Damali pushed away from the wall and entered the room. Yonnie making a pass at her, Jose's quiet way of sending her an open invitation, Tara's near fang drop, every strange behavior within her team family slammed into Damali's brain at once.
She stared at Carlos. Her gaze was unwavering, but her voice was tender. "Baby, I know this whole Arizona thing isn't you. Honestly, it isn't me. All of it has shredded everyone's nerves. I'm not trying to push you away. I just needed space. We have to work on this big problem together. One unit. Really, what we both need, once we conquer this together, are environments suited to us, not this training camp mess that we're dealing with now. We are supposed to be out in the world, but not of it, and unafraid, dealing - not sequestered. But, until we just learned about the new threat, all I was trying to do was make sure the others could fly... It's like, I had this sense that something crazy was on the way. It had been giving me nightmares for months. Now I know why. Do you understand?"
He nodded. "I know. Intellectually, I know," he said, tightening the towel around his waist. "Some days, I could be really cool with the new powers, or the lack thereof. I could intellectually deal with you running the show, until I could step up and we could do this thing side by side, as equals. I could deal with being equals." He shook his head and set his jaw hard. "But being less than that around you is f**king me up. I ain't gonna lie. Some days, I'm just so damned mad, and I don't know why."
Carlos looked at her in the dim light, his eyes searching hers. "It's so much responsibility, D. When my brother and my boyz died, then it was just me and you. For some crazy reason, I could deal with that. But, now I'm tight with a big family, and I'm a nervous wreck half the time, worrying about the kids, worrying about Mom Mar, Marj, my brothers... like, if any of them go down, I'd wig. And then they all got infected. My worst nightmare came true. I couldn't do shit about it, couldn't just go handle this shit in a cloud of black smoke and save them all from this heartache." He stared at a point on the wall and continued. "Did you see Mike's face when he knew he'd brought the infection home?"
Carlos shook his head. "The man was doing the right thing," he whispered. "He'd beat down a demon, saved his woman and her baby, and made love to her - which is gonna kill her. Then came home the conquering hero and slapped everybody in the house a high five. Tell me how to wrap my brain around that, Damali? All I keep thinking is, if I was still a Council-level vamp, I could be the team's front line of defense, walk back into Hell, and go get this shit right. At least I could go get y'all some decent information. North America was my zone, girl. I'd know what was going down on American soil before the f**king government, believe that. I hate this new shit, D."
She came to him and placed her hand over the brand scar he'd always wear on his chest. "I know. It is a lot of responsibility, a lot of weight to love all those people. But that's part of being a family, baby. Love is risk. The harder you love, the greater the risk, but I wouldn't want to go through life without having experienced that."
His arms enfolded her and her head found his shoulder.
"The thing I love about you so much is, you would walk into Hell to make it all right, if you could," she whispered. "But your role has changed, baby. You have to stop looking backward. We have a month, maybe, and time is our enemy. I know you love every single soul on the team, but you can't play God. Neither can I."
"But it's more than that. I feel connected to them beyond words - like they're my skin. And, I find myself hardly able to watch the news, because when somebody is shot, some kid is killed, some part of the world blows up, I live with the sadness for days. I never used to be like that, or care like that, and it feels... it feels..."
"Like the weight of the world is on your shoulders?"
She smiled. He nodded and closed his eyes.
"Yes. That's exactly what it feels like."
"And I bet you get really pissed off when you see injustice and corruption." She kissed his cheek as his head found the crook of her shoulder.
"Oh, baby," he murmured against her neck as his arms enfolded her tighter. "I can't do this... be squeaky clean, always making the right choice, always answering the call to arms for some crazy shit in the world that's bigger than all of us."
She rubbed his back. "This shit is scarier than being a vampire?"
"Most definitely," he said with a sigh. "It was go for self. They was ruthless, I was ruthless, what-the-fuck-eva, wasn't no friends in the game. That shit was easy. The only person they could take as a hostage that woulda made me slow my roll, was you - and since you can hold your own, hey. But now. Damn."
She nodded and hugged him harder. "You're gonna be all right. We're gonna do this thing."
He lifted his head and stared at her, his eyes glistening in the semidarkness. "That's what I'm afraid of," he said quietly. "You were never ruthless. You never played games to the bone. Never lived some of what I lived. That's as much a part of me as this new thing I am. There's a part of me that misses the adrenaline rush of rolling like that... and the power. You never sat on a throne, and you cannot know what it is till you've done it."
She listened to his quiet confession without judgment, applying the balm of healing through silent understanding. "Baby, you'll integrate all of that over time, after we get through this major job we've gotta do. Like I've told you before, you have to take all of that cunning, and all of that master-of-the-game drama you have inside you, and use it for the good. If the Light spared you with this madness developing, then they must have had a higher purpose for you. They don't make mistakes and do things by accident, but they will use an accident that has occurred in the most awesome ways."
"You keep telling me that, and I keep hearing that, but... y'all don't really know what goes on inside my head sometimes."
He gave her a sly smile, followed by a deep kiss. "Like, I miss this for instance," he said, kissing her neck and making her chuckle. "And I miss that, for instance," he murmured, fondling her backside. Then he outstretched his arm and snapped, and looked over his shoulder and sighed. "And I damned sure miss being able to change a room to go with my mood." He chuckled sadly. "Right about through here, there should be torches in the joint, you na**d and sprawled in the center of my bed, in my lair; then I could get creative. Then I'd let you recover while I took underground limo service and work a deal to shut down the slime creeping out of the realms... then I'd come back before dawn, and, you know... we'd celebrate." He shook his head. "I don't do Navajo prints, okaaay."
She laughed through the worry, and pushed him away with a teasing shove. "So, okay, we'll have to do some things the old-fashioned way. Once all this is over, tell the builders to funk your place out the way you want to, and I'll promise to stop by and get na**d in the center of your bed. A sister can do that, and sprawl, if that will chill you out."
"Yeah, but damn, ain't nothing like doing this," he said with a snap of his fingers, gazing at her fireplace, "and starting an inferno." He offered her a sheepish smile. "Be honest, D. You loved it, didn't you?"
"I loved you," she hedged, not willing to give into the dangerous fantasy.
"You had instant maid service," he said, coming closer to her.
She looked away and began folding the blanket. "I'll live."
"But you liked some of the trappings of - "
"Carlos, baby. Let it rest." Her tone had come out a little more forceful than intended. She made a tight, neat, pile of her duvet and put it on the chair across the room. "That was then, this is now. Don't forget about the dark energies that are a real threat. Focus on that and any solutions you can come up with. That's the priority. Me and you need to lock, develop a quick strategy, and then roll it out to the team within the next day or so. Even if we don't turn, as Neterus, we're not immune to the effects. We've gotta be careful."
When he didn't answer, she looked at him hard to be sure he was clear. "Your mind is a weapon, and you'd been dwelling on the old powers so much that it gave you the blood hunger for a minute while you were in transition. The result was that when you drank alcohol, hanging out with a vamp buddy and probably hashing and rehashing the old life, it made you sick as a dog - almost like you'd gone out and fed. You understand how dangerous something like that can be?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, losing all mirth in his tone. "I know. My boy said the same thing, but, like I said, we ain't going out like that no more. I've felt like shit all day, but whatever was in my system passed. So, I'm cool. No need to get Marlene to posse up and get everybody in the house bugging me about potentially being infected or my judgment being compromised."