The Hunted

by L. A. Banks

  “It’s only our package in his bloodstream, but his visitation to the demon realms has left a residual trail of sulfur, and the stench of rotting meat. Rectify that before you go topside, Mr. Rivera. As a master, you represent us—and we have a reputation to maintain. This is why I so detest the demon realms. No finesse.”

  He walked away from Carlos. “That is all I can detect, Mr. Counselor. Obviously we are dealing with a master who has the courage to protect his cargo, and our empire, at all costs, and therefore deserves our gratitude, not suspicion. I have already warned you several times, Mr. Counselor, about my growing impatience with your innuendo. Were it not for our already strained resources . . . We cannot afford to lose another council throne at this juncture—but do not press your luck.”

  Carlos nodded and issued a glare toward the counselor, who returned it with a venomous glance of his own. If the old chairman dude couldn’t smell what clung to him from level five, then what was up with the attorney? How’d the counselor catch that whiff? Something wasn’t right. On the other hand, the counselor was the one who had come from behind the table first, and had gotten up in his face. Maybe by the time he’d approached the table his own sweat had muted the scent? Plus, he was close, but had not made physical contact with the she-jaguar on five. Whatever. But she was definitely something that had a trace of ripening on her . . . and he was definitely tracking that to his South American provinces.

  He eyed the counselor. For now, he’d let it ride. Besides, no one had seriously addressed the question of why he wasn’t attacked.

  “Like the messenger said, they let me through. What’s up?” Carlos asked.

  “The Amanthra demon forces are diminished on level four, due to the wars, and we have an alliance with their old Supreme Council that was to aid them in routing out their rogue elements,” the counselor said impatiently. “You were foolish, but very lucky. You had probably fallen into one of the nests that are within our alliance zone.”

  “But,” the messenger countered, “I wasn’t—”

  “Silence!” the chairman bellowed. “You fool. I will kill you myself for allowing one of our few remaining topside masters to go into enemy territory without my sanction.”

  “His rank superseded mine, Your Eminence,” the hooded creature said, cowering, its head bowed.

  “And, he has also been guarding a Neteru—are you not truly aware of his potentially compromised state? Adrenaline or terror in her sweat or blood can also disorient a master. As a courier, you are a disgrace!”

  The entity only bowed and backed away.

  “However,” the counselor argued, “there is still the question of level five.” He narrowed an evil gaze in Carlos’s direction. “Could it be that we have a potential traitor in our midst? A master vampire seeking to form his own dark alliance with a stronger level-five empire?”

  All beady eyes at the table focused on Carlos, and he slowly folded his arms before him. “If I was that insane, and had such capability to move through their tunnels at will, I would not be standing here asking for an international passport through to Brazil for starters, and I damned sure wouldn’t take one of our messengers with me, or roll in here after being on level five, if I wasn’t on the up-and-up. I’d at least let my suit air out.”

  Silence met Carlos’s logical response, but the tension in the group slowly eased as one by one, council members sat back in their thrones, the chairman took his seat, and the counselor made his way back toward his end of the table. Relief uncoiled in Carlos’s system, taking its time to thread through him just like the Amanthra had taken its time to lower itself to feed.

  The chairman nodded. “We will call in our troops to take you in, but need the balance of this night to collect our forces from the nether regions. Our international couriers are more suited for the job than our domestics. Get the Neteru away from the unknown breach. Next eve, midnight, your passport is ensured.”

  The sweet drinks had snuck up on her and had packed a wallop. The heat, the dancing, and over-proof alcohol had taken its full toll. She had called him the old-fashioned way, stirring male jealousy, and he still didn’t respond. Damn. Whatever had a hold on him, had a hold on him for serious.

  Her confidence thoroughly rocked, Damali got up from her bed with effort and squinted at the clock. It was already noon. She glanced around the empty room. No Marlene. Okay, that was cool—she hoped.

  Pacing to the bathroom, she splashed water on her face, and her mind immediately went to her team. It was time for a roll call. She hurried through her bathroom routine and made her way back to the bed, walking in a zigzag pattern before she flopped down. And she was supposed to perform tonight? Yeah, right.

  “Yo,” she said in a hoarse whisper as Shabazz picked up in his suite. “Everything cool . . . Marlene all right?”

  “Yeah,” he chuckled. “We woulda called, but something came up.”

  Damali had to laugh, even though her head hurt. They were never gonna let that mess rest. “Okay, cool. Get some breakfast, huh? Remember, we’ve got a show tonight.” She seriously needed some of that strong Brazilian caffezinho to get it together. Black.

  “No problem,” Shabazz replied through a yawn. “The rest of the guys cool?”

  Now she was the den mother? Oh, deep. She would never get on Marlene’s case again.

  “I’m doing roll call as we speak, ’Bazz, okay?”

  “Good, baby . . . uh, we’ll see y’all later on. Peace.”

  Damali stared at the telephone as Shabazz abruptly hung up. This was just too wild. Her team had flipped the script on her, and she was sitting there with a phone receiver in hand, all worried and whatnot, with no one in her room. Very deep.

  Big Mike was the next person on her list, because that tall sister he strutted out the door with looked like she was definitely Amazon material. But when his sleepy voice filled the receiver, she chuckled. Maybe she and Marlene had just freaked out from the residual vibrations, because the guys were safe and feeling no pain.

  “You cool, though, Mike? I don’t have to come down there, do I, and check on you myself?”

  “Naw, naw, I’m good, li’l sis . . . and, uh, now wouldn’t be a really good time.”

  She heard the telephone fall, a woman giggle, Mike’s low rumble of chuckles, and then his voice came back strong in the receiver.

  “You okay, D? You don’t need me to come down there for anything—I mean, everything’s cool, right?”

  She shook her head. “Uhmmph, uhmmph, uhmmph. Yeah, I’m fine—but you eat something and bite the snake that bit ya last night. Those drinks weren’t playing, I still feel it.”

  “Yeah . . .” Mike groaned.

  Okay. That was it. She was off the telephone! “Bye,” she snapped, peevish, but knew in her heart she couldn’t be angry with him. Then she burst out laughing.

  The tone of Rider’s voice when she connected with him was somewhere between severe agony and annoyance. Ooops. “Bye Rider,” she said fast.

  “Two more hours, D—that’s all I ask.” Then he was gone.

  She got more or less the same response from JL and Jose, but felt compelled to check on everyone nonetheless. She’d never be able to live with missing one call, or the possible after-the-fact knowledge that a missed call could mean a guardian was laid out somewhere hurt, or worse.

  Damali stood and opened the drapes and was met with a bright glare of morning light. It hurt her eyes, but the sun felt good. Hey, it was daytime, and her guys were still at it. All was right with the world.

  But when she called Dan’s room and the phone simply rang, she panicked. She resisted the urge to just open up her mind to find him, because if he was in a delicate situation, he didn’t deserve to be telepathically swept. Damali sat down in a chair hard with the desk phone beside her and counted to ten. That was her and Marlene’s house rule—no prying into people’s deepest thoughts, no mind locks on their personal business. It took willpower, but after having her own very personal business to
guard, she knew better than to go there.

  Finally when her fingertips began to tingle, she reached for the telephone and tried Dan again. This time the phone picked up on the first ring, startling her.

  “Dan? I was worried.”

  “I know, I know,” he said out of breath, “but, uh, D, can I call ya back? Something, uh, came up, ’kay?”

  “All right. You be safe.”

  “I will, hon. God, I love Brazil!”

  Damali could only stare at the phone as the call disconnected. Even Dan? Oh, my goodness . . . a sudden pang of loneliness swept through her that she hadn’t anticipated. It got tangled up with her worry for the team as well as for Carlos’s safety, and it battled her anger with him for going underground—and she wasn’t sure if he’d done so literally or figuratively. Hurt, anger, worry, frustration, and missing him all collided in the center of her chest and remained there like an unmovable stone. Now she knew just how Marlene felt all those nights worrying about her, when she’d sashay in calmly and give Marlene the look that said don’t start. Damn. Karma. Heavy Saturn lessons for sure. For real, for real.

  But, still. Given all of Carlos’s issues, and given the vampire nation’s factions, he should have left some type of word, or connected with her mind. All because of a stupid argument and some female draw? What the hell was this thing they were tracking?

  She’d tried to sense him, just to see if he was alive, but now being so far away, that was impossible. Father Pat couldn’t reach him, Marlene couldn’t see him, and there might be something terrible out there ready to take his head off his shoulders. And she’d weakened him to the threat, hadn’t listened to Marlene’s advice—they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. What if he’d been jumped by second-level vamps from another region . . . or what if he’d snapped and formally fed from an innocent; killed somebody because of that? Because of her? Or because of this other unnamed thing? She shuddered. And, he’d warned her of his addiction.

  Slowly, she moved toward the bed and wrapped the jumble of sheets around her, curling up within them, and drawing them into her arms. What if something terrible had happened to him?

  Marlene had said the concert would shake the ground. Her mother-seer said fight, and she would. No doubt about it, she needed to put out a call to him that would be heard.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “A COUPLE of issues,” Carlos said slowly, putting his hands behind his back. Spending a whole twenty-four hours underground waiting on resources was nearly more than his nerves could stand. Each time he had to come before the table put his survival on the line. But he needed the resources badly enough to withstand the drama. Still, he hated having to rely on others to bestow anything on him.

  Following protocol, Carlos waited until receiving the chairman’s nod, and he ignored the scowl coming from the counselor at the table. “There are four clerics, that no doubt, you have seen me interact with?”

  The chairman smiled and made a tent with his fingers in front of his mouth, only nodding.

  “Infidel!”

  The chairman held his hand up to the counselor. “Speak.”

  “These men are how I have an exact location of the huntress. Between my comprise of them,” Carlos said quickly, “and of her guardians, I can get to her at will.” A half smile appeared on Carlos’s face. “One of them, I believe, is a lower gen. An eighth or ninth in my line. How can I use him?”

  The chairman sighed. “Insignificant. By that generational level, his effectiveness is so diluted and his status within our ranks is so negligible . . . they’re not even what I’d consider true vampires. They’re a subclass of a subclass, an actual embarrassment to all we hold dear. After the fourth generation, they can’t even produce fangs—totally useless vermin.”

  “But he’s a tracker, and a cleric, and can cross prayer lines. Our Neteru trusts him because he wears a collar. So do the others.” Carlos waited, his gaze locking with the chairman’s.

  The chairman lowered his hands, his smile broadening. His countenance relaxed. “Yes. As always, done with flair, Rivera. But your point?”

  “I need them to be off limits . . . if they get rushed, or bitten—”

  “No one will flush your hunt and terminate your compromised informants while you are abroad, Mr. Rivera . . . will they, Mr. Counselor?” The chairman shot a warning glance toward the counselor and then looked at Carlos. “I do understand your concern about things going awry in your absence . . . another reason I insisted on this meeting before you left—so that we are all clear.” He cast his narrowed gaze around the five points of the pentagram-shaped table, and waited for nods of agreement before speaking. “If you find your travels expand, simply call an exterminator, look into its eyes, and a safe location will be shown to you.”

  Imperceptibly, Carlos let out his breath. That’s all he’d need was to come back to the cabin and find four corpses. Not to mention, the last thing he’d need would be to have Damali’s crew wiped out over there. That would freak her out and send her into a spiral of pain that she’d never recover from.

  “This is your mission, Mr. Rivera. We are all clear . . . albeit your methods are unorthodox, they have been effective thus far.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to be sure they don’t take a body while we’re in Brazil. Can’t have it. Over there, I call the shots, or send me alone. This part is nonnegotiable.”

  “Are you mad, Rivera!” The counselor was on his feet, and two of the exterminator bodyguards snarled their discontent at Carlos’s statement. “These are highly skilled, trained assassins that eat well. We’ve removed them from our borders, at your request, for this ill-fated mission to collect a girl that will probably get on a flight after shopping! This is valuable vampire power gone to waste, and now you don’t want to feed them in one of the adrenaline capitals on the planet? Mr. Chairman,” he urged, opening his arms so wide that his black robes swept the table, “we cannot continue to suffer these offenses, these indignities. These methods are of a rank amateur who hasn’t—”

  “You draw a hotel or stadium police sweep, and get foreigners detained at the airports, you make my job harder,” Carlos argued coolly. “Obviously, it’s been a while since you’ve been topside. This is my era, the twenty-first century—it ain’t the horse and buggy days.”

  “I am from the Roman era, when evil was at its apex on the planet—as was shrewd, duplicitous politics and aggression. The days of chariots; not horse and buggies. So don’t you dare presume—”

  “You make her afraid, or worse, flush her to go hunting, you’ll take my cargo deeper into the badlands of the Amazon jungle looking for the source of what ate a few concertgoers. Hurt her team, and she’ll never leave Brazil until she finds out what killed some of her guys. That’s Neteru nature . . . if you ever had one, you’d know, motherfucker.”

  Carlos studied his nails as he spoke, and then glanced at his watch. The counselor didn’t have an immediate comeback and was silent. The chairman seemed amused. The others at the table appeared anxious for a heart-ripping to take place—and from the looks of their expressions, it was a fifty-fifty split who they were betting on. Whatever. He was wasting time. The concert was probably almost over, and he needed to get to Damali while he was still sure of exactly where she’d be. All he needed was to have to search through the clubs and hangouts all over Rio to find her; some poor innocent might become his dinner.

  “There’s plenty of drug dealers in the jungle hiding cocaine and heroin plantations that the authorities won’t miss, or don’t care about, and that the Neteru won’t be upset about if you guys get hungry—just make it look clean, like a dispute went down, not a feeding. The boys,” he added, motioning toward the exterminators, “wall get one helluva adrenaline rush along with a nice hit of coke or reefer. That’s a fair compromise. But tourists and locals, if you’re going with me, are off limits. Besides, I hear water buffaloes pack a wallop—if you stampede them first.”

  The rob
ed entities nodded, as did the chairman. The counselor sat slowly, seething, but with no option. The logic of Carlos’s argument was rock solid. Yeah, he was definitely getting stronger.

  “You are of great value to us, Carlos. Might I suggest that you take a couple of my favorite resources as added insurance . . . something made for special occasions by our Dark Lord on level seven?”

  Before Carlos could answer, the chairman dispatched a ceiling transport bat, and Carlos waited for his unspecified resources, trying to stay cool.

  A loud commotion beyond the council walls made everyone train their attention towards the sound. Bats screeched in terror, and incessant growls and barks careened through the cavernous space. The front doors flew open, and four super-strength international couriers paired off to restrain the two beasts they held by chains.

  Beasts, each with six yellow glowing eyes that ringed the circumference of their huge skulls, stood three feet high at the shoulder, their muscular black chests rippling as they scrabbled against the slippery marble floor to get to Carlos, leaving deep gashes in it as they clawed their way forward. Their jaws were so packed with fangs that they couldn’t fully close their mouths, and foamed, slick saliva dripped from them, leaving acid burns in the floor. They flapped their leathery wings, half flying, as they pulled the couriers along the floor, slashing at them with their spaded, double-blade tails.

  Almost speechless, Carlos knew he had to rescind the request, “Naw, gentleman. The pit bulls are over the top.”

  “You don’t approve?” The chairman asked with a smile, then sighed. “Next time.”

  Carlos wasn’t sure how to respond. While the offer was generous, this wasn’t about a few easily willed creatures that could give him a heads-up with a bark . . . like a coupla security dogs . . . dayum. “Yeah, next time. Thanks, though.”