The Hunted

by L. A. Banks

  “Nao Ihe entendo, onde e—”

  “He’s not here, but I do have someone who cares.”

  “Meu nome e, Javier.”

  It was evident from the broad smile on his face that he wasn’t the least bit fazed by her protest. In fact, it seemed to be driving him to a challenge. She needed to extricate herself from this guy, and the song felt like it would never end. His confidence was working on her, reminding her too much of the man who’d abandoned her in the States. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Javier. But you are going to have to back up off me a little.”

  “Your man should be here to protect his territory, then,” he said grinning. “I would never allow such a flower from my garden to be picked simply because I wasn’t tending her garden.”

  All right, that did it. Damali backed up a pace and shot the man a glare. Her plan was perhaps a bad one. True, Marlene had said pull out all the stops, but, dang, she’d never done this thing before and Marlene was long gone. Where was good guardian advice when a sister needed it?

  He smiled with understanding, chuckled, and twirled her around. Were all the men from south of the border like this, she wondered? Hell, guys she’d met in the Northeast and out West talked as much smack, too. “Muito obrigado,” she told him, thanking him for the dance as she bee-bopped away from him to another waiting partner.

  Damn, where was Carlos’s ass when she needed him?

  Carlos sat up in the pitch-blackness of the abandoned Beverly Hills lair. It was still daytime, but darkness couldn’t get there fast enough! Another man? Oh, hell no . . .

  But he steadied himself and tried to ease back down to rest for five more hours until darkness descended over the city The old Dominican don’s lair was a much better alternative to the safe house cabin, and he’d needed time to pull himself together and think. The spoils of war were his. He’d beaten Nuit and could go anyplace Nuit’s generals had fallen. It was the law of the jungle. As above, so below. The rules of the vampire world applied, and as the primary topside master vamp, he gladly sought temporary refuge in its luxuries. He was just relieved that the lower-level males had scooped up his harem and put it on lock since the race. That complexity he didn’t need right now—a bunch of females sweatin’ him. He’d even gotten a bit of a handle on the strong female vamp sending lure from overseas. Until he made his decision, nobody was rushing him to do shit.

  Besides, he’d needed to fill himself with the remainder of the privately stocked bottles of blood that had more of a kick than the monk donations, but the main thing was, nobody was stressing him here—except Damali.

  For the past two weeks he had been kicking down lair doors all over his region, sending a message, ripping out hearts . . . Miami had been no joke. Fucking New York had almost made him drop a body to feed. Sons-of-bitches in Canada had been neglected so long that they thought they ran the joint. Only saving thing was they had good wild game up there! And down in the Caribbean he’d almost gotten sidetracked. . . . the babes in St. Lucia had almost made him weep after tearing out an opponent’s throat. It had barely kept his mind off Damali. And it hadn’t been easy.

  Initially, her intermittent calls had practically worn a hole in his brain. And though she didn’t call him directly today, she’d sent her urgent concern as a vibe that he couldn’t ignore. It was like having somebody blow up his cell phone with a hundred 911 calls. But why had she stopped calling after she got into a club filled with human males?

  Then the ache that she produced, her desire for what they both wanted so badly from each other, had made him need nearly a gallon of blood to chill him out. Guilt temporarily swept through him, but he let it go. The only reason he’d jetted on the monks after talking to Father Pat was because those old dudes were in danger while he was like this. All jacked up, confused, pissed off, way too hungry, and needing that damnable woman in his arms.

  He had to get out of there, especially with her gone, before something unnecessary jumped off in the cabin. He’d tried to detox while she was still in the States. Was trying to come down nice and slow before she left, so the days she’d be gone wouldn’t make him snap. But with her so close, and the four monks so near, and some strong lure messing with his mind, he’d almost lost it the second night. No doubt, he had to get out of there. They were innocents, and he wasn’t. Yeah, he’d needed to focus on his territory and get his head right.

  Carlos brought his hands up to his temples and shut his eyes tightly. His brain felt like it was on fire. He had a skull-splitting headache from the interrupted regeneration. Why couldn’t Damali just accept that he needed some space? She wasn’t in any immediate danger. He knew his limitations. Shit!

  His eyes suddenly opened and narrowed. He could smell the bastard, and had felt the tremor run through her. The inside of his thigh had touched the inside of the thigh that had only been supposed to open for him! Sweat. Another man’s sweat on her? He could literally taste it in the back of his throat. The awareness lowered his incisors. And hombre was talking shit in her ear, too, now? Oh yeah, he was going to Brazil!

  “I said, take me to the Vampire Council, and stop on level four and five on the way down! You deaf, or something?” Carlos paced back and forth in the woods as the messenger peered at him but didn’t move.

  “Master Rivera, while I would be glad to take you down to the council’s esteemed chambers, I am sure you are aware of the imminent danger of a border breach with the demon realms at this time. Chaos is rampant, and—”

  “You want to lose your—”

  “No need for threats,” the entity hissed. “But as you recall, when you were first made, and I collected you, and on your return to the surface, I have already escorted you on a brief tour of the realms.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Carlos muttered, still pacing.

  “And you might also recall that we had a mere two minutes on level five before the were-creatures began to move in, and we never even stopped on level four, due to the dangers.”

  “You gonna take me, or what?”

  The entity stared at him for a moment and let out a long hiss of disapproval, but pulled out his scythe from beneath his robe to open the ground. “If you are lost, or abducted, I will report that this was your suicide command, and will tell the council that as a messenger, I had to defer to your rank.”

  “Do it, then!”

  The thing before Carlos sighed. “I will also inform them that this was a command coming from a disoriented master with active Neteru in his nose.”

  Shrieks and screams that echoed within the hellish terrain had now become so familiar to Carlos that they seemed like the mere background drone of street traffic. He allowed his line of vision to absorb the dim, jungle-like region. Interesting. Level three was a swamp, but level four was dense, humid jungle, the darkness a heavy weight. Things here slithered with serpentine agility. Even the plants moved and writhed to a sultry, seductive snake dance. Dense, yellow sulfur smoke surrounded everything, and the moisture in the air was so oppressive with fumes that Carlos covered his nose with his hand. His eyes watered and stung. Slithering, wet insects were everywhere. Eerie black slugs, slimy beetles and cockroaches, and fat, ambling grubs inched along dense foliage all around him. Too disgusting.

  “We are well within the borders of the level-four territories, and should make haste.”

  Carlos nodded. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that the messenger’s scythe was trembling. Definitely interesting. Fetid bodies that were still half alive twisted in agony, groaning and reaching for him as he stepped over them. They were bloody, skinless, half crushed, as though they’d been turned inside out, and their moaning, vile forms made Carlos glance back at the messenger.

  “This is the serpentine realm of revenge,” it said in a low murmur. “The Amanthra are snake-based creatures of deception, and swallow their victims hole, consume them, and then spit them back up, allowing their venom to do the rest.” The messenger pointed on the ground at a nearby torso that was still alive. T
he arms of the victim reached out and empty eye sockets dripped with a foul, running stream of green jelly clumps. “Where these bodies lie, suggests a feeding nest. We must go.”

  Again, Carlos nodded, but felt no immediate sense of danger. It was odd, but he actually felt partially safe. “If we’re in the middle of a nest, why aren’t they attacking?”

  His night vision locked on the tangled vines above them, and it became immediately apparent that the branches were huge, muscular reptile bodies. The entire terrain was a mass of teeming, deformed serpents. Some of the entities had the distorted attributes of other animals, giving their snake-based bodies weird limbs, claws, and matted fur in strange places. The more he studied the forms, the more he could begin to differentiate the various species of the Amanthra that could be made out in the darkness.

  Many were dragonlike entities with huge talons and large leathery wings giving them the appearance of fierce predator birds. Some were snakelike and bore no limbs, while yet others resembled sphinxes with their marriage of feline, serpent, and dragon. The more advanced levels, Carlos noted. Those had to be the ones Fallon Nuit made an alliance with before he perished.

  As soon as the thought entered his mind, multiple glowing green eyes opened and a chorus of hisses followed. He could feel the messenger at his elbow, but was mesmerized by the eerie beauty of the eyes.

  “Tarry not, and do not stare into the eyes of the green-eyed monsters.”

  “Hmmm . . . wise advice,” Carlos noted, feeling their hatred, envy, their pure thirst for revenge filter through him, knowing that a significant portion of his soul had resided with these creatures at one time. Maybe some of him was still there.

  Oddly, upon the realization, a large serpent lowered its head from a branch, appearing out of the nothingness, its black body shimmering like a cut jewel as it dipped and swayed hypnotically before Carlos. The head of the creature was the size of a small, compact car. The monster’s low-slung coil formed a U shape that was the width of two men’s bodies, and its full length was indecipherable; it just kept uncoiling. Opening its jaw slowly, Carlos stood frozen as the massive jawbones unhinged and deadly fangs were revealed, dripping a sulfuric ooze that burned away the dense foliage at Carlos’s feet.

  “Master, I urge you!”

  But Carlos held up his hand, sensing a meeting of the minds. The serpent closed its eyes, sniffed him, and nodded. “You may paaassssss,” it said, then studied the messenger with an evil half grin. “You, however . . .”

  “He’s with me, and we’re out,” Carlos said fast, grabbing the messenger’s robe.

  Without needing to be told, the funnel cloud of vampire transport descended upon Carlos and the messenger, but not before he saw how quickly the Amanthras could move if they wanted to. The thing that had been a slow, patient, seething mass of muscle suddenly struck, seizing a half-digested body from the ground so quickly that Carlos didn’t have time to blink.

  From the smoky ring that encircled him, Carlos watched in disgust as the nearly dead man the Amanthra consumed fought against the beast’s throat, trying to push his way out, creating moving lumps beneath the creature’s scales as the acidic burn of flesh filled the air. Screams of pure agony echoed above them, and in a last glance, Carlos saw the beast heave, vomit the man up, as hundreds of lightningfast smaller serpents snapped and hissed, ripping at the now quivering soft tissue left on the ground.

  He thought of his brother’s death, the way Marlene’s turned daughter had done Alejandro. The acid from Raven’s fangs had burned away his brother’s manhood. The way Fallon Nuit’s Minion crudely ate with unhinged jaws, instead of two, cleanly delivered vampire puncture marks, all came together in his mind. No wonder his brother and his boys had been ripped to shreds in the feedings. Carlos tried to banish the image. That was the past. The fact that Nuit had a deadly score to settle with the council, revenge his primary motive, really brought it all together. If a vampire was mixed with these things, adding the vampire’s intelligence, and predatory shape-shifting capacity, you’d have hell on your hands, indeed.

  He just wanted to see this realm of revenge one more time, because if he went with the council’s offer, he needed to know what feeding den his soul might be tortured in before it bottomed out on six. The thought, while revolting, was something he had to consider. Choices.

  Carlos rubbed his own jaw, realizing that at times it did unhinge to make room for a powerful bite, and even though he didn’t feed like the hybrids, he still carried a little of what Nuit had left from that fateful night in the woods. That was the thing about his kind, whatever bit you left a repository within you. He was just glad that the council’s bite had more power and overrode Nuit’s shit, but still . . . He wondered if that’s what had given him a pass?

  Insane that this was what Fallon Nuit had gone into alliance with to create a hybrid race of vampires. No wonder the Vampire Council was buggin’! The messenger just nodded.

  “You are still insistent upon visiting level five, Master Rivera . . . after what we just narrowly escaped?”

  Carlos smiled. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Curiosity had a stranglehold on him now. He had to know where he could have gone, had his soul not been rescued. And more important, if there was a topside breach, he needed to understand what he might be facing in Brazil. What had slithered up from a hellhole? He studied the messenger with a sideway glance. “I know you can’t be a punk, not couriering for the Vampire Council.” He strode away from the thin, skeletal entity that remained stricken, still, and quietly enraged.

  “You have been deposited to level five,” was all the entity would reply.

  “I remember this place,” Carlos said in a murmur. He narrowed his eyes to adjust for the even darker region. This was the black forest. Unlike the jungle above, it was dry, but the trees had eyes. Multiple, glowing gold eyes of the were-demons. The remnants of bones and skulls underfoot had once made him think he was standing upon rocky gravel.

  The last time he’d stopped here with a messenger, in two minutes the creatures had advanced, stalking, about to rush him. Their howls were bloodcurdling, as were the cries of their victims. Pure hatred lived here. Pure rage was its companion. The place that turned men into beasts capable of any atrocity. The primal place of twisted passions and extreme, unnecessary violence.

  “This is an uncharted realm,” the messenger warned. “Our council has no formal alliance here, and these creatures move quickly. They can take the human form by day, feast upon human flesh, and are very shrewd. It is more dangerous here than in the realm we just visited. Make your survey swift.”

  Carlos nodded. This was the realm of hunters, warriors, pure predators—and a part of his soul had lived here, too. He could make out the shapes of human forms transforming into wolves, bears, big cats, and his eyes locked with that of a jaguar. A familiar scent filled his nose. Female. He knew it instantly. She was hungry. Twisted . . . and sexy as shit. Her musk entered his nose and held him as she loped toward him. He ignored the messenger who drew back when she growled.

  She was near enough now to make a lunge before the smoke could evacuate them—not that he was all that ready to go. Damn, she had an effect that would knock a man’s head back. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear he’d taken a hit of Neteru. But there was something also very vamp about her. But this was a deeper, mustier, earthier, older scent . . . She reminded him of when he first saw Raven, Nuit’s woman, transform into a huge black panther. However, Raven’s scent wasn’t as strong. This bitch was awesome. A real predator. This one, damn . . .

  She purred, issuing a low rumble from her throat.

  “I urge your haste,” the messenger said, backing up. “The females play with their food before consumption, I’m told.”

  Carlos nodded, trying to stave off the erection she’d given him. “Later,” he told the alluring thing with golden eyes that flickered green. She turned, looked over her shoulder once, and sauntered away. Damn . . .

  “Yea
h, man, uh, take me to the council. Cool?”

  “What would possess you to take a risk like that, Rivera?” The chairman was on his feet, walking in a short line between his throne and the counselor’s.

  “I need an armed messenger transport to Brazil—need a passport, because the Neteru went there, and I hate traveling by day in dirt.”

  “I beg you to use another courier. Carlos Rivera is a madman. He forced me to take him to level four and five, without heavy guard, Your Eminence, and he was so flagrant, so arrogant in his abuse of the demon borders that they did not attack. He is a loose cannon.”

  The messenger bowed and the Vampire Council immediately went silent.

  “You said yourselves that there’s been a breach,” Carlos said quickly. “Some very weird shit is going down in the demon realms, and our nation hasn’t had the manpower to find out why, or exactly where. All we have is a general location. I wanted to test a theory, because the messenger is right—as a master, they should have immediately attacked me. Now, I’m really concerned, because they didn’t. Seems to me like they might have something real big they’re laying for, biding their time, you feel me?”

  “I smell Neteru on you so strong that that concerns me. Ripening Neteru?” The counselor had rounded his desk and was on Carlos in seconds.

  Carlos pulled back. “Don’t get it twisted. The only thing that’s on me is Neteru, not ripening, and damn straight you should smell that. I’m headed over there to Brazil now to protect our investment—if I can get an underground passport, gentlemen.” He brushed past the counselor and approached the table, holding out his wrist for the chairman.

  Cautiously lowering his face to Carlos’s pulse point, the chairman sniffed, then straightened himself. Trepidation consumed Carlos as he waited for the chairman’s assessment. Nobody fucked with the top man, and if any hint of a problem became apparent, the old man would snatch out his heart before he ever saw the claw coming. The chairman’s gaze narrowed. Carlos held his breath. Momentary terror caused perspiration to break out on his brow, and he could feel his shirt clinging to the dampness of his body.