Damali's attention ping-ponged between the half-human's hovering and diving with massive, black bat wings, and the ones on the ground covering a cowering woman. She'd seen a lot of weird combinations, but when things from the Dark Realms transformed, it was an all-body shape-shift, not this half-human, half-whatever type of creature.
Black arcs met blue arcs as the entities on the ground fended off a kinetic body snatch with deflective rays. She watched the muscle in Cain's jaw jump, his silver-gold eyes narrow, then suddenly a loud battle cry erupted from within him as he leapt, holding his blade with both hands, making a blue-white arc exit from the tip of it that blew one entity back to slam against the mountain wall, and then took off two heads with one swing.
"Do not test me!" he shouted, hitting the side of the ravine with one foot and pushing off of it to go airborne again.
Damali looked at her Isis, and kept a battle stance to protect the human she couldn't see. But, dayum, her Isis didn't work like that.
Two smoldering heads dropped at her feet and rolled around in a screaming, slow smoking circle, eyes still seeing, blinking, tongues moving. She could barely take her gaze off of the wailing heads. Even the death process was so eerily different here. And just as soon as the battle had begun, it ended. A long echoing wail followed the leathery retreat with a promise for vengeance ringing through the bright, three-moon night. The seraphim-faced entities by her feet wept as they gently eased back and removed their wings to reveal the injured human they'd valiantly protected. A charred, smoking figure of a woman shuddered as third-degree burns covered her body. Her eyes were sealed shut as though her skin had melted and fused every feature on her face together from the heat. Her skeletal, raw hands trembled in agony as bloody hunks of flesh just hung like cooked meat from her bones and her hair had fallen away in red-ember, glowing cinders. But with her mouth sealed in raw, bubbling burns, she could only whimper and mumble as her heels dug into the rocky ground in writhing pain.
"Oh, dear God," Damali said, dropping to her knees. "The Caduceus rod--Cain, bring it to me, we're both Neterus, we can do this! Hurry, before she dies."
It materialized in his hand. "Open up her throat at the trachea. She cannot breathe, Damali. She will suffocate before we can heal her."
Damali gripped her Isis blade and rested the tip against the unrecognizable woman's throat, and then her blade fell away. Damali's rippling scream made Cain work with his hands, and he slit the woman's throat to open a hole and blew air into it, and then repeatedly pressed down on the woman's chest keeping a steady, life-sustaining rhythm.
"Do it now," he said 'between pants. "Hold the rod to her heart chakra. Join me." He glanced at Damali, growing impatient. "Neteru, on your mark! Begin--"
"That's my mother-seer," she whispered.
Cain glanced down, nodded to the seraphim hybrids. "Balm this Neteru while I work. She's going into shock. Guard her third eye."
"Doctor, this one has been gone for ten minutes. This is the longest we've been able to sustain the disappearance without the body bouncing back into the lab as ash. I think we should try to reverse polarity now, before we lose it entirely."
The lead scientist looked at the others in the room. "Do it."
Cain could feel his body heating, lifting, something strange and artificial pulling at his limbs, raising the rope of locks from his back as his hands grabbed the dying woman's shoulders. At one moment he was making his breaths one with hers, offering her his life force as a bridge, like his heartbeat, joining his energy with the healing power within the rod, using the conductive energy of the sacred metals, and then the next thing he knew, he was with the victim's smoldering body on a cold floor in a white and metal room with bright lights.
Masked men surrounded him, a projectile came his way, and he deflected it with a snarl and stood.
"Keep recording!" the lead scientist shouted. "One actually came through with the body and was feeding from its throat!"
"Contain it!" another voice said, making Cain spin and turn in a confused pivot.
One of the men in white slammed a panel. Cain stared down as the floor quickly separated, putting a ring around him and the injured woman, as well as the men now holding Old World crossbows made of gleaming steel. Holy water instantly flooded into the small gulley that had opened in a circle around him on the strange floor. Within the bizarre concoction he also smelled pungent garlic and wolfsbane as a steel net dropped from the ceiling with bags of the demon-barrier substances laced through it.
"Are you humans mad?" Cain swept up the injured woman and glanced at the stricken faces around the room that he vaguely remembered. "The mother-seer is dying!" He almost wept at their stupidity. Her fragile body was convulsing and her flesh was coming off in his hands.
Suddenly he realized that there were two sets of humans. This was not a cohesive group of Damali's team. Blood was in the air with her team's signature in it. Cain hesitated, not sure, his blade leveled as it materialized in his grip. They had not performed the experiment to go in search of a missing Damali. Something stuck him in the leg, the back, the chest, his neck. Tiny bee stings from high-powered implements. His vision blurred, he could sense a vampire... two... just beyond the walls but held back by sacred objects. Bright, artificial light, and somehow he was on his knees. Men were still stinging him with the poison darts, saying to put the big bastard down hard, but not to kill him... who did they speak of that was a threat? Him. Absolute chaos reigned. Men in white coats screamed about another one.... Another what?
He could sense silver, a Neteru brother. All faces were blurry, just a tattoo let him know one of his own had entered the battle. He would not drop his blade. He would not leave the dying human female as he fell to all fours. She was his beloved's mother-seer. His words were slurring in his mouth and in his head. The carnivores in white would not befoul the mother-seer's body. He struggled to brace himself over her. He would use this last breath to pass the message telepathically. "Take the team to safety, my brother! Do not let the mother-seer die."
Two deft whirs collected the team that had been trapped behind the glass wall, the steel room around them was like a bank vault and so was the lab. Against every instinct within him, Carlos pulled Cain into the void with the others, as well as Marlene's lifeless body.
Arizona was the first thought that came to his mind, a place far enough away to make the feds have to scuffle to find them fast, but close enough for his energy to hold. He knew the terrain; it was hallowed ground. But Yonnie and Tara could cross it. If Cain was on the wrong side--his ass would fry. They had a serious core of shaman friends in the Navajo Nation, all financial bickering about the old compound, regardless. It was about quick decisions with no margin for bullshit or errors.
The landing was hard and sloppy with so much dead weight, but Yonnie and Tara couldn't help him while inside the military containment center that had been made white-hot for vamps.
"Put a stake in his chest now, while he's down," Yonnie said, looking at Carlos and then down at Cain. "Motherfucker gotta be Level Seven, sucking her guts out through a hole in her throat after torching her. Fucking flesh-eatin' bastard!" Yonnie spit.
Rider nodded, going to get a thick tree branch as Tara disintegrated everyone's nylon handcuffs and Jose snapped a low-hanging tree limb.
"We've got two big men down," Berkfield said, glancing at Shabazz's and Big Mike's limp bodies. "Tara, baby, you vamps got any way to pull the tranquilizer out without a nick, while I see what I can do for Mar? Might need 'em if those boys don't hurry up with a stake," he added, glancing over toward Cain.
"No," Tara murmured, kneeling beside Marlene. She stared at Marlene with pity glittering in her red-glowing eyes while Marlene's chest heaved and shuddered, struggling for air. "There's only one way I can extract the tranquilizer." Tara's sorrowful gaze held Berkfield's. "It will leave both men permanently damaged." She returned her attention to Marlene and gently touched the side of her throat, feeling a weak pulse. "Before her life essence goes, however, I may be able to give her life... but it will not be what any of you had intended."
Marj immediately dropped beside Tara on her hands and knees. "Oh, Jesus," she whispered, tears streaming down her face and causing Tara to wince and stand. "Richard, she's almost not breathing, almost doesn't have a pulse. She's so badly burned." Her gaze went to Carlos. "Don't let them turn her! Can't you heal her?"
Younger Guardians looked away. Inez's sob broke through the night and roused Big Mike to a drowsy rollover.