She'd left the team to its collective squabbling about the potential next steps to take without looking back. They'd still be at it by the time she got back, she was sure. This was the part of communal living that Carlos couldn't stand; she knew her husband well. After the team meeting, that Scorpio was going to need a private, quiet place to get his head together. Fury waves had been coming off his body so intensely that they were threatening to either fuse the Turkish rug to the hardwood floors around him or start a blaze. That's when he simply got up and left the villa.
Yeah, Carlos had to get up, get out, and walk it off. It was easy to understand. The darkside had jacked with Carlos Rivera's cash flow, which represented major disrespect where he came from, and she knew his old street ways were wrestling within him. That part of him would never fully die. It would always resonate in his being, no matter what. Once from the streets always from the streets. Mess with a brother's money? Oh, hell to the no. Damali just shook her head as she searched the beach for him. Some things were simply embedded in the man's DNA. Armageddon notwithstanding, with a wife and a baby on the way, the darkside was playing to all of her husband's deepest fears—all of which centered on basic survival. For Carlos, she knew cash meant flexibility, maneuverability, strength, a backdoor escape. If he was liquid, he could flow like the water sign he was and get out of whatever. But they'd taken that option away and Senor Rivera wasn't having it.
By the time she found him, his aura was radiating so much heat it had turned the sand around him to glass. Actual grains of sand had fused together right under him without burning him and then had quickly cooled from the trade winds and surf. It was eerie to see him sitting all alone, yogi-style, wearing jeans and a red T-shirt, hovering several inches above the beach in heavy meditation, aura glowing white-hot silver and him taking in long, deep breaths, practically shaking with rage. A deep crimson V of sweat marked his shirt as his broad shoulders and back slowly expanded and contracted beneath it.
Stopping for a moment, she wrestled with how best to approach him. He needed to know that she was on his side, even if she didn't agree with the waste of energy being expended on rage. They had shit to do and had to do it quickly before Mr. Fontaine at the resort began to inquire further.
Caribbean sun beat down on Carlos's bronze skin, making the silver aura around him shimmer until she had to partially shield her eyes with her hand. Small beads of silver perspiration cast a glow to his damp hair, and his normally ripped, athletic frame had bulked ever so slightly, adding bricks to his abdominal six-pack, chest, and thickly muscled biceps. He was two seconds from a full vamp battle bulk, she could tell, and the only things missing were the sabertooth-length battle fangs.
Damali sighed quietly and tested the brittle surface of the beach before she stepped onto the smooth, shiny coating, wondering as much about how to restore what had once been pale pink sand to its previous pristine beauty as she was worried about how to restore Carlos's peace. He was creating an ecological disaster while in angry-meditation repose. What the hell was he gonna do when he finally came out of the trance?
"You're levitating," she said calmly, walking toward him as she murmured a prayer that their conversation be Light-sealed.
Carlos opened his eyes, pure silver staring back at her as he unfolded from the yogi position and stood. "You ain't seen nothing yet," he said in a low, furious tone.
"Okay, so they messed up our money—"
"No," he said evenly, cutting her off. "What the darkside did was box us in, bleed us out, and make us have to come out of hiding to eat ... a daylight exposure move. Sudden death. Old-school vamp. Starve 'em out."
She nodded, having to give credit where credit was due. "Yep. Okay, but we're still unrecognizable, courtesy of the Light. Last I checked, that side was providing for us, any ole way. We got here safely, which is more than you can say for a lot of people. We ate well. Got cleaned up, rested, and got new clothes— anywhere there's a church mission we can pull in resources so we're not raiding stores and gift shops like thieves. So what makes you think we're gonna be without for long?
Might not be as fly as we're used to, but we won't be completely ass out, and you know it. This just pisses you off because it's definitely gonna cramp our style—a lot."
Carlos looked away from her and folded his arms over his bulked chest.
"Do not let ego get a chokehold on you, brother. I know you and Yonnie loved having deep pockets . . . but if the entire planet blows up, how much does that matter?"
When he whirled on her, she knew she'd accidentally pushed the wrong button.
"It's not about that, D!" he shouted. "It's about being able to move, roll smooth without a trace, buy supplies and ammo, and have the basic cover we need when we need it. Don't make this about some old bullshit, Damali. Not this morning. Don't go there."
"All right, all right, my bad," she said, holding her hands up in front of her. "But you have to admit—"
"I don't have to do jack shit but get this family out of here in one piece. How am I supposed to do that when they have all my closest land options in a direct route through the Bermuda Triangle?"
"Uriel said to wait for word."
Carlos briefly hung his head back and closed his eyes. "I know. And I was ready to do that. But where are we gonna wait, D?" He opened his eyes as he opened his arms and simply stared at her. ,"They dropped us at a hotel where we can't pay the bill. Even if I could successfully jettison us out of here, the humans at the hotel will by rights call U.S. authorities, which will alert the darkside to our last location—here—which will put pure Hell hot on our trail."
"Uriel said to wait for word," Damali repeated calmly, not blinking as she stared at him.
Carlos let his breath out hard. "Yeah, I know." "You try the Kings?" He stared at her for a moment. "You try the Queens?" She nodded. "Seems all of Heaven pretty much emptied out searching for the pupa."
"And in the meantime, we're ass out."
Damali fought a smile. "Yeah, I guess our credit card problems aren't a top priority, given what the Light is hunting ... or as much of a priority as trying to contain the pale horse of the Apocalypse, huh?"
"I don't even see how you can crack a smile at a time like this." Incredulous, Carlos raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head'. "We've got a serious problem, boo."
"Yeah, I know," Damali said, finally going to him. "Listen . . . I wasn't making fun of you; I was just trying to put things into perspective. So, we leave Mr. Fontaine a Rolex—which should cover the nights we stayed, along with a note saying that due to the Wall Street crash, everything liquid we had got jacked. This way, we're not breaking cosmic law by stealing, which means the darkside can't track us ... then we—"
"We what, D?" Carlos pulled away from her to begin pacing. "What the fuck are we supposed to do!"
"Go to the hills, and—"
"That's just it, Damali. They're hills, not mountains! The whole island is only twenty-one freakin' square miles big. You can get from one end to the other in an hour. Hide? Hide where, boo? You wanna go to the place called Shadow Mountain here, which is really a big hill—or maybe wall-up underground in their crystal caves that look like you've entered Level Seven of Hell? No, no, better yet, we can hide in Hungry Bay or Mangrove Swamp with you being pregnant! Or maybe we'll just hang out at the golf course green of the Duns Resort until we bump into Tiger Woods and then I'll ask him if he has a coupla C notes he can drop on—"
"Or maybe we could just go to a church, and call the Covenant?" She stared at Carlos. He was starting to get on her last nerve. "The oldest church on the island, Marlene said, is the Cathedral of the Most Holy. To me it's as good a place as any to wait for word from an archangel, don't you think?"
Carlos gave her his back to consider as he put his hands on top of his head and walked off a ways. She'd wait. She knew the drill—he had to blow off enough steam to let good, old-fashioned logic kick in. The fact that Father Pat was no longer around had .simpl
y closed off the Covenant as an option for support in her husband's mind. She could feel it, knew it as much as she knew her name. There were so many things eating the man up from the inside out that it was obvious he couldn't think straight.
"Listen," she said quietly after a moment. "The Light always works in code and yet always provides. We're in Bermuda, man. No one knows who we are, courtesy of the Light. Truth be told, we could eat off the trees and live off the fish in this weather for a long time, if we had to, and we've avoided the pale horse plagues for now. We could still be scraping in the streets of D.C. trying to get past military checkpoints. So,/here's gotta be something about why we got dropped here, of all places."
When he didn't immediately respond, she pressed her point, trying to give him something positive to hang on to. "Did you ever consider that maybe the Light put us here because during this all-out war, even the darkside would be afraid to send their troops through the Triangle to risk their resources right now? That network of interdimensional tunnels fluxes both black and white, right? So, this could be the safest place at the moment. . . I'd bank on that, since an archangel set us down here and not in a hot zone. Make sense?"
To her relief, she watched the intricate tumblers in Carlos's mind begin to turn with that new awareness, as though her words were the necessary lubricant to get the heavy mental gears that had been paralyzed by rage to move. Damali motioned to her necklace. It was important to give the man who she knew wanted to rip out an entity's heart something more productive than vengeance to focus on.
"Twenty-one square miles—do the math." Damali looked at her husband in an unblinking gaze. "Two plus one is three, a trinity. Even after the Light sent old man Cordell back to rejoin his D.C. team, there are still twenty-one members of core Guardians and clerics combined on our team—eighteen Neteru Guardians here with three remaining members of the Covenant back in the States. This place is made up of seven main islands within the cluster of tiny coral islands and islets—seven, Carlos. A lucky number; a power number. C'mon, I thought you were a betting man."
Carlos looked out to sea, his eyes glazing over with a seer's mild trance. "Yeah. Blackjack. Twenty-one, a trinity. All right, I hear you. Spanish mariners got here in 1503, which when you do the math comes to nine ... an end number. But if Bermuda is being represented by an end number, and they left us off outside the Bermuda Triangle—why would they drop us near what is also known as the Devil's Triangle, baby? Cain got his troops through this way before, and you know his granddaddy, old Lu, is crazier than him." Carlos turned to look at her, the trance suddenly gone.
Damali shrugged and looked down at the necklace in her fist. "Let's ask Pearl."
"He released the pale horse," Fallen Nuit murmured to Lilith discreetly. "Does this mean Sebastian was correct in his theory that the Neteru heir has been conceived?
We've scoured the eastern seaboard for three days and three nights, have sent out search-and-destroy teams everywhere, and it's as though the entire Neteru Guardian team simply vanished without a trace. This can only be the work of angels . . . perhaps there is information that we should be apprised of by our master? Why aren't the Neterus here at the epicenter of the disaster fending off our demon attacks and helping the innocent as they are so led to do? Something's wrong, Lilith."
Lilith shot Fallon a glare. "Do you want to be the one to question my husband about his war strategy at a time like this?"
She waited a beat as they stood in the shadowed ruins of the White House. "I didn't think so."
Undaunted, Nuit lifted his chin, wanting to make use of the rare opportunity of having Lilith's ear in a private conference. "Then what of y@ur heir? Surely this contagion that has been unleashed could harm his development."
"Have you seen the angelic dispatches?" she hissed with a smile. "They are of more harm to him than mere pestilence— which, by now, he thrives on like the rest of us. He has been safely moved, rest assured. But the heavens will pour out to attempt to protect their precious humans. A beautiful diversion, don't you think?" Nuit didn't immediately reply as he watched demons scampering between the rubble with bits of dead human flesh in their clutches. It would be weeks before all the bodies were recovered and the damaged structures were repaired. Chaos reigned . . . but there was a part of him that was actually sad. He allowed the odd sensation to invade him for a moment, letting it coat his insides and flow over his evil palate like a new wine that he'd never tasted.
"I shall miss the old days," Nuit admitted quietly, waxing sentimental in a rare display of truth. He lifted his chin to stand taller, brushing flecks of dust from the rubble off his black designer suit and then tugging on his cuffs a bit. The glimpse of vulnerability he'd given his Council Chairwoman could have been a mistake, but it was so close to his surface that she would have sensed it regardless. Resigned to whatever she would do with the information, he turned his black glowing gaze on the carnage and ran his fingers through his thicket of onyx curls. New Orleans was calling him, as were the good old days of plantation ownership in his Creole bayou.
Clearly horrified, Lilith didn't immediately answer. Instead she pressed a graceful hand to her voluptuous chest and allowed a slight scowl to overtake her eerily gorgeous face. She studied Nuit with soulless dark eyes.
"I have not grown soft, dear Lilith, calm yourself." Nuit let out a deep sigh and then motioned before him. "There was once a certain order of things. A balance. There was exquisite beauty in that balance. The greatest honor to become daywalk-ers, and no longer haunted by the searing sun, will unfortunately allow us to witness a loss of what we'd been."
"Fallon," Lilith murmured, coming closer to him, "what have you learned? What haven't you told me at this critical hour of battle?"
"We were bound by the blood and the night . . . now we will all become flesh-eaters before long. The human populations will soon be thoroughly diseased. Pristine blood in the goblets of old shall be no more, shall pass away as have all the old-world ways that once held a level of dignified charm. The erotic thrill of turning an innocent will be a thing of the past as well. . . once the humans all become the walking dead." He shook his head. "Such a pity." Lilith stroked his jaw, seeming relieved as her black irises considered his for a moment. "I will never admit this in open council. . . but I understand you, tnon ami. It is quite a pity and I will miss the days of pure vampires, too. Pure bloodlust. The beauty of deadly seduction versus brute force." Lilith sighed. "We were majestic creatures, yes?"
"Oui. It was tres ban." Nuit allowed her silky, raven-hued hair to fall through his fingers as he slid it off her bare shoulder with strange affection. "Vlad will also weep . . . how could the count, for all his insanity, not miss the old empire?" Lilith nodded and looked out to the smoldering battlefield that had previously been intact city streets. "He will weep, as will all the ones from the era of the night, but yet we shall become used to the new order of things. This chaos is temporary . .
. the heir brings the promise of perpetual night and with it a level of evil that the world has never known. Humans will shudder in fear, the fumes of it rising with their every breath, and we will feed off that as much as their blood and flesh."
"I will still miss the game. The enchantment of the hunt. This is pure slaughter. Not very sporting, after it has all been said and done."
Lilith clucked her tongue and petted the side of Nuit's face until he closed his eyes.
"There, there, yes, I know," she whispered seductively. "I think this is why he's left us the Neterus and some Guardians to still hunt, don't you?" Their eyes met and an evil smile found its way between them to silently savor, but neither would openly say what was on his or her mind. To even breathe that the Dark Lord had left the Neteru team alive because he'd been bested by the Light was a death sentence.
"I suppose I should rejoin the battle," Nuit said, sensing that his private moment had come to an end as Lilith's hand fell away from his cheek.
"You are aware that our Dark Lord only knows brute
force as an extreme measure. For centuries he toyed with the chess games between him and the dreaded Light. And now it has come to this. He is tired, stressed, and has grown impatient for unequivocal victory. My suggestion is that each of you show yourself to be of constant value to the new empire he's creating ... or I don't know how long I will be able to protect any of you. He's on a mission."
"No country for old men?" Nuit said with a sad smile. The sly half-smile Lilith had been wearing disappeared from her face. "No. Not at all, Fallen."
The moment Damali dipped her necklace into the balmy Bermuda waters, the six precious stones in it lit and the oracle pearl blushed rosy pink and cooed. Small waves lapped Damali's calves and she had to admit the water felt great against her skin.
"Oh . . . Damali . . . that feels so good after all the drama." Pearl giggled. Damali and Carlos stared at each other.
"She's been hanging around the team too long," he muttered. "Since when does an ancient oracle start talking about . 'drama'?"
"Hi, Carlos," Pearl said in a sexy voice. "I'm so glad you're all right."
"Hey, Pearl, glad you made it, too," Damali said, slightly peeved.
"Oh, yeah, hi, Damali." Pearl laughed in a good-natured tone, totally oblivious to the slight. "Glad to see you, too."
Damali just shook her head as she held the oracle under the water in the shallows.
"So, I hate to rush you, or anything, but we're in—"
"Bermuda," Pearl gushed. "Just off the coast of Atlantis. There's so much white-light power beyond the vortexes."
L A Banks - [Vampire Huntres Legend 12] Page 2