by L. A. Banks
Carlos nodded. “I know. Was trying not to think about that.” He paused and turned around to completely face Damali. “I thought you might also be worried about something else, too, like getting pregnant again.” He stared at her for a moment and then looked away. “Definite possibility tonight. Restraint of intent ain’t nowhere in me.”
“I am worried about that,” she said honestly, but kept her voice private and gentle. “But that’s something long-term to consider, if we live through this mission. I’m more worried about what we’ll have to face, short-term.”
She looked around the tent at the team that was still scattered in groupings of conversation, card games, and general relaxed chaos. This was a bad position for any of them to be in, to have both generals mentally compromised by a genetic force, while something serious was on their asses.
“Our timing, once again, sucks,” Carlos said, wiping his palms over his face. “I do not like being in a situation where my head ain’t right. That’s a perfect way to get jacked.”
“I’m right there with you, brother—we’re on the same page. My concentration ain’t no better than yours.”
For a moment, they both just stared at each other.
You remember how I was when you were ripening and I’d just turned vamp?
She nodded. Yep, and now I know what you were dealing with, because if you don’t stop the mind locks, I will throw your fine ass to the ground in this tent with everyone watching. “Don’t go there, or revisit that.” I’m in a very fragile state—horny beyond your comprehension. Just the freakin’ memories send chills, you clear! Damali turned away and wrapped her arms around herself and drew in a shuddery breath. But Carlos snatched her arm and turned her around hard, making the others briefly glance at them for the first time.
They both glared at the team, which sent lines of vision away from them. The message was implicit; the argument was private, stay out of it.
Then, don’t even suggest something like that … Okay? Carlos mentally said, stabbing her mind with a low rumble once the team went back to their own conversation. Do not talk dirty to me in here, or even think about a ground body-slam, hear! Not right now, because I’m about to take you up on the threat. He looked at her hard, but there was a plea in his tear-filled eyes that made her measure her words. Know that I have complete respect for what you went through alone. Get back on the subject.
Damali nodded, went to touch his arm, but made her hand fall away. “It’s on me and you, now,” she said in a soft apologetic tone, running her fingers through her locks as she looked up at Carlos. This made no sense, both of them battling to breathe, both sweating like they’d been chased and had an entire team to keep safe, but also having to fight this apex thing going down to twist their brains. “We baited this thing; it’s hooked and headed our way,” she finally whispered, taking long pauses to collect herself. “I can feel it. We’re responsible for what happens to this family.”
“You think Zang Ho got the young bucks ready?” Carlos said, his gaze sweeping Bobby and Dan, then over toward Krissy and J.L. His gaze lingered on Marjorie, and then Inez and Juanita. Then he soberly answered his own question. “Yeah, D. This is tight.”
Carlos and Damali moved closer together. They both stared at each other, the quiet plan implicit.
“Draw it away from the tent,” she murmured.
“Give the family a chance to aim and fire.” Carlos glanced around. “Two-by-two detail.”
Damali nodded. “Okay, everybody. Listen up,” she said, walking away from Carlos and blotting her damp forehead with the back of her wrists. “In about ten minutes, we’ll have true nightfall. I want everybody who doesn’t have night vision capacity, or a fully developed gift, with goggles on, even in the tent. Your gun is in readiness position, unholstered, safety off, and in quick reach range. Shield bracelets are on. Grenades hooked to your vests. Cold-body indicators are on your hip at all times and set to vibrate. Every person in here should have a Bowie or some type of blade. If it gets ugly, and you get separated from the group, make sure you have heat packs and switch your locators on transmit, because if you do make it to sunrise, we don’t want to find you frozen to death. Until we get back down that mountain in full daylight, you look alive and stay alive.”
Smiles faded, eyes hardened, heads nodded as the team stared back at her and Carlos, and teammates began to stand and comply.
“Me and D are doing this first night shift. At this juncture, I need to be away from this tent and as far away from any of you as possible. I’m bait, and trailing. So, the last person you get next to if it gets rugged is me. Home to Damali to take cover. Understood?”
Again, heads nodded. Silence made the tent feel smaller. Tension practically sucked the air up and out of the small center hole above.
Krissy slid the bracelet on her arm, lit a beam to surround her body in a shield, and tapped her indicator. “This one is defective,” she said, glancing around nervously. “It’s already buzzing.”
Before she’d finished her sentence, a giant claw ripped through the tent wall where she stood. J.L. flat-kicked her in the chest and she landed by Big Mike as the tent collapsed. Something snatched J.L. out of the torn opening so fast that Carlos couldn’t get to him as the heavy folds plumed down on the group.
Pure mayhem broke out as Carlos and Damali cut their way out of the tarp. They heard J.L.’s voice screaming a long descending echo. They glanced at each other; two seconds told them the deal. He was falling. Damali’s sword dropped. A pair of eagle eyes replaced hers. Wind rushed beneath her. Talons outstretched. His body was too heavy. He’d take them both down. Zang Ho’s voice stabbed at her mind. Dragon.
She became huge, strong; her muscles split across her breastbone and wrapped her legs in what felt like steel cable. J.L. was semiconscious; his body rimmed in blue-white light from his bracelet, and was reaching for a vest-hitched grenade. Friendly fire was about to kill them both. She snapped at his arm to send his hand back, circled the mountain, and dropped him as gently as she could near other blue-white rimmed bodies.
“You’re ass was lucky,” Damali shouted, to make J.L. know not to attack her. “The only thing that probably kept you from being gored was the bracelet. Hold your fire. It dropped you because the UV burned it.”
Blue-and-yellow rapid-artillery ejections looked like fireworks from the distance. She left J.L. and circled, trying to find a safe place to come in for a landing without taking a shell. Then something slammed into her midair, a slash sounded behind her, and she ducked a razor-edged tail, but it got her wing.
Tumbling, she landed with a hard thud, rolled, and held her left shoulder. The gash was two inches deep and blood was everywhere. But she had to get back into the fight. It wasn’t time to bleed or die. Damali scrambled over the ridge to where the unseen beast had fled trailing sulfur, knowing it was headed in Carlos’s direction.
Carlos ran as fast as he could to draw it away from the others. He somersaulted behind a rock formation, but a bolt of black energy smashed it. The blade in his hand had snapped like a twig when he’d swung it with all his might, the beast ducked, and it made contact with stone. Carlos flung the useless handle to the ground. Two huge yellow eyes appeared in a black scaly face and leaned down from its ten-foot advantage, fangs glistening, one wing smoking, but not slowed in the least.
“I believe you were looking for me,” he hissed.
Carlos’s back was to air, his heels perilously crumbling pebbles. Even with the thunderous distortion, he’d know Dante’s voice anywhere.
Claws extended as the beast lunged forward in an open-fisted reach toward Carlos’s chest. His golden energy shield rose, blocking the heart-snatch, but he fell backward over the ledge.
He was tumbling so fast that all the air in his lungs instantly exited his body. Then something snatched him and stopped his collision with the ground. His stomach lurched and felt like it was in his esophagus; the change in direction was so abrupt. A long, red tongue splatter
ed with black ooze licked the side of his face and covered his hair in slime. Grayish-green hooked claws held him to a cold, scaly torso with breasts. The thing that carried him was so large that he couldn’t see its face. Carlos glimpsed down at the several-thousand-foot drop, then glimpsed up at the entity that clutched him. Options were limited, but it was not about going with her toward the destination of a cliff-side lair.
Carlos opened his hand. A new sword was in it. Death before dishonor. Unable to get a good angle to penetrate the creature’s body, he swiped at one of the huge, leathery wings that beat the air.
The creature screeched, but didn’t let go. A razor tail slashed at his blade, fending off another stab. The female beast that held him was listing to one side, injured in the joint, not in the webbed leather like the other beast had been. Her hulking body billowed foul yellow smoke, her narrowed gaze sought a landing, when something mounted her back. Carlos was flung against the dirt, his sword lost in the hard fall, and he backed away from the edge of a yawning drop, as two beasts collided midair, one black, one gray, and tumbled in a downward death-struggle.
“Take cover,” the gray beast screeched toward Carlos, her eyes glowing black. “You cannot be destroyed. Not now during your apex!”
He didn’t wait to watch the outcome, but rejoined the team, running a hundred yards toward the clearing where blue-white outlined bodies could be seen in the darkness.
J.L. was back on his feet. Rider and Shabazz had locked on targets and released cold-seeking missiles. Big Mike had released a shoulder cannon shell that took out a section of mountain over the next ridge.
The team ducked, scattered, and took cover in five directions as the smoking gray beast was suddenly hurled over the edge of the ridge, slid through the tent and equipment, and landed two hundred yards away against the mountainside. Big Mike was trapped as she rose, dashed forward, and snapped at him. But Mike’s silver-spiked boot caught the beast’s jaw, hurling her back and splattering blackish-green slime at his feet. She reached out with a deadly swipe; Mike ducked and rolled away from the tail that stabbed at him. Inez jumped up, not taking cover, squeezing rounds from an Uzi and screaming Mike’s name. Rider opened fire with Inez and Shabazz to give his man cover, allowing Mike to scramble behind another huge rock.
“Lilith, you bitch!” A deep voice rumbled in the distance. “You will never supercede me to make him your heir apparent! Not in his apex, not ever!” Within seconds, the black beast flew over the cliff edge toward the injured one, his black tail swishing in fury as he gained momentum. The gray one tried to lift off, screeching and hissing, and sending a weak arc of energy toward the larger creature hurling toward her; then suddenly the black one ducked, allowed two cold-seeking missiles to pass him, and covered his face and chest with his wings. The mountainside instantly yawned, sending black, sulfuric smoke into the air. Lilith screeched as an unseen force yanked her body into the cavern “Nooo, husband, I beg you!” she screamed. The mountain sealed.
Missiles made contact, missing their target, Lilith. The explosion quaked the mountainside. Clips and weapons flew out of hands as human bodies flattened to the ground from the impact. A slow rumble sounded overhead. The team got up quickly. No one fired; everyone froze, looked up, and began running.
“Avalanche!” Damali hollered.
“It all comes full circle,” the huge predator hissed, touching down before them to block their retreat. His focus narrowed on Carlos as he lowered his head. “I’ll see you back in Hell, where you were born!”
A black arc snared all gunfire. A sword materialized in Damali’s hand. She swung; Carlos pushed her to fall, and made her miss the Chairman’s throat by a millimeter.
“No,” Carlos shouted. “Not yet!”
“Bring me my book,” a low voice rumbled behind the entity that disappeared.
The team’s attention immediately shot to the fast-moving white threat behind them. Small knots of humanity fanned out, sought rock formations, anything to get behind as a shield. But there was nothing, simply a flat, two-hundred-yard glen, then they would fall over the edge of the world, pushed by ice, rocks, snow, and dirt.
“Everybody come together!” Carlos yelled.
“Hold the line!” Damali shouted, moving to his side. “Temple formation! Don’t separate!”
Bodies slammed against bodies. All eyes turned toward the white-and-brown sea of mother earth hurling toward them. Carlos and Damali stood in a north-south position, back to back with the team between them. He opened his hands; she caught the end of his shield, arcing a dome of golden, impermeable light over the group.
Initially rocks and pebbles leading the avalanche bounced and skittered off the dome, making them cringe, but they all closed their eyes, said a prayer, and braced their bodies for the death impact.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of ice pushed the dirt over the dome, making all but the two Neteru’s holding the shield, fall. Carlos and Damali could feel the entire team being moved inch-by-inch, backward while they strained to keep their position.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, all motion stopped, leaving the team sealed within an icy white tomb.
Breathing hard, Carlos kept his eyes shut while team members stood slowly, glancing up in disbelief. Damali’s head dropped forward, her arms shook from the pressure, and for the first time since the chaos began, her injury started to burn and throb, making her painfully aware it was there.
Marlene’s attention snapped toward Damali, as her side of the shield began to give way. “Medic! We’ve got a Neteru down!”
Berkfield quickly shoved toward her. Carlos peeped over his shoulder and his side of the shield buckled.
“Keep your concentration, man!” Damali shouted. “I’m all right. It’s a flesh wound, Carlos.”
She lowered her head but kept her arms outstretched, muscles in her arms shook as pain carved at her exposed shoulder blade.
“I’m looking at bone and gristle, hon,” Berkfield said nervously, opening his hands and lowering them slowly toward her wound.
“Don’t,” Damali ordered. “It’s a demon nick, Council level or worse. You’re a sacred blood healer and the shit will burn like hell.” Sweat covered her forehead and she coughed as nausea from slowly setting shock began to claim her.
“Seal her up,” Carlos said through his teeth. “That shit will make her sick.”
“No,” Damali said, her voice losing some of its strength. “It’ll fuck up my concentration when the burn goes down. I won’t be able to hold the shield.”
“You ain’t gonna last another five minutes, baby,” Marlene whispered, glancing up with the team as the dome began to buckle and yawn.
Bits of ice and rock began to rain inside the dome as Marlene spoke. Carlos’s knees bent slightly, and he strained against the fissures like a man holding up the weight of the world. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“It was a vamp nick from the Chairman, not Level Seven. My system will fight it, I’m …” Damali’s words trailed off as delirium from blood loss began to make her woozy.
“I said seal her up! That’s an order,” Carlos shouted. “I got this. Heal her.”
Still the team hesitated, but the golden light protecting them got brighter. Carlos suddenly dropped his hands and turned, his focus beyond the group. Team members covered their heads in reflex but the dome never wavered. He walked toward Damali, who still had her hands outstretched, her head dropped forward, rivulets of sweat running down her temples and her nose, making her keep her eyes sealed shut.
“You have got to trust me,” Carlos said near her ear. “Just like I have to trust you. We’re both strong,” he said, taking her hands within his, as she fell forward against his chest, “but sometimes we have to pick up the slack for one another.” He looked at Berkfield. “Heal her.”
Carlos handed Damali off to Marlene and walked to the edge of the globe they’d created. Damali’s screams almost shattered his concentration, but there was something more impor
tant than individual pain: the survival of the family. Damali would live. But the wound had to be cleaned out and sealed.
As Berkfield slit his palm with a Bowie and sent the sacred to chase the unholy out of Damali’s wound, Carlos allowed her screams of agony to make him stronger. Berkfield’s agonized hiss as his palm’s covered Damali’s shoulder and the wound opened on his back made it all the more maddening while the healing happened behind Carlos. The sound of Damali’s cries, breathing, the smell of blood, the exit of sulfur, the scent of spent vomit, sweat, tremors, tears, wails, pain. Never again.
He remembered it all so clearly now. Her screams of agony, hysteria, how they’d clawed his seed from her womb. Blackness had entered his lungs, polluting his system, making him a carrier. His vibrations had affected the team, had strained the dynamics for months, adding to the contagion, had threatened his woman’s existence … had rendered confusion as an illusion. It wasn’t a concussion from the car accident. He’d taken the Chairman’s throne; it had attempted to take him by force, blood-rape sacrilege. They’d wanted the worst of him to step forward, then as Zang Ho had said, so be it. The head of the Chairman, then the book lodged in his double’s chest would expel and open. A simultaneous hit had to go down. He had to kill the worst in himself. As far as Lilith went, he had no choice but to let the Devil deal with his own wife.
Carlos sat slowly on the ground and crossed his legs Indian style with his back to the frightened team and Damali as she recovered. He was cool. He was one with the elements. He was snow—fucking ice. He was fire—molten lava. He was stone—a vast cavern of secrets protecting his family under his granite arch. He was the shadow of the night—never to be revealed to the enemy. He was the weapon.
Damali stirred slowly, her gaze immediately going to the holding shield and over to Carlos. All eyes followed hers as she sat up.
