"You recognize me, don't you?" the man said in a steady, confident voice.
"Its eyes have gone from red to gold, Patrick," a tall, strapping African-looking cleric swathed in all white said. "That is a good sign. He's normalizing and is not in attack mode." He continued to hold his machete in a readiness position, but his stance seemed relaxed.
"Yes. His face is nearly healed, save the empty socket," another of them said. He was an Asian man in dark brown clothes, who also bore a familiar voice.
The only man that looked positively terror stricken was a young priest without a weapon, dressed in a black Catholic habit.
"There were more of you," Carlos finally said, his voice raspy. "You were with us in the tunnels, right?"
"Yes, and we saw you fight with honor," the Moor replied. "We also know you nearly died before we evacuated."
"And Damali?" Pain sent a seizure through Carlos as his partially severed arm locked back into its socket, and he bent, letting out an awful cry of agony. He could feel his ribs reconstruct under the skin, and he grabbed his face as a lightning strike of torture made the raw flesh where his missing eye had been feel like a knife had been gouged into it.
Dropping to both hands, he panted as his ruptured kidneys realigned and healed and the compound fracture in his leg reset. His arms trembled, forcing him to drop to the dank cave floor. Skin from undamaged sections of his body stretched and multiplied to cover areas that had been stripped of flesh to conceal skeleton and ragged muscle that knit itself together like steel cable.
"Throw him another bag," Father Patrick ordered.
Almost too sick to ingest it, Carlos grappled with the bag that had been flung toward him, slitting it with a fang and practically inhaling the dark, thick liquid. As his body temperature heated up, he pulled the shreds of his shirt off, sweat running down his chest, his back, coating his arms. Panting, he lay there for a while, allowing the last of the shudders of pain to abate. He felt stronger, whole, but was tender as all hell. His entire body felt like he'd been punched and then run over by a Mack truck. The parts of him that had not been previously injured now stung from the process of splitting and cloning more tissue for the wounded organs. But at least he could see. At least he was alive, or more correctly stated, still existed.
"Damali?" he wheezed, trying to stand too soon, but wobbled and fell. "I have to get to her."
"You would let a vampire near the precious vessel?" Manuel crossed himself again and glanced nervously at the other men of the cloth.
"He is the only one who can help her at present," Father Patrick said. "Our Neteru's light diminishes daily."
"What happened to her?" Carlos was on his feet now, pacing. His fist connected with a section of the cave wall, leaving a crumble of rock where it had landed. He tried to think of her, to lock in on her present location, but all his mind would offer was glimpses of the past. He stared at the old seer.
"I cannot locate her, either, my friend. She's blind."
"What do you mean, blind?" Carlos stared at the man, thinking of how his own eye had been ripped from his skull in the fight. The thought of that happening to his woman made the air stop moving in and out of his lungs. Her beautiful face... even her name meant beautiful vision, to have that maimed, with no way to regenerate - all the plastic surgery in the human world couldn't repair her. Anger burned in his stomach, forcing bile up to his throat. He swallowed it back down along with unshed tears.
"She couldn't withstand the thought of your turning... or what she saw in the tunnels." The older man's voice was calm, sad, almost soothing. "Our huntress has shut down her third eye."
"But she's vulnerable without her second sight," Carlos murmured, his gaze holding the blue knight's. "You have to make her see again."
The clerics all nodded, as the one in blue rubbed his hand over his jaw in contemplation. "She still possesses the other gifts... superior strength, heightened senses of scent, taste, and hearing, she can feel with profound enlightenment. But her third eye is extremely vulnerable. It is what helps her see into souls, thoughts... and before long, if it doesn't come back, her other senses will begin to erode."
"I know," Carlos said quickly, "but why is she blind? I still don't understand. She was fine when she left the tunnels. Why now?"
"She had others she cared for at her side... it is in her nature to protect her own," the elder cleric said in a quiet tone. "But once the immediate danger had passed, her heart sealed with total despair and the loss of hope. She saw you ripped apart and die - at least she believes you died in those tunnels. Her third eye took those images into her mind and she watched it all. She loved you and your brutal death broke her heart the way nothing else has. Up until that moment she still had hope that you would turn to the side of light and come with the guardians. That hope was so deep and strong that the loss of it is eating away at her soul like a cancer."
"The loss of this hope - of you - makes her imminently more vulnerable to the Vampire Council, Carlos," the Moor added in a quiet, worried tone. "They will eventually sense this and will relentlessly pursue her." He paused. "And she may very well surrender. Once she does, they will not relinquish her until her next fertility, and once again the threat of daywalkers will be upon us." Asula hesitated. "You know we cannot allow this... even if we must ultimately take the Neteru out of the equation for her own good."
Carlos snarled, and flexed his hands. They had actually threatened her in his presence? Were they mad?
"That was never our intention," Monk Lin assured him.
"Do her guardians know about this?" Carlos's tone was even and lethal.
"Their gifts are ebbing, too, with a significant loss of hope, shaken faith, and... other issues clouding their judgment." Father Patrick looked at him squarely. "The Neteru compound is in jeopardy. The family is fracturing, and were it not for the civil war within the vampire realms, it would have been under siege as we speak."
"The compound is a fortress!" Carlos shouted. "I saw it, it's nearly impenetrable."
"Nearly," the large cleric named Asula said in a calm voice. "Nearly. But you got in - through her. She had them lower the barricades for you. One day, perhaps for the same reason, another shrewd master vampire will get in, too, but with very different intentions and horrific outcomes." He paused and stared at Carlos hard, but there was no anger in his eyes, just urgency.
Fury roiled within Carlos, but it was also mixed with something else now - fear.
"There's an old Ghanaian proverb that says, 'The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.' " Asula's voice was unwavering and held authority, just like his gaze. "The Neteru compound is representative of nations. The guardians are all from every faith and group of people, merged as one family - as it should be on earth. Her home, her family unit, must be strong. There's not enough technology in the world to keep out evil... and we know that religious amulets are playthings, if there is not strong faith to back them up. Break the family and the second line of defense at the compound fails. We, the Covenant, her first line of defense, have all but been broken... we lost two-thirds of our number down in Hell."