her. As he approached, his footfalls made her look up and push away from the wall with a scowl.
"What's your problem?" she said, gripping the Isis tighter than was necessary.
Carlos looked her up and down, assessing her revealing outfit with disdain. "I was about to ask you the same thing. If you wanted to go out hunting, I thought it was the house rule to do two-by-two detail from now on?"
"Puhlease. I wasn't going anywhere with you tonight."
"I didn't say it had to be me," Carlos shot back, "just another Guardian, at least."
Damali put her foot against the wall and began tightening the laces in her boot. With the mini and her pose, she was serving all thong, and had no modesty about it whatsoever. He could only assume that she was trying to really piss him off, and it was working.
"Look, I don't know what you're trying to prove out here," he said, crossing his arms, "but--"
"I don't have to prove anything, Carlos. This place drew me, had some crazy energy, but I went through the entire club and couldn't even get a good beat-down going." She dropped her foot to the ground and then began working on the other laces. "If you would stop being so muy macho and feel the wall, you'd see what I'm talking about."
Angered by the charge she lobbed, he walked over to the wall, spread out both palms, and tried to focus. "Nada."
"Figures." Damali cut him a glare, sheathed her Isis, and began walking toward Dan's car.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'figures'?" Exasperated, he walked in long strides to catch up to her, and grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop.
Damali looked down at his hand until he removed it. "You didn't feel the bodies... the faces... the hands on that wall pushing like they were caught inside and trying to get out of it? It wasn't a pure demon presence, or a vamp or werewolf sensation." She sucked her teeth when Carlos looked back at the wall. "Like I said. Figures. You're so worried about your so-called woman doing whatever, and dressing however, you can't focus on the real."
"That's bullshit," he muttered, walking toward the wall and opening his hands against it again. "And if it was all that you said, what the hell is wrong with you, getting all up on it until you knew what it was?"
She arched an eyebrow and gave him a wicked smile. "It felt good. What can I say? I'm going home."
He whirled on her as she jumped over the door and slid into the driver's seat. "Just like that--no, 'Baby, you need a ride?' "
"Just like you blew in here, now that you can do transport with accuracy, you can take your own ass home. I drove because I wanted to feel the motion and keep my mind occupied with some music, okaaay? If that's all right with you."
He stood in the darkened alley listening to air-conditioning compressors and club music thudding through the walls as she turned on the engine and careened away.
Something was so wrong with his baby that he could only look up at the full moon and stare. Fury was spiking through him so hard that it almost stopped his pulse. About to leave, Carlos turned as he felt it, or rather, felt them.
Twenty very foolish, lower-level male vampires eased into the alley with smug expressions. Carlos just stared at them. They had no idea how badly he needed to kill something to vent the bubbling rage within him right now. Every chest before him had a bull's-eye on it.
"Where's your shield, Neteru?" the boldest one in the group said, stepping forward. The blond vampire chuckled as the others began to fan out in a semicircle around Carlos. "What... ain't got no blade?" The vampire shook his head. "A dark alley is a real bad place for an ex-Councilman to be caught solo."
Carlos rubbed his jaw and smiled, appraising the biker-looking vamp with a bad mousse job on his spiked platinum blond hair. Skinny motherfucker was gonna get his heart ripped out. The Goth crew with him, serving hard-dyed black-and-red punk-style haircuts with black hps and nails, made the muscles in his forearm twitch. "I'm not in the frame of mind," Carlos said in a quiet, lethal tone. "Just be advised." He looked around. "Damn... this used to be my club, too."
One copper-coiffed, very high vamp giggled in a squeaky-pitched tone. He adjusted his twisted nail-and-leather dog collar and then opened