by L. A. Banks
“Rider, man, lower your voice. I hear you,” Carlos said, holding his head.
“Lower my voice? Lower my voice!” Rider hollered, walking in a circle with his arms opened wide. “What the fuck is going on, I ask somebody! Our primo sensor, smooth operator, the one who knows all this demon realm shit like the back of his hand, is dead damned drunk—and so pitifully so—that a master vampire can give Damali a nod with full fangs in his mouth and ask her if she wants a lift home?”
“What?” Carlos tried to stand, but had to sit back down.
“Damali is gonna have to fill you in, or Father Pat—somebody—because right now, I lack the patience!”
Rider punched a porch post and walked back and forth. Carlos held both sides of his skull and tried to stop the reverberating gong Rider’s bellows created.
“But, I’ma tell you this, captain. The girl was angry. Had a right to be. Don’t take that shit out on Yonnie, you deal with it—because Yonnie did what any male of any species would do, all right. He saw an opportunity. Damali was spittin’ nails, she was so furious. There was something lurking out there—she got one of them—her dead foster father and—”
“What?” Carlos whispered, allowing his hands to drop away from his skull.
“I take it you know the import of that?”
Speechless, Carlos couldn’t even nod.
“Yeah. That’s why Yonnie offered her a master vamp transport lift home with the caveat that, if she wanted, he’d hang around till dawn as her personal bodyguard. He was gonna do the invitation by mind lock, seeing as how we were all on the porch, by the time she was ready to leave … and Tara was there. But, Damali said no, so he had to just put it out there and see if she’d take the bait. Now you can evaluate that however you’d like.”
Rider stared at his hands, using them as invisible scales in the air. “One way, a man could say, my friend is honorable. I’d do no less. On the other hand, one could say, I played myself. Girlfriend is old enough to take a nick and still do daylight. She killed a predator, but her emotions were raw and vulnerable last night, and I was out cold.”
Both men stared at each other hard.
“You better get real clear this morning,” Rider said in a mercifully quiet voice. “You’ve got a family, a post to man, and responsibilities. There were kids in the house, what if one of them was yours?” He sighed wearily, but his tone held no apology in it. “Me, yeah, I’m probably an alcoholic, I’ll accept the title. But I’m a very functional one. So, know this. I’m never away from my post when I’m supposed to be there. There is no old buddy from my old days in the streets that can come into this family unit and pull me outta here and get me to the point where I imperil my own.”
Rider leaned against the post and looked at the mess on the porch floor. “Except Tara. Yeah, I screwed around and got more than nicked. But I even let her go, my heart, so I wouldn’t come back in here one night and not be myself—you got that?”
“Rider, man, listen … I—”
“I don’t want that sonofabitch on this property. Period. I do not ever want to have to babysit your ass for the bottle or any other vice, not if you’re gonna take equal partnership to lead this household. Period. If one Neteru goes off shift, the other one goes on—and when y’all can find time to do what you’ve gotta do, somebody’s fucking radar better be turned on, because, if you haven’t noticed, the Levels are consolidating power, heat in the system is ramping up.”
“I know, man, but—”
“No, you don’t know jack! My old friends had bad habits, too, dude. Mike ain’t on our shit list, because he informed us where he was going, when he was going, and when his flight touches down this afternoon, he’ll be lucid. Your ass, most likely, ain’t gonna dry out for another twenty-four hours. I’ve got a cell phone number to everybody else that rolled outta here this morning. Even if their cell phone vibrates so hard it gets up and walks across a hotel night-stand, I can raise a lucid Guardian within an hour, the moment they catch their breath and say their last ‘I love you, baby’—you hear me? Your days of being absent without leave all night and coming back fucked up and needing to regen for twelve hours of daylight are over.”
Carlos let his breath out hard and leaned on his forearms.
Rider lit another cigarette. “Stupid as it sounds,” he said, dragging hard on the butt and exhaling rage with the smoke, “I almost kinda liked it better when you were all vamp. Was easier. We knew what to expect, and the one thing we could always count on was nothing would roll up on Damali and possibly take her out. You were on the case. Wouldn’t even let us do anything that could put her in harm’s way. You were the fortress, man.”
“I liked it better that way, too, hombre,” Carlos muttered. “You just don’t know.”
“Yeah, well, pull your shit together and stop bellyaching,” Rider said, his glare focused on the walkway and he drew in another hard drag that hissed. “I liked it better when I was twenty-five years younger. Liked it better when I could take one of Tara’s Fourth-gen nicks … Oh, yeah, there were things I liked so much better than this current state of affairs I find myself in—like babysitting a new male Neteru who has yet to get his head screwed on straight. I bet Shabazz liked it better, too, when Kamal was in Bahia, but he ain’t. Guaranteed Berkfield liked it way better when he was just a cop, and wasn’t policing demons away from his daughter or watching her about to get her bones jumped by our team’s computer whiz kid. But shit happens. Things change. You find yourself in new circumstances, and gotta cope. Grow up and take a number. Everybody on this team has something they liked or wanted way better than this.”
Rider flicked away the half-smoked butt and looked at Carlos without blinking. “By rights, I should be the one who was lying passed out on that swing. If you had any sense, you would have been the one over there at Damali’s new place, no matter what she’d said, talked your way into her door—like the master you used to be, and made the best of the new circumstance. You’ve got opportunity and gifts you’re not even using, brother. The thing that’s kicking my ass is, of all the people on the team, if you would get the spirit of this change together, you could have it all like it used to be…. You’ve got the money, the girl is still crazy about you—don’t ask me why. All the newbies hang on to your every word. Had Dan reaching for reasons why you were out cold.” Rider pulled his fingers through his hair and hocked again.
“There’s a lot of things that are real different, man, that are hard to explain.” Carlos scanned the horizon. There was no way to capture it all on the porch.
“My simplistic trailer-park-roots advice is this. Don’t allow time to pass and wind up living on that swing, because your boy bested you at your own game, or a Guardian brother just happened to be in the right place at the right time … or we go do a job in some foreign land and she rolls up on one of the one-hundred-and-forty-four-thousand Guardian options out there and makes a decision because they had their heads on straight and you were off the job. The quicker you let go of what was old and figure out how to work with what’s new, the better.
“I’m going to go do some target practice, something useful and productive that’ll keep my skills sharp and keep me out of the doghouse, to release some of my old tensions,” Rider said with sarcasm. “I had your back, last night. Still got it, but the Yonnie thing worked my last nerve. I need to go shoot something.”
Carlos looked up slowly. A combination of emotions tore through him. Rider was pissing him off, but truth resonated within every angry word. Guilt lacerated him. Rage shook him. Worry made him weary. Damali’s state of mind and what he’d missed while out sent dread and a spike of adrenaline through his every cell. Then the layers and degrees of all of those things, plus so much more, began to peel and blister. Humiliation was in the mix; he just couldn’t separate it out from the rest.
Rider nodded toward the mess on the porch and began walking down the steps. “You need to clean up your own shit before the young bucks and the women
see it, dude. Stop wallowing in your own crap. Find out what the new mission is from somebody that has patience, I’m not the one today. Call the priest, whatever. Then go down the road and fall on your sword like every man has to do when he fucks up real bad. It’s simple.”
Carlos stood watching Rider’s back as he trudged down the path, kicking up dust before rounding the house. What was there to say? He sent his line of vision on the horizon and squinted and then stared in the direction of Damali’s new house.
Was it any wonder that she was lukewarm about getting married and wasn’t ready to tie the knot legally, on hallowed ground? He’d felt it before, but knew it now. Rider hadn’t lied. Could he blame her? Damali had waited all her life for this?
Carlos glanced over his shoulder at the puke on the porch and frowned. For all he knew she, by rights, might be blaming him about her losing the baby. Or, maybe it was the way they just weren’t the same when together … like that last time together in Philly could still be in her head—he was angry, she was angry, and he’d never touched her like that in his life … nothing had been right since that.
The insane part was, he didn’t even know where to begin to make that up to her. Or maybe it was simply the Light being too done with him. After Lopez, he could understand why Heaven would be fed up enough to make Damali turn away from him for good.
“I don’t know,” Carlos whispered, closing his eyes to the too-bright sun. Maybe it was all of it, or none of it. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure what to do, and she wouldn’t even really talk to him … kept everything to surface bullshit. At the same time, he was just as guilty, because there was no way he could honestly talk to her about this.
He just shook his head, which made him wince. Damali had actually gone down to square off with the Chairman like he should have…. She ran the team better than he probably ever would. She knew the Neteru code cold. She had met with her queens and they’d offered her swift guidance, when his kings had simply marked him and left him to figure life out on his own.
Plus, she’d shape-shifted so smoothly that it gave him chills when she went from black adder to panther, and had held Hell in check until she hit multiple targets with authority. Damali was moving up in skill and rank, while he was on the bottom rung of becoming whatever he was supposed to be. Rank busted. What was he supposed to do with that? More important question: What would she wanna do with that? With him?
No doubt about it, she was evolving into something more spectacular than she’d already been and was in full control, total command, just like he used to be. He was proud of her, but the joy was bittersweet … just like she’d crooned to all the masters in Sydney, it was a bittersweet transition, from time to time.
Even up in Gabrielle’s establishment, Damali had to show him how to get back on his horse and ride … and the way she’d bent light up his spine and had him close to pure ether…. There were no words for it. Girlfriend was bad. She had to be simply tolerating his ass these days.
That was unforgivable; not her actions, but his. No wonder she didn’t feel like it, all their love notwithstanding. Familial love was something real different from Eros, any fool knew that. So when she says, “I love you, baby,” what does she really mean? he wondered. Which kind? General, like family, or specific, like you’re my man? But that was a stupid mental question, because what had he put down with authority lately?
Skills all fucked up, head jacked, powers shaky … Shit, he couldn’t stand his damned self, why would his woman? So, no, it was better that they didn’t try to mind lock. Maybe they both had enough sense to know that they might find out some real deep shit that neither of them was ready to address.
Carlos hung his head. Every part of his body felt like he’d been beat down. He missed it all, and couldn’t lie to himself or the Light about that any longer. He missed everything, the old nights, to be more precise … damn … when a throne gave him absolute power and control over everything in his world. A time when he could walk through walls, bulk to beat down any predator, step to any challenge … with strategy like a razor, game to the bone. Variables, not a problem—he could work four corners of a room with unparalleled mastery, because he was a master. He could blow Damali’s mind and show her some shit she had never seen before, and leave an echo print on her soft skin that would make her holla just from the heat of his breath against it. Those nights were gone. He had to suck it up and deal with his new reality, or new sentence.
He thought for sure after he’d been shown some new shit by the old boyz in Ethiopia, and then on the road, things would go back to the way they were. But how did he begin to deal with the fact that now he was always two steps behind her, instead of leading the charge?
Damali had taken to the Light like a fish to water; he’d been dragged into it kicking and screaming and was currently drowning in it. The Light had blessed her with radiant beauty and unstoppable power; it had stripped his ass bare and bled him out, as far as he was concerned. Fair exchange. His baby had rolled on Level Six, pure gangsta. He’d seen her do that cold-blooded shit with his own eyes, which had left him both proud of her, but fucked up behind it. The combination was unsettling. Somehow that was different from what she’d done in McGuire’s castle, because at the end of the night, then, he was still Councilman Rivera … he owned all the territories in the world, and had worn her beautiful ass out lovely in the desert.
“Ain’t that always the way,” Carlos absently muttered as he began cleaning up the porch, tying everything he’d been thinking about into a tidy military-style bundle to clear away.
Yet, a jumbled, tangled pile of thinking lay at his feet. He might as well have dumped his dresser drawers and tried to quickly shove everything back into them. Same process. Once everything was out, one had to deal with every individual item, carefully lift, handle, and fold each piece, quite a process if the furniture was over-stuffed from the get-go. His black box was. He hated cleaning out his box as much as he hated his turn doing team laundry and cleaning up the aftermath of a night out with Yonnie. It was sloppy.
Carlos glimpsed the mop with sudden disdain. The mundane had claimed him. He had been given the gift of life, but from all indicators, he was still trapped in another world, one of mediocrity, filled with senseless struggles that caused nothing but heartbreak. Yeah, he was still serving time, more like marking it than living it. Cool. He’d figured it would go that way—maybe he’d traded a living hell for a dead one. He’d amassed enough debt for either side to make said point.
“Es decepcionante.” Very disappointing, indeed. Carlos glanced through the screen, hoping nobody would come outside to see him at the messy task of cleaning away what he’d upchucked. What he had now were spotty powers that worked when they felt like it, and a family to care for when he couldn’t half take care of himself.
And what about the vamp females that would inevitably come out of the shadows when he reached his apex for real? What then? He was supposed to be this millennium’s male Neteru, but wasn’t even sure he could take down one vicious vamp female and dust it if it rolled up on him in the midnight hour; but he knew Damali could. He’d seen her nearly smoke four vamp bitches with their masters present. So now Damali was his bodyguard?
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He couldn’t even look at her, right through here, and abruptly trained his line of sight on the horizon, remembering the freedom of wingless flight. Mist. Smooth exit. Except that wasn’t an option this morning.
To his mind, there was just a certain way things should be done. The complex problems really had simple solutions, but the whole issue of souls and their metric weights added variables that frankly seemed to cause more confusion. The angels knew everybody in Hell was double-dealing, so why didn’t they just come down, go prang, and fix this shit with the quickness? He knew the Light had awesome veto power, but the way they used it just strung his brain out.
That was something he definitely had to ask Father Pat one day. He had questions like, w
hy all the riddles, intrigue, mayhem, and choice drama? Lucifer had aces and nonsense up his sleeve, so the other side, to his thinking, should just do the damned thing and straighten out the madness. Zap that bastard, too, while they were at it, and be done.
He’d had this partial conversation about the use of power when the Covenant had first rolled up on him in a parking lot at Nuit’s building. What now felt like a long time ago seemed to be a simpler time, too. Just whack one slimy mofo and save his woman angst. But even then the Covenant couldn’t negotiate directly with him to cut a deal. They had to take it higher up, and wait for a long decision. Whereas the side that shall remain nameless seemed to work on a different timetable. Instant gratification.
Like, in the old nights, he could have solved Rider’s problem with one feral elevation nick, and made him a master so his woman would never stray again. Rider was drinking and smoking himself to death anyway—there were viable options … if one wanted to get technical. It wasn’t his first choice, but he was sure if he was in a position to make a tender offer to a man slowly losing his mind over something like that, hey, the thing would be simple. He knew Rider well enough to know that if the shoe were on the other foot, hombre would be down to do whatever needed to be done. That’s what he liked about Rider—the man was practical, a realist, said what others were too chicken shit to say. He respected that.
They could have discussed it over Jack Daniel’s, shook on it, and the deal would have been done. It wasn’t about allowing a respected amigo to suffer. Rider was grown; one allowed a grown man to choose his own way out. At least that’s how it was done where he was from … East L.A., by way of Mexico, and a small pit stop along the way. But topside or sub, you didn’t leave your tight homeboy to twist and have his heart butchered slowly by memory Harpies or his guts pulled out by shit too hard to digest. A favor was in order, for a real good friend caught between a rock and a hard place. De nada. Same night. Right on the spot when he and Rider stood up from their bar stools.
