"I ought to be," Carlos admitted, shaking his head. He had to think fast on his feet. He'd f**ked up, had told them way too much in his urgency to protect Damali. He and Shabazz were from the same badlands in the past, and the bottom line was that a brother from the hood could smell bullshit a mile away - sensory gift or not. Shabazz wasn't even one of the noses, but he could feel shit.
Carlos passed his line of vision over the group in a slow, serious rove. "They did my brother, my cousin, my two best friends... you read how they found them - their mothers couldn't even bury them right. So, maybe that's why the Templar dude, being of the cloth and all, had some mercy and filled me in. That 'was cool of him, given that I was on a rampage to find out who did it. Maybe they just didn't want me to snuff somebody innocent and start a damned war."
"You're starting to believe this stuff, aren't you?"
Damali's question hacked at him. If she only knew. Believe? He'd seen both sides: a slice of Heaven and a whole lotta Hell. If he could just draw her into his arms and explain how this crazy bullshit had gone down... and why it was now so important for her to trust him - if it was the last thing she did... even if he was mixing truth with the evasions and lies now - it was coming from a correct place in his heart. He tried to send it by thought, but gave up, afraid to chance it. Not now. He was already spread too thin.
"I'm starting to see things that I never understood before," he told her truthfully. "I don't know what to think, or what to do, so I came here. That's all I can tell you."
"I know exactly where you are," she whispered, and briefly looked away.
When her line of vision broke its hold on his, the absence of those deep, brown orbs of understanding made his chest cavity constrict from the loss. I never want to hurt you, baby... that's why I can't stay much longer. He had to get it together. Pull out of his own thoughts. He'd lapsed, trying to talk to her from his mind.
But that was pushing the envelope - he had to focus to keep all illusions intact.
"What's in this level three tunnel, man? Or on level four? A demon grabbed at Damali today, and I'd like to know what we're up against if we have to go after it." Rider had set down his weapon to hold an edge of the map, but kept sniffing, and then appeared to shake off a disturbing scent.
Carlos glanced at her. "You all right, baby?" He could feel possessiveness riddle him. Who'd attacked her?!
She nodded, and he looked up at the team.
"I'm okay," she murmured, and came closer to him, burning his shoulder where her hand landed. "Don't worry."
Carlos remained very, very still. He had to. He simply looked at her as she'd touched him. It had seemed like she'd extended her arm in slow motion, and he could see her pulse beat in the delicate inside of her elbow, right where the forearm connected to the upper arm, and beneath her bronze skin a faint blue-green vein hid... moving life through her. The motion was mesmerizing, as was the scent that the shifted air carried when she'd reached for him. And she wanted him to stay tonight for his own safety... to sleep in her room, love her hard and fast then tender so she didn't have to think about tomorrow. Had she any idea?
"I know you got a torch for my baby sis and all, brother, but you need to check them heat-seeking looks toward her while she's got six glocked-up brothers and a momma who can fight, staring you in the face."
Whoa, bad slip. Way out of order. The big brother had bristled, rightfully so. All Carlos could do was nod and wait for the ruffled feathers to settle. Shit, he had to get out of there. Damali was a telepath - even if he wasn't sending, she was receiving, and it was messing with his cool. Baby, please stop.
"Mike, please," Damali whispered. "Can we stick to the matter at hand?"
This situation was getting confusing, and way too tense. Carlos let out his breath hard and raked his fingers through his hair.
"Listen, man, here's the deal - all bullshit aside. On level one, you have your average run-of-the-mill ghosts, haints, souls that died with a grudge in their hearts, issues, and whateva. Level two, they get a little more trippy - like the poltergeists and the kind of mess that can possess somebody to do some whack shit in one second, then make them all of a sudden wake up from the daze, and not know anything about the three bodies in the room with them."
"Keep talking," Rider said. "The man is making sense here."
"All right," Carlos pressed. "I'ma say this one time like the guy told me, then I'm out. I've got things to do. He said, the further down you go, the less ghost-like the demon becomes, and the more solid it becomes as the density gets thicker - it compresses the soul weight and creates these hideous deformities, and the souls that were once within those things are jacked and stored to be fed on within the levels, twisted like the demon's bodies are. The third level is where vengeance creatures come from and their territory is so wide it overlaps a part of the fourth level... So you've got your recipe for the garden-variety demon. By the time you get all the way down, though, now you are in a very sophisticated space. These are the things that take on the original form of man. The longer the being can hold its human form, the more sophisticated - like the difference between werewolves, a level five, and vamps - level six."
J.L. nodded, appraising the maps. "It's like a deconstruction/ reconstruction pattern. First the body dies, the soul leaves - if it goes down to level one, it remains this floating, unformed negative energy. The further it gets pushed down, based on the weight of the sins on its back, depends on what level it clocks in at. Then there's the crossover zone," he added, pointing on the map that three people held.
"Yeah," Carlos said, pleased. "Level four. From there the physical matter starts trying to come back into its original form for reentry into the world. As above, so below. From above it is a very cool process - that's where babies come from."
Carlos chuckled, and Shabazz and Big Mike gave him a lopsided smile along with Rider.
"But," Marlene said in a quiet voice. "Coming from the other direction, the birth process is backward. It spews up fully formed, already corrupted, and at the end of its life horrible entities - instead of innocent, not fully formed, growing, at the start of its life beauty."
The group fell quiet for a moment, and Carlos studied them, remembering Marlene's loss, and his own. He could have sworn that Damali visibly cringed as Marlene had spoken. It was as though her hand had mentally reached out to touch his face, but then retreated. Maybe it was just the bitter agony of hearing himself described as a creature of the night that had made him believe such a foolish thing. Maybe it was simply knowing that a mother stood in the room, remembering what her baby was like before it had been turned. Although they were blind to him, he could pull from them, and both seers barraged him with truths that hurt too much to think about. Now all of those emotions crushed in on him. But he could still swear that Damali had reached out in her mind to stop the pain.
"What's on level seven?" Dan murmured.
"The exact opposite of what's in seventh Heaven," Damali said softly, "and we don't even name it in this compound."
"Okay," Rider said on a long breath. "So. If Nuit's gang can use the demon high-speed-line, and won't have traditional above-ground coffins, how do we find them?"
Carlos put his hands behind his back and began to pace to keep from touching Damali. "His spot in New Orleans has a door."
"Been there, seen it, done it, not going back," Rider said emphatically, shaking his head.