by L. A. Banks
All Damali could do was laugh. But it did give her an idea. Maybe Carlos might hear it? Maybe he’d already heard it? Naahhh . . . She disallowed the thought. His ass didn’t need to be in Rio. Besides, it was over. “Okay, so what about the instruments? You asked if I had noticed the instruments.”
“You’ve already incorporated this African-Brazilian sound in the music, well before we got a definite booking for this concert—it’s infused in the latest cuts we just laid down for the gig. ‘When You Call’ has it, ‘In the Dark’ has it. Fine. But I kept watching your reaction to the environment . . . you blended into it like a chameleon, like you already knew it. You’d put it into your music even while you were still blind. Maybe we need to rethink that; maybe you weren’t as blind as we thought? So, what happened in the lobby? The color drained from your face.”
All she could do was stare at Marlene. Yeah, she knew Rio blind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DAMALI SOUGHT Marlene’s eyes, and all modesty fled as she sat up slowly. “Marlene, I felt Brazil running through my veins. I could taste the food, smell everything, knew the language, knew the landscape, and . . . and I felt myself calling him—hard. So much that I felt a presence . . . a highly erotic one, in broad daylight.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist, but never lost eye contact with Marlene. “What’s freaking me out is, while whatever is out should have been my primary concern, it wasn’t. Isn’t. Are you hearing me? I shouldn’t be thinking about getting with him, not with my girl’s family at risk, innocents at risk, my whole team at risk, but I swear Mar, I can’t shake this feeling. It’s not normal. I’m so ashamed to be acting like this; I don’t know what to do with myself. I hate being out of control, and I think I am.” Damali’s voice went to a low murmur and her gaze went to the floor. “Marlene, I don’t know what he did to me, and I’m scared.”
Her eyes sought Marlene’s again for understanding and found it, which gave her the wherewithal to continue the confession. “Plus, he’s got strong vibe, but brother ain’t that bad that he can cut through equatorial sun. Come on, now.”
Marlene nodded. “I don’t think it’s him,” she said quietly.
Damali was on her feet. “And then when we arrived here it felt like I had done some of this before . . . I just knew what was going to happen next, but it wasn’t like a premonition. Then I felt this really hard-to-shake sexual presence . . . That’s what made me freak. But it was there, and it wasn’t playing.”
Marlene’s voice was quiet and her expression was grave. “I know, because it happened to me, too.”
Damali let her breath out in relief. “Glad I’m not trippin’ by myself in here. But I’m really worried. I thought I was the only one.”
“You’re not.” Marlene stood and paced to the window. “Have you been watching Jose? He had the opposite reaction—nearly bristled when we walked through the hotel lobby”
For a moment, the two women held each other in a worried stare. Truthfully, she hadn’t noticed Jose’s reaction. She had been too immersed in her own. “You think he’s all right, Mar?”
“Yeah. But he sensed something, too. And the guys are losing perspective here. Shabazz is quietly going nuts . . .” Marlene’s gaze slid from hers. “I know him very well, and my man is a tactical. He’s usually the team’s voice of reason; the rock. He had to get away from me in the lobby and go get a drink—that ain’t Shabazz’s way. And I watched Rider inhale and go weak in the knees. JL and Dan practically melted down as soon as they crossed the threshold. And Mike . . .” Marlene shook her head. “We’ve gotta put a short choker chain on him. Boss is ready to nail anything walking, and Mike is usually pretty selective. This environment, for whatever reason, is kicking everybody’s ass—even mine. It’s making everybody lose focus. But it’s also like our whole team has done this before, and we can’t get our concentration together.”
Marlene looked at Damali, her gaze a stronghold, and nodded. “Yeah, even me, the den mother,” she admitted. “None of us should be thinking like that, given all we have to do. The question is, why? Carlos didn’t do that to the entire team. Something else is in the equation. So don’t be too hard on yourself, for whatever it’s worth.”
“This whole thing is weird. Not like what we generally do isn’t out of the ordinary, but you know what I mean.”
Marlene nodded again. “When I heard your song lyrics, I knew what you were going to say before you read them to us in the studio, and not because I was inside your head. I knew the music, the sound beneath it, just like JL was able to pick up the percussion and lay it in—perfectly. Everybody on the team almost knew the same song, all of us were throwing in flava with the sound. Then something jumps off that makes us need to book here for a concert? C’mon, D, you know how this mess goes. You don’t cut a CD in a night, in one take—it’s not done. Nor do coincidences like all of us vibing on Brazil just happen. We were all beginning to get drawn to this region before the bodies dropped. It was in the music, came through before this mess hit the news. Once it did, we were all on lock. But we wanted you to zero in on it on your own. After ten nights, you did. Give yourself a break.”
“I know . . .” She walked about the room, raking her fingers through her locks. Marlene’s absolution meant a lot, and it took some of the sting out of her wounded pride.
“I didn’t put innocents at risk,” Marlene said firmly. Wouldn’t do that, even for you. Bodies have dropped at distinct moon phases . . . and you and Carlos hooked up when the moon was full, and the relationship ran aground when the moon waned, just like the incidents did. Father Pat and I convened and both came to the conclusion that your telepathy would start to strengthen as the moon waxed over here again. But I think I need to call in some experts on this particular hunch. I know some people who’ve mixed it up with were-demons and have even been nicked. They would know.”
Damali looked at Marlene hard. “All of our guys are solid, right? So are Father Pat’s . . . I mean, even if they had a little vamp in them from generations back, it should be diluted enough and they’d passed all the will tests to be able to handle this. Talk to me, Mar.”
Marlene nodded. “If what we’re dealing with are vampires.”
Damali sighed. “The Covenant said some mess went down over here, right? They were trying to talk to Carlos about finding out more about what was happening here when he disappeared.”
“Yeah.” Marlene folded her arms over her chest. “Said all they knew from their Vatican sources was that in 1500 the pope, unrightfully, gave the Amazon and Brazil to Spain, months before Pedro Alvares Cabral claimed it for Portugal, and he brought a bunch of convicts to settle it. But for about a hundred years, things were fairly cool—the Portuguese harvested the red dye, basile, from the Caesalpinia echinata tree, where Brazil gets its name, and—”
“Red . . . The color red . . . I just was thinking about how that needed to go with ‘In the Dark.’ ”
Marlene looked at her. “Right. And, then the Germans came. Ambrosio de Alfinger—beheaded the African-Brazilian Indians, and—”
“Stop!” Damali walked over to Marlene and held her by both arms. “Okay, now listen . . . Didn’t the clerics say they couldn’t intervene on this one?”
“Yeah,” Marlene said.
“Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Definitely.”
“What if they can’t get in it because . . . like Carlos always says, ‘fair exchange is no robbery’? A Catholic pope sanctioned—”
“Oh, my God.”
“Right,” Damali said quietly. “And, isn’t beheading the only way Carlos can be killed, because of my brand?”
Marlene took in small sips of air.
“Mar . . . you should see the way he looks at the color red. Maybe he was scared to death for me to come to Brazil. I thought the red fetish was some vamp blood thing, and the fear of me coming to Brazil was just Carlos being selfish. What if there’s more to it that he just didn’t tell me? In fact,
I know there is, but he’s got me blocked now.” She sighed. “This is getting complicated. I just wish he would have been honest with me.” She rubbed her hands over her face in frustration and let her breath out hard. Secrets, lies, drama, she hated all of it, but needed to figure out this maddening puzzle to keep her team safe while they hunted. Shit!
“Damali,” Marlene said slowly, “he told Father Pat that the other portals had been closed, but the vamp empire was still seeing disturbances in his realm coming up in Brazil—”
“Where people have been mauled and beheaded.” Damali grabbed Marlene’s arms and stopped her words. Two weeks of getting ready, going over battle plans, preparing for the show, doing promo hype for an impromptu venue, and staying away from the subject of one Carlos Rivera, had left a hole in their strategy. Her gaze locked with Marlene’s. It was in her mother-seer’s eyes. The team had been too concerned about her sense of privacy, not wanting to violate it, needing her to fathom the facts on her own, and had not gone over this essential data . . . all for her. They needed their Neteru to come to her own conclusions on her own terms, and within her own time frame. Marlene just nodded. Fury at her own selfishness claimed her.
But Marlene simply looked at Damali with gentleness in her eyes. “Baby, don’t disbelieve everything you saw in him during those ten nights—and yeah, you deserved to have a little respite, a little happiness all your own—not shared with anyone but him. All right?” She waited for Damali to nod. “Recognize that the team was conflicted, too, about not being able to just blurt out what was happening. That was hard, as well as necessary. It was easier when things were black and white, not all these shades of gray. We’ve all been selfish in our own way—even Shabazz didn’t want to come here and do our job . . . because he has a personal issue at stake. That’s human.”
Damali let Marlene’s arms go, and went to lean against the wall. “You guys were right, though; I was still blind . . . and it wasn’t all Carlos’s fault. I played myself.”
“We all do that the first time out,” Marlene said quietly. “That’s the process, and it’s normal . . . it’s just that, given your level of responsibilities, you had to come to these conclusions fast and on your own so that your judgment never gets clouded again. We didn’t have time to burn—but we all wanted you to have that small window of joy. All of us did, even the clerics. Child, you have a bigger responsibility than any of us know.”
“Mar,” she said, her voice strong, even though she wasn’t completely sure what Marlene meant about a bigger responsibility than known, “all right. I’m over it.” She looked at her mother-seer and snapped her focus to the mission. “These deaths are possibly history repeating itself, right? You and Father Pat knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yup. What’s going down here is just like what the angry mobs did to the Jesuits in Belem, and Para, and Maranhao—because the Jesuits went against papal edicts and were trying to stop the human trafficking. The church was at war with itself. The Jesuits were the only ones against the Amazon slave trade . . . there was an old Vatican letter that Father Pat showed me, it said a cleric had even written a plea . . . ‘What is a human soul worth to Satan? There is no market on earth where the Devil can get them more cheaply than right here in our own land—an Indian for a soul.’ But even the Jesuits created havoc from the diseases they imported while going out trying to stop the violence. It was a mess. It was all a big mess—the conquistadors were insane barbarians searching for gold and the mythical El Dorado . . . burned people at the stake, even cut up and fed the Indians to the alligators. That’s why we’re not sure it’s vamps running amuck, or what. The moon-phase killings make me say it’s the work of demons.”
“How much of this did Father Pat tell you, and how much of this did you pick up in visions?”
Marlene sighed. “Half and half. I saw wars, saw mauled bodies, and went to Father Pat . . . he told me I was seeing the conquistador history, and he was ashamed that the highest levels of his particular church at that time had a hand in it. That’s why he didn’t want to come over here. He thought he’d dredge up more of this near the team, and was ashamed. Then he confirmed it with the letters and sat me down so we could talk about the history, where a sixth of the native population was murdered. Then we started scavenging as many facts as we could from the Internet and the news sources, and did the astronomy on when the bodies began turning up.”
Marlene drew a long breath and shook her head. “Until the lobby thing, I just assumed I was picking up residual vibes from the past in a place that had a lot of bloodshed on its grounds . . . that happens to seers sometimes, so I didn’t put a lot of stock in it. Didn’t pick up vamps, demons—so, I let it go . . . till you and Jose freaked quietly in the hotel. I was hoping that the music thing, with the sounds of Brazil in it, was just your sensory systems kicking in to feel this location, and groove with it. Truthfully, I was praying that we only had another twisted master vamp to contend with, and that perhaps he’d brought up foul energy with him . . . but, baby, now that I’m here and watching the effect on the team, I know it’s way more than that. I just can’t put my finger on it, though, because I can’t get a lock. That concerns me.”
Again, silence passed between them as both women looked at each other, slowly nodding.
“All right,” Damali said, holding her hands out, trying to make sense of the jigsaw puzzle that had eluded them for almost two months. “We have seen the killings around that specific region in the Amazon—and near Brazil, which also means red . . . which Carlos has a thing for. Don’t ask. But it also makes a metaphor for blood, and red peoples, peoples of color, and war, and he’s connected to all of that somehow. Correct?”
She waited until Marlene nodded. “The Catholic cleric of European descent can’t get into it, because his line already has blood on their hands, so to speak, past karma on this one . . . and those that weren’t directly dealing with it from that perspective, did as much harm from the diseases they brought with their attempts to convert native peoples. It was genocide—a sixth of the people were wiped out here, is what you’re saying. So Padre Lopez, of Indian descent, or Asula, of African descent, and even Monk Lin—because his people weren’t in it—could have come, but not Father Pat. Deep.”
“Yeah, seems so,” Marlene said, her voice heavy, matching her heart. “It all went down so long ago, and is in perfect alignment with the stars, too. Remember, right before your birthday, when me and Shabazz saw the trinity in the sky—Mars, war, Venus, love, and Saturn, the planet of big karmic lessons—make a huge triangle in the sky?”
Damali nodded. “How could I forget?”
“Yeah, well, Mars is the red planet. Saturn is dealing with lessons and karma . . . and Venus is about powerful female energy, love, plus is the planet of female warriors . . . girlfriend, we just thought it applied to you—but it appears that, wherever there’s some mess to be worked out, this alignment is affecting more than just you. And, let’s not forget how close Mars is coming to the earth. It’s the closest transit in sixty thousand years. Red war.”
“I almost can’t even wrap my mind around this right before the concert, Mar, for real. The fellas are going to freak. They think they’ve died and gone to Heaven here. They’re not even thinking about chasing evil, they are too distracted chasing tail. I ain’t mad at ’em, ain’t throwing no stones, believe me—but you hear what I’m saying, right?”
Marlene sighed and nodded.
“Have you told them all of this?”
“Some of it, most of it . . . but it’s not sinking in—which is also very strange.”
Damali paced in a slow, thought-filled stroll back and forth across the room. The last thing she wanted to do was blow the groove on some hypothetical past yang. And after experiencing what she had with Carlos, she could appreciate the guys’ need to break out and have a little fun. However, all stress-relief therapy aside, there was definitely something to go after. But it didn’t register like anything she’d ever experience
d. It also gave her pause as she thought about Carlos. If this mess was in his territory, and he was vibing on it hard, maybe it had already drawn him here ahead of her? That could not be good. She wiped her face with both hands again. It could be a past life, or a present danger, or a combination. Oh, this shit was complicated. She needed to be angry with him, and to put what was going on into a neat box—but none of it fit. One thing for sure, something was dropping bodies in a very nasty way.
“Maybe we’re just feeling what went down before, and it’s unearthing everything that should have stayed buried, or something.” Damali’s tone was hopeful as she stared at Marlene. “Or maybe there’s an ancestral link that a few of us on the team are extra sensitive to? Something we’ve all experienced before, in some way?”
Marlene had a crazed look in her eyes, like she’d just had an eerie epiphany “Or . . . what if this is reverb from a past life, Damali? What if it isn’t so much that we’ve lived it before, but that each of us fits a role to something that went down before?”
Again, both women just held each other’s gaze.
“Whichever scenario is correct—and we’ll figure it out—after the church conversions, the conquerors brought in Africans. So you have the same ancestral ethnicities that are represented on our team . . . Spaniards, Africans, Portuguese, with native Indians here, children and women and villages held hostage with men beheaded and ripped apart . . . all for the quest of gold, and sugar, rubber, and—” Marlene stopped herself and slapped her head. “Damali, your eyes! Gold! The flickers of gold! That wasn’t a vamp trait from those love bites Carlos laid on you! It wasn’t because you temporarily overdosed your system with vamp virus from repeated bites—your body has been giving clues like a road map!”
