Sweat poured down her face, blurring her vision, stinging her eyes, dripping off her nose, but she could not unclasp her hands behind her head. Seven jewels glinted in the distance. The body of the cactus teased her as it split into multiple blades becoming one.
"My Isis," she whispered, but still couldn't move. Tears of joy and frustration rose to her eyes, yet anticipation kept her frozen. A coyote howled in the distance, Native American flute music filtered into that from an unknown source. She saw a female hand yank the sword from the dirt and grasp it. From somewhere within, she knew it was her hand. An owl screeched. Then, in an instant, she saw the unidentified hand swing the blade at a dark form walking toward what had once been the cactus. She flinched as the blade sang in the wind, adding chants to the sound of the flutes, and then connected. The strike echoed the unmistakable sound of tissue being severed - then came a thud. The form dropped, and a head rolled toward her, spinning so fast in the yard dust that she couldn't see it until the creature looked at her with glassy, dead eyes.
She screamed and turned away, jumping off and backing away from the rail so quickly that she knocked over the deck chair that had been behind her. Carlos's face disappeared. The Isis was again a cactus. A car was entering her driveway. She grabbed her pants and yanked them on, forgetting about her boots. Terror shot through her system and sent her running through the house. She'd beheaded her own man. Oh my God!
Breathless, she ran out onto the front porch and down the steps in her bare feet, expecting the vehicle to be Carlos's. When the sheriff got out of his squad car with an elder from the tribal council, her gaze raked them for an explanation.
"Chief Quiet Eagle, Sheriff Lightfoot, what's wrong?"
The elderly man shook his head and deferred to the sheriff, a man in his mid-fifties. He adjusted his tan trooper hat, and mopped his brow.
"Ms. Richards, we need to talk to you. There's been an accident."
She looked so young and pretty standing in the middle of the road. His speedometer was cresting seventy-five miles per hour and climbing when he spotted her wearing a blue calico dress that floated in the wind. The scent of lavender filled the cab of the Jeep. She was almost sheer, luminous... "Tara? Oh, shit!"
His foot slammed the brakes, and she became a doe, her golden eyes caught in the headlights, her body frozen, so huge and immobile as his Jeep swerved and the deer went through the windshield.
Blood was everywhere - his, the doe's, maybe Tara's, he didn't know. He could smell gasoline and smoke. Not a good combination. A heavy body was on him, pinning him down. His car was listing to one side and without looking he knew he'd been thrown into a ditch.
The first thought that entered his mind was Yonnie will freak. Rider would, too. Using all his strength, he pushed at the tawny furred body and used his shoulder to lean against the door. Half falling, half sliding, Carlos hit the ground with a thud. His hands were bloodied from the deer's remains, and he rounded the hood of his Jeep to see if she'd come around.
"Tara, girl, aw... man... I'm sorry, I couldn't stop." He touched the creature's forehead just above its glassy eyes, and watched the blood trickle from the doe's nose and mouth. "Come on, chica. You all vamp - wake up, baby. Call Yonnie to feed you. C'mon," he said, his voice becoming more strident as he talked to the dead animal on his hood.
Then he stopped. Wait a minute... a female vampire couldn't be taken out by vehicular homicide. He checked the animal's chest. Nothing had punctured the doe's heart.
Carlos stepped back and wiped the blood from his hands on his jeans. This was just a deer. "Damn!" He blotted his bloody nose on his forearm and then kicked his tires, but laughed with relief.
"Tara," he yelled out again into the nothingness around him. "Girl, don't roll up on a brother like that. You could have..."
His voice trailed off. Tara hadn't responded. The insistent echo of gasoline and blood dripping from his Jeep sounded one in the same. The smell permeated his nose and made him tilt his head to the side. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, and swallowed more of his own blood. Salty fluid covered his tongue, but he hocked and spit, trying to forget what it tasted like. A slight tremor ran through him, and he turned away from the deer and then shoved his hands in his pockets as they began to shake. "Oh, shit, not now," he whispered, and began to limp away from the toxic site.
A deep, gurgling rumble came up from his stomach. Hunger ate at him, making him breathe hard. The sound of the drips became louder, all-consuming. Sweat began to form along his brow and crept down the center of his back. The animal on his hood twitched. In a lightning response he turned to stare at it. A pool of dark liquid had formed on the ground and was spreading toward his feet. His knees locked as he willed himself not to bend to touch it or taste it. But the beautiful crimson edged toward him in a sultry, hypnotic beckoning.
Panting, Carlos shook his head no and backed farther away梑ut his eyes remained on the dead creature's jugular. Reflex made him run his tongue over his teeth. When he nicked his tongue, he closed his eyes. Four inches of feeding-length fang had invaded his mouth.
A wretched sob tore through him as he walked still farther from the smoking vehicle. The night darkness was so clear that it might as well have been high noon. He could hear every skitter on the plains; the coyotes had stopped howling. He held his head with both hands as the pain from his accident faded, his legs felt stronger, and he heard his body mend on its own.
"Noooo!" he yelled, his voice tearing into the night and stilling all creatures within it. Another sob filled his chest, seizing his heart, stopping it briefly, before it began beating again. "Why?" Carlos whispered to the moon, casting his gaze heavenward. She knew. Damali had to have felt this coming. The vibes in the house had been weird, too - but before the infection. Everyone was acting out, prone to excesses and fixated on the carnal before the contagion ever hit. A vampire was in their midst, and their senses had to be evolving and locked on it, but daylight had been his cover.
The moonlight offered no answers, but the wind kicked up to bring the blood scent closer to torture his spirit. He had to focus and think: Marlene would never leave newbies; neither would Shabazz; nor would Marj and Berkfield leave their kids like that. Not at a time like this. They'd all left the house before any infected team member had touched them. Just like Big Mike would never, ever leave his post, no matter how seductive the booty - not with untrained kids in the house, and the way Rider was drinking, then back on nicotine? Maybe they'd all been infected much earlier than they'd realized?
The Covenant brothers had all skied-up and just left the compound to go back to Rome, and Mecca, Tibet, and Israel, with a new Neteru that had a month of training before the big spike to go - because they'd admitted to being infected earlier. That had to be it. Plus, Kamal had left his men in Bahia, chasing an old flame from who knows how long ago, and laying for Shabazz to mess up just once? Never, unless something really strange was affecting them all beyond the dark poison leaking from the portals. They'd been told that was what was wrong, but he could feel something else was more wrong than that.
How could the contagion have been so insidious that none of the seers picked it up in advance or none of the brothers had caught a vibe and stepped to him if he was fluxing back hard? Tara was AWOL since she'd guarded him on the porch, as though she didn't trust herself around him? Yonnie was acting strange, too, a master vampire caught up in a love-jones - unheard-of. Juanita being drawn to him just now, to that degree, making her ridiculously bold? And Jose making an outright run at Damali, and Damali almost going there? Uh-uh. Something more profound than dark portal energies had to be spiking all these turns : . .
Jesus help him... help them... They didn't know about him, but they had to be feeling whatever bizarre energy was causing this hard flux. Every Guardian had to be caught up in it, sensing it down deep mixed with this new portal problem, too. Nobody had been right since Philly, which was a little more than six months ago.
Carlos tried to steady himself and force unadulterated logic to the forefront of his mind. For the first time since he'd come back, he hadn't been able to connect with Father Patrick. When the team had a meeting with the elderly cleric calling from the Vatican, he'd been passed out cold - more than drunk, almost as though heavily drugged, and excluded from the communication... like he was a pure vampire. Damali refused a mind lock repeatedly, something a full-fledged Neteru instinctively was supposed to do against a vamp... But he'd been one before, and she'd never refused him then. Why now, even if he was temporarily fluxing?
Maybe she didn't trust herself, because something inside her knew that they'd both been contaminated? But if everyone on the team had become infected over the last six months, why hadn't they manifested the horrible final stages within thirty days, like every other human was supposed to experience? There had to be more to this problem than any of them knew - What was it?
A basic vamp turn should have registered, regardless, unless they were all already so compromised that they couldn't pick it up. It was the only explanation that made sense.
Carlos wandered off the road and into the sparse brush, then finally dropped to his knees, unable to continue to fight the urge to return to the fallen deer and feed. It was only a matter of time; he had to stop lying to himself. The acid burn was in his stomach; blood was in his nose. Normal food didn't stay with him. Five more minutes, and he'd have to give in to the deer. But why would Tara do something like that to him? They were family! Was she trying to seduce him? Was it the near apex that would make her do something that crazy?
"I did everything I was supposed to do," he said through a bitter sob, his face turned toward the sky. "I served my time, didn't I?" How could the Light do him like this?
He was about to stand, but a force compelled him to remain paralyzed on his knees. He couldn't get up, and he struggled with the unseen as though someone or something had placed powerful, invisible hands on his shoulders. The touch burned worse than the blood hunger, and he cried out in agony as it spread throughout his body. His voice created sound waves that began to shimmer around him, and soon he was covered in a moving globe of bluish white light.