by L. A. Banks
This was beyond fucked-up.
She took her time going out onto the back deck, sensing her environment, fully alert to possible danger. But she would not live like a prisoner behind locked windows and bolted doors. The dark side would not be allowed to take her freedom; otherwise she might as well be dead.
When she got outside, she flipped on the floodlights, needing illumination. The darkness had become suffocating around her. She carefully set down a bag of Red Sea salt close to her. By rote, she began to work her body, hoping that would bring clarity to her mind.
Her daily routine of exercise had been destroyed over the past months, and she wanted to regain all that had been disrupted in her life. Tonight she needed clear vision. There was only one way to achieve that; suspend all personal problems and then home in on a solution. She hadn’t even been able to focus enough to raise an audience with the Neteru Queens.
Anything close to normalcy, in her abnormal world, was a soothing dream that they all clung to. Just like the holiday seasons were always celebrated the same way; no store-purchased gifts, only one handmade or self-made item given from the heart to each member of the house. The rest of the giving was for the community, spreading love and cheer, and offering helping hands to less fortunate people they’d heard about or seen on the news. For them, that was normal. She and the Guardians had their own rituals and ways to give thanks. Like Shabazz had always said, it was imperative to keep a routine, stay focused on one’s blessing, lest one’s spiritual, mental, and physical muscle give way to flab.
Her mind was muddled, her spirit was sagging, and it wasn’t about letting the body go to pot, too. The trinity worked as a unit. Personal gratification, personal problems, all that needed to be sublimated for something greater than herself.
Damali propped her feet up on a deck chair, her boot toes slightly bent. Her face repeatedly neared the wood planks, her left arm behind her back, her full weight on her blade arm—then she slowly stroked the muscles, made the burn work sinew in her upper body, torso, shoulder, stomach, and back. She needed her blade arm strong and readied at all times, whether Madame Isis was still with her or not. She needed Carlos, whether he was with her or not.
“Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, clear the mind!” she shouted, keeping time with the one-arm, military push-ups. At fifty, she switched arms, blew stinging perspiration away from her nose with a puff of breath, and began again.
Her body was in tip-top condition, so this sagging libido thing had to be a function of her mind. But why? Minor spats be damned. He was right. She shouldn’t have been feeling this way. But her gut was rarely wrong. Lack of trust had been a shadow around her every time Carlos came near. Without that, she couldn’t relax. If she couldn’t fully relax in his arms … But that made absolutely no sense. What about him was not to trust? Even if it was some temporary infection … they were supposedly both immune.
She’d trusted the man when he’d become a vamp. Had trusted him with her throat and her very life. Had entrusted her family’s safety with him. Now this?
“Thirty-four, thirty-five—aw, shit!” Her left arm was slightly weaker than the right, and she could feel the muscle in it trembling as she tried to reach the fifty push-up mark.
Was it that she didn’t trust herself? She jettisoned the thought as she unfurled her right arm from behind her back and began again from the number one, this time using both arms to lift her body.
Damali splayed her fingers against the wood and looked straight ahead through the deck rail into the darkness. She lowered her body in slow movements to burn the energy in agonizing increments and then rose without taking her eyes off the mark. Facts aligned in her inner sight. The man’s clothes had torched and smoldered. The earth had swallowed them whole, along with his bodily fluids. He’d fevered and convulsed under a prayer blanket. He’d presented fangs, and daylight had kicked his ass. His recovery was full, as soon as the sun set. Marlene needed to know that, as soon as she got home. Where was Marlene—Shabazz, Marjorie, and Richard! No one had answered the calls all day! Another hour and she’d mount a search party. Marlene had received her transmission. But no answer?
Carlos’s Neteru pheromone spike didn’t freak out a master vampire the way it should have? If Carlos was somehow turning, even that shouldn’t have backed her up and cooled her passion for him. If he’d gotten temporarily infected, that shouldn’t have done it; it didn’t affect her like that with Jose—it had the opposite affect, in fact. What was it?
“Fifty.” Damali stopped, breathing in long and deep through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. She pushed up, jumped to her feet, and then stripped off her pants and boots. Standing on the deck in her T-shirt and underwear, she went to the deck rail and balanced her thighs on it just below her pelvis. Time to work the abs.
She laced her fingers behind her head and bent over the rail until she could see her knees on the other side of it. Then she raised herself in backward sit-ups, shooting for the goal of one hundred.
Each time she lifted her body, she kept her eyes on her focus point—a cactus twenty feet away. At the thirty-eighth sit-up, she noticed that it seemed to move, but focused physical exertion sometimes created mirages. She stopped briefly, mentally swept the terrain, and resumed. However, she began to lose count and to forget about the slow smolder raging in her abdominal muscles. The cactus seemed framed by a glow not created by the floodlights spilling from the porch.
An iridescent, bluish tinge soon conquered the yellow, artificial light surrounding the desert plant. The thick, prickly body seemed to grow narrower and slimmer each time her line of vision went away from it to stare at her knees and then returned to it. The bulbous knots on either side of the cactus soon became curved, ornate silver, and she stopped at the ninetieth sit-up to stare at it in awe.
Sweat poured down her face, blurring her vision, stinging her eyes, dripping off her nose, but she could not unclasp her hands behind her head. Seven jewels glinted in the distance. The body of the cactus teased her as it split into multiple blades becoming one.
“My Isis,” she whispered, but still couldn’t move. Tears of joy and frustration rose to her eyes, yet anticipation kept her frozen. A coyote howled in the distance, Native American flute music filtered into that from an unknown source. She saw a female hand yank the sword from the dirt and grasp it. From somewhere within, she knew it was her hand. An owl screeched. Then, in an instant, she saw the unidentified hand swing the blade at a dark form walking toward what had once been the cactus. She flinched as the blade sang in the wind, adding chants to the sound of the flutes, and then connected. The strike echoed the unmistakable sound of tissue being severed—then came a thud. The form dropped, and a head rolled toward her, spinning so fast in the yard dust that she couldn’t see it until the creature looked at her with glassy, dead eyes.
She screamed and turned away, jumping off and backing away from the rail so quickly that she knocked over the deck chair that had been behind her. Carlos’s face disappeared. The Isis was again a cactus. A car was entering her driveway. She grabbed her pants and yanked them on, forgetting about her boots. Terror shot through her system and sent her running through the house. She’d beheaded her own man. Oh my God!
Breathless, she ran out onto the front porch and down the steps in her bare feet, expecting the vehicle to be Carlos’s. When the sheriff got out of his squad car with an elder from the tribal council, her gaze raked them for an explanation.
“Chief Quiet Eagle, Sheriff Lightfoot, what’s wrong?”
The elderly man shook his head and deferred to the sheriff, a man in his mid-fifties. He adjusted his tan trooper hat, and mopped his brow.
“Ms. Richards, we need to talk to you. There’s been an accident.”
She looked so young and pretty standing in the middle of the road. His speedometer was cresting seventy-five miles per hour and climbing when he spotted her wearing a blue calico dress that floated in the wind. The scent of lavender filled the ca
b of the Jeep. She was almost sheer, luminous … “Tara? Oh, shit!”
His foot slammed the brakes, and she became a doe, her golden eyes caught in the headlights, her body frozen, so huge and immobile as his Jeep swerved and the deer went through the windshield.
Blood was everywhere—his, the doe’s, maybe Tara’s, he didn’t know. He could smell gasoline and smoke. Not a good combination. A heavy body was on him, pinning him down. His car was listing to one side and without looking he knew he’d been thrown into a ditch.
The first thought that entered his mind was Yonnie will freak. Rider would, too. Using all his strength, he pushed at the tawny furred body and used his shoulder to lean against the door. Half falling, half sliding, Carlos hit the ground with a thud. His hands were bloodied from the deer’s remains, and he rounded the hood of his Jeep to see if she’d come around.
“Tara, girl, aw … man … I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop.” He touched the creature’s forehead just above its glassy eyes, and watched the blood trickle from the doe’s nose and mouth. “Come on, chica. You all vamp—wake up, baby. Call Yonnie to feed you. C’mon,” he said, his voice becoming more strident as he talked to the dead animal on his hood.
Then he stopped. Wait a minute … a female vampire couldn’t be taken out by vehicular homicide. He checked the animal’s chest. Nothing had punctured the doe’s heart.
Carlos stepped back and wiped the blood from his hands on his jeans. This was just a deer. “Damn!” He blotted his bloody nose on his forearm and then kicked his tires, but laughed with relief.
“Tara,” he yelled out again into the nothingness around him. “Girl, don’t roll up on a brother like that. You could have …”
His voice trailed off. Tara hadn’t responded. The insistent echo of gasoline and blood dripping from his Jeep sounded one in the same. The smell permeated his nose and made him tilt his head to the side. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and swallowed more of his own blood. Salty fluid covered his tongue, but he hocked and spit, trying to forget what it tasted like. A slight tremor ran through him, and he turned away from the deer and then shoved his hands in his pockets as they began to shake. “Oh, shit, not now,” he whispered, and began to limp away from the toxic site.
A deep, gurgling rumble came up from his stomach. Hunger ate at him, making him breathe hard. The sound of the drips became louder, all-consuming. Sweat began to form along his brow and crept down the center of his back. The animal on his hood twitched. In a lightning response he turned to stare at it. A pool of dark liquid had formed on the ground and was spreading toward his feet. His knees locked as he willed himself not to bend to touch it or taste it. But the beautiful crimson edged toward him in a sultry, hypnotic beckoning.
Panting, Carlos shook his head no and backed farther away—but his eyes remained on the dead creature’s jugular. Reflex made him run his tongue over his teeth. When he nicked his tongue, he closed his eyes. Four inches of feeding-length fang had invaded his mouth.
A wretched sob tore through him as he walked still farther from the smoking vehicle. The night darkness was so clear that it might as well have been high noon. He could hear every skitter on the plains; the coyotes had stopped howling. He held his head with both hands as the pain from his accident faded, his legs felt stronger, and he heard his body mend on its own.
“Noooo!” he yelled, his voice tearing into the night and stilling all creatures within it. Another sob filled his chest, seizing his heart, stopping it briefly, before it began beating again. “Why?” Carlos whispered to the moon, casting his gaze heavenward. She knew. Damali had to have felt this coming. The vibes in the house had been weird, too—but before the infection. Everyone was acting out, prone to excesses and fixated on the carnal before the contagion ever hit. A vampire was in their midst, and their senses had to be evolving and locked on it, but daylight had been his cover.
The moonlight offered no answers, but the wind kicked up to bring the blood scent closer to torture his spirit. He had to focus and think: Marlene would never leave newbies; neither would Shabazz; nor would Marj and Berkfield leave their kids like that. Not at a time like this. They’d all left the house before any infected team member had touched them. Just like Big Mike would never, ever leave his post, no matter how seductive the booty—not with untrained kids in the house, and the way Rider was drinking, then back on nicotine? Maybe they’d all been infected much earlier than they’d realized?
The Covenant brothers had all skied-up and just left the compound to go back to Rome, and Mecca, Tibet, and Israel, with a new Neteru that had a month of training before the big spike to go—because they’d admitted to being infected earlier. That had to be it. Plus, Kamal had left his men in Bahia, chasing an old flame from who knows how long ago, and laying for Shabazz to mess up just once? Never, unless something really strange was affecting them all beyond the dark poison leaking from the portals. They’d been told that was what was wrong, but he could feel something else was more wrong than that.
How could the contagion have been so insidious that none of the seers picked it up in advance or none of the brothers had caught a vibe and stepped to him if he was fluxing back hard? Tara was AWOL since she’d guarded him on the porch, as though she didn’t trust herself around him? Yonnie was acting strange, too, a master vampire caught up in a love-jones—unheard-of. Juanita being drawn to him just now, to that degree, making her ridiculously bold? And Jose making an outright run at Damali, and Damali almost going there? Uh-uh. Something more profound than dark portal energies had to be spiking all these turns …
Jesus help him … help them … They didn’t know about him, but they had to be feeling whatever bizarre energy was causing this hard flux. Every Guardian had to be caught up in it, sensing it down deep mixed with this new portal problem, too. Nobody had been right since Philly, which was a little more than six months ago.
Carlos tried to steady himself and force unadulterated logic to the forefront of his mind. For the first time since he’d come back, he hadn’t been able to connect with Father Patrick. When the team had a meeting with the elderly cleric calling from the Vatican, he’d been passed out cold—more than drunk, almost as though heavily drugged, and excluded from the communication … like he was a pure vampire. Damali refused a mind lock repeatedly, something a full-fledged Neteru instinctively was supposed to do against a vamp…. But he’d been one before, and she’d never refused him then. Why now, even if he was temporarily fluxing?
Maybe she didn’t trust herself, because something inside her knew that they’d both been contaminated? But if everyone on the team had become infected over the last six months, why hadn’t they manifested the horrible final stages within thirty days, like every other human was supposed to experience? There had to be more to this problem than any of them knew—What was it?
A basic vamp turn should have registered, regardless, unless they were all already so compromised that they couldn’t pick it up. It was the only explanation that made sense.
Carlos wandered off the road and into the sparse brush, then finally dropped to his knees, unable to continue to fight the urge to return to the fallen deer and feed. It was only a matter of time; he had to stop lying to himself. The acid burn was in his stomach; blood was in his nose. Normal food didn’t stay with him. Five more minutes, and he’d have to give in to the deer. But why would Tara do something like that to him? They were family! Was she trying to seduce him? Was it the near apex that would make her do something that crazy?
“I did everything I was supposed to do,” he said through a bitter sob, his face turned toward the sky. “I served my time, didn’t I?” How could the Light do him like this?
He was about to stand, but a force compelled him to remain paralyzed on his knees. He couldn’t get up, and he struggled with the unseen as though someone or something had placed powerful, invisible hands on his shoulders. The touch burned worse than the blood hunger, and he cried out in agony as it spread throughout his body. His
voice created sound waves that began to shimmer around him, and soon he was covered in a moving globe of bluish white light.
“Be still,” a booming voice said.
The light around him was blinding.
“You have a debt to pay,” another voice said.
“You have purpose, as you are,” a third voice said.
Carlos shielded his eyes with one hand, but still could not break free of the force to stand.
“You are the only one who can enter the darkness to retrieve the book.”
“What book!” Carlos shouted, not ready to give up any information while unsure of who or what he was dealing with.
“The Light seeks the unholy Book of the Damned,” a thunderous voice replied.
“Your destiny is incomplete,” another said, and then the globe retreated from Carlos.
He was on his feet in an instant. The blood hunger had abated, and he glanced around, terrified and confused.
“One-half of your pairing is to protect the innocent,” a voice said.
Carlos spun around, unable to get a bead on the direction the voice was coming from.
“She guards the living,” two more voices murmured in unison.
“You guard the dead, and are to deliver us the lost—those who were stolen.”
“I don’t understand,” Carlos whispered, his voice catching in his throat.
“All seats at the table are vacant. The Chairman has fled his lair. We shall find him. But only one from his line can retrieve The Book of the Damned.”
