"Carlos, listen to yourself. Tonight, it's a quarter inch. Tomorrow night - "
"Aw, girl, I've still got a reflection. Chill." He resumed walking, but with less confidence in his stride. "It happened to you, a while back, and you came out of it. This Neteru shit is - "
"I had never been fully turned, never died, brother," she said, not following him into the darkness.
He stopped, but didn't turn around. "You think that could make a difference?"
"Maybe," she said quietly. It was hard to find her voice, but she finally moved toward him. "We should tell Marlene."
"No... I mean, not yet." He turned to face her in the moonlight. "If it's just a flux thing, or because I was out drinking and my system wasn't used to that for a while, you know, it was probably just jacking with my body chemistry - like when I temporarily apexed in Philly but it didn't hold, and..." His voice trailed off as he ruffled his fingers through his hair, annoyed. "D, you know what I'm dealing with over at the house. There's no room to quarantine a brother, the kids in there will freak, Marjorie and Berkfield will have Glocks to my temple until daybreak, then they'll be all in my face about some shit that's just passing through my system. You've been there. So, just let me go sit on my own front steps, sleep off the buzz, and in the morning things will be fine."
She stepped closer to him, one hand on her hip while the other held the gun down at her side. Yeah, she'd been there, all right. The team didn't play that. But if he was on hallowed ground, only showing a few passing signs, and a vamp had brought him home to pull himself together... She immediately opened her mental radar to scan him.
"Don't be going through my pockets without asking me! What about trust, Damali? Huh!"
"You're standing here drunk as a damned skunk, and you're asking me to trust you with fangs in your mouth? What did you do, ask Yonnie to nick you and - "
"Are you crazy?" he shouted. "That would be a step down. He's a master; I'd be a second, if I didn't go straight to ash. I was a f**king councilman, D! I was never a lieutenant! Ever! Was never second in command, you got that?" Carlos walked in a haphazard circle, stopping intermittently to point at Damali. "I had a throne, woman. Do you know what that means, how much power that was? Let my own elevated master nick me? I was made by the Chairman himself? I'm so f**king offended I don't know what to say to you! Just because I ain't number one on this f**ked-up, so-called, Neteru team, don't mean I don't have no pride and would go for sloppy seconds in my old yard. I used to run that shit - so be clear!"
"I'm going to ask you some questions, and if you give it to me straight, then I won't have any doubts in my mind," she said carefully, pulling back her mental scan to bring the argument down a notch. "I don't like the sentimental references to your old life. Period. Be clear about that, because that's why I'm worried. Not to get in your business, but, like you said, I have been there."
Carlos closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and jammed his hands in his pants pockets. "Fine. Go 'head."
Damali circled him slowly, talking as she inspected him, her questions sounding detached and medical.
"When did you first notice this change?"
"Me and my boy was sipping Remy, talking, and suddenly they were in my mouth."
"Be honest," she shot back. "When you felt the change in your mouth, what was running through your mind?"
"Aw, D, I don't - "
"What," she said emphatically, "was on your mind?"
He sighed hard. "A lot of things, D."
"Like?"
"Like how messed up my boy's situation really is, for one." He was not about to divulge Yonnie's deepest secrets. Some things were between men, and only men.
"Okay," she said, standing in front of him. "That's good. Compassion is a feature of the Light. What else?"
Carlos opened his eyes and stared at her. "I was angry."
Damali cocked her head to the side. "Somebody in the club piss you off? You pick up a trail that set you off? Bloodlust will make a new Neteru system haywire like that," she said, snapping her fingers.
He slowly removed his hands from his pockets and folded his arms in front of him. "No. Nobody in the club pissed me off. I was mad at you."
She swallowed a smile. "Oh."
"Yeah. Oh." He shook his head. This was getting nowhere.
"Okay, so you were pissed off at me because we weren't spending the weekend together, but that - "
"Is precisely what you don't get," he shouted, and began walking. "How f**king off-the-hook mad I am about having to endure your endless rules and regulations and family and the way it always has to be your way!" He stopped, opened his arms, and glanced around at the tumbleweeds and sparse cactus foliage. "I am not a desert dweller! I hate this place. This is not me, Damali. I ain't trying to live here under any circumstances - but I was ready to come out here to be with you, then your ass doesn't wanna be with me! All of a sudden, you need your space. That's enough to make a man drop fang!"
"But you never said how much you didn't - "