Yonnie stopped moving for a moment and stared down at her. "What did you say?" he whispered very carefully.
Tara came out of the pleasure haze with him still lodged deep within her. "I don't know . . ." she sobbed, her voice catching in her throat. "Why are you torturing me?" He grabbed her jaw roughly between his fingers and turned her head to expose her throat. "No humans, ever," he whispered, feeling a new level of control simmering inside him. Something had definitely gone down.
"But why?" she moaned, arching her back to take more of him in.
"My Chairman's edict... unless I hear it directly from Rivera that he's changed his mind."
"He's no longer a vampire, Yonnie. He's no longer one of us." Her eyes were wild and desperate as they searched his for answers.
"He'll always be the one who elevated me--that's enough, no matter what he is now. My brother never lied to me... whatever's messin' with your mind I don't trust." He kissed her forehead, sensing a powerful darkness there that had been strong enough to compromise Tara's iron will. If it got to her, then whatever it was had to be serious.
"Then just do me," she said breathlessly, not sounding herself. "Forget the human."
Yonnie lowered his mouth to Tara's throat, siphoning a gasp from her as his fangs raked the fevered skin of her neck. "I won't go against our brother, or f**k up a chance to get out of Hell. But, V-Point, baby... any night of the week."
Lilith sat down very slowly on Dante's old battered throne, feeling it come alive at the armrests under her caress. As the red velvet fabric knitted itself together beneath her she closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and released a slow, burning breath of satisfaction. She would miss Dante sorely, no matter how insidious her treachery had been. He was special.
But that was then and this was now. She watched without emotion as the Vampire Council Chamber on Level Six began to reorganize itself and the abandoned, pentagram-shaped table slowly gurgled to life with black blood now pulsing in the veins of the marble. So much waste, so much strain on the empire... she well understood her husband's rage. She would not incur his wrath again with failure.
Concentrating on Carlos Rivera's essence, Lilith waited. The dark side of him that had been born from her machinations put tears of pride in her eyes---the entity had been so foul. Then the good one had killed it... just like the female Neteru had slain her Dante. The loss of her would-be heir, a dark Rivera, was profound, leaving a visceral hole in the evil empire--one of no less magnitude than Dante's demise.
Lilith glanced up toward the cavernous ceiling, enraged that even vampires in the new male Neteru's old family still would not submit to the lure of human blood or the temptation of an elevation, and were still loyal to the Neteru team. Guardians hadn't even been fully compromised!
Revenge gripped her and her nails grew to talons that penetrated the armrests. The Neterus would pay.
Slowly, through the haze of sudden fury, she felt it. The sensation came into her spine like a lightning strike and made her throw her head back and screech with laughter.
"Oh, Carlos . . ." she whispered, clucking her tongue. "Now I know your dirty little secret--the one thing that will fell you and will make you lose your mind. I own your greatest fear... and now I can turn the blade in your side, thus hers, just like she gored my womb. Wait until Damali sees this."
CHAPTER TWO
Malibu, California Damali stared into the bathroom mirror as she brought the towel down from her damp face. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the past slithered through her. Everything that Carlos had ever done wrong came to life within her mind like a hot coal burning the good memories away.
"You can run but you can't hide," she told herself quietly, and took her time puttering around in the tiled sanctuary with the door closed.
She didn't feel like making love to Carlos this morning. Not after what she'd finally come to understand, and not after it had had time to fully sink in. Things like this took a minute to germinate in one's soul. The awareness left her feeling like doing nothing at all. Numbness threaded through her and left her very sad. Weary. In fact, all she wanted to do was to go home--back to her own place in Beverly Hills.
The emotion had crept up on her by degrees. In the midst of battle when she'd faced her man's other half, the dark side of him, she'd seen horrible images hurling at her. But she'd paid them no mind, then. Going up against a serious demon presence would send every, and anything, into one's mind, so a sister had to be strong, ignore it, laugh at the bullshit. That's what she'd done. Then.
Once she and the team had handled their business--and thankfully all of them had made it out of that madness alive--it was about a party, a celebration of life. They'd won.
Damali peered at the shut door as she sat down slowly on the edge of the wide, midnight-blue porcelain Jacuzzi and began applying the butter to her skin. Suddenly she wanted to cry as much as she had a fight surge roiling inside her.
After the party came a month of pure indulgence in her apexing Neteru's arms. Heaven. Heart-stopping, mind-melting, time- altering, mad-crazy lovemaking day and night until it didn't make any kinda sense. What was there to think about, then? The powerful jolt from his sexy pheromones kept anything out of her head, except getting with him and enjoying every moment of it. She'd almost eloped with him, being so swept up in the passion of it all. They'd only waited a few so that Father Patrick could get back from Rome and they could do the thing proper with their beloved priest, who was like a real father to Carlos.
Damali closed her eyes. Tears wet her lashes. Maybe she should have just gone ahead and married him and not waited. Time was kicking her ass now. The cold light of day was real ugly and she could no longer escape the fleeting impressions that had gradually become too clear and full blown within her mental sight.
It was so unfair, and the rational part of her had diagnosed her problem with logical detachment. By all rights, she knew she couldn't blame him. He'd been under the influence. For several days she'd repeatedly reminded herself of that fact. But the emotional part of her being still had major issues. Her unspent rage seemed to come out of nowhere, which was the crazy part.
And it all. happened in a slow dissolve of her reality as Carlos's apex ebbed, and the spiking hormone levels in her body dissipated to a dull roar. Snatches of information had come back to her third eye with a vengeance. Things no woman should ever see her man do, foul behavior that had been previously blocked within her head was loosed. This was worse than the were-demon incident, to her way of thinking. Oddly, she could live with that and she didn't really go there in her mind. But this thing with a Guardian sister... family, such as it were, was too messed up. Too close to home, literally.
The thing that hurt so much about what she'd witnessed was the fact that the only reason it had happened at all was because he'd defied a direct angelic command... which had tethers to the fact that he'd been so resentful of her command, her position, and the fact that for even a little while, she'd been the one in charge. That hurt. That was how he'd been seduced to prematurely act, contagion or not, it was at the core of his being. That was what had put him in a position of being nearly compromised beyond redemption. And once his brief possession by the unthinkable occurred, he did things under the influence that were horrible.
More than anything else, she also knew that, even possessed, the dark side worked with what was already looming within the shadowy sections of the human spirit. All it did was bring those things to the fore with a vengeance.
Carlos had been angry at Yonnie, way down deep, for making a pass at her. He'd been conflicted and upset with Tara, for Rider's sake and for Yonnie's, and all the dark possession did was elevate it and bring it out in its worst form; he'd wanted her to choose clearly and decisively to end the drama between two of his closest friends. He owed Jose and loved him like a brother, but had still been pissed off at Jose's attention, his silent love-jones, and the blanket--going after Juanita made sense while possessed. Nasty Scorpio bastard.
Most of all, Carlos had been furious with her for still being the team's most seasoned Neteru, and not wanting to get married or to conceive right away... so, while "under the influence," as Carlos called it, he'd set out to punish her--even though he loved her... even while possessed. The demon had a stranglehold on him through his deepest, darkest insecurities, much the same way a man who loves his wife beats her to be sure she stays with him. Insanity.