The Hunted

by L. A. Banks

  Shabazz bristled and stepped forward. “Nobody needed to come here for—”

  “Bullshit!” Kamal yelled. “You blind? The Neteru needed to learn, see for herself, the kind of tough choices got to be made, sometime, for the good of the group.” He pointed toward Damali, but his gaze was on Shabazz. “Can’t speak out both sides of your mouth. Can’t tell the young ones to do as I say, not as I do. Gotta show by example, and on dis one, Heaven asked a lot of all her instructors . . . even you. Can’t put the whole squad in danger over your own personal shit; she had to learn dat! And, she needed to see that the master who was her lover was making a tough choice, too—pushed her away before what he is, or what was in his life, consumed her. That shit is beyond honorable; ask me how I know! Everybody in here bleeding. So, I’ma ask you again,” he said, retracting his trembling arm, “You blind? You tink I wanted to reveal dis tough lesson in front of my own men? Fuck your ego. Hell yeah, I let her teacher come over our barriers to school her.”

  Kamal folded his arms over his chest and faced the wall, breathing hard. Shabazz just rubbed his jaw and went back to the window as both teams relaxed, sober defeat claiming all of them.

  Rider backed up further, spat on the floor, and went to a wall to lean on it, nervously eyeing Kamal’s crew. “Tell us something we can work with. Who cares who got nicked from what on these teams? The point is moot. We’ve all taken a hit from something by this age. It was just a bit of a mindblower to see it up close and personal, instead of theoretical, when you guys did the fang thing—but, hey, we all got issues.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Mar, don’t argue with me about drinking too much when, and if, we get home.”

  “Dis dark passion that you’ve seen has not happened yet, gurl,” Kamal said carefully, his voice gentle as he spoke, not looking at Damali. “It was in his mind, a want, maybe a need. You got some visions to send her, too. Will draw her out. Make her use rage to battle you, not strategy. You got a soul dat can forgive, she don’t. This one thinks she’s the Neteru. This demon has ingested the essence, and it is corrupting her mind. Has polluted ripe Neteru scent to sway his judgment. She had an entire guardian squad trapped by a misguided—”

  “I don’t know anything anymore,” Damali whispered.

  “You do!” Kamal insisted and whirled on her. “It was the ancient Neteru’s mother-seer that took her body and desecrated it, and chose to become a demon for vengeance and rage. If the portal is open, with those conflicts in her spirit, we might even have to battle Amanthras out there, who knows?”

  “Her mother-seer?” Damali looked at Marlene horrified, finally hearing all the words that had been said around her.

  “That’s why you knew her magic, how to reverse it to save me. Baby, a Neteru went down, her mother-seer lost her mind, and did this terrible thing. Her team followed the seer into the pit, trying in vain to resurrect their Neteru, but what happened in the dark spell was the mother-seer took on everything she held dear about the Neteru. She’s got the strength of a demon, but she will fight you like a Neteru warrior . . . and she wants Carlos to release her from regional and moon-based captivity. We’ve been over this, but your concentration has been scattered.” Marlene looked at her with a gentle gaze. “In fact, she wants him as much as she wants the freedom . . . a dark guardian, an eternal mate. Baby, you’ve gotta fight this on a lot of levels.”

  Damali covered her face with her hands and breathed into them slowly to keep from hyperventilating. She finally understood what Carlos had said, and the profound pain that went with his crazy but honorable choice. Understood Marlene and Kamal’s decision, and felt Shabazz’s hurt like a knife to her skin. Everyone around her had done and was doing the right thing, but the shit hurt like hell, especially now that it was her turn to do said same.

  “Now you got an image to put next to hers,” Kamal said in a quiet voice. “Show her what it’s like when a man wants to be there, versus when it’s jus’ somethin’ to do, or he’s forced. In dis case, it’s somethin’ he’s being coerced to do—plantations did that to breed de oppressed, her own people. If she does dat to him, let her taste dat bitter wine.”

  Damali just lifted her head slowly and stared at Kamal, not even blinking.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” Rider hollered, walking back and forth, losing a section of his sanity in the process. “Is that what that bastard came in here and showed her? Oh my God, no wonder she leveled Big Mike!”

  “No lie, man . . . but if Damali did that, and you piss off that Amazon with the suggestion, Kamal, man . . .” Big Mike shook his head.

  “Female strategy, done every day by wives to let an interloper know she’s just a piece of tail. Show her how much he cared about you, wanted you, before you even had Neteru to knock his head back . . . let her see that shit raw. You were his choice; she was his option. There’s a huge difference. Don’t let her flip the script and mess with your head—you know who you are—his first love! That shit’s stronger than Neteru. Claim your title. It will draw her out—” Marlene said coolly, “—will get her out in the open.” Not a man spoke when Damali raised her head and stared at Marlene. “Baby, what else did you see?”

  “How they did her people. Massacred them,” Damali whispered.

  “Show her how they did your people, which are also mixed with her people—making you both from the same people just a couple of continents in between,” Marlene spat back. “That’s what we both picked up, as seers, as soon as we set foot in the heart of Rio in the hotel lobby. So, show her a hundred twenty-five million in the Middle Passage,” she added, waving her arms in the air. “If you wanna look in my eyes, I’ll give you plenty of images from my folks down South, folks that raised me and taught me to see. Lynchings, rapes, burnings, all the same horrific shit—but your methods and her methods to correct oppression and injustice are real different, baby. Worlds apart, and ain’t even the same. Just like what you and Carlos have is very different than her proposition.”

  “You gotta get to her fast and hard, den,” Kamal said quietly. “Before the were-demon senates form an alliance with the weakened Amanthra empire—”

  “What?” Rider was walking between Shabazz and Big Mike, shaking his head. “They have senates, plural, like the vampires have a council—”

  “Don’t be foolish,” Kamal said with disdain, looking at Rider hard as his gaze scanned the group. “Every sector of the were-realm has a senate segregated by fila. Each of the Hell levels has some form of organized, governing body. There are legions of evil down below, brother, just like we got up here. Dat’s why there are so many types of guardian teams on the planet. We may have deeper insight because of our circumstances, but we don’ deal wit dem, thou’. Like I said, we are not demons—we are humans dat had da misfortune to get nicked. And we are very clear on what side of the line we’re on.” Satisfied when his entire were-human squad nodded, Kamal let his breath out hard and raked his fingers through his locks. “We got your back.”

  “Oh, I feel better,” Rider said with a sneer of disgust.

  Marlene walked away from Damali’s side. “All respect for what that the female were-demon lost and endured, since she was once one of us—a Neteru guardian—but, yeah, you show her what you lost, first. You show her your history, too, honey. You’ve got one; believe me. Your past life was here, your DNA is tied to this region, and your people went through hell on earth, too. So, when you confront her in battle, you ask that twisted bitch if she’s gonna pass out green cards for all the oppressed people of the world to keep them from becoming something her ancestors fought against! Ask her how she’s gonna keep the same oppressed people, who’ve already had horrible things happen to them, from having to endure more—and ask her how she’s going to keep the human power structures from nuking the joint, leaving a smoking, black hole topside,” Marlene yelled. “And you ask her how she’s going to justify going against you, a Neteru, a light-chosen warrior. If she has a sliver of a conscience left, even if only through ingesting
the strength of character resident in a Neteru’s cellular makeup, it might give her pause, might make her hesitate for a split second, and that’s when you take her.”

  “Yeah, you think once the human superpowers find out, they won’t detonate something, trying to stop a vamp-demon army that’s come topside—not having a spiritual reference for how to deal with something like this? And you think they’ll listen to us?” JL shook his head. “Can you see world leaders, or the United Nations convening a summit on this? They’ll act like aliens had infested the planet, will shoot everything with all they’ve got, not realizing the firepower ain’t what they need to fight this madness, and that this is a spiritual war.”

  “This crazy shit will kick off the Armageddon just from the fallout,” Dan added with a shudder. “Maybe that’s what this is? The prelude to the Armageddon?”

  “Crazy motherfuckers with their fingers on the red button will probably go with the alien theory first—won’t ask a church, temple, or mosque, and definitely ain’t gonna come to no people down the way to get the answer. We’re oppressed and ignorant, remember,” Jose said, walking toward the porch.

  “By the time they do, the war will be over,” Rider snapped. “Just like that. All right. I’m down. This is big shit that transcends the drama, kiddo. We’ve gotta sync up with Kamal’s team. We’re talking potential world peace hanging in the balance. How many innocents do you think will die from a nuclear, human-sent blast?”

  Marlene held Damali in a firm stare, sending confidence with it, trying to heal with a look. “You’ve got a long tale of woe that lasted the same four hundred years or more in the US. But you show her, also, the faces of the innocent people she murdered. Folks with children and partners, and parents, and what have you. Give her a dose of that while we’re out there. She hit ’em with no warning, not like a warrior—and with no honor. Civilians. And they weren’t even armed. You let her see it, taste it, breathe it, and ask her how it feels. Baby, you’ve gotta fight this one spiritually, psychologically, and with some serious artillery to back it up.”

  A grumble of agreement rippled through the room, fist pounds got exchanged, and suddenly the two teams became one.

  “If she persists,” Kamal said, rubbing his hands over his face, “den you twist her heart wit de last image you have, draw her out. Make her crazy, give it up—to da bone . . . till she don’ care ’bout ambush, takin’ cover, all she wants is your head on a pike, gurl. Den, you swing de Isis. Hear me? Show her you with Rivera, and what dat really means.”

  “Tell that bitch you’re her daddy,” Shabazz muttered. “Use what you saw, in any voice you need.”

  Shabazz and Kamal shared a glance, but this time it wasn’t a look of hatred between ardent competitors. Their stare contained the silent agreement to disagree, for the good of the whole, for the safety of the squads, for the protection of the Neteru, for the love of Marlene, and with much respect for the position the other had to endure. The two masters nodded, then allowed their gazes to trap Marlene’s for a moment before finding a neutral point in the room.

  “She even wanted to take Madame Isis from me,” Damali finally murmured. Steadier, more lucid, Damali nodded as the images receded. But the place inside her soul was raw. Stripped. Kamal looked at her, his eyes gentler now, and not blazing with conviction.

  “Took a lot for him to show you what he showed you to save your life,” Kamal murmured, sitting down on the side of a bed. “Felt da love. Dat’s why I knew . . . let dat one through—set no barrier for the vampire wit half a soul in da balance. ’Cause de man would die for you. Dis makes one more time he did . . . ’cause he know, like any man in his right mind know—once a woman tink ’bout another lover wit him, let alone see it, part of dat love dies between you two.”

  “Baby,” Marlene said gently, only looking at her, “you have immediate, recent, visceral memories of being with Carlos. It’s a primary memory, not a secondary illusion of one . . . but stronger than even his fantasy of being with her, because you’ve lived it. Her images of the past don’t have the texture of the present, because they were transferred to him—didn’t come directly into your consciousness from experience. Just like what you show her of your history will have the depth of a textbook, or movie, because it’s a fourth-generation down—my great-grandmother lived it, told my grandmother, who told my mother, who told me. What I show you, just like what Carlos showed you, is diluted. Only first-line feels it directly, the eyewitnesses. So, she won’t smell the insides of the slave cargo ships, won’t feel the lash. Unless she has a lot of compassion, and she doesn’t, it won’t move her.”

  When Damali nodded, Marlene pressed on, holding her in a stare to get through, to strip away some of the pain in the only way it can be purged at a time like this—by another supportive woman-friend’s voice. “His fantasies of being with her are not grounded in the other senses all the way. Close, because he imagined it, but he still doesn’t know because the act wasn’t consummated. But you’ve got a nuclear bomb of recent memory grounded in every fiber of you. Hit the red button, baby. Use it. Blow her head up so we can take it off. Use the truth. And kill her with your love.” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “That’s what Father Pat had said. This scenario had to be fought with compassion and love, and he, as a cleric from an order with blood on his hands here, couldn’t be there to witness it or help.”

  “You might feel like you’re gonna die, and when you walk away from what you need to walk away from, part of you will,” Rider said in an inordinately gentle tone, “but sometimes you have to opt to exist, even if it’s not how you want to live. Y’all both might have to do that. Much as I hate to, I’ve gotta give Rivera credit for that. Welcome to being an adult. The shit sucks.”

  Kamal let his breath out slowly and rubbed his jaw and sent a silent message of thanks Rider’s way for veering the way-too-personal subject away from him, Marlene, and Shabazz. He waited until Damali looked at him before he spoke.

  “Granted, his fantasies were fucked up. But all I’ma say is, dis ain’t happen yet, and nobody needta be judged on a fantasy, or we’d all go to Hell in a handbasket.” Kamal’s gaze swept the room, avoiding Marlene. “Ask any and all of your brothers, dey’ll tell you. Don’t let what could happen drive a wedge between you and him out dere. Deal wit what did happen, and if it’s going to go down in a way you don’ like, suck it up. That’s life. You won’t die of no broken heart—you will die, however, if you misjudge your opponent. Shit happens fast.”

  Shabazz looked at him. “Yeah it do, man. I’m real sorry it does, too.”

  The two old masters looked at each other again and nodded. Respect and silent understanding passed between them once more, sealing their pact to let their personal incident ride.

  “Heal up your slayer’s head, man. Baby girl took a hit of something she didn’t need to see for years—if ever. Fucked-up, man . . . but in dis case it was de only way. Truth was da light. Bring da light.”

  “Word.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THIRTY-THREE VERY serious, fatigue-wearing warriors entered Belem, causing other pedestrians to cast fearful glances in the combined team’s direction. Humid, thick air almost stole every breath while sweltering heat bore down on them. Waiting for Kamal to do the necessary weapons transaction with his unnamed contacts from places she was too weary to imagine, Damali absorbed the collage of tower blocks, crumbling Portuguese churches, and the dotting of Old World Mediterranean palaces in pastel hues. Cobblestones, hand-laid, brick-by-brick by slave labor met her footfalls. Every sense quickened, she was not about to miss anything that could be of importance to the group’s safety.

  Sitting, waiting, watching, sipping cool glasses of cupuacu juice on rickety wooden outdoor café chairs, the table umbrellas mild relief from the sun, she studied the terrain. A dog ran by and thirty-two pairs of eyes behind dark sunglasses, expressions masked, looked at the animal. Children and vendors plied their wares, but made no move toward her group
this time. She hunted the environment with her sweeping gaze, roving over every aspect of it, taking mental snapshots of the borderline Belem presented between elegance and shabbiness. It was a gray zone, too.

  She felt it. The Jesuits had aided in the destruction of the Indian populations here. Smallpox, dysentery, the lash for not adopting the conquering religion, cultural destruction as much as physical annihilation, people who had known freedom remanded to aldeias—reservations. Segregation. Lands snatched and plundered. Righteous anger lived here, just under the surface, crumbling the buildings as much as the weather and the insidious heat. They were getting closer to the Amazon. The question was, how to reach this agonized entity that wanted to unleash a demon army upon this land to wrest it back from modern invaders?

  Damali looked up at the sun, not needing a watch now to tell the time. It was late. The travel had been yet again delayed, as things were always delayed in parts of the world that lived by the natural rhythms. She was still uncomfortable about Kamal’s decision to go all the way with the group, since it was not the original plan. She was worried not because of Shabazz; a truce had been established. The elders forecast that the number thirty-three in a situation like this was a double trinity to deal with a triangular relationship; three issues within it—love, war, lessons. Two triangles made the hexagon balance. Three and three, the number thirty-three, half-were and half-human forces joined. Crazy. Yeah, they needed an army for this battle.

  The triumvirate of Marlene and Kamal and Shabazz were cool. The men were cool; the teams had melded. But she looked at thirty-two innocent people possibly going to their final destination with her. The responsibility was enormous. She knew how her adversary felt. Damali had to respect that much about her. She respected the place from which the rage bubbled within the Amazon’s soul. But the methods the Amazon used, and was about to deploy to redress the wrong, Damali could not abide.