"He saved me, guys, remember?" Dan said fast. "This guy put everything on the line, fellas. Seriously." Standing, Dan's expression held an apology.
"Rider, stop. Put the weapon down, okay?" Damali shook her head and stood in front of Carlos. Although fatigue had dimmed her sensory awareness, common sense still prevailed. If Carlos were a vampire, or vamp helper, no religious guy would have let him know their location. The Templars weren't that sloppy.
"If a Templar sent you," Marlene said suspiciously. "Then?" But Marlene pulled back a bit and folded her arms. "How about if you stay on that side of the room, and Damali comes this way and stands with us... just till we get comfortable. We don't get many visitors at night around here - none that don't bear fangs."
"You know, Mar, now that you mention it, the hair is standing up on my arms." Shabazz bristled and picked up a weapon, glancing at Big Mike and J.L. who gave him a nod and flanked him. "Damali, come on over to this side of the room."
"No! Would you guys stop? Carlos, show them whatever it is you came to show us."
"Thanks, D," Carlos murmured. The fact that she had remained on his side of the room was not lost on him at all. The Templar had made good on both parts of his agreement; he'd get him into the compound and would try to surround him with enough mercy that the guardians wouldn't sense his vampire status. But he only had a few minutes. Damali and her team, although weary, had keen sensory ability. He had to talk fast and get out.
"I got a newspaper shoved through my front mail slot, and inside of it were some drawings I couldn't understand at first... until this guy came and told me to choose wisely - then rolled. It was the weirdest thing. Said something about New Orleans, and bullshit going down at the big international concert. I figured one or two things - either the guy was whack and could pose a threat, so you should know, or, it had something to do with all this bizarre shit we've seen lately."
One by one the stances before him relaxed, and Carlos kept his attention roving over their expressions. It was a definite standoff, and the monitor behind the guy J.L. disturbed him. It was flashing like wild, but he'd been able to mute the sound. His attention was divided between too many things at once. It was sapping him to project, cover the hole in his shirt, conceal the ring, keep the alarms from sounding, stand away from any unusual lights on the table; the smell of holy water and incense was wearing him out, as was Damali's fragrance. The joint was a freakin' oven, he had to materialize maps, and hope the guardians would heed the tunnel layouts before daylight came and the illusion of the maps torched... and the big guy named Mike kept tilting his head like a bloodhound, like he could hear something, and the hunger was beginning to come back - the energy drain was kickin' his ass. He'd need to feed again after all this.
"Look," Carlos said, tossing the maps out for the guy named Mike to catch. "I don't know why I bothered. Turn off the lights, and I'm out. No need in jeopardizing you all - I have a lot of people looking for me. Dig? I want to slide out of here cool like, and not get sprayed when I roll."
The attention of Damali's palace guards went to the maps, and the blinking monitor no longer made the huge brother keep tilting his head. They descended upon the information like vultures, but he was curious - Damali hung back, near him. Deep.
"Where did you really get that, Carlos?" She'd whispered the question so quietly that she'd almost mouthed it instead of speaking.
The complexity of her question, and the way her voice had murmured, made him step closer to her than was advisable. The nearness was working on the wrong side of his brain, gnawing it away from cool logic.
"Now is not the time, but you have to trust me."
She nodded, and put her hand on his arm. He stood there glancing at her team as they absorbed the information, trying his best not to breathe too much of her in. The heat of her hand was melting his common sense. He needed to get out of there. Now.
"Do you know what this is, dude?" Rider walked around the table and saluted.
Shabazz and Big Mike gave a grudging nod.
"Looks like these things can open up a portal at will - big change," Shabazz muttered. "Not good."
"Apparently, there was an alliance formed," Carlos began with caution. "We're in the last days, the knight said, and key sectors of the demon realms have joined with a major sector of the vampire empire. Evil is concentrating, gaining force."
"A vampire-Amanthra hybrid..." Marlene whispered, making the group stare at her. "I didn't think it was possible, because the two species are enemies. But now it all makes sense."
"That's what the superstitious guy said." Carlos allowed his statement to sink into the wary team around him, and just pointed toward the maps without crossing the invisible boundary that had been drawn between the sides.
"He went on and on about how it used to be that the vampires could only come up through lair sites - burial sites, where they kept their coffins, and had to have human helpers move their coffins from place to place. But, under Fallon Nuit, he made a pact with the demons, and can use demon transport levels to move underground without human support - like high-speed train zones through the third and fourth layers of Hell. Like I said, do what you want with the info. He was talking some crazy shit. I need to go."
"Man, you mean these things can just take a Concorde up from Hell and exit at any demon portal? Or they can jet underground and come up through any of Nuit's or his vampire line's lairs without aboveground movement?"
"Gone are the days of having Igor move a vamp's coffin in a horse and buggy and stow it in a basement, I guess," J.L. said with sarcasm. "This is the era of the global economy, brothers."
Carlos nodded to confirm the answer to Rider's question and to add weight to J.L.'s statement. Things had changed, and it was better that Damali's squad knew that, and didn't underestimate what they were dealing with.
"That's what happened in Philly - it was like sound got sucked right out of the air in a vacuum, then vamps came up. We'd seen 'em manifest before, but not with the total absence of sound." Mike let his breath out and just shook his head. "This is problematic."
"Understatement," Rider muttered.
"The absence of sound is a result of the speed and the matter displacement. Demons move in silence - as do ghosts, but the vampires have more density, which is why they hold their form... unless they will a transformation into something else." Marlene shook her head. "It's all so clear. But I don't know how to block a moving target."
The team passed nervous glances between them. Carlos struggled as much with his desire to tell them more in order to give them a fighting chance, as he did with the oppressive environment they had him now trapped within. But he needed to get them to understand before he got out of there.
"Other master vampires cannot use the tunnels - Nuit was the only one who formed an alliance... the religious guy said." Carlos shrugged, trying to seem blase about the whole thing, but they were staring at him hard. "He said those zones are heavily guarded by very militant elementals that were marginalized by the vampire empire. The shit is getting ready to be on, from what I understand. You have the old vampire guard who can't maintain unilateral power for business as usual, you have the new guard who don't know how to utilize their power without running amuck - and neither side can keep a lid on the chaos. There are side deals and pacts being made everywhere."
"You seem very well-versed - if not intimate, with the whole issue at hand," Shabazz said in an even tone as he slowly looked up from a map.