Damali's line of vision searched the deadly serious faces around the table.
"We let you have time to be a kid," Jose murmured. "Because we love you."
"Yeah. Information like this sorta blows the groove, doesn't it?" Rider let out a weary sigh. "Hell, after the first attack, Marlene didn't even want us to explain it to you, because she wanted you to still have a little more time."
Shabazz nodded, and then pounded Rider and Big Mike's fists.
"The forces of light came to Marlene in a vision. That's why Marlene, a guide, found you. Seers are always the ones to locate a Neteru and form the circle of protective guardians around him or her - and that's why during religious purges, seers are the first to be put to the stake. Kill the visionaries - the seers - and a slayer can be lost in the mix. But the Divine always knows where you are. The planetary alignment signaled when you will come into all your powers - three inner planets signaled three months from the alignment." Shabazz used his hands to speak, drawing out the constellation for Damali as he tried to get her to understand.
"One outer planet signaled the lesson that must be learned in one month - your birth month. The last large planet, Jupiter - a massive planet signaled a massive event soon to come. But it's also the planet of good luck."
"Then, let the chips ride on the big Jupiter bastard, then," Rider said, letting his breath out hard. "Man!"
"Rider, your mouth," Marlene warned, shaking her head. "I know it's hard to change, but please. We are trying to school a Neteru."
"Sorry, Mar. Old habits die hard. Been cooped up for months; I have a slight verbal aggression issue." Rider chuckled as Marlene raised an eyebrow and Shabazz let his breath out slowly again.
Damali couldn't focus on Rider's sidebar commentary. Instead, she just shook her head as she stared at the team. Too much had come at her too fast. Yeah, she knew there were these things called vamps. Yeah, she knew there was above and below ... a lot she'd learned, but that was more abstract before, and today it was applied science - the mathematics of it, the planets, the physics, secret armies. The logic. Whew...
"How do you g*ys just know all this stuff?"
"Unfortunately," Big Mike said with a weary sigh after a moment, "we had to research it - some the easy way, some the hard way. Each one of us went through our own personal trial by fire. We each survived an attack, and were then led to another person like us, who had also survived an attack. Baby girl, you aren't the only one who grew up feeling weird as a kid."
Mike glanced at the team and received nods of confirmation. "Heck, when I was younger, I thought I was crazy. I could hear things nobody else could hear. Scared the heebee-jeebies out of me, most times. So, I didn't tell nobody, never. It was my secret, until one day something rolled up on me and I had to deal with it."
"Word," Shabazz muttered. "I could be out in the hood playing B-ball, and brush up on somebody, and feel when they were gonna die. Or give an aunt a hug and know her time was limited. We've all been there, Damali. Everybody's had their own private wake-up call. We all have a long story, and we wanted you to have as much time being a kid as you could."
"Yeah," Big Mike agreed. "We didn't find you until we were readied, either. You had to be in a place in your head where you were ready to be found, had seen enough stuff on your own to accept protection - -just like we all had to."
"Right," Jose agreed. "And we all had to be ready ... it took us time, too, to learn to accept the cosmic laws of reciprocity. We would teach you and be taught by you. We will hunt and be hunted. We will guard you and be guarded by you. We will defend you and also sustain attacks from the vamps. Whatever we all do follows the natural and supernatural laws of energy exchange, Damali." Jose labored as he spoke, and his body slumped from the mere exertion of his statement.
"Here on Earth is the gray zone; it's both light and dark here," Marlene said as everyone nodded. "In this war, the good and the bad pull from the casualties of that war - the choice border, Earth. That's what we defend."
"Last night, your metabolism changed," Shabazz said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Second sight, olfactory and taste awareness, tactical sensing, increased audio capacity strength. When the seventh one hits ..."
Damali kept Shabazz's gaze trapped with her own as his voice trailed off. So much had come to her at once that she could no longer get inside the group's heads. Part of her didn't want to. Before today, she'd never mentally probed them - but it had been a reflex when it happened this time. But now it was almost as though they'd thrown up a mental barrier to her thoughts, and when she looked at Marlene, all she saw was blackness. Why would Marlene block her that hard now? "What's the seventh?"
Thoughts, emotions, and an ache so deep that she couldn't move, battered her - her heart hurt. She just stared at the people around her, listening, trying to make sense of the insane. But they were forcing her to grow up overnight and fast-forwarding her awareness. The shift in tempo of the group was dizzying.
"Later," Shabazz said, shaking his head. "Marlene will go over that one-on-one. We need to look at the map." Shabazz went to the weapons table and gave Damah his back to consider. "Our people are going down, as are Blood Music's and Carlos's - forming a triangulation of activity between here, Carlos's hub, and New Orleans where the bullshit began."
"The vamps have eyes everywhere - normal joes who do their bidding ... think this big worldwide concert has anything to do with it?" J.L. fired up one of his computers, and clicked on the attached projector, shining a map of the world on the wall whiteboard. Using a laser pen, he drew a line between the five selected continents, marking the cities where the concerts were to be held. "It looks like a giant pentagram. Anybody want to bet that the dark realm has claimed all the space between the points as the place where their major attack will be mounted?"
Marlene sent a glare so sharp and with such warning embedded in it toward J.L. that he looked away. If Damali didn't know better, she would have sworn Marlene wanted to cut the man's tongue out. Deep. Later, like Shabazz said. However, this time when the group fell silent, the quiet horror they shared was audible. No words were needed.
"We've been following the attacks happening to Blood in the papers, just like we've been following what's up at Carlos's joint. We can probably rule out that his performers are vampires, because to perform, they have to cast an image," Jose rasped, countering Marlene's glare as the group's peacemaker. Despite his weakened condition he appeared to be desperately trying to restore civility. "Their artists are doing music videos, interviews, traveling on planes during the day, whatever."
"Have you seen 'em lately?" Big Mike argued. "They look like walking death, too. Might drop and turn any minute. Never can tell, if this old master vamp, Fallon Nuit, runs Blood Music."
Shabazz shook his head. "Vampires have normal business operations to keep them rolling in capital. They don't feed on everything around them; that would be stupid - and the last thing vampires are is stupid. The only reason this world concert made us sit up and pay attention is because J.L. showed the team that the locations formed a pentagram. That part is not a coincidence. So what if their artists look like hell? Plenty of goths look like death warmed over, too."
"Drugs will do that to you," Rider said with a sigh. "We can't go staking what we think are negative artists on a hummer - even if they can't play a lick of music and their act reeks. I believe cops will call that Murder One." Rider made little quotes around the word "negative" as he glanced from Big Mike to Damali.
"No," Rider added in slow contemplation. "If they're casting an image, they aren't a part of the equation - except as possible master vamp helpers. Hell, we've had presidents that were surrounded, and they were even guarded by Secret Service from a master vamp's groupies. Every part of the world has had a leader that was either surrounded, or compromised, at one juncture or another. A coupla hot music artists doesn't stress me. Vamp traitors gotta make money, too. That's part of the deal - your soul for millions, power, and fame. Basic. Once the deal is made, a human is marked for that master vamp. However, vamps don't generally do their marked human helpers ... so it might be safe to say that wherever bodies are dropping might just be happy hunting grounds."
"No, listen," Damali said, finding her voice as she approached the map. "Didn't you all say they stake out territory like wolves and fight if lines are crossed? Well, this concert is being simulcast - which means that they had to form an alliance across competing vampire borders. If what you're telling me is true, they're not supposed to do that, right?" She glanced around and then wiped the perspiration from her brow. "Either there's been a weird alliance, or one master vampire has taken out a lot of competition to be able to cross vamp borders worldwide."
"Li'l sis has got an excellent point," Rider conceded, finding a stool and sitting down again. "Damn. Maybe the bodies dropping had to do with some war we didn't see coming, some subsurface event that was hiding in plain sight - just like this slayer is. What if that's why the killings were all so brutal, and not the normal, smooth, two-hole bite? Ever think of that? A vampire version of a drive-by, maybe?"