"I wish I were," she said quietly, finding the edge of the bed before she collapsed.
"Nothing!" Lilith said, blue-black smoke billowing from beneath her gown as she walked before the council table. "No Neteru! No Rivera! I personally looked in every man's face on that plane, and not one of them even resembled him." She stared at the chairman through red glowing slits. "Do you know what this means?"
"No," he said evenly. "Tell me, darling. Your fangs are showing." Pointed, leathery wings ripped through her shoulder blades casting a twelve-foot shadow over the table as bats above took shelter.
Her scaled, serpentine tail emerged, altering her spine and tearing through her gown to bear a spaded razor that sliced his cheek before he could pull away. As her rage mounted, her shapely legs transformed into gargoyle gray granite, the varicose veins in them thick and corded by stagnant black blood. Her once sexy spike heels became yellowed, clawed talons that now dug into the marble floor. Only her arms, torso, and head remained the sultry female she'd just been, although her lush mouth was brutally distended by a hideous set of jagged, demon fangs.
"Ipersonally intercepted the transmission from his lieutenants! They put a weak Guardian on the phone, and everything he said was garbled-damn their barriers. But it wasn't Rivera." Lilith's voice rumbled in a deep, threatening baritone, her breaths a ragged gasp between each word as fury overtook her reason. "All that's left of him is two last holdout vampires that aren't worth the bother to pursue beyond troublesome Native American shaman barriers. The master Rivera made was so weak he's taken to beddinghuman witches instead of real vampire lair mates!"
"That's because there aren't any left in his territory, except one, darling. A man has to do what a man has to do, especially if he's about to be exterminated. Have a goblet and relax."
She stormed away from the chairman and pointed at him. "I was so infuriated that I torched that little redheaded bitch while he was turning her. I should have incinerated him, too, and would have, if I didn't think he might still have access to Rivera. He only lives as bait." Her eyes flickered darker. "But that did send him a very serious message to call his maker, ASAP. So we wait."
"I know," the chairman said in an amused tone to stoke her ire. He glanced around unconcerned as the torches in the chamber went out and bats screeched in fear at her thundering. "I've also blocked his turns so he can twist for a century or so without a lair mate. The female is so weak that she barely took the elevation he attempted. I'll dust her when I have time-maybe while he's on top of her, who knows? But do not waste your precious time micromanaging this minor detail; it will be excruciating for both of them when I'm done amusing myself with their panic,that I assure you. I'm a patient man." He smiled. "Why didn't you just abduct and torture the information out of him?"
"Because Rivera would never come out in the open then, once he heard Yolando's howls. Are you insane? You saw how Rivera resisted my harpies! Neteru information about the female was locked inside his mind like one of our best vaults! It's clear those two loser vampires don't know where he is any more than you or I do!"
CHAPTER TEN
He allowed Lilith to seethe. He ignored her blinding wrath and concentrated on the tiny questions nagging his mind. Why wasn't he able to torch the two lower-generation vampires, when he'd been able to ash all the others? She didn't need to know that his attempts had failed, or contemplate how two vampires had been able to hide behind a shaman's prayer line... why was a small cabin impervious to his black lightning strikes when the Guardian compound and the Covenant's safe house had so easily burned to the ground? They were missing something crucial. He could feel it in his skin, but he kept chuckling with haughty disdain in his countenance and avoided glancing at the small compartment hidden in the center of the table beneath the fanged crest that only he could open, allowing Lilith's ego to make her twist.Oh, darling, I have such a prize in there .
"Dante, I dredged every man's dreams trying to wrest out Rivera's location. Nothing!" she shouted, oblivious to the chairman's mood shift as she railed on. "They were only able to try to sendten thousand measly dollars toa human that had to write it down. That'sall Rivera has left. My harpies ripped open the belly of that aircraft, searching in vain for his coffin, in case he was still one of us! Nothing! And if a Neteru had been on board, we would have known the moment he or she launched into battle."
She swished away, leaving the chairman to seal the deep gash in his face, his black blood splattering the front of his robe and blending into it. "The female Neteru did not come for her Guardians, even when I sent the plane to crash and burn. No male Neteru rose to the challenge to come to their rescue, either. The last remnants of the Covenant were even on that aircraft, and no Neterus came... no Isis blade or disc of Heru was ever raised."
Lilith shuddered and gave Dante her back to consider, knowing she was running out of options. If she didn't find the Neterus quickly, she'd have to destroy the embryo, lest it ever be discovered. Or, worse, turn it over to her husband and try to claim that in her search for the dead Neterus, she'd discovered it. Either way, she refused to concede total defeat. If there was no bounty to be won to take over all the weaker realms, shecould not lose favor on level seven. Her mind raced for a back-door solution.
She'd blame it on Dante, if she had to give up the egg. The egg had passed through his chambers, and this had been a Vampire Council matter, originally. But that bitter black pill was something very special that she was saving for when she'd exhausted every measure. To prematurely unveil that it even existed meant potentially tipping her hand, if the Neterus were somehow still alive. Dante was holding something back from her; she could sense it. So she skillfully changed the subject and allowed herself to appear totally spent. He could never know her ultimate aim. Men were foolish. There were no friends in this game.
"Warrior angels made it necessary to back off... but the plane went down. There was no way anyone on board could have survived. Damnable daylight interfered, but they're history." Lilith covered her face with her hands and breathed in deeply, causing her wings, tail, and talons to recede as she regained her composure.
"Hmmm... are you quite sure? The same way I was so sure that Rivera had been burned alive by the sun?" The chairman shook his head. "Very sloppy-or did you say that to me not long ago?"
"I looked themeach in the eye before we decimated their aircraft at dawn, and all I saw was frightened humans. No Neterus. The plane went down over a holy region that even I cannot penetrate without my husband's assistance. I'm officially banned from that area, except the Red Sea, by truce," she wailed, suddenly becoming so distraught that she waltzed back to the table and took a shaky sip of clotted blood from the chairman's goblet and set it down hard.
"Perhaps, if warrior angels showed up, they're masked. Did you ever consider that? It has been done before." He studied his goblet and circled the rim of it with his finger.
She stared at him without blinking.
"You seem awfully impatient, my dear. That is not like you. Maybe you should call my father to help you-"
"Don't f**k with me, Dante," she screeched, growing fangs again. "This is a catastrophe!"
"I thought our goal was to kill them, anyway?" He risked another sly smile, baiting her further as he took a slow sip from her abandoned goblet. "Calm yourself. My remaining councilmen are in stasis repose in their vaults, and we must conserve our energy for the future-"
"What future, Dante? If we don't deliver them, there is no bounty," she said flatly, leaning into him. "Our Dark Lord deals in absolutes. I will not suffer his wrath for failing!"
He stood and chuckled. "Or, if I did indeed kill them both, first, then what you mean is, I've won the challenge-and didn't f**k up so badly after all." He caught her hand before she could strike him and caressed her face with his free palm. "Come, come now, dearest Lilith," he whispered, his fangs growing to battle length as his form bulked to shadow hers. He squeezed her wrist until the bones within it snapped and she winced. "Is that any way to treat the possible ruler of theentire dark realm?"
CARLOS WATCHED with morbid detachment as each member of the team was attended back to reasonable health. The odd sensation that he and the others were not alone kept him on guard, staring out into the crystal blue water. The vast expanse was dotted by lush land, green with foliage as though Eden. No one, for all the stilted discussion, had made even passing mention of the spirits he'd seen. The angels, their parents-it was such a powerful phenomena-and yet, it hadn't come up as the basic logistics were argued.
Who cared which way they should walk, how they would get back to any modern transportation? They were alive. Didn't they see the angels? A small part of him wondered if he were still losing his mind.
Dan knelt by the edge of the lake. He was babbling something about needing water. Carlos watched dispassionately as Shabazz grasped the junior Guardian's arm and warned him about parasites. True enough, but it still didn't make sense. A jumbo jet had crashed in the mountains, but hadn't immediately exploded. Everyone on the united teams had walked away-surely a divine hand had been the cause. Parasites were the least of their problems.
The moment the thought crossed his mind Carlos squinted. It seemed as though the vaporous mist hovering just over the surface of the still lake was parting. Then out of nowhere, they were there-three old men with scruffy white beards in long white tunics and small, embroidered, flat round hats peered at him from the tiny canoe. They seemed as old, dark, and weathered as the ebony wooden canes they leaned on for support. Their canoe eerily moved forward on its own accord. Carlos waited a full thirty seconds before his teammates even saw them.
"Yo!" Rider shouted, jumping back a few steps. "We've crashed-a little assistance?"