"You're awful quiet, brother Shabazz," Rider said with a sheepish grin as Marlene stormed from the room.
"Do you know what the significance is of the seventh trait that you guard? The last thing that will happen to our girl on her birthday?"
The team fell silent and gave Shabazz their attention, casting nervous glances between them. Finally Big Mike shrugged. "She'll get stronger, the hunts more dangerous, she'll have to ward off a master who might be sniffing around her, like Carlos, getting hopeful - we're just having a little fun while there's still something to laugh about. You and Mar need to chill."
"On her birthday she becomes a vessel for both sides. Every seven years a female Neteru can either produce another vampire huntress, if made with a guardian - or her womb can sustain a vamp. Her antibodies against vampirism don't kick in until her birthday, didn't you all hear Marlene before?"
Shabazz finally nodded when satisfied that their expressions were suitably terror-stricken enough to produce reverence for the issue.
"Shit," Rider whispered. "Like, man, I thought we were guarding her coming into some Zen-master-slayer state or some shit like that, I mean for real for real, so I wasn't really all that concerned, given our girl was getting stronger and shit, you understand the shit I'm saying, right? Holy shit!"
"You're babbling, Rider. And watch your mouth, like Marlene has been telling us for years."
"Fucking A, I'm babbling, Shabazz. Damn."
"You think Marlene would be all freaked out just because Damali is getting stronger, and might get a rush from killing a vamp? Stronger, able to draw them out of a lair - that would be a good thing, right? Think about it. It's the vulnerability that Marlene is rightfully trippin' about."
"This is too deep." Jose slumped over the table, leaning on his elbows, and shook his head.
"Profound is a better word," J.L. murmured. "Like the bullshit of legends."
"I'm still not following," Big Mike said, ignoring the group's dismissive glances of impatience.
"What the hell is not to understand, Mike?" Rider was walking around swinging his arms wildly. "One of them does her, and it's all over."
"No," Mike said, shaking his head. "Why now? At twenty-one? Talk to me, Shabazz. She's like my baby sister."
"It has to be a guardian that sires, or - "
"Aw, shit, we do not need that level of complexity in the group, dude." Rider began circling again. "Aw, man, aw, man, aw, man..."
"Relax. She has one hundred and forty-four thousand guardians on the planet to choose from. Remember? Nobody in here needs to worry or get their hopes up - the chemistry would have already been identified by now, and he would have been led to her... and he hasn't been. Correction, he was, but that's history. His choice. Shit happens."
"That's cool," Rider said woefully. "Okay. I can live with that. But, just for the record, anybody know who Prince Charming was?"
J.L. slapped the back of Rider's head. "Listen and learn so we can do our job, man. It was supposed to be Rivera, but he chose the dark path."
"Ow, fine. But don't try to act like nobody else never thought about it."
Big Mike grabbed Rider by the shoulders and sat him down hard on a stool. "Shut. Up. Rider. And listen."
"Vampires can't breed... their seed is dead, and in the females, the wombs are dead, right? Nothing ages on or in them beyond the age of the host's death." J.L. rubbed his faced with both palms and then began walking. "They make more of them through the bite. Period. I don't understand how a Neteru - "
"You're right, except if a Neteru willingly gives vampire seed a host - that's the choice. Not whether or not we sent a hunting party to New Orleans, or to do the concert. Please!"
Now Shabazz was pacing. "On her birthday, our Neteru's sensory patterns will lock in and her body is going to change again to add the seventh sense - which uses all senses, and she's going to have to fight a craving that's as bad as the vampire thirst. She'll be in here like a damned junkie. On the positive side, if a guardian gets to her, or the initial fertility season passes, then we have no issue, and we're cool for another seven years. But, if the vamps get to her, then we've got a serious problem. There's a one-month window when her system, for lack of a better term, reboots - old antibodies flush, she's susceptible to the vampire viral infection, and it takes a month for her to be restored."
"They'll try to turn her, right? So we just have to be on red alert during this first one-month vulnerability window?"
"No, Jose. Were it just that simple. If she gets bitten and impregnated before her full tolerance is set, which is synergistic to the vampires' romantic proclivities - biting is an integral part of their passion process, all lusts are involved when they... You get my drift. She'll only have enough antibodies in her system to keep her from turning, but not anything else in her body. It takes a month from her birthday, till her next cycle - her first full cycle after her birthday, for her to be in the clear. Are you hearing me?"
"Talk to us, Shabazz," Rider murmured. "If there aren't enough antibodies flooding her system when it's virally infected and she conceives, the cells will first ensure the host, the Neteru, is not endangered? The antibodies won't help the fetus if there aren't enough in Damali's body to assist both, is what you're saying? Everything about the way she was created is meant to keep her fighting?"
Shabazz let his breath out hard. "Yeah, Rider. Plus, if she gets into a telepathy lock with a master, she'll want him to bite her, like a dare almost, to draw him to her. It's her hunting instinct. But the possible backfire is, within the lock, she'll also be feeling his urges as strongly as if they were her own. She can transmit, and she can receive and feel him - has to in order to locate him. The right guardian will be lead to her the same way one day. That's the double-edged sword of the telepathy gift, though. A master vamp will be trembling to bite her. She'll feel that primal desire, too. But she won't have a natural fear of it, because instinctively she knows it can't hurt her - and that's her vulnerability - the fearlessness. It'll kick in all of her hunting instincts, which are a real turn-on for the male vamps. Gentlemen, consider the reality of a huntress that was genuinely afraid of a vampire bite; do you think that human entity could repeatedly go into harm's way where she could be bitten?"
"No," Big Mike murmured, his expression one of stricken awe.
"Right," Shabazz said evenly. "And trust me, fellas, if she has that master vamp in a mind lock to be able to track him, her instinctive goal to always get to his lair to terminate him, but she will transmit her first flash of competing desires back to him - and he'll oblige. It's a dance. She lures him, he steps to her, she pulls him harder until he can't stand it and stops hiding from her. Then, it's on. Whoever is stronger, wins. Think back on those roiling emotions of your first time, huh?"