Stunned male eyes slid away from Damali's.
"Gentlemen, I'll say this one last time. You'd all better get your heads right and focus. This ain't about you, what you've experienced, or any bullshit going down within your individual relationships. Handle your business," Damali said flatly and drew away from the table. "Father Patrick, talk to me."
A sly smile crossed Rider's face as he pushed back in his chair. "I think you gentlemen had better stand down and let the general work."
Shabazz tilted his head from side to side, and spoke in a tight voice. "Aw'ight, Marlene, your take?"
Damali glared at him. "I'm doing this divination as the lead Neteru and seer on this team. My capacities outstrip hers," she said, holding respect in her eyes as she glanced at Marlene. "The baton has been passed, big brother, and you need to get with that." Marlene nodded. "Truth, Shabazz. Has been that way since she came back from the Neteru Queen's Council. She ain't a baby anymore, and is a full-grown woman--respect that." Marlene swept up her robe and walked over to stand by Damali's side, as Marjorie also neared her.
"If Carlos had been seen with a gorgeous, female Neteru from an unknown realm and had gone through the dimension rip," Marjorie said with a narrowed glare, "would this team be wasting this much time pointing fingers and finding blame, or would we be developing a strategy with Father Patrick, Imam Asula, Monk Lin, and Rabbi Zeitloff ?" When none of the men in the room responded, Marjorie folded her arms again. "I didn't think so." She kept her gaze sweeping the male Guardians. "Proceed, Damali, and tell us whatever you can pick up."
"Thank you, ladies," Damali said, again placing her hands on the table between the three stones she'd collected in Ethiopia and the one she'd gotten from Gabrielle, creating a pyramid with her fingers.
"Can you sense them at all?" Monk Lin asked in a calm tone, breaking through the charged silence in the room.
Damali breathed in deeply, closed her eyes, and let her breath out slowly through her nose. "I don't sense peril or injury. It seems as though the struggle has abated and I can feel both energies still pulsing."
She drew her hands back and then extended them in a slow sweep around her. "They're alive, not battling, but moving. That's all I can tell."
"Good," Imam Asula said through the phone. "Then perhaps we have time."
"But you don't have a name, any identifying quality?" Rabbi Zeitloff argued through the speaker. "Marks, weaponry, something that we can place in our books to use? A name?"
"He didn't give me a name," Damali said, frustration tearing through her brain. She closed her eyes again, and now somewhat calmer, began to replay every detail of the exchange in her mind. "Give me a second."
Silence enveloped the team and the speakerphone sat eerily quiet as Damali mentally scavenged for information. The fight with Carlos the previous morning was oddly the first thing that jumped into her head, but rather than shunt that impression aside again, she rode it, felt it, followed the course of its angry flow, hoping that it would connect the missing dots.
She could feel the old rage reenter her, making the hair at the nape of her neck bristle. In slow-moving impressions, it became vividly clear. Carlos's lapse had hurt her deeper than even she knew at the time. It definitely went beyond the thing with Juanita; him doing her fellow female Guardian was simply the last straw that had broken her back. In that regard, Carlos was right: Juanita was just the innocent victim of an all-out vamp seduction, didn't have anything to do with it, and her rage against Juanita had been misplaced, even if the girl got on her nerves. Something else within her had spiked the rage.
All logic dictated that she couldn't be angry at Juanita for carrying a torch--the girl didn't strike the match to set it ablaze, a vamp seduction had. Who could be blamed for an old, warm memory? The dark side worked with any kernel of doubt or weakness within humans. That's the game they played, and since the Chairman's demise, the game had kicked up several notches on the boards. Possessions went the same way, had to work with something that was already resident, and that's what had her pissed off at Carlos so badly. Not some possible fling.
As she stood silently remembering, the team's eyes on her, full awareness overtook her. Yeah, it went beyond the lapse, that's why sne couldn't shake the rage. Just like Carlos had wanted absolute power and fawning lieutenants, deep down inside, which allowed him to ultimately go after
Yonnie like he had, he'd also secretly harbored the fantasy of having one last run with Juanita before getting married... for old time's sake, deep down inside... along with the power of a throne, supernatural strength and knowledge, and the ability to single-handedly blow up Hell. Carlos got that fantasy, all of it, and that's how they got to him.
Instant knowing slapped her face, and almost made her jerk her head back, the sensation was so severe. He'd never fully embraced or appreciated the gift or responsibility of being a Neteru. That was too ordinary for him. Too powerless by comparison to what he'd been before. His mind kept constantly going back to the so-called good old days of absolute power where he could cast illusion, receive VIP treatment everywhere he went, walk through walls, battle bulk, fight, regenerate missing limbs if necessary, and hit the vanishing point to blow a sister's mind with no effort. Damali balled her hands into fists; his short-sightedness made her want to scream.
The dark side had taken it to the max, albeit way beyond what Carlos had consciously wanted or intended. Although he'd never do Yonnie and Tara like that, or probably Juanita, the fact remained that if his power lust hadn't been there, with all the other dark lusts he owned, Damali knew in her soul that things wouldn't have gotten crazy. He would have been a pure Neteru, versus what he'd returned as--part human, part Neteru, part Council-level vampire. The fusion had to happen when he'd come through the heat of Hell's furnace and into the atomic-level burn of the Light.
Damali shook her head.
"You all right, baby?" Marlene asked quietly.
"Yeah," Damali said in a distant voice, not opening her eyes. "A few more minutes. I think I've got it now."
Damali ran her palms over her face, feeling the slight moistness that had crept over her brow. The last episode had cultivated a quiet, deeply personal meltdown within her and something evil had attached itself to that when she couldn't take it anymore.
From his drug-dealing days, to becoming a vampire and all the madness that went with that, to accidentally getting pregnant with him, and losing the baby--but not just losing it, but having to retrieve it and slaughter the demon thief that stole it... nearly losing her title for him, having to reconfigure the team to accommodate him, having to share her command of the Guardians with him, then for him to go against what the Light had told him, after being a catalyst to her loss of the Isis and having to run all over the world to get it back... and then him getting compromised, again, on a dark throne no less--oh, yeah, it was about so much more than Juanita. Love or not, through-the-fire devotion or not, this man had shattered her nerves.
She'd wanted a new, safe pair of arms to hold her, ones without history, ones without house consequences. An older, wiser, more disciplined soul... one with charisma and sensuality and music who could appreciate her gifts, his gifts, her art, and had some sexy new ways of his own, but without all the changes that Carlos Rivera had taken her through over the years.
It had been at the forefront of her mind that day like never before. As she'd driven from Malibu back to Beverly Hills the thought had almost become a mantra. She'd pleaded out loud with hot tears running down her face, "God, give me somebody I don't have to go through changes like this with anymore." She also remembered the more urgent, silent part of the prayer. "Give me a man who is comfortable in his own skin and who loves being a Neteru." She almost laughed out loud in despair as new tears wet her lashes. She hadn't named names, and wasn't specific, which was most likely why the being who showed up didn't reveal a name--she hadn't asked for one--even though the rest of him was made to order! Like Marlene had always told her, be careful what you wish for, 'cause ya just might get it.
Damali quietly shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. She could suddenly hear Carlos's mirror-image-request echoing through her head with as much pain as hers had contained. "Let her know what it feels like to have everybody looking at you sideways all the time. Let her know how something could go down like it did, but not mean all what it seemed to mean. Make her know how hard it is to resist something that has you all caught up and that's stronger than you."
Two Neterus of equal power, passion, and righteous indignation, praying hard, at the same time, in polar opposite directions on the same subject? Carlos had manifested this scenario as much as she did! Damali shuddered. Surely the Light would accommodate their requests, but also let them both know it was not to be trifled with for personal nonsense. That could only mean a stern lesson was about to be taught. Her only prayer now was that her team be spared drama on this go-round, if possible.
Thankfully, when she'd lobbed the Heaven-bound request, she'd blocked any attachment she had to Jose, not wanting to put him in the middle of a potentially disastrous liaison. And even though she'd been angry as all get out with Juanita, she didn't want to go after Jose for spite--he deserved better. Frankly, Juanita did, too. But she had to be honest. Deep down, a little female vengeance had slithered through her human soul. That's what had been her weakness, and something dark had worked with what she'd given it.