L A Banks - [Vampire Huntres Legend 12]

by The Thirteenth (pdf)

  Heather's eyelids fluttered violently and her once-calm breathing became a labored pant as her head dropped back.

  "What should I do, D?" Dan paced behind his wife, not sure if he should touch her or allow her to descend further into the trance.

  Carlos looked at Heather as he spoke to Damali. "D, she's going in really deep ... is it cool?" When he turned around, Damali was in a heavy trance state that mirrored Heather's. "D!" "Don't touch them," Marlene said, walking up and onto the top deck. "Now it begins. Just watch."

  Shabazz was on Marlene's heels. "What's going on, baby? Look at 'em! It's like they're all—" "Drowning," Marlene said calmly.

  Every male on deck yelled the same word at the same time: "What?"

  "They have to let go and stop struggling," Marlene said, moving to the center of the vessel, opening her arms and using her ebony walking stick like a lightning rod. "Once they die to what they knew, they will be emptied of the old and filled with the new."

  Carlos pointed at Marlene, challenging her, but with respect. "Marlene . . . don't you let one of them die or hemorrhage. I don't want them emptied, none of the brothers do—we clear?"

  "This is feminine energy, baby," Marlene said gently, her wise eyes beginning to glow white. "The energy of peace after the fire. Trust it."

  "I trust you, Mar," Carlos said, beginning to pace. "Trust something much bigger than me," Marlene said, starting to whirl in a circle as an iridescent shimmer began to overtake each female Guardian standing at the rail.

  Damali clutched her throat with one hand while holding on to the rail with the other, suddenly gasping and convulsing until her wings tore through her shoulder blades with such force that rivulets of blood coursed down her back.

  "That's it!" Carlos shouted, heading toward his wife. "Touch her now and you'll injure her!" the pearl in Damali's necklace shrieked. "Don't, Carlos!" Every man backed up from his wife, panic and adrenaline making the muscles in their biceps twitch.

  "They must die," the pearl said more calmly as the winds began to rise with roiling waves that summated out of nowhere. "Go home to the source . . ."

  "She's not dying—fuck all that," Yonnie yelled over the roaring winds. "C, do something, man . . . you know all this spiritual shit!"

  "We wait," Carlos said, glancing between Damali and Marlene, who nodded.

  "Wait for what? A fucking tsunami to take our wives overboard!" Rider shouted as a huge wave in the distance headed toward the craft.

  "Have faith," Marlene said quietly. "Wait." "Atlantis is rising," Pearl said in an eerie echo. Her voice had taken on a hollow tone like that of an amplified seashell.

  "Every old, highly advanced civilization came from there . .. this was where the tree of knowledge was replanted. Every reincarnation of advanced empires comes from that tree, and it flourishes as long as the leaders adhere to the principles. But those empires will go into instant decline and obscurity when the laws of the Divine are violated . . . and their civilizations will turn to dust. It has happened cycle after cycle, until there can be no more cycles after this."

  "I don't care about that ancient history shit," Carlos said, going toward Damali.

  "There is a wall of water about to hit this ship, Pearl, and I need to know where the closest landmass is on this side of the Triangle—stat!"

  "She'll capsize!" Monty yelled frantically from the pilothouse. "She wasn't meant to withstand anything like this!"

  "C, we can't fight the ocean!" Big Mike shouted, bracing Inez in an iron grip. Berkfield began flinging life vests into the center of the deck. "Marjorie—don't just stand there! Help me!"

  "It isn't a wall of water, Carlos. It's a wall of energy from Atlantis," Pearl said in a soothing but firm tone. "Do not touch your mates, they are almost dead, and they will be washed away. It is prophecy."

  "What!" Carlos was pure motion.

  Every male on the ship broke his position and made a dash toward his wife, but a bullwhip of white light that came up from the depths like the tentacles of a giant octopus separated them from their objective.

  "Do not interfere!" Pearl warned. "The children they carry must be infused with all the insights they need to rebuild the next world after the Fall. It is their role to protect the future. They must have all of the technical advancements of Atlantis, plus the wisdom that was lacking in subsequent empires . . . there will be no more cycles left after theirs for humanity to finally evolve." Before the male Guardians could make another desperate lunge for their wives, the wall of jewel-blue energy hit the craft, washing over the deck, and radiated a sparkling, opalescent charge over every surface. Each female Guardian stopped struggling, stopped breathing, her eyes wide and glassy as the hue of her chakra color slowly overtook her irises.

  Beams of colored lights danced beneath the pristine water's surface, connecting to the fingertips of each woman as she opened her arms and then gasped in a soul-shuddering breath. The light swelled from the ocean's depths, covering them each in blue, violet, orange, red, every color that was worn spilled onto the deck, overtook their hair, lifting it from their shoulders, and creating a halo around their entire bodies.

  White light spiraled up from the great sea beyond and entered Damali through the crown of her head, lighting her eyes in glowing, white-hot energy that lifted her from the surface of the deck, arched her back, and then suddenly sucked in every color her sisters emanated. Her gasp cut through the night, and her exhalation sent the light toward them, lifting every other woman off her feet in a color orb of the chakra hue she wore. Then Damali's Guardian sisters turned to face one another, still in a trance, each opening her mouth and releasing the sound of her hue. Damali's voice blended with theirs to ring at a glass-shattering pitch. The harmonics fused, creating a spiral of multicolored light that became denser and denser until it was an opalescent staff that rose from the deck and then exploded into glittering, iridescent pinpoints of light energy. In the shimmering wake, a hologramlike image of a magnificent crystal pyramid filled the center of the all-female circle. Each woman's eyes glowed a different hue, and the writings through the ages moved in a blur in her irises. Languages never recorded, symbols lost in antiquity . . . then Kemetian hieroglyphics, Sumerian, Aramaic, Greek, Chinese, runes, wall art, so many so fast that it was impossible to catalogue, and it all passed through their eyes as male Guardians stood in awe, paralyzed with reverence.

  Then, one by one, each woman dropped to the deck, washed away by a current of energy that left her sputtering and trembling. Damali collapsed, her wings still glowing with energy, her eyes flickering as the last of the current abated. She looked up first as footfalls neared the circle.

  "Don't!" Damali said, her voice foreign, older, and sensually husky as it echoed through the night. She stood with effort, her gaze unfocused. "Atlantis had to sink. Its knowledge was too powerful and vast for the undeveloped human spirit. The avatars of old, however, reincarnated, time and time again, each remembering some of their time in the chrysalis of pure knowledge . . . and time and time again, their human condition, eventually, was overtaken by the temptations of the dark-side in the world."

  She opened her arms, golden tears filling her eyes. "Just as Kemet rose to great heights and knew a long reign of advanced science, beauty, art, and grace for centuries . . . after thousands of years without incident, the later pharaohs forgot the Divine principles and fell into decadence, they lost all that they had once owned ... as has every empire in the world after them. These children we carry must not forget. This time when they rebuild, they will hold the collective consciousness of the old avatars of Atlantis . . . but will also contain the spiritual lighthouse—once the darkness in the world is vanquished. Just like you must not forget. . . everything that you are, the dark and the light within must be used for the Ultimate Good and for the protection of the final empire." Damali let out a hard breath, blinked twice, and just that quickly her eyes were normal brown again. Slightly disoriented, she looked at her Guardian sisters who were sti
rring on the deck and then looked at the stricken expressions on the rest of the team.

  "You guys okay?" she said, giving Carlos a curious glance. "What?"

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lilith craned her fingers in, black energy swirling in the centers of her palms, and then in a fit of fury, she hurled the orbs at the hovering globe so hard that it nearly tipped off its axis.

  "Waters arise—empty your depths! Bring them to rne! Sweep the shores of all life. Swallow everything in your wake!"

  Raging dark energy plunged into the blue oceans of her globe, sending tidal waves inland toward North America to crash into fragile crusts of land. She shrieked with mad glee as Manhattan submerged and New England disappeared. The length of the eastern seaboard, except Washington, D.C., disappeared under a blue eclipse. Florida broke off and sank, along with Cuba and all of the West Indies. The Gulf of Mexico spread inland like a deep blue stain, a wall of water that made Lilith screech and clap, and then form another orb to explode in the Pacific. Immediately, from Portland to La Paz, encompassing all of California inland to the Sierra Nevada, disappeared beneath a roiling blue carpet of death. Central America was gone.

  "You're in North America, I know it! Why won't you just die?" Nuit stood in the desert, wearing black fatigues, with a look of cool satisfaction on his face. He stared at the human mercenary soldiers before him, admiring their Bradleys and military arsenal.

  "One clean sweep," he said calmly. "Twelve dead old men, Aborigine insurgents, terrorists . . . and you bring me the artifact that they stole from my corporation long ago—and you will be handsomely rewarded."

  "The contract still the same, mate?" the commanding officer said, flashing a dazzling white smile against ruddy skin.

  "Yes. . . one hundred million of recently recovered monies for each of you . . . and eternal life." Nuit rubbed his jaw and chuckled, looking at the six men who were mounted on unstoppable weapons of destruction. "And you do this of your own free will?"

  "No worries, mate. For that deal, who gives a shit about a bunch of crazy geezers?" The Unnamed One looked up from his large black marble war board, standing slowly as a commotion drew his attention to his outer chamber. His hooded demon sentries shielded their eyes from a white glowing object held by the charred human remains. The blackened bodies of six men stuck to the surface like gooey tar, which was the only part of the large disc his demons could hold by skewering the bodies with their scythes.

  "My darkness," the lead demon murmured, nervously genuflecting. "Councilman Nuit sends his regards and has brought you an unusual offering. He requests an immediate audience, after having the audacity to send you something with the dreaded Light embedded in it. We have detained him to prevent what could only be an assassination attempt, this close to the—"

  "Send him in!" the Unnamed One thundered, quickly walking around the war board to further inspect Nuit's unimaginable offering. Pure ecstasy coated his dark heart and then he closed his eyes. This was what he'd been waiting for. Now he could release his full torment on the world, and the moment the Light retaliated by breaking the fifth seal, he would trump them with the sixth!

  As Nuit was thrown forward and hit the sizzling cavern floor, Lucifer bent and offered Nuit a helping hand up. "Come, my new Chairman . . . talk to me. . . ." Carlos quietly stepped back from the group. From a very remote place in his mind he saw Damali commune with her sister Guardians and Marlene. The brothers were listening to the women's experiences with complete focus. But he watched the water.

  Something very deep within him was still coiled tight like a serpent ready to strike, needing to strike. It was something that went well beyond gut hunch. It was a knowing.

  The night was darkening, the stars seeming to go out one by one like someone was blowing out birthday candles. He had at one time been the very night itself. He understood the slow, seductive creep of darkness. Yonnie gave him a sidelong glance and left the central gathering on the deck to join him at the stern.

  "Yeah, I know," Yonnie said, confirming Carlos's suspicions while chewing hard on a toothpick.

  Carlos nodded, motioning toward the water and then the horizon. Distant lightning flashed, making the group stop talking. Within those few seconds of illumination he saw that it wasn't stars going out above, but the water rising to eclipse the horizon.

  "Oh, shit!" Yonnie yelled, jumping back as the two men at the stern stared into a demon-infested wave.

  "Battle stations!" Shabazz shouted, jumping up and heading toward the pilothouse with Big Mike.

  Carlos held up his hand and didn't move. One could fight demons, but couldn't fight the sea. Viking war ships numbering in the thousands painted the rising surf black. Carlos pulled Mike and Shabazz in with the others and then covered the team with a shield of Heru, ignoring Damali's shouts to let her fight with them. Carlos stared at Yonnie.

  "How many of these motherfuckers you think we can take before it's all over, man?" Carlos asked calmly, watching the tsunami-size wave continue to build. Yonnie shrugged and spat out his toothpick. "Couple hundred, if your shield holds

  . . . maybe you should jettison the team to anywhere you can dream of now before we capsize." Yonnie let his breath out hard. "I mean, what the fuck? They definitely gonna die here."

  Carlos nodded, the absolute impossibility of what faced them making him become eerily calm. The problem was, no image would come to his mind of where safe could be. His fingertips didn't tingle, no energy surge pulsed through him enough to lift and jettison the entire team safely in a fold-away. He knew he'd drop them in shark-or demon-infested waters—something was siphoning his power, sucking him dry. He was still too close to the Devil's Triangle and it was as though it had become another entity to laugh at him.

  "So, whassup, man?" Yonnie finally said, beginning to pace.

  "Triangle's got me shot-blocked," Carlos said as calmly as possible. Yonnie nodded. "Then we do this old-school. Go out swinging." He pounded Carlos's fist as Carlos's line of vision remained on the building wave. From his old Vampire Council life, he remembered what the Vikings were capable of... rape, pillage, plunder. The bloody death—cracking open a living being's rib cage and pulling out their lungs. Torture refined to a spectator sport. Quick raids and hits on unsuspecting villages by sea, from North America to Africa, raining down hell on every continent in between . . . always by sea. Decimating Europe and the Middle East, even as far as India and Asia.

  And now these raised barbarians stood on living dragon ships bearing glistening fangs, propelled by demon surges. Eyes glowing in hollowed sockets, weapons raised. Bloodlust crackling over the black ghost ship hulls . . . and nowhere to send his wife and child, his brothers and sisters and their children, panicked to the point of numbness, he wondered what the innocents had felt when their villages were attacked. Many probably took their own lives rather than succumb to what the Berserkers had in store for them. And he was now the member of what amounted to a floating village.

  Seconds had clicked by, but it felt like many long minutes. Carlos snapped out of the daze, Damali's call a refrain in his ears. He turned to see a rainbow of lights dancing under his shield and then something in her eyes made him open his mind, open a channel to her telepathy, and agree without words to lift his paltry protection.

  She was right, his fellow Guardians were right, if they were gonna die, they had the right to go out swinging. The shield he'd erected to keep them breathing in an air pocket when the wave hit, and to keep the demons off their backs, would only hold until his energy waned in the battle—which wouldn't take long given the circumstances. Carlos reluctantly dropped his shield of Heru. The very instant he did that, the vessel became encased in shimmering light.

  Guardians held on to anything they could as the huge wave finally crashed into the ship, swallowing it. But they gradually stared up as though moving in slow motion to see the dragon hulls pass over them. Bright light from their vessel illuminated the crystal-blue water that surrounded them, but they didn't feel
wet and could oddly breathe.

  Weightlessness soon lifted them off the deck and they found themselves moving their arms and legs to hold the relative position they'd been in. Guardians touched their bodies, their billowing clothes, one another while watching their hair lift and sway in an underwater dance. Silence blotted out panic as they all took in the deeply surreal scene.

  Damali stared at Carlos and simply touched her pearl at her throat. He nodded, understanding but yet still confused. The demons couldn't see them. Yonnie stared up at the passing legions in awe. Slowly Guardians stared up to watch the majesty of being passed over as ship after demon ship lurched forward above their heads while schools of sharks swam right past them, chasing the bloody vessels for a sure after-carnage meal. Then suddenly as the wave passed, their vessel broke the water's surface and everyone took a huge air breath. Sound came back. The yacht bounced a bit and then steadied, leaving Guardians sprawled on the deck floor. Carlos reached out and clasped Damali's hand and kept his voice quiet and reverent. "Whoa . . . what a ride. One day you've gotta tell me all about Atlantis." A few Guardians rose from the deck and Carlos looked around the yacht and then to Monty.

  "Where are we?" Carlos asked. "Your navigation equipment is going nuts, Monty. What did getting hit with that energy wave from the lights and that crazy water do?"

  Frantic, every Guardian with sensory capacity tried to hone in on a landmass, to no avail.

  "J.L.,you get that communication connection up yet?" Shabazz paced back and forth on the deck. "How's Damali's pearl?"

  "Spent," Damali said quietly, "like the rest of us."

  "It's cool, it's cool," Carlos said. "We'll figure this out. I just want J.L. to get some kinda communication going, because the last thing we need right now is a run-in with a protective battleship or a coast guard patrol, ya know." J.L. looked up. "Dude . . ." he said in a far-off tone. "This can't be right. . . ."

  "What can't be right?" Yonnie said, going to the pilothouse.