Father Lopez looked at Carlos. "They don't know if you'll turn." He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. "They're not sure if you're a daywalker or not, and given your relationship to Damali, they know you'll take her and she'll ultimately go to Hell and back with you."
"If you haven't noticed," Carlos said evenly, anger roiling within him, "I haven't dropped fang since I got blasted by the damned Light."
"True dat," Shabazz said, no judgment in his tone, "but you haven't made it through the night, either, my brother. Daywalkers can eat regular food, right?"
Carlos nodded. The team was so still they seemed like they'd been frozen in marble.
"They can deal with the sun, right?" Shabazz pressed on. But his gaze slid to Damali as he delivered the balance of what he had to say. "And they can obviously sire with a fertile, willing, Neteru, correct?"
When Carlos didn't answer Shabazz, he nodded. "My point exactly.They don't know ." Shabazz rubbed his jaw and sipped his drink slowly, then made a face, and let his breath out hard. "Right now, all they can detect is that she's bleeding. Until she has a D&C, the clerical doctors won't know if they got it all, and I'm sure they're as concerned about that as we all are." He looked at Damali, his eyes filled with so much sadness that they glittered. "I hate to have to have said that in this room, like this, baby, but we have to just put it out there and deal."
Damali wrapped her arms around herself and pushed a tumbler to the center of the table. "Pour me a little Jack, huh, Rider? Something to take the edge off."
Rider nodded and complied. For a moment, silence again shrouded the team.
"You know, we've all been set up, right?" Carlos said, his tone calm, as he pushed his glass toward Shabazz to be filled.
Shabazz refilled Carlos's glass and the team watched him sip it. "You got knowledge, drop it."
"Shabazz is right. If anyone on this team were bitten, given the length of these nights and the crazy route they've put us on, we'll be in the air near turn time. If there's a female Neteru carrying a daywalker, and if I'm still one, the bet is I'll cancel a new male vamp's ass out. If Marlene turns, she's toast, because she'll instinctively rush my Neteru." He glanced at Berkfield. "The only one they're really worried about is you,hombre . But since you've had the sacred in you, you won't get bitten. They just wanna be sure the plane doesn't go down hard. Feel me?"
Carlos took a very slow sip of liquor, shook it off, and smiled. "Not bad, but still tastes weird without a little color."
"That's not funny, man," Rider said, pouring himself a new drink.
"If we've been sacrificed to a contained, suicide air battle," Imam Asula said, glancing at Monk Lin and then standing to reach for a glass at the center of the table, "then what harm is a drink?"
"So, you are sitting here calmly telling us that the entire clerical community expects this plane to have a last vampire outbreak on it? For Carlos to wipe out whichever of us drops fang, and then what?" J.L. shook his head and rubbed his face with both palms.
"I cannot go to Tibet now," Monk Lin said. "Not even to warn the others. I could poison the brotherhood if I am unclean."
"We sit here, as members of the Covenant, and can do nothing but wait for a fight to break out on this aircraft?" Father Lopez's voice held as much quiet rage as disbelief. "They,our church , would do that to us?"
"Yes," Father Patrick said flatly, and raised his glass. "For the cause. Haven't you attended your religious history classes, Padre?" The older man looked at Carlos and saluted him before downing his drink.
"And, in the battle, Guardians that may be slow to turn from a nick would try to separate me from her," Carlos said, not looking at Damali. "If I'm still what they think I am, without weapons on board, there is no chance in Hell any of you'd make it out alive. No weapons would fire; therefore, this plane would stay airborne while the carnage takes place. It would only be me and Damali and the pilots left standing-and Berkfield, if he didn't get in the way. Which he wouldn't. He isn't a Guardian and doesn't have that kill-vampires-or-die-trying instinct. But for me, after the crew, he might be a food source until I could find a safe place to put down a lair. I wouldn't do the pilots unless I was starving and out of fuel-unlikely given how many of you are on board. They know I wouldn't risk nicking Berkfield to fry my insides with the sacred blood that runs through his veins, no matter how hungry I was, and he'd be a good hostage, if I found myself surrounded by the Light. Besides, they must know that me getting her pregnant before council's schedule set off a civil war between me and council, so I wouldn't be anxious to jettison her in a tornado... which I'm not even sure vampires can do this high up. Never tried it."
"Sonofabitch!" Berkfield shouted and stood. "They've got my wife and kids behind the walls of the Vatican."
"Ironic, ain't it?" Carlos said without emotion. "But that's also the safest place for them."
Berkfield walked in a circle. Big Mike grabbed Rider's bottle and poured another drink.
"Logical. Chilling. With all the intrigue of old Rome," Rider said with disgust as his gaze went toward the windows. "The powerful all function the same." He looked at Carlos hard, but his tone held an air of acceptance and friendship. "Thanks for the heads-up. So, if we ain't gonna break out into a round of prayer, judging by the current mental condition of our clerical leaders here, then I vote for going out snot-slinging drunk."
"Much obliged,hombre ." Carlos tipped his drink in Rider's direction. "I have to admit that that's why I'm always a little skeptical about things that are too good to be true." He glanced around the sumptuous environs and sighed. "Sometimes ignorance really is bliss."
"Up until this moment," Rider said, studying his glass in the light, "I was a pretty ignorant and happy bastard."
"How much you wanna bet that the pilots are sealed behind a reinforced steel door?" Carlos added. "To further blow your bliss, think about this. Why would I make this plane drop by killing the pilots with my woman and child on board? Therefore, their real cargo, Berkfield, wouldn't die, either. But, then again," Carlos said with a sigh as he sipped his drink, "they've already extracted the sacred from Berkfield. One SOS transmission, and they could shoot this bitch out of the sky." He rubbed his jaw. "I don't know if I'm still a vampire or not, but I do know how people with a lot at stake think. Men of power who plan on winning would have war-gamed multiple options."
"We should be having this conversation in our own compound, back home, in our own war room," Shabazz said through his teeth. "Brotherman is too on-target, and what he's saying makes too much sense. I know they had to take precautions, but I hate being cannon fodder."
Father Patrick nodded and his angry gaze locked with Imam Asula, Monk Lin, and Father Lopez. "I hate that we're so expendable in this grand war game. Every time I lose one of my men, I ask myself, how high the cost... at what price?" He stood and began pacing. "I could take dying in the full heat of battle, getting attacked by the other side. But to know that our own set us up as cheap insurance... to know that they'd sent us down into the mines like canaries, and if we came out alive, there was no gas leak, or if we didn't, then the mine was polluted and they wouldn't drill for the natural resource Berkfield has in his veins. This is an outrage!"
Damali stood, her gaze steady on Marlene. "I'm going downstairs, so we can all be sure and then get a few hours sleep."
Carlos looked up at her but didn't move. "I wish you wouldn't go down there to let them hack on you. What if they accidentally-"