"Lilith . . . It wasso sweet, " Yonnie breathed out. "Better than hump-in-your-back sex." He shook his head and kept his eyes closed with his face tilted toward the sun. "Sebastian practically shit himself when they tied us down-but she had to, man. We were wiggin' so bad, it would have been on to the death. We would've tried to ice her. Nuit tried. He lost his cool and bugged at the last minute.Took about fifty of those little bastards to hold him down, too. By the time she got to me, hey, I was philosophical."
Yonnie opened his eyes with a wide grin and then demonstrated for Carlos, calmly reenacting the scene. "Just turned my head to the side and pointed to the vein. Figured, f**k it. Flat-line me so I don't feel the sunburn, you know." He chuckled and shook his head. "I woke up sun-stupid, brother. Came right here to let my homeboy know I made it." Yonnie grabbed Carlos's hand in an old-fashioned finger grip handshake, and then banged his knuckles. "But I ain't gonna lie, I gotta eat soon . . . gotta come down . . . I'm buzzed like a motherfucker." He wiped both his palms down his face."Tarahome? She gotta see this."
Damali's telepathy stabbed into Carlos's brain.Say a prayer over him and do him now, baby-send him into the Light proper.There's three of them! Daywalkers!Councilmen. You know what this means!
No! I can't . . . he deserves the same chance I got. Besides, we learned a lot-don't make me do this, D. I'm asking you as your husband-fall back.
"Everything cool, man?"Yonnie said when Carlos didn't respond to the question fast enough. He sat up slowly, monitoring the tension between Carlos and Damali.
Carlos glimpsed Damali and watched her lower her blade. "Yeah, man, everything's peace."
Yonnie stood, making Carlos stand. "Then, uh, why's your lady clutching anIsis ? I didn't come this far to get smoked in broad daylight over bullshit."
"When you hit our skylight," Carlos said tensely, his gaze boring into Damali's, "we didn't know you were gonna make it."
Yonnie nodded and then swallowed hard after a moment, slowly pulling Carlos into a brotherly embrace. "Thanks, man . . . I owe you.Always got my back, no matter what. Woulda took my head clean like I'd asked you to, if I woke up burning and screaming. Damn . . . that's a helluva friend."
Carlos slapped Yonnie's back, staring at Damali over Yonnie's shoulder until she glanced away."Yeah, if it came to that, but it didn't." He withdrew and looked Yonnie dead in the eyes. "Last thing I want, man, is to see you suffer."
ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND
CHAPTER ONE
Damali walked slowly along the beach behind the house, hanging back as Carlos said good-bye to his friend. The battle between her instinct to take the head of a clear and present threat and her desire to honor her husband's request twisted her stomach into knots. She could feel the entire household manning battle stations as each Guardian awakened to their own internal sensory guidance.
No less than she would have expected, Marlene sat up in bed first, eyes wide, third eye vision sweeping and then honing in on Damali's to question the SOS vibration she'd clearly felt. The insistent contact between Marlene's seeking vision and her second-sight unlocked the interior of the house for her in surreal imagery. Like a bad and hazy dream, Damali could mentally see the unfolding chaos in her mind's eye coming to her in fits and starts, and she took in a deep breath to summon calm as she continued trudging twenty-five yards behind Carlos and Yonnie.
Likea giant ebony cobra, in one fluid move Shabazz had slowly unfolded from the lotus mediation position he'd been in, locks crackling with raw fight energy, the look in his eyes deadly. His expression said it all: The house had been breached-unacceptable.
Mike had heard the thud on the roof and was already packing ammo as he came down the hall with Inez. Damali remembered seeing his bald head jerk up when Yonnie first hit the skylight in the roof, but the potential of immediate danger had blotted out the rest of the imagery until now.
She didn't need to watch the trajectory of events mentally, however. The past informed her better than any second-sight ever could. Mike was on the move.Pissed off. A six-foot-eight, two-hundred-and-seventy-five-pound human bear made of pure muscle was in the hall of their compound; Big Mike wasn't having a homestead breach any more than Shabazz was. Her girl, Inez, was right behind him, too, her short self toting a handheld Uzi. Damali groaned inwardly and then turned away from Carlos and Yonnie to head back toward the house before shots were fired.
This was the part that she wasn't sure Carlos understood, as much as she empathized with his dilemma. This was finallyhome .
The entire family had envisioned every room, every detail of the massiveSan Diego beachfront property. They'd all prayed for a place to call home, and everything had been made manifest, right down to the sprawling ten acres that surrounded the mansion and the pristinemountain view beyond it. It was something to come back to after the battle in theHoly Land .This was sanctuary.This was what every man and woman on the team, from the eldest to the youngest, had dreamt of for years. A place that was like a citadel, but that was also not like the old maximum security prison-type compound from years ago . . . or the cramped, crazy dwelling they'd survived in during the rough stint inArizona .This was a home where dreams could flourish and peace could reign supreme. And not a Guardian in the joint was having any mess come to their door.
In her soul she knew the brothers were prepared to take a Masada-inspired last stand here this morning if they thought a daywalker hadcome calling. The vibe reverberated through the air and pierced her skin like tiny knives. Live free or die trying.
"Oh, shit . . ." Damali let her breath out hard, and then picked up her pace and hurried back to the house.
Rider met her at the door with a sawed-off shotgun resting on his shoulder.Tara stood behind him with a 9mm lowered at her side, but the look in her eyes said it all-she knew. Damali held up one hand and let out a weary breath, watching younger Guardians hustling down the steps over Rider's and Tara's shoulders. Couples fell into Full Metal Jacket formation, flanking the windows and doors. For a moment all Damali could do waswatch them.
Jose and Juanita parted like pros, clutching weapons while silently doing one-handed leaps over opposite banisters with Jose giving Juanita the two-finger silent signal to take the window while he headed for the deck. J.L. and Krissy hugged the wall and squared off with vents and fireplace openings, splashing each one with holy water before backing up to train a weapon on it. Bobby and Jasmine headed for the back door to lend support to the senior couple, Berkfield and Marj, who were already in the kitchen, strapped. Mike and Inez were out in the pool area, securing the lower decks, and Damali cringed knowing that Shabazz and Marlene had taken the roof. This was ten minutes past real bad.
Everything within the house was in order, the scramble effective and the way it was supposed to happen . . . yet the cosmos was out of alignment and there was no fighting that with conventional demon-hunting weapons. Until Carlos came back with more information, there was no way to know how to take down a daywalker permanently, the range of its powers, or how many had been made. The questions were endless.
"Stand down," Damali said flatly, garnering confused looks from those Guardians within earshot. "Carlos got this."
Incredulous gazes followed her as she brushed past her stunned teammates and headed for the kitchen. She heard the fallback order ripple through the house behind her and knew a near mutiny was close at hand. For this she needed coffee, not herbal tea. Before she could fill the pot with water, the entire team, sans Carlos, had piled into the kitchen behind her.
"That was Yonnie out there! His signature is in my sinuses, tell me I'mlying ?" Rider hollered. "And unless my eyes are playing tricks on me and this is a very, very bad dream, D-a f**king vamp councilman is taking a daylight stroll down the beach with your husband!"
"I know," Damali said as calmly as possible, and then added enough water to the huge pot to make enough coffee for everybody. What else was there to say? She didn't have a clue at the moment what was going on, and was trying her best not to freak out. While she gathered her thoughts, she continued making coffee very methodically, and then put on a teakettle for Marlene and Shabazz. Her actions were mechanical, by rote, something she'd seen Marlene do a hundred times, if once, to quell mass hysteria in the compound.
"You know?"Shabazz said slowly, parting the group around her as he neared her. A blue-white swath of electrostatic charge spread across the floor before him like a crackling blue carpet as he approached her."You know?"
Damali closed her eyes and then turned away from the sink in a slow pivot. She'd seen Shabazz upset before, but this was definitely a first.