"For real, for real." J.L. laughed nervously. "I'd rather take on the Asian mob, or the freakin' Russian dealers. I can handle a drive-by," he added, tucking in his khaki T-shirt, hoisting up his fatigues, rolling his neck, and then checking the laces of his army boots before he straightened himself again. "Been there, seen it, done that growing up in Laos. I mean, we don't even know what we're dealing with out there tonight." He shook his head. "I've got a bad vibe. I've never seen Damali or Marlene look like this after a gig. Your run-of-the-mill demon, one or two vamps, are one thing, but this vibe is freaky. Don't wanna have to do nobody I know, you know what I mean?" He looked at Wizard, and then looked away.
"True dat," Jose added with a melancholy tone. "They call me Wizard because I can design some def shit, but I ain't no magician. Dis ain't da barrios either, man. Ain't the Columbians or da Dominicans tonight, boss. I jus' ... I jus' hope Dee Dee's not out there."
Damali and Marlene glanced at each other. Everybody knew the Dee Dee situation was going to be the hardest one to cope with. When Rider had mentioned her name, everybody had paused. How did one put a stake in a teammate's lover and then have things go back to normal? Wasn't possible. Jose would be messed up for a long time if his dead girlfriend was out there. Before she'd gotten nicked, Dee Dee had been like family to all of them. Poor Jose didn't even have a chance to ID her body at the morgue, because like the rest of their dead crew, the bodies had vanished from the slabs before they could get there.
Damali's glance ricocheted around the group. Yeah, they all knew it.
Chapter Three
"I gotcha back on that one, Wizard," Big Mike reassured him after a moment, pounding Jose's fist in the process. "Cool?"
"Yeah. I'm cool, man." Jose checked the settings on his crossbow as he answered, but did not look up. "You do her, though, if she's out there. Okay?"
Mike nodded, his massive walnut-colored hand splaying across Jose's lean, sinewy shoulder. "The sooner we do this, the sooner we do this, little bro."
"And the sooner we can get on a plane, and can sleep for five hours before we land in the morning at LAX," Shabazz reminded the group. "Focus. We need a full day and the time the sunlight provides to check the compound out, and make sure we still have a secure base. They've got regular people like us siding with the vamps for power and money who can get past the vampire traps. Remember that. We don't even rehash or strategize on the flight, because you never know who's listening. So let's just do this and be out."
"Might be nothing," Jose offered. "We've been strapped up before, all ready to rock 'n' roll, and only one or two of 'em was out there - or none, and we just had the heebie-jeebies."
"That's the best way to get yourself nicked, or worse," Damali warned. She carefully chose her words and spoke with full authority, trying to be sure that her team was clear about the danger this time out. One by one, she looked each crew member in the eyes. "Don't let your guard down - not at night. Not tonight."
"I got Raven," Shabazz said quietly, watching Marlene, "if she's out there. Nobody should have to do a person they've loved. You don't have to carry that burden, baby. I'll carry that load, if it comes to it."
Marlene nodded, but the emotional wear from his reassurance almost made her face appear to age as the group waited for her response. "Thanks."
Damali let a tender gaze rest with Marlene's. It was clear that for all of Marlene's hard edge, the woman was breaking inside. Made sense, now, why Mar had been riding her so hard all day. She must have telepathically picked up Raven nearby, and it had to hurt Marlene so badly that their auxiliary seer was slowly going blind. Marlene's voice had been just above a whisper when she'd spoken to Shabazz. Damn.
"You good?" Marlene asked Damali after a moment, shifting gears and obviously submerging her own pain.
"Yeah, I'm good," Damali responded on a long exhale, while pushing herself away from the place on the wall where she'd been temporarily leaning. "I'm always good." She had to say something to get the group's confidence back. But the question remained, if Marlene was blanking because of Raven's possible presence, then who was out there that was making her blank? Seeing Dee Dee would definitely hurt, but wouldn't rock her to the core like that. It had to be more than that.
"Then, let's pray," Marlene began, joining hands with Damali and Shabazz until each member of the team was linked in a circle. "May the power of the Most High, the Giver of True Light protect us, and send a battalion of warrior angels to flank us and cover us ... let no weapon formed agamst us prosper. Let our circle remain unbroken. Ashe."
A dull chorus of "Amens" followed, and one by one hands slipped away from hands, and palms gripped gear and weapons in the place of human flesh. Damali looked into the eyes of each of her mentors, guides, trainers, crew, who had become her beloved family - like older brothers, people that she'd never had connections to by blood but who were now linked to her soul in spirit... just like Marlene had become the mother she never had.
Whatever was waiting for them, whatever hunted them, had a darkness more vast than she'd ever sensed before, and if any of the team of seven fell on this full-moon eve, she wondered whether that would be the final stake driven through her own heart. Damali glanced around at each member of her team and gave them the nod. There was only one way to find out what was in the streets.
"Let's do this."
damali listenedbeyond the steady drone of the air-conditioner compressors that wafted down the vacant alley. The low hum resonated through her as she tried to get her bearings. Humidity hung about the guardian-huntress team like a thick cloak. It was hard to breathe in air so dense. The summer heat combined with the dampness felt like a shroud. She glanced at her squad and the way everyone's shirts had begun to stick to them just that fast. Nervous perspiration was also a probable cause. Extra adrenaline was a good thing. Her ears strained to detect anything abnormal while her team's footsteps echoed against the gray, rounded cobblestone as they walked in formation.
This was an alley probably filled with ghosts, she told herself, her gaze sweeping the terrain. Original architecture, old buildings, hidden openings. She hated shit like this. New buildings were clean, better, easier to spot a sudden movement against. The bricks probably hadn't been replaced since the sixteen hundreds, and the Society Hill alley was still as narrow as it had been during Ben Franklin's era. Joint even emptied out to the old slave-auction square. No wonder everybody had the creeps. Stupid developers had cranes up a few blocks away digging in slave burial grounds, too. Who knew what else they'd dug up? All she knew was they'd better chill, before they unearthed some real deep shit. Maybe that was all she and the team had sensed. A massive, disturbed gravesite.
From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a rat scurry behind a Dumpster. Others on her team had seen it, too. Yeah, they were on guard. Cool. Everybody had clutched their weapons tighter, and the muscles in their arms had tensed. That was good. Nobody was sleepin' on the job. Might save their lives if they noticed something as small as that.
But there should have been more noise coming from the club and the streets beyond the alley; more sound. Damali tilted her head. Something was wrong. It didn't take three seconds to process the answer. Just as she thought. No security. Not even the cops were out there. But that didn't account for the eerie absence of sound. The human vampire helpers had obviously been there to create a diversion, and had gotten any witnesses out of the alley - but that still didn't answer the sound question. When she heard Big Mike's footfalls stop behind her, Damali glanced over her shoulder at him and listened harder.
"It's too quiet," Big Mike remarked as the team cautiously paused in the alley before advancing.
Shabazz just nodded, flexing his right hand and rolling his shoulder. "No cops. No back-door security. Nobody out here going for a smoke - you know when it's dead like this, trouble's brewing. I don't like the vibe out here. I'm feeling the hair stand up on the back of my neck."
"I don't like it, either," Jose agreed, breathing deeply and closing ranks tighter while they all surveyed the dark, narrow back street. "I'm tracking a scent. Coming from that direction," he added with a nod.
"Sulfur." Rider sniffed the air and quickly hocked and spit on the ground in disgust. "I hate the taste of that shit. I'm just glad it's not raining."
"Time for the Twenty-third," Marlene muttered, her line of vision glancing to Dumpsters, darkened doorways, and then up to the fire escapes that hung above them like huge, blackened skeletal remains.
Damali nodded and started walking again, her team resuming their original formation. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ..."