The Hunted

by L. A. Banks

  Carlos snarled when they hastened to sit Father Lopez down and bring him a glass of water. “Sonofabitch needs a cold shower, not a glass of water, gentlemen. Unless I’m losing my touch.”

  Watching them try to restore order and help the disoriented Lopez, while issuing nasty glances over their shoulders in his direction, truly got on his nerves. Carlos paced, hating how they flinched at his every move. “All right, all right. My bad. I’ll chill.”

  “This is going to be a long seven years for all of us, Carlos, if you keep this nonsense up,” Father Patrick snapped.

  As soon as the priest reminded him of the length of his sentence, he reached out toward the door, ripping it from its hinges from where he stood across the room. Wood and metal splintered and bent as it came to a hard crash against the floor. Seven years, fuck that. Seven more minutes was a stretch. The fact that everybody was on their feet was of little consequence. Yeah, he was getting stronger—they needed to know that, too. So were the urges that came with the increased power he owned.

  A thick, blue-white band surrounded the house from the threshold out a hundred yards and heat rushed through the door as though he’d opened a furnace. He’d never make it across without torching himself. Carlos waved his arm in frustration and immediately repaired the door and then paced from the door to the window.

  “You fucking lied to me. That’s a sin! Fucking clerics and you lied? You brought my coffin over that shit out there . . . and . . . and—that shit ain’t right! Don’t tell me about being a master of deception! All you want is for me to go to Brazil with Damali—track her, protect her, go hunt down and kill whatever is over there—just fucking work for your asses like a mule! Deliver the package, untouched, right? But I’m not allowing her to get in harm’s way. You think I’m crazy? Stupid?”

  “No,” Father Patrick said calmly. “You’re not crazy. We did conceal the full purpose of our mission.”

  “What!” The sofa hit the wall and three lamps blew out. “You admit that shit to my face?”

  “Yes,” Father Patrick said with a sly smile. “We had an agenda. No sense lying about it now.” He glanced at the others who had weapons firmly in their grip in the darkened room. “Carlos knows this is how business is done. Fair exchange. We work on saving his soul, all the stuff he wants . . . well, almost all, and he works on what we want.”

  All sarcasm and amusement went out of Father Patrick’s tone as his glare narrowed on Carlos in the dark. “We want the Neteru safe at all times, just like you do. We want whatever is causing chaos to be eliminated—just like your vampire world probably doesn’t want anything harvesting humans from their territories, we don’t either. We have the same end goal in mind, but for different reasons.”

  Begrudgingly, Carlos righted the furniture and repaired the lamps.

  “You’re getting stronger,” Father Patrick said.

  “Yeah. Goes with the new territory—literally,” Carlos muttered as he sulked and paced away.

  “Power concentrating from Nuit’s old areas?”

  “Yeah. What’s it to you?”

  “If you’re strong, that’s a good thing,” Father Patrick said carefully. “A heck of a thing for us to cope with in here, but something you’ll need where you’re probably going.”

  “If you had any sense, you’d let me talk her out of getting herself in harm’s way . . . and just let me go over there and dust whatever’s lurking . . . if that would shorten my sentence.” Carlos stared at the old man, trying to keep a plea out of his tone.

  “You know that tonight wouldn’t be a good time for you to talk to her. Let us focus on the Brazilian problem instead.”

  Carlos sighed and found a stationary post by the window. “Yeah, I know the deal. We can do this the hard way, or the smooth way.”

  “Correct,” Asula said in a harsh tone.

  “No more attacks on our junior member, understood?” Lin said evenly. “He’s young, and it’s not a fair match!”

  “Tell me, what about any of this is fair?” Carlos didn’t look at them as he asked the rhetorical question. This shit was royally pissing him off. “What if I made Lopez feel it every time I did? Made him lose his goddamned mind like you’re trying to make me lose mine . . . for seven years?” Carlos glanced at the young priest, considered just taking him there on general principle, then decided not to for the sake of his own sanity. “Shit,” he said, going back to the window. “Don’t mess with me, tonight, about what’s fair. I am not in the mood.”

  “You have not answered my question about the mountain killings,” Father Patrick said with a glare of disapproval blazing in his eyes as he tried to wrest back Carlos’s focus.

  “Yeah, well . . . whatever. Probably not vampires.” Carlos sighed. This was really getting on his nerves. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared into the darkness, wishing he were an invisible part of it. “Those bodies were mauled, found, and pronounced dead—with no signs of a ritual near them. The hybrids from Nuit’s camp have probably been hunted down and killed by the Vampire Council’s squad by now.”

  Carlos placed both hands on the windowpane, as if trying to touch the moon through the glass. “These guys fell in some pretty remote locations—by the time the search parties found them, whatever was out there in the wild had gotten a piece of them as well. Wasn’t like they dropped in a city park. Dumb bastards were out in the freakin’ Amazon and dickin’ around on some nature jaunt. One thing I’ve learned is, if you ain’t where you’re supposed to be, you’ll get fucked up—and do not mess with Mother Nature. Heads probably rolled when a predator went for their throats. Motherfuckers should stay out of the jungle. Period, end of story.”

  Carlos smiled as he studied the clerics’ drained expressions. “You know how delicate the human throat is . . . how very few bones keep it attached to the shoulders? Something eating or attacking could easily decapitate a victim without even trying that hard.” When Father Lopez looked away, it was all he could do not to chuckle.

  “Are you sure?” Father Patrick said, his tone firm, sending a quietwarning to stop scaring the young priest.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Carlos muttered, defiance claiming him.

  They nodded, and he enjoyed the worry on their faces.

  “I cover North America, South America, and the Caribbean because Nuit took South America topside and ceded it to me for bringing him Damali. That’s history. But the attacker wasn’t one of mine. If there was vamp tracer on a body, from either one of my diluted line or a poacher, I would have known. If those humans that fell were inhabited by a demon, I would have picked up the sulfur trail right away. Nothing goes down in my territory by another vamp without it transmitting to me. But I do need to get out, all bullshit aside, to properly track it.”

  “You wouldn’t feed from any people . . . or human remains while you were out there, would you?” Padre Lopez brought his hand up to his cross and began nervously toying with it. “You’d only take a deer, like you promised us before, right?”

  He was pleased that the young cleric’s resolve was wavering. After a mental blast like that, he’d be shocked if the man hadn’t responded.

  “I don’t eat carrion,” Carlos said, indignant. “The victims were already dead for a coupla days when they were found and were too far for me to even think about getting to—if I was so inclined, and I’m not.” He hated that a collective sigh of relief from the clerics greeted his statement. What did they think he was? A bottom feeder? Only lowlife demons ate dead meat. He was a master vampire!

  “Gentlemen. I’m the only male master in this region, on two continents. I’ve got all the lower-level males who had not allied with Nuit, and therefore, haven’t been dusted by council, pushing up on my business enterprises, jockeying for position. They can only assume I’m out there, somewhere, but must be too badly injured to respond or that the council has me detained in the Sea of Perpetual Agony for some offense. That leaves major sectors of my territory wide open. I need to get with that
and address the flagrant violation of my authority!”

  “Okay,” Father Patrick said, growing weary. “We understand that you have ego-based concerns that have to be addressed in the vampire world to keep up your ruse—”

  “You do not understand what I’m telling you,” Carlos yelled. “It’s not ego, it’s primal. It’s the fiber of what a master vampire is!” Four sets of widened eyes stared back at him as the color drained from the clerics’ faces when his fangs inadvertently slid down from beneath his gums. Carlos ran his tongue over his teeth to send them back—but the shit felt good. Had been a while.

  “I want you to imagine where I am right now,” he said quietly. “And I’m not going to screw with your minds—this is just the facts.” He waited until the group’s seer, Father Patrick, nodded before he continued. “Gentlemen, I have vamp females out there who are sending out probes to sense for the strongest male in the territory, and even though I’m blocked behind your prayer wall, I can hear them—since you left a breach for me to detect what you needed me to. And the shit they send to lure a male master . . . you have no idea. I’m just glad Damali’s isn’t transmitting, too . . . but she doesn’t know I’m alive.”

  He drummed his fingers on the edge of the window frame. “The females of our kind are designed for two purposes. Primary—take the stake, the daylight, the arrow, whatever, in the event that a master’s lair is breached. When we make one, or acquire one, it’s in her cellular code: be a body shield. We always travel with five points of the pentagram, therefore at least five females; the sixth element is the crest, the centerpiece is the strongest male. Same formation with peripheral, male bodyguards. So, the five strongest females in the regions will compete using telepathy until they lock with a male master, then they’ll leave the weaker males and come to me. They know the registers haven’t run blood with the death of a second master . . . they are calling me by name . . . no, you have no idea.”

  Just confessing was making his hands begin to shake. He put them behind his back and walked toward the kitchen to go find blood. “As above, so below. They have the same instincts as female lions, that’s the way we’re set up. They’ll even hunt for you, if you ask, and feed you from their veins if you’re injured or too lazy to break a sweat.”

  “Carlos . . . we didn’t know—”

  “No, Father. You don’t understand my world at all.” He glared at the elderly man, and then allowed his gaze to sweep the others in a hard rake. “When one of us gets injured, it’s in their code to track us, find us, and take us to shelter and bring blood. Preservation of the line at all times.” Carlos wiped his face with both hands, truly feeling the call of the night in multiple female timbres.

  “They can sense me near, but haven’t been able to locate me for a month because of the damned prayer lines blocking them. It’s driving them crazy, and me with them, because they know I was injured and in danger of the sun. The more frenzied and panicked their calls become, the harder it is for me to stay in here.” He chuckled and looked out the window.

  “Carlos, you’re going to get through this difficult transition,” Monk Lin said, his voice an attempt to soothe. “You died with a prayer in your heart, which is why you can hear the name of the Almighty, even say it, and because you still have a piece of a soul.”

  “Ultimately, you are moving toward the light each night that you purge yourself of your old ways,” Asula said, his voice dropped to a calm timbre. “Our goal is not to torture you. This is not a period of punishment in the atonement process, but rather a reversal of your perspective.”

  Carlos chuckled, the tone in it brittle. “Torture? This is the fucking Inquisition, fellas.” All he understood right now was what they were dangling over his head, but what he couldn’t have. Freedom. He knew from his old life how to give a man a taste of something he craved, just a taste of it, then how to dangle it over his head to keep him in line. He used to do it all the time.

  “We didn’t want to deceive you,” Father Lopez said in a quiet voice. “We wanted to illustrate your options in a safe environment . . . so you could make informed decisions.”

  “Informed decisions? I wasn’t informed that you wanted me to hunt down a predator on my turf. The last thing you said was help the Neteru get her sight back so she could hunt and stay safe—and investigate what was out there. I was down with that. No problem. I wanted baby girl safe, too.”

  “We also need you to restore her hope, by giving her some of yours. We wanted to rejuvenate your spirit, as much as we wanted your body repaired.”

  Carlos stared at Father Patrick hard. “Hope? You all definitely came to the wrong place for that . . . and I know you don’t want me to work on her body.” He shook his head and laughed. “If I remember from my old catechism classes, evil is everywhere and will ride the airwaves until the big war, Armageddon, or until the good guys go up in the Rapture. Right? I cannot mind lock with her on a two-way. No. Thought I could hang, but I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Father Lopez glanced from one cleric to the other and then looked at Carlos nervously. “You just did it to me, sent me the wrong thing, but . . . you could send her—”

  “Hombre, just squash it.” The young man was so foolish it was making Carlos pace.

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Father Patrick said with confidence. “If a person goes through their whole life without a break, hope can die and our Neteru is losing the battle with—”

  “Spare me!” Carlos whirled around and held up his hand.

  “We did,” Father Patrick said, his eyes not holding anger, but something close to amusement.

  “I’m not hearing this bullshit. Okay, ironically, the prayer lines have been taking some of the cut out of that blade in my skull . . . but shit . . .” Carlos leaned against the wall, his gaze toward the clerics unwavering. “Don’t ask me to do a two-way lock with Damali, ever. Especially not with the female vamps sending and open for my telepathy signal . . . their secondary purpose is beyond your comprehension, fellas. A couple of nights ago, I almost went there and blew my cover. The only reason I didn’t is that I wanted to be sure I was back to full power, all my wounds were thoroughly healed, and that I could battle another male, which is always inevitable if you go out. Self preservation is always first, but after that . . .”

  “Your will is strong enough to—”

  “Father Patrick, get real. The whole job of a female vamp is to keep you sated, in lair, and out of danger, only coming out to feed and hunt when absolutely necessary . . . patrolling your borders with caution. They’ll gorge on fresh, adrenaline-pumped kill, bring it to you hot . . . for a double-plunge siphon . . . aw, man, you just do not know . . .”

  He walked by the coffee table and kicked it to stave off the shiver just knowing had sent through him. It was of little comfort that his misguided jailers had compassion in their eyes, because their wills were still tightly bound on keeping him in tonight.

  “Neteru scent works the same way—it locks around all your senses, and fucking drags you into the street, five lair kittens notwithstanding, it beats their call . . . which ain’t no joke.” He pointed to the window, his arm extending in a hard snap. “You have me trapped in here with Neteru pumping adrenaline in nightly blood hunts, singing her heart out . . . some sad shit about losing her soul in Hell, five strong females calling my name with bait like you wouldn’t believe, goddamned competitors eating up my territory, and you want me to do this sentence cold turkey, and don’t even have a blunt on you?” He was incredulous when they didn’t flinch. “You can’t hear it, but I can.”

  His gaze was drawn to the window like a magnet. He faced the night and listened to her siren call to him. She was wearing pitch black, and she was serving stars like diamonds. Nothin’ but da rocks—night was all iced up. He focused on the stars. The moon cast a bluish tint on the tall redwoods and pines surrounding the cabin. The colors moving against the tree leaves had the allure of a silk scarf floating gently on the breeze against a wo
man’s throat. The night was one sexy bitch . . .

  “Carlos, son, evil creates plagues and disasters, violence. You’re right. These things have been unleashed to inhabit the planet. But each time an individual goes against evil, whether in a small personal battle with themselves, or within their family, or whether it is a group that conquers evil with peace, harmony, beauty, love . . . or the sword of truth, we win. Just like when we see people rush to help people they don’t even know . . . you’ve seen average individuals do heroic things, risk everything in their lives and rush to aid someone in a fire, or something equally as tragic. That action also affects those less courageous, gives them hope. Perhaps it helps a mother hug her child tighter, or makes a man give up a vice—nothing is ever wasted in the battle, not even you. Our side uses disasters, that we did not create and that evil did, to bring out the best in mankind.”

  “It is akin to spiritual judo,” Monk Lin said softly. “We use the enemy’s aggression against itself, and use its weight to flip it. Such a cry goes up to Heaven when people see things that are so terribly unjust that it gives them pause. Even the worst of men, generally, have a limit.”

  “You must battle—”

  “I am losing the battle tonight and I have reached my limit,” Carlos said, pure honesty in his tone. “Now at full strength, I can’t take these calls—while injured, yeah, but not tonight.” Carlos slapped the center of his chest and then went to the refrigerator and slung the door opened so hard that it came off the hinges. “And all you got in here is cold blood?” With total disgust, he repaired the refrigerator. “I need something to bring me down . . . a damned Valium or something.” Carlos raked his fingers through his hair.