"What are you doing here?" he muttered.
"I never run."
"Yeah, I forgot." His back was to her and his tone was angry and distant.
An eerie quiet filled the room, time standing still again in the balance between her response and his.
"Carlos, you do understand my concerns now, right?" She leaned on her Isis blade. "There is only one issue - the stolen key."
He looked at her hard.
"I had a need to know not just from them, but also from you," she snapped, her gaze roving over him so hotly that he turned around.
"Since you've been all inside my head, Damali, then I hope you can also feel the fatigue from my sitting up all day, worried f**king sick, praying, and beating my own ass about what I've allowed to happen to you."
She swallowed hard and looked down at her shoes.
"And you should have also picked up how your first awareness panic while they were purging you cut my soul to the bone and emotionally bled me out till I had to come to you. Funny thing is, you're in my system as much as I'm in yours. Now, that's f**ked up, when I'm the one supposed to be running shit. So my main concern then was, as it always has been, to make sure you survive. Fuck a key, if it means you'll die - or worse."
When she looked up at him, the tears that glistened in her eyes made him glance away.
"If we don't find and return the key, all of humanity will get turned - or kept for vamp food. I just don't want to live like that," she whispered.
"Neither do I, baby, but I don't know how to fix this. All I've ever known how to do is play the hand I'm dealt to buy time. Now even that's running out."
"I felt the hunger burn," she said, her voice so quiet that he had to strain to hear her. "I've never been so repulsed or terrified in my life."
"It's a bitch," he said plainly, walking to stand by a massive living-room window. "And the absence of daylight, the taste of real food, everything you've always taken for granted, ain't no joke. So now you know."
"If I stay with you as a female vamp, I'll never see my family again. But I want to be with you so bad, it hurts. But you also know I'll do whatever I have to do to get the key."
Carlos sighed. "If you stay in the dark life, you'll never see daylight, your family, your friends, a lot of shit that seems unimportant until it's gone." He turned and looked at her squarely. "Believe me, I miss my mom, and Grams... I miss my brother, and my boyz. And I wanted to protect them all, just like I wanted to protect you, missing you most of all. But, hey, that's my trip, my atonement for all the foul shit I've done." Unable to look at her any longer, he rubbed his hand across his jaw, remembering the last of her touch. "Let me do at least one thing right, and take you home. You stay there, let me do what I have to do, and it'll be cool. I'll find the key and will work a deal. I promise."
"No, it won't be cool. Guarding humanity is my job. This is not something you can cut a deal with. You clear?"
Even though her tone was firm, her eyes held such empathy that he couldn't remain focused on them. "Just promise me one thing," he finally said, as he began walking toward the door.
"Name it."
"Don't ever tell a master vampire something like that," he chuckled, his voice hollow from the soul ache. "Hear me out, then make wise choices, baby."
"Talk to me."
He closed his eyes. He wasn't sure if it was the familiar line, or the timbre of her voice yearning to hear some feasible solution, or the fact that she still cared enough to listen to him despite the circumstances, but the simple statement messed him up.
"If you die on your mission - and I have to say that because I know you're so stubborn there's no stopping you once you've made your mind up," he said slowly, measuring his voice to be sure it didn't falter, "and they make you a warrior angel... look in on my people for me, D. Make sure my moms knows I loved her and died trying - but just took a wrong turn at the Light."
He would not allow the fact that her fingers had gone to her lips to change his path. He was walking out that door, going to handle his business and settle this issue, alone, once and for all. As for his fate, the Devil may care, but he didn't. All she had to do was cross the threshold, and he'd transport her to the edge of the lights beyond the compound.
"You coming?" he said in a hardened tone without looking back at where she stood. "Since you're siding with the Guardians, we go out side by side. No 'in your arms' bullshit. I ain't got that much integrity, animal-predator that I am."
When she didn't move, he turned around and glared at her. "We've got a time issue, dig?"
He could feel her mind working, trying to absorb all his pain and make it right. "You can't fix this, no more than I can fix it. Let it drop. Sometimes you lose when you gamble. I've gotten used to it. You want the key for your reasons, I want the key for mine. You're ready to die for the cause; I'm not waiting around to watch that happen. Now let's go."
He waited while she walked toward him slowly, and then lifted her chin to stand by his side. Every instinct within him told him to never let her leave, but everything he'd ever known about her also told him that if he held her there, one night she'd grow to hate him just as much as he hated himself now.
"I had a hand in this thing, as much as you did," she murmured. "We're partners. We work this situation together. Me and you and my Guardian team."