The Hunted

by L. A. Banks

  His foot pushed against the stones and gravel. One hand clawed and grappled at it to drag his battered form forward. His inner radar drew him to where it was dark and cool as the planet slowly began to heat with approaching dawn. Pain riddled him as he slithered along the ground millimeter by millimeter, tearing open flesh wounds against his abdomen and torso.

  Exhaustion and agony claimed him, filling his pores with profound torture until he stopped his struggle. His skin began to feel hot, prickly. A cold shiver washed through him. He knew he was going into shock. Sweat ran down his face and covered his back and chest, the salt of it igniting new shards of pain as it entered his gaping wounds. It wouldn’t be long before the night lifted and gave way. He’d loved Damali so much; didn’t she know if he could reverse the hands of time, he would have? But that was beyond even a master vampire’s powers—just like he was beyond redemption. The situation was what it was; he was what he was, and soon the sun would cook that away.

  Damali’s voice entered his skull, the last stanza of her concert song, the one she’d composed as a secret message to him . . . the refrain that he’d so arrogantly ignored, “Remember, baby, how it used to be? When we were just kids, and so free.”

  Yes, baby, I remember . . . It was all he had left.

  Three nights later . . .

  “Father Patrick, are you sure you should get so close to the beast? It is not yet full daylight, it’s wounded and could attack.” The younger cleric placed a trembling hand on the old man’s shoulder, trying to get him to heed caution as he glanced around the dark cavern, a torch and flashlights their only source of illumination. He made the sign of the cross over his heart as soon as one of the lights glinted off a set of fangs. “Madre de Dios . . .” His voice was a strangled whisper.

  The gruesome remains of a vampire were the last thing he’d expected to ever see when he entered the clergy and became a priest. He’d heard about myths and legends like this that were rampant among his people in the countryside, but never in his life had he believed. These were superstitions, the rationalizations of simplistic people left over from a time gone by. In fact, he didn’t even believe in exorcisms. The church itself was very, very skeptical about even discussing such things. But now he was out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, in a cave, at night, with three old men claiming to be clerical warriors, who were advancing, without fear, toward something unfathomable? Until he spied the thing they spoke of, he had simply not believed.

  Padre Manuel Lopez swallowed hard and wanted to look away, but could not. Fear gripped him and kept his gaze firmly on the thing that bore fangs and had only half a face.

  “Padre Lopez . . . Manuel, there are only three of us left from the original twelve in the Covenant,” the senior cleric replied after selecting a place for the others to set down a huge, silver chest. “My friends, Asula, Lin, and me.” The Moor and the Buddhist nodded. “You are new, and do not understand this beast like we do.” He let out a long, patient breath.

  “My visions have led us here. The only reason you are here, Padre, is because your parish is near and we don’t know this region. We needed an anointed man of faith to be our guide, or we would have spared you this grisly sight. On your insistence, you have entered this cave. We tried to warn you, but you would not heed our advice. So, please do not interrupt our mission.”

  “Patrick is right. He is a knight of Templar from the highest order, and the seer of our Covenant of the twelve major faiths in the world. The others were lost in the battle to protect our Neteru. Her team made it out, but ours all but perished. So many of us died with that honor. Those who made it out alive, died soon after from the wounds they’d sustained,” Asula said quietly. “This beast saved our lives. Saved our Neteru. That is what matters here.”

  “How can that be?” Manuel’s eyes darted between the three older men and the heavy silver trunk they had set down only yards away from the creature.

  “He placed himself between our teams and those who attacked us,” Lin answered, folding his arms over his chest. “The adversary showed no mercy.”

  “You think it’s too late?” Asula stared at Father Patrick, worry lacing his question.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his tone carrying the same grave concern. “Three nights is an eternity for a vampire who has been wounded and cannot feed himself.”

  Manuel looked stricken. “I thought we came to kill it, not revive it with witchcraft!”

  “Calm yourself,” Lin warned as they flipped open the trunk. “This is no witchcraft—it’s donated blood from our order.”

  “Since when does the church authorize—”

  “This did not go through normal channels,” Father Patrick said, cutting him off.

  “Obviously not!”

  Father Patrick sighed. “Think of it this way. If we were the government, this would be considered a necessary black ops mission. But we work for the highest realms, and this is a white light mission of salvation. Therefore it’s a very discreet white ops mission.” He studied the young man for a moment, and then went back to the task at hand.

  “How so?” the young priest whispered, taking a cautious step backward. “You come with bags of blood to revive a creature of the night . . . our church does not know about this . . . You have the gall to carry it in a Vatican silver chest with the holy crucifix on it—”

  “Enough. We do this because the warrior angels wrested this creature’s soul from the pit, and it is now in Purgatory,” Asula said calmly, lifting out a bag of blood and tossing it to land near the vampire’s face. “The dark side violated supernatural law, took him too early in accordance with the three-day laws of transformation. He was immediately turned, and his choice was stolen from him. This entity did not willingly give his soul—he was deceived. And now he is on our side.”

  “As long as his soul is in Purgatory,” Father Patrick said, “Carlos Rivera still has a choice, has time. He has not fed from an innocent human victim, yet. Our job is to see that he doesn’t.”

  Lin cut the top off a container and threw it toward the vampire’s ravaged body, splashing his face with its contents. “But I fear we’re too late. If he were stronger, he would have awakened to attack us, smelling our blood, or the blood we carry.” He then looked at Father Patrick, ignoring the alarmed young clergyman. “If the blood doesn’t revive him . . .”

  Father Patrick and Imam Asula nodded and spoke in unison. “Then we’re too late.”

  “The merciful thing to do would be to behead him,” Monk Lin said upon a whisper.

  The smell. Obviously he was hallucinating. Carlos inhaled the sweet elixir of life and licked his parched lips. A series of sharp pains about his mouth made him tentative about exploring the pungent scent further. It had to be a starvation-induced hallucination, anyway. Why waste the energy or endure the agony?

  He was so close to extinction that he could feel warm bodies close by and hear the clamor of men debating in low tones. He stuck his tongue out and lapped at the sticky, cool fluid on his face, unable to resist the survival reflex to seek blood. The salty, thick liquid burned the open wounds on his face. Blood should be warm, not cold.

  Another cold splash hit his face, and a smooth pouch landed against his clenched fist. Plastic blood bombs from above? Carlos laughed inside his mind. Yeah, right . . . But the taste and the smell of life were all around him. He opened one puffed, battered eye and squinted.

  The young priest stared in horror as the creature before him opened one glowing red eye that intermittently flashed gold. “You have awakened the beast! Now kill it, before it’s too late!”

  “No!” Asula argued, and flung another bag of blood toward Carlos. “We told you! This one was once a guardian, and was destined to be paired with the Neteru—”

  At the mention of Damali, Carlos struggled to push himself up. All the men before him drew back, weapons raised, dead silence enveloping them. He could hear their hearts beating loudly within their chests, their pulses racing, their l
ungs slowly expanding and contracting with small, terrified sips of air. Be afraid, he warned within his mind. Be very afraid. Even a few swallows had revived him enough to imperil a human. He reached his hand toward the scent of blood and snatched it, splashing the cold substance against his fist and on the ground with his tight grasp, then sucked as much as he could from the bag. His body began to heal itself.

  He snatched another bag in one deft motion as it hurled toward him. He tossed the drained bag away in frustration, narrowing his gaze on the four warm bodies before him. Yes . . . be very afraid.

  “Carlos,” a familiar voice said, “we have come to help you. Here is more. Regenerate quickly. Heal yourself. We have less than an hour to get you to a lair.” Another bag hit Carlos in the chest.

  Carlos caught the bag before it dropped to the ground, snarled, and drank down the contents, feeling a surge of energy as some of the pain abated.

  “He’ll need all of it,” another voice said, “if he is to completely heal.”

  “And, if that’s not enough? What then?”

  That voice was younger, higher. He gave off the delicious scent of fear.

  “Then, you’ll be the first to go,” Carlos said in a low warning.

  “No,” the older familiar voice said firmly. “He is an innocent. A cleric. Kill him, and my warriors end this while you’re still wounded.”

  The familiarity of the voice, talk of innocents, and clerics . . . It forced Carlos to focus, to strain to see the blurry shapes around him as he drank. Templars? Still not sated, but much improved, he held onto his near-amputated arm with his good hand and leaned against a column of rock.

  The electric blue robes worn by the human with the familiar voice held his attention, and he studied the strange crucifix that had a bleeding heart surrounded by thorns in the center of it. The white-haired cleric slowly lowered his sword, and the glint of the silver in the dim light brought it all back for him. Father Patrick, the blue knight of the Covenant. The seer who had told him of his fate and fought side-by-side with Damali and the guardians against his predecessor, his nemesis, Fallon Nuit.

  “You recognize me, don’t you?” the man said in a steady, confident voice.

  “Its eyes have gone from red to gold, Patrick,” a tall, strapping African-looking cleric swathed in all white said. “That is a good sign. He’s normalizing and is not in attack mode.” He continued to hold his machete in a readiness position, but his stance seemed relaxed.

  “Yes. His face is nearly healed, save the empty socket,” another of them said. He was an Asian man in dark brown clothes, who also bore a familiar voice.

  The only man that looked positively terror stricken was a young priest without a weapon, dressed in a black Catholic habit.

  “There were more of you,” Carlos finally said, his voice raspy. “You were with us in the tunnels, right?”

  “Yes, and we saw you fight with honor,” the Moor replied. “We also know you nearly died before we evacuated.”

  “And Damali?” Pain sent a seizure through Carlos as his partially severed arm locked back into its socket, and he bent, letting out an awful cry of agony. He could feel his ribs reconstruct under the skin, and he grabbed his face as a lightning strike of torture made the raw flesh where his missing eye had been feel like a knife had been gouged into it.

  Dropping to both hands, he panted as his ruptured kidneys realigned and healed and the compound fracture in his leg reset. His arms trembled, forcing him to drop to the dank cave floor. Skin from undamaged sections of his body stretched and multiplied to cover areas that had been stripped of flesh to conceal skeleton and ragged muscle that knit itself together like steel cable.

  “Throw him another bag,” Father Patrick ordered.

  Almost too sick to ingest it, Carlos grappled with the bag that had been flung toward him, slitting it with a fang and practically inhaling the dark, thick liquid. As his body temperature heated up, he pulled the shreds of his shirt off, sweat running down his chest, his back, coating his arms. Panting, he lay there for a while, allowing the last of the shudders of pain to abate. He felt stronger, whole, but was tender as all hell. His entire body felt like he’d been punched and then run over by a Mack truck. The parts of him that had not been previously injured now stung from the process of splitting and cloning more tissue for the wounded organs. But at least he could see. At least he was alive, or more correctly stated, still existed.

  “Damali?” he wheezed, trying to stand too soon, but wobbled and fell. “I have to get to her.”

  “You would let a vampire near the precious vessel?” Manuel crossed himself again and glanced nervously at the other men of the cloth.

  “He is the only one who can help her at present,” Father Patrick said. “Our Neteru’s light diminishes daily.”

  “What happened to her?” Carlos was on his feet now, pacing. His fist connected with a section of the cave wall, leaving a crumble of rock where it had landed. He tried to think of her, to lock in on her present location, but all his mind would offer was glimpses of the past. He stared at the old seer.

  “I cannot locate her, either, my friend. She’s blind.”

  “What do you mean, blind?” Carlos stared at the man, thinking of how his own eye had been ripped from his skull in the fight. The thought of that happening to his woman made the air stop moving in and out of his lungs. Her beautiful face . . . even her name meant beautiful vision, to have that maimed, with no way to regenerate—all the plastic surgery in the human world couldn’t repair her. Anger burned in his stomach, forcing bile up to his throat. He swallowed it back down along with unshed tears.

  “She couldn’t withstand the thought of your turning . . . or what she saw in the tunnels.” The older man’s voice was calm, sad, almost soothing. “Our huntress has shut down her third eye.”

  “But she’s vulnerable without her second sight,” Carlos murmured, his gaze holding the blue knight’s. “You have to make her see again.”

  The clerics all nodded, as the one in blue rubbed his hand over his jaw in contemplation. “She still possesses the other gifts . . . superior strength, heightened senses of scent, taste, and hearing, she can feel with profound enlightenment. But her third eye is extremely vulnerable. It is what helps her see into souls, thoughts . . . and before long, if it doesn’t come back, her other senses will begin to erode.”

  “I know,” Carlos said quickly, “but why is she blind? I still don’t understand. She was fine when she left the tunnels. Why now?”

  “She had others she cared for at her side . . . it is in her nature to protect her own,” the elder cleric said in a quiet tone. “But once the immediate danger had passed, her heart sealed with total despair and the loss of hope. She saw you ripped apart and die—at least she believes you died in those tunnels. Her third eye took those images into her mind and she watched it all. She loved you and your brutal death broke her heart the way nothing else has. Up until that moment she still had hope that you would turn to the side of light and come with the guardians. That hope was so deep and strong that the loss of it is eating away at her soul like a cancer.”

  “The loss of this hope—of you—makes her imminently more vulnerable to the Vampire Council, Carlos,” the Moor added in a quiet, worried tone. “They will eventually sense this and will relentlessly pursue her.” He paused. “And she may very well surrender. Once she does, they will not relinquish her until her next fertility, and once again the threat of daywalkers will be upon us.” Asula hesitated. “You know we cannot allow this . . . even if we must ultimately take the Neteru out of the equation for her own good.”

  Carlos snarled, and flexed his hands. They had actually threatened her in his presence? Were they mad?

  “That was never our intention,” Monk Lin assured him.

  “Do her guardians know about this?” Carlos’s tone was even and lethal.

  “Their gifts are ebbing, too, with a significant loss of hope, shaken faith, and . . . other issues clouding
their judgment.” Father Patrick looked at him squarely. “The Neteru compound is in jeopardy. The family is fracturing, and were it not for the civil war within the vampire realms, it would have been under siege as we speak.”

  “The compound is a fortress!” Carlos shouted. “I saw it, it’s nearly impenetrable.”

  “Nearly,” the large cleric named Asula said in a calm voice. “Nearly. But you got in—through her. She had them lower the barricades for you. One day, perhaps for the same reason, another shrewd master vampire will get in, too, but with very different intentions and horrific outcomes.” He paused and stared at Carlos hard, but there was no anger in his eyes, just urgency.

  Fury roiled within Carlos, but it was also mixed with something else now—fear.

  “There’s an old Ghanaian proverb that says, ‘The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.’ ” Asula’s voice was unwavering and held authority, just like his gaze. “The Neteru compound is representative of nations. The guardians are all from every faith and group of people, merged as one family—as it should be on earth. Her home, her family unit, must be strong. There’s not enough technology in the world to keep out evil . . . and we know that religious amulets are playthings, if there is not strong faith to back them up. Break the family and the second line of defense at the compound fails. We, the Covenant, her first line of defense, have all but been broken . . . we lost two-thirds of our number down in Hell.”