"Go, go, go!" Damali shouted, scrambling civilians and pushing the team from behind.
Carlos had the front, she had the back, sandwiching the team between them for maximum safety as they ran the treacherous two hundred yards.
But every instinct within her told her something else had happened. Heru's appearance was so out of the blue, so very, very strange—the Kings and Queens were gone, otherwise engaged? They'd raised a crown prince? They'd brought the east and west together and had left Guardians stationed in other parts of the world for later?
Familiar Guardian faces came into focus as she ran, pushing the group to be sure they got everyone into the tunnels alive. New York, Detroit, Chicago, D.C., Atlanta, L.A., she almost wept to see who'd made it, just as much as it broke her heart to see who hadn't.
Then she saw them. Father Patrick. Father Lopez. Rabbi Zeitloff. Monk Lin. Imam Asula. The Covenant.
Carlos had stopped and turned, pushing past people to double back to stand by her side. They looked across the barren land in awe, and for what seemed like miles, all they could see was an army of saints. Hannibal rode in from the left flank, Adam and Ausar from the right. Steeds pawed the rock-hewn earth as Nzinga's and Eve's mounts joined the front line with Aset and her Amazon warrior sister. Seth pulled up next to Abel, as Heru rode in close to his father.
The ancient empires had risen, royal warriors in every hue, their regal carriage and wise, exotic eyes deep-set with intense knowledge. Larger-than-life, they loomed massive like their monuments, as though they'd stepped right out of the Egyptian hieroglyphics on their tombs and into the world.
Heru lifted his sword, touching it to Ausar's and Adam's, creating a silver trinity as he stared at Carlos. "Lead! The fifth seal has been broken! Today, once and for all, we dethrone the unholy!"
A Neteru war cry went up as every sword pointed to the ground and opened a fissure in the earth.
"Take me to Lilith's lair!" Eve shouted to Damali. "Together we shall stand victorious!"
"Get those civilians down in the tunnels, and seal it off with a prayer!" Damali shouted over her shoulder to the Guardians that stood transfixed.
"Now!" Carlos yelled, as a fire-snorting, winged steed came to him, ready for war. He mounted it when Nzinga caught Damali by her arm and swung her up high to take flight.
As she rose from the momentum of Nzinga's hard pull, the air around her became still. The sun felt close and bright, warming her face as all sound muted and her head dropped back.
Arms at her sides, she careened up, up, rocketing in a blur, and then somersaulted to face the earth, blade pointing toward it, wings pressed in tight to her body. Then Hell vomited.
Out from the cavern, millions of demon scorpions poured onto the landscape, causing steeds to rear, but united Neteru blades sent a scorching carpet of white light to incinerate them. Her target remained the yawning pit of darkness that was growing as her hurtling body got closer to it. She saw Carlos look up at her, timing his descent with hers to avoid a collision— and then their energy locked. Both over the edge as one, an army flooded in behind them, slashing, burning, cutting at demon bodies, and severing screaming heads.
United blades delivered white-light mortar fire, blowing open levels, and sending the unholy into the sun. Phantoms, poltergeists, succubae, and incubi dissolved, slaughtered by the millions. Demon limbs littered the caverns, and innards-splattered rock walls dripped with demon gore. Neteru Kings went back-to-back with their Queens, gutting the entrance levels of the pit, and then razing the third and fourth levels by white-light infernos. Were-creatures in mangled transition were caught by dreaded sunlight. Hulking werewolves howled at the piercing beams that blinded and dismembered them, huge heads thudding to the burning floor in a sulfuric wash before combusting into putrid ash. The martyred fallen chased any fleeing demons into deep caverns, routing them out, knowing they could never be held captive again.
But the deeper Damali and Carlos dove, the quieter it got, until soon it became apparent that Hell had emptied onto the earth, en masse.
Damali and Carlos dropped into an empty Vampire Council Chamber. Thrones were gone. The pentagram-shaped table was gone. The doors had been left wide open with no fanged crests or hooded messengers. Harpies were nonexistent. Transporter bats were careening up and out of the vaulted ceilings. The Neterus looked at each other—Carlos grabbed Damali's forearm and gave her a heave to ride with him on the back of his mount as the huge white steed reared and opened its massive wingspan, spooked.
"Punk bitches moved." Carlos glanced around at Hannibal, Adam, and Ausar, who'd caught up to them with Eve and Aset. Eve released a war cry of frustration and pointed her blade toward the floor, sending multiple pulses of white-light rage into it. "Then open the Devil's lair—I've always wanted to meet that sonofabitch!" A dispatch of warriors circled back with Nzinga. "The warrior angels said to retreat. Something is wrong," Nzinga said breathlessly. She pointed to the vaulted ceiling, breathing hard as the light began to diminish above them. "You two must leave now"
"Where's the sunlight?" Damali said quietly. Carlos kicked the sides of his steed.
"We're out!" Rock and thick, grasping roots with tendrils of dark webbing began to pull the earth back together. Combined Neteru blade pulses were the only thing that opened the quickly closing passageway out above them before the earth snapped shut.
Damali and Carlos hit the ground hard as their mount's leg got caught in the fissure as it sealed. Warriors surrounded the shrieking white horse, trying to keep the panicked animal from beating its wings and cracking bones while it pawed the earth. Furious Neterus shot the ground with blue-white novas attempting to free it. Then, suddenly, something pulled hard from the underside of the earth, sending blood splatter from the animal's mouth and nose as its hide peeled up its back. Hannibal leapt forward and beheaded the creature under the fast-moving eclipse to put it out of its misery, and then spat on the ground in frustration.
"The sun is going as black as sackcloth," Aset murmured, gazing directly into the eclipse as the ground began to rumble. "And the moon is bloodred in the sky, now seen with the sun."
Damali watched the meteor shower for a moment and then offered another verse as gale force winds began to swirl. "The stars of heaven fell to earth . . . and the fig tree cast her untimely fruit."
"And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together," Carlos muttered in disgust. "When did these motherfuckers get the seal, that's what I want to know?" Adam and Ausar stared at him.
"Does it matter, young brother?" Ausar said, touching his blade to Carlos's. "We fight until the last man stands."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carlos never had a chance to respond. As complete darkness fell over their armies the sound of Ayana's high-pitched scream told him that his worst nightmare had come true.
Pure darkness had coalesced a hundred yards from the water tunnel entrance, almost seeming to be reaching down into it to pluck Guardians out of it. All he could determine was, either the prayer barrier hadn't gotten laid down fast enough, or when the team hid, the site wasn't cleared. Not knowing twisted his mind and practically seized his heart—if anything happened to the innocents on his watch ... if anything happened to his brothers' wives . . . A child had scrambled to freedom with machine-gun report behind her. The other Guardian teams were on fire, fighting like every man and woman was ready to make this place their Masada—their last stand.
His team went ballistic; Big Mike was diving headlong into untold numbers of beasts; Damali was in forward motion to save the child; Inez was swallowed by a wall of darkness. Marlene's yell cut through the night. Mounted Neterus tried to encircle Damali to keep her from what was clearly a suicide mission, but Damali would not be hemmed in ... and then something fragile within him snapped. His wife turned toward him, her eyes glowing white. Everything felt like it was suddenly happening in slow motion. That same fragile cord had apparently popped within her, too. A black claw reached out for the child and then exploded a
s Ayana's voice hit a decibel beyond his range of hearing.
Furious transporter demon bats lost sonar navigation, crashing into one another and attacking their own in a feral frenzy. Gargoyle-bodied Harpies became instantly disoriented by the light-frequency of the sound as the voice of pure innocence turned them one upon the other in vicious attacks that culled their numbers.
Carlos released a Neteru war yell, fangs lengthening, silver sight scorching everything in its wake. Battle bulked, his arms and legs felt as though forged from steel cable, his night vision pure laser, his intent singular—save the baby. Every footfall felt like it took an eternity to propel him forward, yet it was only seconds in real time. Save the child— Ayana locked into his focus. Her face was his visual mantra.
Warriors slashed and cut their way forward as the darkness filled in all around them. And then he heard Damali's breaths above the din. Slow, individual inhalations and exhalations of Ma'atAkhw BaAnkh separating out her signature from the pure chaos of wanton battle.
Opalescent light around her broke the oppressive darkness that was closing in like its own entity. The luminous aura created a guidepost, bathing a thirty-foot circumference around her in scorching white light. Demons fried, popped, and sizzled, screaming to their deaths while her powerful aura shielded human Guardians and gave them a living lighthouse in the darkness.
Damali opened her mouth and released a long, sustained, nasal cry that sounded almost like a cross between a muezzin call to prayer and the harmonic sound lines of the dreamtime shaman.
The sound hit Carlos like a depth charge, arched his back, stripped sanity from his brain, and sent him airborne into pitch-blackness. He couldn't see what he killed, not because he was night-blind, but because he was moving too fast. Soon his sensory precision adjusted to bring him flashes of awareness from the vibration within each entity he slaughtered. He could tell humans from that which he dismembered by their aura of light and lack thereof. If it didn't shine, it had to die. Icy cold entrails filled his hands. Gook splattered his face, sending sulfur up his nose. Demon legions had formed, legions had been decimated. Neterus and armies of the Light cut their way through the erupted contents of the Sea of Perpetual Agony while the sky rained brimstone and angels charged.
Covenant clerics appeared, fighting back-to-back with Neteru Guardians, keeping the living alive, circling the child and civilians in protection. Carlos's gaze swept across the bloodied battlefield. His wife had stopped running and slashing demons with her Isis blade to open her arms under a shaft of inner light, her sword lifted, pulling down rays from the sky, and exploding out a white-light nova carpet from where her feet met the ground.
Suddenly colored shafts of light could be seen in the distance, each of her Guardian sisters lit to produce a hue and harmonic that blended into Damali's. The genius of Atlantis and Marlene's and Pearl's words stabbed into his mind; his wife had become a living crystal, the main pyramid that drew down Divine light and refracted it to her sisters.
Their light shafts gave human warriors cover and night vision, incinerating any demons that came near in a one-way shield of energy that allowed projectiles out and none to come in. Gathered in a semicircle, pushing back armies of darkness as they advanced from the mouth of the tunnel entrance, they were a walking light and sound weapon. Neterus and angelic forces boxed in the demon legions from the flanks and rear. Hell was surrounded. Let the total annihilation begin!
Carlos slashed his way forward as he ran toward the child. Then Ayana was at Damali's side, protected by Father Patrick wielding a Templar blade. The small angel from Nod body-shielded the child, too. Sara and Hubert were here?
He could only process what he saw next in flash-frames of bewildered consciousness. The longer Damali held the note, the stronger the beams of light became. The stronger he became. The harder the Neteru Councils fought. . . the more determined the armies of martyrs were.
Big Mike surfaced from a pile of werewolves and Level Five were-demons, arms bulging, holding bodies by the throat. His old werewolf fang wound across his knuckles was bleeding. A section of the deceased, Brazilian were-human Guardian team leapt out of the morass of bodies with appendages in their jaws. If ever there was a squad that had given their lives in the name of On High, it was Kamal and his men. For a few seconds Carlos watched, rapt, as their translucent spiritual energy deftly slipped between Mike and fatal harm, fearlessly fighting with him, death no longer their issue.
Carlos quickly sent a blast from his sword to assist, but watched stupefied as Mike's rib cage cracked, his chest became more diesel, and he gutted a huge alpha male werewolf with his bare hands. Inez had thrown away her 9mm when the clip ran out and was charging toward her child, severing any demon appendage that reached for her with a bowie knife in each hand.
Imam Asula followed through with a machete, hacking demons out of her way, going in and out of astral projection to frustrate the unholy that couldn't destroy him.
Monk Lin's face melted into J.L.'s as phantom samurai blades filled J.L.'s palms. Krissy's harmonic tone bathed him in yellow-gold light, allowing that Guardian brother to actually lift and propel himself from it as though it were a solid object. Slain Tibetan monks, student protesters, and eons of innocents fell from the sky like golden-clad ninjas to decimate the darkness around them. Huge Amanthra serpents attacked, but J.L.'s double-sword agility and his fast-moving spiritual backup dropped heads quicker than a serpent's strike.
From his peripheral vision, Carlos caught a glimpse of the team's youngest male warrior. Bobby's body became awash in jade-green light, then X-rayed into dreamtime shaman images, his wizard skills locking into the sound of Jasmine's call, white lighting a swath through a legion of scythe-bearers. An Aborigine army encircled the young couple in prayer sound lines, their Light-poisoned darts taking down targets of darkness until the ground smoldered.
Rider threw his head back and yelled as turquoise light folded him away into nothingness, releasing him behind unwitting vampires to blow their brains out. Native American wind chants blew in ghost riders wielding glowing battle-axes and Light tomahawks, taking heads as they cut through grounded demons that could not get airborne under the Light-frequency sound.
Padre Lopez moved in and out of the darkside's vampire columns, a phalange of holy water blinding them as he flung last rites with a hard gaze. Nubian warriors melted up from the earth as druid warriors melted out of the stones. Kemetian ground troops rode out of splinters of Light on golden chariots. Light hit their shields and spears and within seconds they'd broken formation to join with fallen Spartan armies to war against the darkness of ancient Rome. Every male Neteru Guardian's past wounds, every weakness he'd owned, now surfaced with the harmonic tone echoing through the war zone. But those old darkside-inflicted injuries were no longer a liability; this time they were a source of strength. Carlos saw it with his own eyes, old wounds that should have crossed a man over to the darkside, the Light was now using it to reinforce their warriors—just like Damali had said. If he made it through this battle, he would never question her again. He spun and took off the head of a massive demon Roman soldier with one swipe of his blade, ducked to avoid a mace, and then halved the foolish entity that had swung it.
A ground blast dropped Jose, who was so battle-crazed that he stepped beyond a pool of protective light. Before Carlos could get to his Guardian brother, Yonnie covered Jose's body, only to be rushed by huge international transport demons. Carlos tore toward his fallen men, but Val's red energy flowed over Yonnie, her voice a sustained chord of deep sensuality. Yonnie lifted his head, eyes gleaming black, holding attacking messenger demons paralyzed in the bands of crackling energy that radiated from his fingertips.
Confused demons genuflected, hesitating too long as they mistook the camouflaged Yonnie for a Council-level vampire of their own. Yonnie slapped Jose five as he pulled him up from the ground and an orange rush of energy claimed Jose from Juanita's tonal wail, putting fangs in Jose's mouth.
; "My line brother, let's do this shit!" Yonnie whooped. "My councilman, my line brother," Jose said through fangs, whipping out a fresh 9mm loaded with hallowed earth shells. The two Guardians locked arms and took a running whirl to become a huge black tornado emitting a black Vampire Council charge and bullets, slaying everything in their wake.
Nearby roars made Carlos pivot, missing a flying demon barb to his head, only to see that Shabazz had upper and lower canines presented, his dreadlocks lifted in blue adrenaline static, hands a razor-blur of instant death. Kamal and Hubert from Nod were right at his side. In the distance Carlos could see Light forces and winged cavalries rolling over dark legions, practically wading now through ash. Marlene had worked her stick so mightily that she stood in ashes that reached her shins, white-light heat rippling down her locks and keeping entities back. Slave ship chants surrounded her, along with the chants from Trail of Tears captives, and the cries of concentration camp victims—all were now replenished with fluorescent vitality as they fiercely fought against imperial-izing powers of evil, devastating their ranks.
Dan was covered in a purple haze, his tactical energy rolling out in concentric circles, incinerating demons in a depth charge that shook the earth. Peoples from native lands too numerous to count stood with him, their shackles raised, their indignation against injustice a powerful force that lit the region as they lifted their fists and their collective cries exploded demons beyond the hillside. Marjorie was a madwoman, magnetizing demons to lift and send into the path of Berkfield's single pump shotgun shell to the head. It was as though the two were playing coordinated target practice, and the only thing missing was Berkfield's cry
"Pull!" A sea of clerics surrounded them from every nation and every religion; all those persecuted in the name of the Most High now stood their ground to obliterate dirty emperors, Inquisition participants, barbaric clerics, and dirty politicians who had innocent blood on their hands.
L A Banks - [Vampire Huntres Legend 12] Page 17