Oh, yeah. Everybody was on edge and needed to chill. She now wondered what Marlene, their seer-guardian, had sensed. When Marlene had visions, she got real cool - scary calm. Damali tossed her knowledge of Marlene's capabilities around inside her head and watched her mentor's body language. Only having a portion of one's skills to rely on was a bitch.
Maybe she should have just told Mar that she was going blind again tonight. But she hated the concept. What, and have the guys go back to treating her like a young buck? A newbie? Hell, no. This was her crew, and whatever was going wrong with her was temporary. All she had to do was look at Marlene hard to know it was gonna be on when they left, no doubt. Didn't need second sight to pick that up.
Jose glanced from crew member to crew member, his nerves also seeming raw. The fact that no one else had said a word had to be jacking with him. Their percussion man's dark eyes shifted nervously between Damali and Marlene Stone. "Yeah, you brought it to 'em, D," he confirmed after a hesitant glance up from his task of packing away equipment.
Small talk, a sure sign of nerves. She hated small talk. "Thanks, Wizard."
"You owned New Energy tonight. The club will never be the same - Warriors of Light Productions and you, lady, should get some good ink from this one in the press tomorrow."
Tomorrow? Assuming they made it through the night. Damali glanced at Jose and then toward Marlene. That crazy Mexican Indian always started babbling when he was hyped. She loved him just the same, but if their ace tracker was trippin' - then damn. Marlene blanched. Obviously Marlene got that message, too.
"Sho 'nuff, we brought it, Wizard," Damali said in a short pant, giving Jose a fist pound, trying to make him feel better as she did so. It was obvious that her mental wall against Marlene wasn't even working. But she also couldn't seem to completely catch her breath. Forget that, Wizard always talked a lot and his voice got louder when nervous. Tonight was no different. It made her head hurt.
She glanced at Marlene again. The colors of her manager's royal purple Afrocentric robe and glittering gold-patterned embroidery that matched her lame pants were now too bright, and Damali briefly shut her eyes to that regal countenance. Jose's sleeveless black T-shirt and jet-black jeans stabbed into the center of the color array that danced beneath her lids. Silver from his large cross turned into a pinpoint of light just as she'd glanced away, and now she could feel herself taking in breaths in short sips.
"Get her some water," Marlene ordered, dispatching Jose from his semi-stooped position over a light kit bag.
Damali accepted a new bottle of spring water from him; she broke the seal of it with her eyes still closed and took a deep, cleansing swig. A metallic taste covered her tongue. The taste of nearby death made her appraise her crew with a wary eye. They couldn't afford to lose another soul in their group. By now she could definitely tell that they'd sensed the danger, too.
Everyone was too quiet, too laid-back, too methodical in the way they'd quickly dispensed with courtesies with the club management, fended off groupies, and then immediately began to break down the equipment to pack up to leave the club without a word. There wasn't the normal backstage revelry; there wasn't any discussion about getting something to eat, or general conversation even. Just a strange nothingness stood between them as they worked like robots at their tasks.
"I'ma go help Rider get the rest of the gear," Jose finally said in a low tone, leaving Damali's side. "Won't be too long."
"You cool?" Marlene asked again, giving her artist a level glance as she gathered up Damali's cast-off costume pieces and thrust them into her mud-cloth satchel. Marlene then looked at Shabazz, who didn't utter a word.
Damali only nodded in Marlene's direction. She noted that J.L., their lighting/keyboard man, also hadn't said two words since they'd entered the room. What was that about?
"Damali's always cool," Shabazz murmured.
Damali stared at him for a moment. Okay, Shabazz was always chill as the group's Aikido instructor/choreographer/bassist. Brother smooth, the director of ice. Martial arts warrior of few words, unless it was much rhetorical philosophy. However, Shabazz had murmured without looking up from helping Joe Leung disassemble and pack sections of the lighting grips and the digital keyboards that masked the vital computer tracking systems they needed. J.L. hadn't looked at Shabazz either, and those two were always in sync and made eye contact. No. Something deep was up.
She studied her crew hard. Marlene, their manager and the guardian seer on violin, normally bristled at the slightest trace of movement and saw everything coming with eagle eyes. What was wrong with Mar tonight? Plus, Marlene wasn't givin' up the tapes. She just kept trying to act like everything was cool, but it wasn't. Shabazz and J.L., also pair sensors - they could actually feel things coming, and could detect a location by simply touching something evil left behind - were tense, on guard, but weren't talking.
Jose and crazy Jake Rider, their guitarist and sharpshooter, shared the capacity to pull the taste and the scent of danger out of the air. They were the noses - and they hadn't been right all night. Then there was Big Mike, their soundman/music director, who could hear what nobody else could, and could also blow the mothers up, literally. An unmatched explosives expert from the era of 'Nam, tonight he was jumpy. That wasn't Big Mike's style. Brother was always laid-back, and the voice of reason in the group.
Together they possessed all five senses, plus the sixth of clairvoyance through Marlene, and yet she was supposed to be the omni-voyant one - possessing all six natural wonders as a vampire huntress, so they'd said. Yeah, right. She hadn't seen any of that grandeur materialize lately. For a while, she was all that. But as of a couple of weeks ago, she felt her gifts, as Marlene referred to them, sliding away from her fast. First her sight, and then some of her physical endurance. Her nose wasn't worth shit as a tracker these days. Taste and sound were off-kilter, too. Then, without warning, each attribute would come back stronger than it had been before. Like power fluctuations during a brownout. Go figure.
All she knew right now was that she was good at kicking ass when she had to - the streets had taught her that, although she'd give props to Shabazz for the Aikido refinement. But if the crew was buggin' this hard, then it was large, whatever it was. That was real.
"Where's Dan?" Damali finally asked. "I don't think it's a good idea to leave him behind this time. He's not a guardian, and if there's trouble out there tonight, he'll be at extreme risk."
"Weinstein is settling with the club owners, and going ahead of us to book a venue in New Orleans before we meet up with him in L.A. Probably the safest bet for his life is to stay away from all of this. The less he knows about this, the better," Mar-lene replied gently. "Daniel's a good man, but he's no guardian, and he definitely isn't a hunter. He has no skill, other than being a fantastic business manager. He should've stayed on the administrative side of things. I told him I had the other aspects of managing the band, but everybody wants to do the glitz and glamour thing."
"Yeah," Damali agreed. "Problem is, he came to an evening performance. Usually he just works the phones by day, ya know? It's getting too hot for him to be out with us, at any time, especially at night."
"I know," Marlene murmured, her gaze going toward the door. "He insisted this time. Wanted to personally experience the phenomenon of Damali so he could better promote her in contract negotiations, he said. I argued with him about it, and thought it was settled, and then he shows up tonight anyway, unannounced. Not good. Too dangerous."
"Every-damned-body wants to be in the mix," Shabazz said with a disgusted sigh. "The limelight. If they only knew."
"When we get back to L.A., I'm going to have to sever him for his own good. Let's just get our innocent home safely. We clean up whatever's out there tonight, and then page the limo to pick Dan up in the front, first, before the limo comes to pick up the team. I'll have to go back to doing the promoting as well as the books, I suppose. But in the meanwhile, I just have to think about what to tell Dan. I'll give him a nice exit package, though. It's at the point where we can't even expose a limo driver to this." Marlene chuckled sadly and addressed Shabazz. "Looks like you'll be driving our limo again, too, after tonight." "No problem." Shabazz shrugged. "It's better that way. Just like old times."
J.L. gave a slow nod of agreement in response to Shabazz. "Yeah, man, but what's taking Rider and Jose so long to break down the set? It's time to bounce. We need those mics - stat." "They ain't breakin' it all the way down," Mike reported in his deep Southern drawl.
"No, not tonight," Rider concurred as he reentered the small space followed by Jose.
Damali didn't comment. Mike Robert's dark face held a nondescript, poker-player blank expression that Damali was used to reading by now. Being an audio-sensor, she wondered if he'd heard anything in the charged atmosphere. That possibility was not lost on her. It was all in the way Big Mike kept stopping and tilting his head like a hunting dog straining to hear something, and then going back to his task. His vibe didn't improve her nerves. Nor did Rider's or Jose's actions help cool her out when they came in the room, breathed deeply, stopped for a beat, and then began moving quickly to convert some of the gear.
Again Damali's gaze scanned the room, returning to Marlene Stone's eyes. Her manager hadn't changed her expression; it contained the same barely concealed tension that it had ever since they'd arrived at the club. Marlene tightened the beaded strap that held back her waist-length, silver-gray locks, and then picked up her walking stick, casting a second one in Damali's direction.