by L. A. Banks
"My visions have led us here. The only reason you are here, Padre, is because your parish is near and we don't know this region. We needed an anointed man of faith to be our guide, or we would have spared you this grisly sight. On your insistence, you have entered this cave. We tried to warn you, but you would not heed our advice. So, please do not interrupt our mission."
"Patrick is right. He is a knight of Templar from the highest order, and the seer of our Covenant of the twelve major faiths in the world. The others were lost in the battle to protect our Neteru. Her team made it out, but ours all but perished. So many of us died with that honor. Those who made it out alive, died soon after from the wounds they'd sustained," Asula said quietly. "This beast saved our lives. Saved our Neteru. That is what matters here."
"How can that be?" Manuel's eyes darted between the three older men and the heavy silver trunk they had set down only yards away from the creature.
"He placed himself between our teams and those who attacked us," Lin answered, folding his arms over his chest. "The adversary showed no mercy."
"You think it's too late?" Asula stared at Father Patrick, worry lacing his question.
"I don't know," he said, his tone carrying the same grave concern. "Three nights is an eternity for a vampire who has been wounded and cannot feed himself."
Manuel looked stricken. "I thought we came to kill it, not revive it with witchcraft!"
"Calm yourself," Lin warned as they flipped open the trunk. "This is no witchcraft—it's donated blood from our order."
"Since when does the church authorize—"
"This did not go through normal channels," Father Patrick said, cutting him off.
"Obviously not!"
Father Patrick sighed. "Think of it this way. If we were the government, this would be considered a necessary black ops mission. But we work for the highest realms, and this is a white light mission of salvation. Therefore it's a very discreet white ops mission." He studied the young man for a moment, and then went back to the task at hand.
"How so?" the young priest whispered, taking a cautious step backward. "You come with bags of blood to revive a creature of the night… our church does not know about this… You have the gall to carry it in a Vatican silver chest with the holy crucifix on it—"
"Enough. We do this because the warrior angels wrested this creature's soul from the pit, and it is now in Purgatory," Asula said calmly, lifting out a bag of blood and tossing it to land near the vampire's face. "The dark side violated supernatural law, took him too early in accordance with the three-day laws of transformation. He was immediately turned, and his choice was stolen from him. This entity did not willingly give his soul—he was deceived. And now he is on our side."
"As long as his soul is in Purgatory," Father Patrick said, "Carlos Rivera still has a choice, has time. He has not fed from an innocent human victim, yet. Our job is to see that he doesn't."
Lin cut the top off a container and threw it toward the vampire's ravaged body, splashing his face with its contents. "But I fear we're too late. If he were stronger, he would have awakened to attack us, smelling our blood, or the blood we carry." He then looked at Father Patrick, ignoring the alarmed young clergyman. "If the blood doesn't revive him…"
Father Patrick and Imam Asula nodded and spoke in unison. "Then we're too late."
"The merciful thing to do would be to behead him," Monk Lin said upon a whisper.
The smell. Obviously he was hallucinating. Carlos inhaled the sweet elixir of life and licked his parched lips. A series of sharp pains about his mouth made him tentative about exploring the pungent scent further. It had to be a starvation-induced hallucination, anyway. Why waste the energy or endure the agony?
He was so close to extinction that he could feel warm bodies close by and hear the clamor of men debating in low tones. He stuck his tongue out and lapped at the sticky, cool fluid on his face, unable to resist the survival reflex to seek blood. The salty, thick liquid burned the open wounds on his face. Blood should be warm, not cold.
Another cold splash hit his face, and a smooth pouch landed against his clenched fist. Plastic blood bombs from above? Carlos laughed inside his mind. Yeah, right… But the taste and the smell of life were all around him. He opened one puffed, battered eye and squinted.
The young priest stared in horror as the creature before him opened one glowing red eye that intermittently flashed gold. "You have awakened the beast! Now kill it, before it's too late!"
"No!" Asula argued, and flung another bag of blood toward Carlos. "We told you! This one was once a guardian, and was destined to be paired with the Neteru—"
At the mention of Damali, Carlos struggled to push himself up. All the men before him drew back, weapons raised, dead silence enveloping them. He could hear their hearts beating loudly within their chests, their pulses racing, their lungs slowly expanding and contracting with small, terrified sips of air. Be afraid, he Warned within his mind. Be very afraid. Even a few swallows had revived him enough to imperil a human. He reached his hand toward the scent of blood and snatched it, splashing the cold substance against his fist and on the ground with his tight grasp, then sucked as much as he could from the bag. His body began to heal itself.
He snatched another bag in one deft motion as it hurled toward him. He tossed the drained bag away in frustration, narrowing his gaze on the four warm bodies before him. Yes… be very afraid.
"Carlos," a familiar voice said, "we have come to help you. Here is more. Regenerate quickly. Heal yourself. We have less than an hour to get you to a lair." Another bag hit Carlos in the chest.
Carlos caught the bag before it dropped to the ground, snarled, and drank down the contents, feeling a surge of energy as some of the pain abated.
"He'll need all of it," another voice said, "if he is to completely heal."
"And, if that's not enough? What then?"
That voice was younger, higher. He gave off the delicious scent of fear.
"Then, you'll be the first to go," Carlos said in a low warning.
"No," the older familiar voice said firmly. "He is an innocent. A cleric. Kill him, and my warriors end this while you're still wounded."
The familiarity of the voice, talk of innocents, and clerics… It forced Carlos to focus, to strain to see the blurry shapes around him as he drank. Templars? Still not sated, but much improved, he held onto his near-amputated arm with his good hand and leaned against a column of rock.
The electric blue robes worn by the human with the familiar voice held his attention, and he studied the strange crucifix that had a bleeding heart surrounded by thorns in the center of it. The white-haired cleric slowly lowered his sword, and the glint of the silver in the dim light brought it all back for him. Father Patrick, the blue knight of the Covenant. The seer who had told him of his fate and fought side-by-side with Damali and the guardians against his predecessor, his nemesis, Fallon Nuit.
"You recognize me, don't you?" the man said in a steady, confident voice.
"Its eyes have gone from red to gold, Patrick," a tall, strapping African-looking cleric swathed in all white said. "That is a good sign. He's normalizing and is not in attack mode." He continued to hold his machete in a readiness position, but his stance seemed relaxed.
"Yes. His face is nearly healed, save the empty socket," another of them said. He was an Asian man in dark brown clothes, who also bore a familiar voice.
The only man that looked positively terror stricken was a young priest without a weapon, dressed in a black Catholic habit.
"There were more of you," Carlos finally said, his voice raspy. "You were with us in the tunnels, right?"
"Yes, and we saw you fight with honor," the Moor replied. "We also know you nearly died before we evacuated."
"And Damali?" Pain sent a seizure through Carlos as his partially severed arm locked back into its socket, and he bent, letting out an awful cry of agony. He could feel his ribs reconstruct under the skin, and he grabbe
d his face as a lightning strike of torture made the raw flesh where his missing eye had been feel like a knife had been gouged into it.
Dropping to both hands, he panted as his ruptured kidneys realigned and healed and the compound fracture in his leg reset. His arms trembled, forcing him to drop to the dank cave floor. Skin from undamaged sections of his body stretched and multiplied to cover areas that had been stripped of flesh to conceal skeleton and ragged muscle that knit itself together like steel cable.
"Throw him another bag," Father Patrick ordered.
Almost too sick to ingest it, Carlos grappled with the bag that had been flung toward him, slitting it with a fang and practically inhaling the dark, thick liquid. As his body temperature heated up, he pulled the shreds of his shirt off, sweat running down his chest, his back, coating his arms. Panting, he lay there for a while, allowing the last of the shudders of pain to abate. He felt stronger, whole, but was tender as all hell. His entire body felt like he'd been punched and then run over by a Mack truck. The parts of him that had not been previously injured now stung from the process of splitting and cloning more tissue for the wounded organs. But at least he could see. At least he was alive, or more correctly stated, still existed.
"Damali?" he wheezed, trying to stand too soon, but wobbled and fell. "I have to get to her."
"You would let a vampire near the precious vessel?" Manuel crossed himself again and glanced nervously at the other men of the cloth.
"He is the only one who can help her at present," Father Patrick said. "Our Neteru's light diminishes daily."
"What happened to her?" Carlos was on his feet now, pacing. His fist connected with a section of the cave wall, leaving a crumble of rock where it had landed. He tried to think of her, to lock in on her present location, but all his mind would offer was glimpses of the past. He stared at the old seer.
"I cannot locate her, either, my friend. She's blind."
"What do you mean, blind?" Carlos stared at the man, thinking of how his own eye had been ripped from his skull in the fight. The thought of that happening to his woman made the air stop moving in and out of his lungs. Her beautiful face… even her name meant beautiful vision, to have that maimed, with no way to regenerate—all the plastic surgery in the human world couldn't repair her. Anger burned in his stomach, forcing bile up to his throat. He swallowed it back down along with unshed tears.
"She couldn't withstand the thought of your turning… or what she saw in the tunnels." The older man's voice was calm, sad, almost soothing. "Our huntress has shut down her third eye."
"But she's vulnerable without her second sight," Carlos murmured, his gaze holding the blue knight's. "You have to make her see again."
The clerics all nodded, as the one in blue rubbed his hand over his jaw in contemplation. "She still possesses the other gifts… superior strength, heightened senses of scent, taste, and hearing, she can feel with profound enlightenment. But her third eye is extremely vulnerable. It is what helps her see into souls, thoughts… and before long, if it doesn't come back, her other senses will begin to erode."
"I know," Carlos said quickly, "but why is she blind? I still don't understand. She was fine when she left the tunnels. Why now?"
"She had others she cared for at her side… it is in her nature to protect her own," the elder cleric said in a quiet tone. "But once the immediate danger had passed, her heart sealed with total despair and the loss of hope. She saw you ripped apart and die—at least she believes you died in those tunnels. Her third eye took those images into her mind and she watched it all. She loved you and your brutal death broke her heart the way nothing else has. Up until that moment she still had hope that you would turn to the side of light and come with the guardians. That hope was so deep and strong that the loss of it is eating away at her soul like a cancer."
"The loss of this hope—of you—makes her imminently more vulnerable to the Vampire Council, Carlos," the Moor added in a quiet, worried tone. "They will eventually sense this and will relentlessly pursue her." He paused. "And she may very well surrender. Once she does, they will not relinquish her until her next fertility, and once again the threat of daywalkers will be upon us." Asula hesitated. "You know we cannot allow this… even if we must ultimately take the Neteru out of the equation for her own good."
Carlos snarled, and flexed his hands. They had actually threatened her in his presence? Were they mad?
"That was never our intention," Monk Lin assured him.
"Do her guardians know about this?" Carlos's tone was even and lethal.
"Their gifts are ebbing, too, with a significant loss of hope, shaken faith, and… other issues clouding their judgment." Father Patrick looked at him squarely. "The Neteru compound is in jeopardy. The family is fracturing, and were it not for the civil war within the vampire realms, it would have been under siege as we speak."
"The compound is a fortress!" Carlos shouted. "I saw it, it's nearly impenetrable."
"Nearly," the large cleric named Asula said in a calm voice. "Nearly. But you got in—through her. She had them lower the barricades for you. One day, perhaps for the same reason, another shrewd master vampire will get in, too, but with very different intentions and horrific outcomes." He paused and stared at Carlos hard, but there was no anger in his eyes, just urgency.
Fury roiled within Carlos, but it was also mixed with something else now—fear.
"There's an old Ghanaian proverb that says, 'The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.' " Asula's voice was unwavering and held authority, just like his gaze. "The Neteru compound is representative of nations. The guardians are all from every faith and group of people, merged as one family—as it should be on earth. Her home, her family unit, must be strong. There's not enough technology in the world to keep out evil… and we know that religious amulets are playthings, if there is not strong faith to back them up. Break the family and the second line of defense at the compound fails. We, the Covenant, her first line of defense, have all but been broken… we lost two-thirds of our number down in Hell."
Father Patrick nodded as Carlos backed away from Asula and relaxed.
"This is why we need your help. She doesn't even have uplifting music in her heart—which is the core of her gift. Without her spoken word, without her ability to touch others through this medium… her spirit will further wither."
"And what am I supposed to do?" Carlos gave them his back to consider in frustration as he walked a few paces deeper into the cave. "She hates all that I am, all that I stood for in life—and hates what I am now. No wonder she went blind."
Profound guilt claimed him and tore at him like a fresh wound. "I can't even trust myself in her presence." Carlos found his vision blurring once more as he kept his face turned away from the misguided clerics. "I never want to see that look in her eyes again," he finally said, his voice dropping to a broken whisper. "Never."
"Our ranks are thinning," Asula said. "Hers are battered, exhausted, a few may be on the run trying to reestablish another safe house. The vibrations Father Pat has picked up say the group is splintering, looking to go their separate ways."
"Where is she now?"
"When the Neteru and her guardians came up from the tunnels, they immediately sought hallowed ground," Lin replied.
"They've been moving from those places in a crisscross pattern through LA, trying to get back to the compound for the last few days," Father Patrick said in a quiet voice. "The first night after the concert, the streets were crawling. They had to seek immediate shelter in the cathedral closest to the stadium. The next morning, human vampire helpers worked through the police to have them briefly detained for questioning after the concert on the ruse of needing information about the young people that had been victimized at the events. This ate up precious daylight for them to move within. But a man named Berkfield worked behind the scenes to have them quickly released before nightfall."
Carlos stared at Father Patrick.
"You know t
his man?" the older cleric asked, stepping forward.
"I did him a favor, guess he did me one without even knowing it. Yeah… I know him. He's marked by me as off-limits."
All the clerics glanced at each other. Shoulders relaxed. Weary expressions gave way to what Carlos could only interpret as hope.
"They were released and had to find a safe place to wait out the second night," Father Patrick said, his voice now more urgent. "On this third night, we've lost her trail, because she went completely blind. Her team seer is nearly blind. The guardians have broken the cord to the Light, and even I can't get a clear vision on them, the loss of hope in them is so great. That is the other reason we sought you."
Carlos sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What was the first reason? And how did you find me?"
"There is still the unresolved matter of your redemption," Father Patrick said wearily. "I am a seer, and I was led by the same thing that saved you from being staked. Hope. Faith. It was my only beacon to find you. Your hope for her was bright; hers for you is so dim, I cannot sense it to locate her. When you, a vampire, asked God to spare her—you called on the Almighty, then I could clearly see you." He nodded toward the young cleric, Padre Lopez. "He also helped immensely For some reason, he, even more so than I, could get a direct lock on you—and he knew the region."
Carlos turned around and folded his arms over his chest, closely watching his odd benefactors. "My possible parole, which you call redemption, saved my life in the tunnels?"
All of the clerics except the young one shook their heads no. The one named Manuel just stood there with his mouth slightly agape.
"The Neteru's brand saved you," Father Patrick stated, nodding at Carlos's chest. "See for yourself. You owe her."
Carlos looked down at his bare chest. A full-scale imprint of a woman's fist with a dagger clutched in it, and part of a slender forearm was now a slightly darker bronzed-tone, a raised keloid burn scar that covered his heart. He reverently touched the strange marking on his flesh with the tips of his fingers.
