It was a foolish concept that he nursed as he lay dying. Protection. For minutes, hours, days until they tracked her down again? His kind was relentless and had all the time in the world to go after her once they regrouped. That he killed many of them in the combat was of little consequence. His efforts would barely make a dent in the numbers that hunted her. He'd come to understand that as the tunnels of Hell had filled and they'd rushed him.
Even for a master vampire like him, there had been too many of them. Rogue vampires had descended upon him with their allied demon forces, however his objective had been singular: keep them away from the Neteru, away from Damali and her guardian team. Were it not for his alliance with the Vampire Council of old, he would have immediately perished. But, then, that might have been a more merciful fate.
Agony from his wounds stripped the breath from his lungs as his mind struggled to hold onto consciousness. Bone cut through his skin like jagged, bloody, white knives, leaving his leg a distorted wreck. His jaw had been shattered, neutering him, leaving him no vampire defense. His left arm was almost amputated, hanging by a bloody mass of muscle at what had been his shoulder. Sections of his rib cage protruded from beneath ripped flesh and had dug into the ground when they'd dropped him, almost trapping him against the sand until he could bring himself to roll over onto his right side. He couldn't even groan when he did. Pain had seized his vocal cords and impaled him.
His chest rose and fell with intermittent shudders for air. He trained his mind on the distorted faces that had attacked him. In the chaos of battle, he'd avoided being beheaded, and something he couldn't fathom had made it impossible for one of Fallon Nuit's master vampires to drive a stake through his heart. Odd. A strange arc of energy had spared his chest and had given his attackers pause. The split-second advantage allowed him to take out his immediate opponent, but it had not kept him from being badly mangled in the blood struggle with the others. Were he not in so much pain, he would have questioned what spared him, and then laughed at the irony of it all.
"Pride goeth before a fall," his mother had always said when he was still human. She, too, was right. What good were expensive suits on a dead man? He thought about how he'd once put so much emphasis on being well-groomed, the perfection of his haircut, his material possessions, all that he owned. No wonder he was damned. He'd never put a value on his soul, and now his once-athletic body was ripped to shreds and of no use.
His right eye was almost sealed shut. Multiple blows to his face had left a gaping hole that remained from where a claw took out his left eye and a part of his cheek. An attacker from behind had gotten to his one arm in mid-swing - that was now precariously dangling from filleted cartilage and ligaments, no longer in the shoulder socket that once housed it. When he'd fallen from the impact, like vultures they'd gone for his legs, his mobility, leaving one leg stripped of muscle and flesh down to the bone over a multiple compound fracture, and his ribs on one side had been crushed. There had been just too many of them that descended upon him like rabid wolves. Now his immortality was a curse, keeping him locked within a pain-riddled carcass.
His entire existence flashed through his mind in snapshots. Everything in his short lifespan was measured before the vampire turning point, and after it. B.V., before vampirism, and A.V., after vampirism. Before he had been turned, he'd squandered his talents for business by investing in the drug world and had been king of his hill. He was a real predator - and had been preyed upon by his own kind. Vampiri. A mournful howl entered his chest and escaped from the confines of his broken jaw. What had he done?
When the Vampire Council's forces had rushed the tunnel in search of him and his Neteru cargo, it had created a distraction for Nuit's army - but not before the rogues had angrily jettisoned him to the topside, earth. Their demons had made haste to lay him in the open desert two hundred yards away from a cave entrance before returning to the underworld civil war... two hundred yards away from the safety of a sunshield with dawn approaching. No mercy. That was the way of his world.
Badly wounded, and unable to hunt to feed himself in order to regenerate, he knew his fate was sealed. He didn't even have enough telepathic energy to mentally project himself to a safe place beyond the sun's reach; he could barely lift his head. He just laid there in the dark awaiting dawn.
Yet an eerie calm befell him, like that of a man who has finally accepted his demise. Soon daylight would incinerate him. It would burn away what remained of his flesh and turn it to a pile of ash, but it would also release his embattled soul. The pain of sunlight would pass in minutes, and would be nothing in comparison to the suffering that tortured him now.
Carlos stopped struggling against the hard, rock-strewn ground. The desert night air was cool. Coyotes howled, and he could sense them coming nearer to him; he was carrion. What did it matter? He had already been ripped to shreds, and his heart had no beat, no blood flowed through his veins. The Covenant of Light had been wrong. There was no second chance. In life, he had been a predator, feeding on the weak and dying as a drug lord, luring them and seducing them with his product. Now the carrion feeders were about to fill their bellies with his dying remains. Yes, only fitting. Karma.
Besides, there was no going back to a human existence, not with two significant mob factions looking for him, as well as the FBI.
There was no joining the Minion, Fallon Nuit's rogues, even after conquering Nuit, their attack made that clear. The old vampires posed no option, either. They wanted him to hunt down the only source of light in his life and bring her to them - and he'd never give them Damali.
So, Carlos waited. He could feel his body being nudged and sniffed by the jackal-like creatures of the desert. Out of pure reflex, he snarled, having no real energy to do more to defend himself. But the animals yelped and backed up in confusion. He could feel their terror and see them retreat with his inner mind's eye, at least. But eventually Damali's image eclipsed even that. God, please let her have made it out alive. He fully closed his half-shut eye. Profound. Near death, and with her name in his skull, he could call the name that used to scorch his brain.
Seeing her inside his head, the last still frame of her as she turned to him once, her eyes filled with tears, her voice strong but trembling, begging him to come with them. She'd seen him in full vampire mode, knew what he was, had watched him transform, but foolishly insisted that he come away with her and her guardians. Carlos allowed the sweet balm of her belief in him to enter his bones. It dulled the excruciating pain. As long as he could see Damali's face, her eyes, her Isis sword raised above her head... her eyes closing as tears for him ran down her face...
They had taken his soul, but they could never take his memory of her. The warmth within her being blanketed him. He remembered her touch, her kiss, her smile, her passionate spoken words, her music. His undamaged hand clawed the sandy earth as he remembered the softness of her bronze skin, the smell of shoulder-length locks, the way her black pupils eclipsed the color of dark brown irises when she looked deeply into his mind. All five-foot-seven inches of her lithe, athletic frame had fused to his in a desperate hug. She had not given up on him, refused to let him go, even when she saw the beast within him. And both vampire nations had wanted him to turn over such a precious vessel to them to pollute her with their demonic seed... to turn her untouched womb into a sanctuary for daywalker fetuses? Never! Not even as a dead man.
His foot pushed against the stones and gravel. One hand clawed and grappled at it to drag his battered form forward. His inner radar drew him to where it was dark and cool as the planet slowly began to heat with approaching dawn. Pain riddled him as he slithered along the ground millimeter by millimeter, tearing open flesh wounds against his abdomen and torso.
Exhaustion and agony claimed him, filling his pores with profound torture until he stopped his struggle. His skin began to feel hot, prickly. A cold shiver washed through him. He knew he was going into shock. Sweat ran down his face and covered his back and chest, the salt of it igniting new shards of pain as it entered his gaping wounds. It wouldn't be long before the night lifted and gave way. He'd loved Damali so much; didn't she know if he could reverse the hands of time, he would have? But that was beyond even a master vampire's powers - just like he was beyond redemption. The situation was what it was; he was what he was, and soon the sun would cook that away.
Damali's voice entered his skull, the last stanza of her concert song, the one she'd composed as a secret message to him... the refrain that he'd so arrogantly ignored, "Remember, baby, how it used to be? When we were just kids, and so free."
Yes, baby, I remember... It was all he had left.
Three nights later...
"Father Patrick, are you sure you should get so close to the beast? It is not yet full daylight, it's wounded and could attack." The younger cleric placed a trembling hand on the old man's shoulder, trying to get him to heed caution as he glanced around the dark cavern, a torch and flashlights their only source of illumination. He made the sign of the cross over his heart as soon as one of the lights glinted off a set of fangs. "Madre de Dios ..." His voice was a strangled whisper.
The gruesome remains of a vampire were the last thing he'd expected to ever see when he entered the clergy and became a priest. He'd heard about myths and legends like this that were rampant among his people in the countryside, but never in his life had he believed. These were superstitions, the rationalizations of simplistic people left over from a time gone by. In fact, he didn't even believe in exorcisms. The church itself was very, very skeptical about even discussing such things. But now he was out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, in a cave, at
night, with three old men claiming to be clerical warriors, who were advancing, without fear, toward something unfathomable? Until he spied the thing they spoke of, he had simply not believed.
Padre Manuel Lopez swallowed hard and wanted to look away, but could not. Fear gripped him and kept his gaze firmly on the thing that bore fangs and had only half a face.
"Padre Lopez... Manuel, there are only three of us left from the original twelve in the Covenant," the senior cleric replied after selecting a place for the others to set down a huge, silver chest. "My friends, Asula, Lin, and me." The Moor and the Buddhist nodded. "You are new, and do not understand this beast like we do." He let out a long, patient breath.
"My visions have led us here. The only reason you are here, Padre, is because your parish is near and we don't know this region. We needed an anointed man of faith to be our guide, or we would have spared you this grisly sight. On your insistence, you have entered this cave. We tried to warn you, but you would not heed our advice. So, please do not interrupt our mission."
"Patrick is right. He is a knight of Templar from the highest order, and the seer of our Covenant of the twelve major faiths in the world. The others were lost in the battle to protect our Neteru. Her team made it out, but ours all but perished. So many of us died with that honor. Those who made it out alive, died soon after from the wounds they'd sustained," Asula said quietly. "This beast saved our lives. Saved our Neteru. That is what matters here."
"How can that be?" Manuel's eyes darted between the three older men and the heavy silver trunk they had set down only yards away from the creature.
"He placed himself between our teams and those who attacked us," Lin answered, folding his arms over his chest. "The adversary showed no mercy."