Trying not to smile as Nuit's knees buckled, Carlos opened his eyes and glanced away.
"She's beyond awesome... think of what delivering that first break of skin will be like - especially if she turns her throat to you with her panties wet and begs you to take both her neck and her - "
"Stop." Nuit's fangs glistened in the darkness. He couldn't even pull them back. Water dripping from overhead provided the only sound that echoed between them. "Two more evenings - you just used up one..."
"That's why I said, back off with the random hits. If you kill her, or she gets hurt - or one of her people gets jacked, she will go into deep mourning... she'll never come to you for years."
"Whatever you want - work the strategy to bring her to me like that. If you can get inside her head, inside her compound... can get her to follow you to me - then do it! What else in the territory do you want? Name it."
Nuit stalked back and forth running his tongue over his incisors, trying to regain his composure. "Three thousand years since they made a female Neteru - and we thought they wouldn't make another one. Since that time, they've only made males." He held Carlos in a furtive gaze. "Do you understand?"
"Hell yeah, I understand what jonesing for Damali is like." Carlos chuckled, an earnest one from his core.
"You want the first daywalker female off the line?"
"Is that a rhetorical question, or are you playing with me?"
Nuit laughed with Carlos. "Done."
"Appreciate it, man, 'cause I'm all f**ked up - don't trust myself to even run from the sun... 'cause I wanna sit outside her window so bad. I don't want anything you find at the don's when you clean out his place. Can't go there after getting a Neteru in my nose. You feel me?"
Nuit walked toward the tunnel exit nodding. "Yes. I definitely 'feel you,' and I imagine it is difficult to step down when you've been so close." Nuit paused and gave Carlos a furtive glance. "Fifteen minutes, and the lair will be yours. Bring me more word and scent of her next evening. I need to smell her again."
"Done." Carlos leaned against the wall as Nuit vanished.
Information was knowledge, and knowledge was a powerful thing. In the disgusting exchange, he'd moved up in the ranks, took out an old enemy, scored a plush lair, and bought Damali and her crew a valuable, temporary off-limits marker. Baby might have a coupla days of peace. But would he? Regardless, he had inadvertently become a triple agent by making alliances across three borders - Nuit, the Vampire Council, and possibly with the invisible DEA - the forces of light. Question was, how to play it.
Still, not bad for the first night on the job.
The stricken look on Marlene's face chilled Damali. If Marlene had seen them... Humiliation made her cheeks warm, and it was hard to hold her gaze.
"Big Mike told the others about what happened out there with Raven," Marlene whispered. She cast her gaze out the window as she spoke in a quiet voice that trembled. "I should have told all of you that she was my daughter... but... I couldn't deal with it. I wanted to put the fact that she was once my child out of my mind. I loved her, Damali," she murmured as she swallowed hard.
Marlene's eyes held such pain that Damali was almost forced to look away. "Carried her in my body, and put her to my breast. She was my baby... and Nuit took her when she was your age. She was like you in so many ways... beautiful, talented, headstrong, and fearless. Thought nothing could happen to her that she couldn't handle, and that I was just Mom who didn't understand the 'happening' new world. She wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't heed my advice, and the streets took her, and then he got her. She was wide open, and vulnerable... maybe that's why I was so hard on you. I was afraid that I was watching history repeat itself."
"Mar - "
"I know I didn't do right by you, child," Marlene said fast, cutting off Damali's words quickly and wrapping her arms about herself. "God forgive me... I just couldn't take care of you both, and I thought if I gave you to people who had resources, and if you were hidden... I just thought that maybe we'd all be spared. But he came, not knowing I was pregnant when I ran, and thought my Christine was you... then he turned her into Raven. The joke was on him, though. She wasn't a Neteru. You were safe, and that was my consolation for a long time. It's all good. I have to believe that, or else I just won't be able to go on."
Two large tears formed in Marlene's eyes, and Damali went to her. Although it had been a relief that Marlene hadn't witnessed her intimate exchange with Carlos, she didn't want a telepathy block from pain like this to be the reason Marlene's second sight was down. She was also sorry she'd been the one that had to kill Raven with the sword Raven's own mother had given her... and now, holding Marlene in a tender hug, she felt all the reasons Marlene kept things from her.
Yes, she could understand. How would a young, pregnant woman in love explain vampires to a lover? How would a young woman cope, in that day and age, with being left to bear a child alone, predators all around her, and no momma or family to help her because she had to run away and hide in order to protect them? How was Marlene to care for an infant that would bring vampires constantly sniffing, and still protect and provide for a baby, as well as her unborn child or herself, for that matter?
Damali closed her eyes, holding Marlene tighter. Oh, Marlene... Yes, she'd seen teenage mothers in the street with no support, no skills, no money, no education, no parenting skills, and preyed on by guys who'd just stop, drop, and roll them. Yeah, she'd witnessed how that struggle ravaged the hope and potential from so many young girls. It had been the thing that had kept her straight - seeing with her own eyes, and maybe having unknown second sight, at that time, had helped her make wiser choices. There but for the grace she went. She could have gone out like that, too. Marlene had been practically a child herself... young, alone, afraid - with no money, no real skills or education, no defenses, and had to live by her wits and her gift. God in heaven, what would she have done if she had to walk a mile in Marlene's shoes?
Damali stroked Marlene's back as she held her, hoping that the aging guardian still had enough sensory battery left to feel the healing of her touch and be able to sense without words the forgiveness being transmitted to her. Yes, it was so true. The things Marlene had taught her were right... judge not, lest ye be judged. You never know what scars another person carries deep within them that causes them to act the way they do. She remembered Rider's story, and the things Big Mike had said about his own childhood. Then there was Jose's pain. She knew Shabazz carried his secret hurts so deeply that no one on the team really had the full story about what had happened to him. And Lord knows what J.L. had experienced in Laos.
Her thoughts drifted to Carlos, and she wondered what scars he'd carried that had made him choose the life that he did. They all had long stories...
"Mar, I am so sorry I had to be the one to... release Raven's soul," Damali murmured into her hair. She couldn't even bring herself to call it what it was. She couldn't describe Raven's demise in the crude terms the team normally used to verbally distance themselves from what they had to do. How could she say "put down," "drop," "stake," "take out," "roll," "splatter," or "gut," when talking about the loss of Marlene's daughter? Marlene had been right about that, too. Words had power. Vocabulary was important. Maybe if people called it what it really was, then the very thought of "doing somebody" would give them pause, and they'd think twice about murdering another human being. But that's just the thing, Marlene's daughter wasn't human, which is what was breaking Marlene's heart.
"I'm so sorry," Damali repeated. "Oh, Mar... I won't even claim to know how you feel."
"No, thank you, baby," Marlene said on a shaky sigh. "You just put my daughter's soul to rest. I couldn't have done it. I didn't have it in me. That's why I hesitated in battle. I'd keep seeing her face when she was a toddler... I'd think about how she'd climb into bed at night with me so we could read stories, or how proud she was of her first little gold star in school." Marlene drew a ragged breath. "As a mother... you think about all the good, and wonder how it could have gotten so bad, and you lacerate yourself wondering where you went wrong... how could I have let her get taken by evil... and they call me a guardian? I couldn't even protect my own child."
Marlene's shoulders shook as Damali held her and rocked her for a long time. The sun peeked out from behind the deep gray haze of clouds as the sky gave birth. All Damali could do during the transition was stroke Marlene's hair and let her cry.
"We have to get back to the group," Marlene murmured. "None of us has really slept, the compound is breached... and I can't see. I was already weak from laying hands on Jose, then the fight to get out of the compound, and then... Raven. I'm totally blind, Damali. I'm no more good to you. My second sight is just blackness. I can't get past the pain to concentrate."