"I know," Marlene murmured. "My second of hesitation almost cost you and members of the team their lives."
Shaking her head, Damali began walking. "No. That's not why you should have told me, Mar. I deserved to know because it was the truth."
They all walked back to the Hum-V and Marlene's Jeep in silence. Damali allowed her thoughts to fuse with Marlene's as she tried to gather some understanding of why Marlene, of all people, would have deceived her with such a lie of omission. Hurt, anger, and disappointment filled her, almost making it impossible for her to summon her gift. But then she focused on the love... which became a mother's heartbreak. Marlene had been a young woman, frightened of her gift, and forced into the role. Damali heard Marlene swallow hard, and could see her eyes glisten with moisture in the moonlight as they cautiously approached their vehicles. She could feel Marlene opening her mind, allowing the connection to be made, as images floated through Damali's psyche.
Marlene had wanted a normal life... had been in love, was pregnant with Christine - who became Raven after the bite. The elders wanted Marlene to protect a Neteru baby... but how did a young, single mother do that without risk to her own unborn child? A choice was made. Marlene opted for safety and ran away. Only to have what she feared most ultimately hunt her down and mistake Marlene's baby girl for the sought vampire huntress - her. Damali released Marlene from the connection. Yes, she knew there was more to the story, but at this moment, she just couldn't deal. Fatigue clawed at her, as did major sadness. She'd trusted Marlene, but could understand... However, that still didn't take away the sting of it all.
"Guys," Dan said quietly, trailing behind the group, "you're not leaving me, right?"
"Hop in, Dan," Rider said with a sigh. "Because of your stupid ass, the rest of our team might be jacked. So, if you're gonna ride with us - shut up."
"Check him out, first," Big Mike instructed. "One of 'em said they couldn't eat the blond. Why not?"
"Probably because they wanted to use him as a decoy, is all," Damali said on a weary exhale. "Remember, when we found him, he was praying and holding onto his star. If he was a vamp helper, they would have used Dan another way... Dan was just a lure - bait - they knew we wouldn't leave him to be eaten alive." She shook her head, and motioned to Big Mike. "Ride shotgun with Marlene, please. I'll drive with Dan and Rider."
"We've gotta tell J.L. and Jose about Raven, and the other stuff," Mike said, his expression sad. "It's time for everybody to be on the same page."
"I know," Damali murmured as the team swept the vehicles for safety and climbed in.
Carlos watched Damali pull away from a distance. He now knew what a Neteru was. He'd seen her fight, and understood her disappointment in her family member all too well. Her pain made him ache to hold her.
Intense remorse filled him as he walked through the ashes of the dead. If he'd only known before. He'd told Raven to stay away from her and Daniel! But Raven had been so bold as to amass her third generations to disobey his telepathic order. It seemed other things besides a well-placed blade could make a vampire lose its head; jealousy, the green-eyed monster. So Raven wanted to wipe out Damali and have him battle Nuit - for her... foolish.
Carlos shook his head. In order not to blow his cover, there had been nothing he could do to help the guardians ward off the unauthorized attack, but remain unseen and yell for Raven to come to him. By the time he'd arrived, the battle was already under way. He could never let Damali see him for what he was now.
Frustration worked on his reason like a chisel, filing away at him. True, he couldn't say he'd never been told about faith in things unseen - but in those days, he didn't believe. Words he'd heard earlier in the night entered his mind... if a man loses faith, then he loses hope. How long had he walked the planet with no faith, and therefore hoping in all the wrong things? Without hope, one cannot love. When Alejandro went down, he'd lost hope, and they got him. Carlos shut his eyes and drifted through the blackness of the woods. But they had also said that if you still had love, the strongest of all gifts, then hope could be restored, as well as faith.
He opened his eyes and followed the Hum-V, watching the red taillights of both guardian vehicles disappear around a curve. The moment that Damali had become seized with worry for her team and electrified by the hunt, her sensations had run all through him. Her breaths had filled his lungs. Her increased heartbeat drummed a rhythm inside his chest. Her tender concern for someone she hardly knew made him taste tears. The sound of her voice made him tremble.
Carlos walked to the side of the road and stared at its vacancy, again closing his eyes, and shuddered when he deeply inhaled the fragrance Damali left behind once more.
"He's with the doctors," Shabazz said quietly as the team entered the waiting room. "I know you're still bent on going, but he won't make it to New Orleans tomorrow... By the time we got him out of the compound, he was almost in a coma."
Damali sat down slowly beside Mike as Shabazz leaned forward with his forearms resting on his thighs.
"We've never sustained a compound attack like that," he whispered, his gaze coming up from the floor to lock stares with each member of the group before going back to Damali. "J.L. almost bought it."
She looked up at J.L. who was pacing like a cat until Mike steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.
"I had to attempt to reboot the security systems to give us enough juice to at least get into the four-by-four and then hope we could get the automatic doors to open... I was only like thirty seconds behind Mar and Shabazz - who was carrying Jose, when the generators got knocked out."
"Mar kicked some butt in the dark, second sight - sister fought blind, like a pro. Took a head with a battle-ax, and her walking stick did the rest so she could catch up with you guys. Glad to see everybody made it back in one piece." Shabazz breathed out hard.
"She used her stick to keep them off my back while I threw a few grenades into the Jeeps to clear them out, and then dumped Jose in - but three of 'em slithered out from under them. They went for J.L. who got one crossbow shot off in the hall. He got one vamp, but then it was on. I almost couldn't get to him fast enough."
"Only thing that saved my ass," J.L. said in a distant voice, "was fiber-optic thread."
The team looked at J.L., and then glanced at each other.
"Me and Jose had been working on a new shark suit design for Damali. We had made these handheld concert lights with the leftovers, trying to think of things we could get mass produced for the audience."
From the back pockets in his jeans, J.L. pulled out two silver-plated, four-inch-long cylinders the width of a double-A battery that had a thicket of nylon-thread hairs sprouting from the tops.
"Looks like the average five-dollar concert trinket, but we put UV bulbs in them. Figured at the big show, we could do an anthem that tells everybody to turn on their light to make sure kids buy them on the way in, and we can sneak them past the vamp crew and any vamp helpers - because they look like nothing harmful. Standard concert junk."
Damali nodded as the group huddled closer, accepting the ingenious decoy with a slow smile. "J.L., you guys are brilliant."
"You shoulda seen him work with 'em though, D," Shabazz murmured, and pounded J.L.'s fist. "Jet Li - type vibe. Brotherman was fighting for his life, running up the sides of the garage walls, leaving a burn with every flip, and backed the two remaining ones up enough for me to get my stake on with Marlene. Then we had to manually open the door - which was not fun."