The Damned

by L. A. Banks

  “I want you so badly, I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she gasped against his neck, biting his earlobe, her hand covering the place where his tattoo lay dormant. “Just don’t make me pregnant tonight, we can’t, I can’t,” she panted in stuttering jags. “Make it burn silver, baby,” she said nearly weeping, waiting for his dead symbol to engage. Then she bit his jugular and sucked hard.

  Down in seconds, they slammed onto the porch floor, her tattoo literally making the wood smolder beneath her, but her urgent movements under him demanded his earlier question be answered. Permission to enter? Her body was on fire, becoming dangerous liquid silver in his arms as her passion for him spread through her Neteru bloodstream. Big fucking variable. Time was of the essence. The throne didn’t offer clues about a fully matured female Neteru’s secret weapon to withstand an unwilling seduction!

  His fangs had ripped through his gums on impact with the porch, but her eyes were still shut so tightly, and her thrashing so erratic, that he knew she was oblivious. The duality of heat was fracturing his intent, breaking his mind. The scorch of her body was dangerous, molten protoplasm from the realms above; his now owned Hellfire from the realms below. The games he’d played to send her to into a frenzy had become a trap that could leave him seriously injured. The dilemma was kicking his ass, burning him up from the need to get with her.

  “Permission to enter you,” he groaned into her ear. “Just tell me I can.”

  She nodded, her voice caught on a strangled gasp.

  She had to say it. The Neteru will barrier was impenetrable in a seduction battle. He could feel a force brutally blocking him, even though her nails scored his shoulders to drive him onward. “Just say it, baby … tell me.” He was near tears she felt so good; he’d almost forgotten Hellfire was no match for her silver heat.

  She arched for him, making his request a command.

  Frustration tore up wood splinters as he gripped her hair in his hands, held her face, broke the kiss, and stared at her. “Say it!”

  She cried out his name instead. He closed his eyes and almost laughed. The Light was fucking with him real bad right through here. He kissed her hard and rolled her over to straddle him. He needed to look into her eyes, get a mind lock going. Had to break the black box in her skull and shatter it. He could barely retract his fangs to speak. His words came out as a stuttering plea instead of the thundering demand he’d intended. “Baby, tell me I can come into you now.”

  “Oh, God!”

  Ball game. He dumped her on the porch and had to stand and walk in a circle. The electric arc that zapped off her skin almost fried him. Totally sobering, erection killing, pain so intense that he bit his tongue and almost upchucked his nuts. Okay, so not tonight. Fine. He couldn’t even look at her as he tried to catch her breath to stop her torrent of passionate words.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” she said, panting, reaching toward him, beginning to stand.

  Horrified that the zap had only further turned her on, he backed away as her aura radiated pure silver. Reality provided a cold slap in his face as Damali got to her feet. They used to play hard, play rough, but he was always on their side before. Every physical Neteru change she’d just gone through under him would have driven him mad—before. There was no way to do this … even if she said yes. Oh, shit …

  “Jesus, Carlos, please, baby, no more teasing, no more playing, you have got to finish this tonight!”

  The name of the sacred made him wince and turn away. Tears of agony were streaming down her beautiful face. Near madness had filled her expression, making her look all the more ravishing in the moonlight as she’d frantically searched his eyes for an answer before he gave her his back.

  “Stop walking away from me!” she nearly shrieked. “Don’t you want this? You trying to bait me into a shape-shift? What? Panther? Is that what you want? Talk to me! You want me to drag you into the bushes by your damned throat?” She shouted, and wrapped her arms around herself. “ ’Cause, tonight, if you don’t stop playing with me after that floor show, I might. Don’t tempt me. Oh, God, what is wrong with you?”

  He held up his hand, three calls of the Names and his skull was splitting. “Shut up! I can’t take it,” he shouted, pacing as his ears began to internally bleed. “No mas, por favor. A minute. To get my head together. All right?”

  He had to get away from her. She was turning him on so fucking bad it didn’t make sense … drag him by his throat, oh, shit—if she hadn’t said the Names, but he knew from all experience, she would again, and again, and again. And she was walking toward him, lit up with silver fire. He’d torch on impact from even a hug.

  “Back off me, woman! You know we don’t play like that!” he bellowed as he could feel her energy about to dip low and go serious feline when she purred.

  She shook her head as though coming to from a punch as she stood on the porch in the buff, and then slowly backed away from him into the house and shut the screen door behind her.

  Carlos watched her for a moment, totally defeated and too conflicted to immediately argue. Okay, maybe he’d gone too far, which could be disastrous, if he ever wanted her to chill out and be with him again. The conundrum was profound. He’d wanted to fuck her till she lost her mind, but if he took her there she’d burn him alive. If he did her in a lackluster fashion, she might get pregnant, but damn, what would be the point? The Light had this shit rigged so foul it was obscene. Now he really understood the Chairman and the old boys’ problem. Why he was such a necessary pawn in their game. Think, think, think. There had to be some way around the barrier … and she’d been so turned out she was ready to serve panther? Sheeit.

  But as he hesitated, a tiny, fearful cry from within echoed through his conscience. What was he doing? Why was he doing this? None of this had anything to do with the mission he’d been assigned, and getting Damali pregnant was the last thing he should have been trying to do, especially if what he’d seen on the Chairman’s throne would come out of his body.

  He stood on her porch, breathing hard, as he battled the procreation imperative and looked at the woman he loved, and then clung to that very thin silver filament left inside him. No, she was not to be the vessel for something worse than a daywalker. Jealousy and newfound power had had him in its grip. Unbridled rage had made him show off and nearly stop her heart with pleasure shock. He had to get the Jose thing out of his head and be rational.

  “C’mon, girl. I was just playing,” Carlos said, fighting the eerie sensation of conflict brewing within him. “It’s a male Neteru thing, mixed with a little vamp still in my system from old times, that’s all. I’m near my real apex. What can I say?” He opened his arms and smiled, loving how her skin was still wet and flushed from releasing till she’d cried.

  “Put my clothes back on,” she demanded, breathing hard, raking her hair, but her eyes never left his. “No silver, no ass. I musta been out of my mind!”

  He smiled as her gaze traveled down his body and lingered. “I want you, too, baby. The old-fashioned way works for me … unless you want to go to the point?”

  “Too rough already,” she said, standing and slapping remnants of sand off her soaked clothes as he robed her in what she’d previously had on. She scowled at his good faith move and glared at him. “I’m not going to V-point with you—and I thought … Never mind. This shit was ridiculous.”

  He smiled in an attempt to play off the pleasurable horror she’d just experienced. “I’ll be gentle next time, girl … for real.” He gave her a sly glance, his smile widening as he spoke. “But it did feel good, didn’t it?”

  She still couldn’t see if he had fangs, not that she needed any further proof that he owned them. “No. It didn’t. You seriously violated my mind. Don’t do that to me ever again, Carlos. I’m not playing! I feel dirty, like I need a bath.”

  “All you have to do is say the word—”

  “No!” She scanned the floor for her missing blade.

  He produced it for her twiddl
ing it outside the screen door.

  “Let me in the house and I’ll make it up to you, girl. You’ve got me out here naked, cold, and that’s why I was pissed off. You didn’t have my back at the family house, and—”

  “Where’s my holy water. I’m gonna …”

  Damali’s voice trailed off as her motions slowed down. Damn, she really took this the wrong way, and it was not about allowing her to douse him with that foul concoction of Marlene’s tonight. It also disturbed him that he was back to needing a verbalized invitation to cross her threshold. That had never been the case, and it released another inner cry from his psyche that he couldn’t totally ignore.

  Carlos opened his fingers and splayed them against the shut screen, pulling away the last few minutes, closing his fist around it all, and then hurling it into the back of her mind like an erotic bad dream. “Hide,” he murmured behind the small black orb that penetrated the base of her skull. Then he dried her clothes, righted all toppled furniture, put the baby Isis back in her hand, snapped his fingers, and released time.

  “I’m going to get the stuff I need to douse you and your clothes. Stay on the porch,” she ordered over her shoulder. But her tone was calm, as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. “I want you to see how your clothes just disappeared in the yard before.”

  “Okay, baby,” he said in a weary voice, covering himself with his hands. “But can you at least bring me a towel?”

  She laughed. He finally relaxed and smiled.

  After a few moments, Damali appeared at the screen door. She absently threw the towel she was holding at him and half of it landed over his head. He sat appearing contrite as could be on the steps, watching her make a big production out of dousing his clothes. Total amusement filled him as he slowed her down again, his clothes on the ground disappeared, and he replaced them with new ones.

  Battling emotions filled his mind as he watched her. A small inner voice kept repeating the word danger. It was a muffled cry, almost a sob. Then a stronger voice would override it and tell him to fuck with her. Carlos dropped his head into his hands and peered up slowly as Damali walked in a haze of altered time. Dear, G—

  He stood yelling in pain. White-hot poker heat seized his brain and almost set it on fire. He held on to the rail and looked up. He could no longer hear the Name even casually, not just when he was an imminent threat, but no matter what? “Oh, shit.”

  Carlos covered his face with both hands and breathed into them with shaky breaths. What if he couldn’t cross cathedral barriers, or whatever? What other limitations did his little dip down to Level Seven via the Chairman’s throne have, he wondered? Why could he even cross here and be on this land, though? It was all too confusing.

  “C’mon, y’all. Don’t play me like this. I’m on your mission. Yeah, I took a tumble, but don’t get new. Hey. For real. I’m serious now.”

  The starry horizon didn’t even squint at him, much less produce a sign. “Okay, fine,” he muttered, and sat down, then released Damali from the time aberration.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, walking around the wet heap of soiled clothes in the yard. “Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing happened,” Carlos repeated casually, “because, like I told you—nothing happened. I didn’t relapse and whatever infection had me earlier passed out of my system. We’re Neterus, immune.” He looked up at the sky, as though arguing with it. “Everybody is making me feel like I’ve committed a crime, and I haven’t done a thing. Y’all are being real unfair,” he said, his face still heavenward. “There’s a double standard. When you had your moment of trip-out, they were trying to help you, Damali. Everybody did all that they could to keep you on lockdown and safe in the compound, but see how they do a brother?”

  When she didn’t answer, Carlos gave her with a angry sidelong glance, abandoning his skyward-hurled argument. “It ain’t right … and what hurts the most is, you’re standing here at the bottom of the steps, a bottle of test water in one hand and salt and Ju Ju oil, or whatever, in the other, just looking at me like I’m the Devil himself.”

  Carlos swallowed hard and stared out into the distance. “Never thought I’d see that expression in your eyes, of all people, Damali … after all we’ve been through together? Bottom line is, you don’t trust me. That hurts more than anything else.”

  He watched her slowly set the bottle of Holy water, anointing oil, and purified sea salt on the bottom step, then let out an unnoticeable breath of relief.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she murmured, glancing back at his clothes, confounded. “We just have to be careful because of the newbies and the portal problem.”

  “I thought the foundation of any relationship was trust?”

  She nodded and came up the steps and sat beside him. “I’m sorry, okay?”

  He shrugged, and adjusted the waist of the towel sarong that had been shielding his lap. “Whatever.”

  “Look, why don’t we go inside? You get washed up; I’ll open some wine. We’ll just chill, try to … I don’t know, sync our vibe back up. All right?”

  He shrugged away from her hand as it touched his cheek, and stood. “I don’t feel like making love now, all of a sudden.”

  She stood and reached for him again. “Carlos, I am really sorry I didn’t trust you.”

  He didn’t pull away from her hold and allowed her to hug him, begrudgingly hugging her back, half afraid to touch her. “Been that way for months.”

  “I know. I’ve been going through changes I didn’t even understand, and I guess I’ve been shutting you out, like you said. Maybe the contagion got me, too?”

  “So, I’m welcomed in your home? You ain’t scared that I might turn into a monster?” he said, brandishing fake claws with his fingers in the air and giving her a crazed expression to make her laugh.

  “No,” she said, swatting his chest. “You can fall by here anytime you want. It’s me and you, okay? You have permission to enter, whatever all that unnecessary drama was about.”

  He smiled, but hesitated. Her mind was strong enough to still hold a bit of what had transpired before his memory block, and was clearly still recording impressions. It was as though her silver-coated gray matter was leaking through the dark orb he’d placed there, searching for truth beyond the illusion. He kissed her slowly, not sending anything extra into it that could make her bolt and run, attempting to erase the last vestiges of any sensations from the previous hour. When he lifted his head, he brushed her stray lock back from her forehead and stared at her mind. “Good.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Yonnie and Tara touched down in the alley on Bourbon Street and looked around.

  “I wouldn’t have brought you to Gabrielle’s unless it was an emergency,” Yonnie said, his gaze going toward the pedestrians beyond the shadows. “So be cool when we get in there.”

  “No problem,” Tara said, her voice as distant as her gaze. “I don’t have any issues with Gabrielle or her profession. She is what she is, just like we are what we are.”

  Yonnie brought his attention back to Tara, conflict wafting through him as he studied her calm demeanor. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” he said in a tight voice after a moment, and then began walking. “I was foolish to think you might.”

  Tara didn’t respond. What was there to say? It was better that Yonnie relive his desires at a coven brothel in New Orleans than to insist on sex from her after he fed each night.

  “For the record,” he snarled as they exited the alley and blended in with the party people in the street, “I never insisted on anything.”

  “All right,” she said, no judgment in her tone, simply fatigue. “Let’s not argue about what is.”

  He grabbed her arm. She looked down at his hold with curious disdain.

  “You know for a fact that since the Chairman’s throne has been vacated, as a master, I can’t deliver a bite that isn’t fatal. No turns, no passion nicks, nothing, if it’s on a human. No elevations on one of our own.
So my visits to Gabrielle’s place haven’t been all you think.” He dropped her arm when he realized that frustration was making him squeeze it harder than he’d intended. “You’re the only one who can take my bites.”

  She nodded and touched his face. “I know.” Her hand fell away, and she let out a long breath. “That’s why, from time to time—”

  “From a sense of pity,” he said in a low rumble, “or to protect an innocent human?” He strode ahead of her muttering. “Either reason is unacceptable. Especially tonight.”

  Tara watched him alight the front stairs of the old French-quarter dwelling with the grace of the wind. She stared at his strong back and straight posture, as he held his head high. His dark Afro-style hair shone under the night stars and street lamps, glistening like a king’s crown. Under any other circumstances, this man would have been a good choice, given the options her world presented. Yonnie was honorable, handsome, had defended their territory well, his only flaw was, he wasn’t Jack Rider.

  She took the stone stairs behind him, and leaned on the ornately curved brass rail that replaced what should have been wrought iron, waiting for one of Gabrielle’s girls to open the door. Witches didn’t do iron, Tara reminded herself, as she slipped off the silver shaman necklace that could cause any were-demon working girls offense.

  “Thank you,” Yonnie muttered and then depressed the bell as Tara put the jewelry into her coat pocket. “At least for appearance’s sake, you could fake being with me as a real lover, not simply my semi-estranged wife.”

  Tara threaded her arm through Yonnie’s, and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I need to go talk to him, so I can finally put things to rest the way I should.” She stared up at Yonnie as shadows moved behind the wide, lace-covered, leaded-beveled glass panels in the door. “Let me go see Rider—just to talk. This isn’t doing any of us any good.”

  “I forbid it,” Yonnie said in a quiet tone as the door tumblers turned.