No answer.
Frustration would not lay claim to her; she willed it away, but sent a very graphic representation of her skills into the night air with a desirous growl. She smiled as she again sensed him pause. Yes, think about that tonight... and do not ignore me again.
With a sigh of exasperation, she dismounted in one fluid flex of her spine and landed on the ground on all fours. Her attention went to the nearby village. Her shape shifted into human female form. Flimsy doors, half-hearted prayers, open windows, adulterous men in the streets. Humans were so very careless.
Carlos closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. She was walking, her long, confident strides fluid beneath her faded jeans. He loved the way every toned muscle beneath her gorgeous, bronzed skin worked as she moved. His mind seized upon the small tattoo at the base of her spine and caressed it. He could almost feel the soft texture of the fabric of her lemon-yellow tank top. He remembered her mouth, her kiss, her smile... One of her guardians was with her, making her laugh. He could literally taste the taco as she bit into it.
"You've been monitoring her telepathically for a month, Carlos." Father Patrick's comment made the vision evaporate. Angered by the sudden loss, Carlos set his jaw hard and kept staring out the window.
"We're also no closer to finding out what is going on in South America," he pressed on. "My visions reveal the deaths themselves, but not what caused them. Is it vampire? Maybe some of the hybrid things left over from before?"
Carlos kept his back to the priest he'd come to call Father Pat. As his gaze remained fixed on the full September moon, harvest season ran through his mind. He sent a glare over his shoulder, and watched them bristle. Only Father Pat seemed cool.
"I've told you a hundred times, if once, since I got here. This ain't my kind - we don't eat flesh." He returned his gaze to the moon. "We're purists. Only do blood."
"The hybrids from Nuit's colony left sloppy signatures - real brutal bites that tore out organs," Father Patrick countered.
Carlos thought about it hard. The twisted bastards Nuit made had kept human body parts and meat hanging in their lair refrigerators... he was just glad he wasn't one of them and had been made by council. His mind went to the young girl Nuit had gutted for his brothers to feed on. His kind was capable, but that was the new regime, not the old one. Something about this wasn't right; he could feel that it wasn't from the empire. "Those victims in Brazil didn't get back up and turn," he said after a moment, trying to convince himself that it wasn't possible for vampires to be involved - like whether the victims turned or not really made a difference. He knew better than that. These were feed kills.
But this was so damned boring. Carlos folded his arms over his chest. Just one night out... "Demons possess - so they're careful about what they do to the bodies they plan on inhabiting. I told you that! They go in before the body is declared dead, or known to be dead by the living. That way, they can walk around undetected, and they can cast illusion to keep the living from seeing the decay - that's why they smell the way they do. They're f**king parasites." He turned and looked at them hard. "I don't think it was vamps, but I need to get out of here to really investigate. I need to employ all my senses to - "
"No," Padre Lopez said, fast. "That's not part of the deal. You must avoid proximate occasions of sin until your willpower is stronger."
"Fuck it, then," Carlos said, his tone a low grumble as he turned back to look at the moon. "Have it your way." He closed his eyes. Good food and a good woman - that was what was in order.
But he could feel the team at his back grow tense with his silence. Each one of them possessed a sensory gift, and if they were picking up half of what was on his mind, then they had every right to be concerned. Just the thought of a hunt was making his gums thicken, and thinking about Damali was having the same effect on his groin.
Fully healed and well fed, he was out. But he had to play this cool and not get staked because he hadn't been strategic. At night, Asula, Lin, and Father Lopez were always a little standoffish when he was awake and moving about in their section of the cabin quarters. He could dig it. He made them nervous, rightfully so. He could feel it as they continued to stare at his back, waiting for him to say something.
"She's still partially blind," Carlos said softly. "I wanted to give it time to wear off... thought maybe it was temporary shock. That way, I wouldn't have to go to her in person. She didn't even move her compound like we thought she would. I don't understand."
"This is what we feared," Father Patrick said sadly, allowing Carlos to change the subject without resistance. "She doesn't care about her own safety anymore."
"No... knowing Damali, she's taken a stand. She's even trying to book concerts all over the place. She's thinking about working on a new CD. She's just stronger, and not afraid anymore." Carlos rubbed his jaw and let out a hard breath. "My baby is all grown up. I was the one who taught her to stand her ground, to claim her territory, and not be moved. Guess I was good for something."
He walked away from the window and then back toward it. The night was calling him, like a siren. He couldn't stand being cooped up like this, or having to always roll with a cleric, lest he lose himself to temptation and have dinner in the streets. Watching Damali from afar had been Hell on earth.
"Have you eaten yet tonight?" the monk named Lin asked in an apologetic, but nervous tone.
"I'm not hungry, yet," Carlos said with a lopsided smile, tilting his head and appraising the cleric in a way that he knew would engender fear.
"Compadre, you should, uh, go to the refrigerator... there's been new shipments."
Padre Lopez's comment made his smile broaden. It was twisted, but he enjoyed f**king with these guys. He wasn't sure why, but maybe it was lingering resentment over being so powerful a creature, held hostage by the legal technicalities of supernatural law. Seven years living with monks was definitely incarceration. Seven years of Damali living only a few miles away, but never being able to touch her, was working on the wrong side of his brain. He decided not to bear fangs, though. That always caused them to sweat and go into defense mode. Tonight a whiff of their adrenaline-soaked blood might push him over the edge.
"I need to go out for a few hours," he said, studying them all hard for their reactions.
"You know that isn't advisable, or allowed in your current frame of mind."
"Yeah. I know. Can't blame a man for trying, though," Carlos muttered in disgust, returning his gaze to the window. To vaporize and turn into mist... to feel the night enter his pores and to become one with it once again, was such a seductive pull that it made him close his eyes. He could feel his incisors thickening and threatening to rip through his gums again. In the distance, wolves howled, and it was all he could do not to answer their baleful call with one of his own.
Oh, shit, they had no idea what this was like. It wasn't that bad while he was rehabilitating, getting his head together, and coming to terms with his existence. But now... How did a man ignore his basic instincts, divorce himself from his nature? To hunt was in his very DNA. It had always been there, even before he became a vampire. The clerics even told him he was designated by fate to be a tracker guardian, once an olfactory sensor. Her scent was so close...
Before he had been turned, he'd had a heightened sense of smell梚t had helped in his former business. But they didn't understand that that ability had been further heightened through his new vampire status. The scent of their blood, sweat, everything in his environment was beating against his brain with its call, especially Damali's scent. And she was out hunting again, tonight, the song of her blood filling the air. Shit.
"In the zoo," Carlos murmured, "sometimes the lions don't eat because the kill is brought to them like canned dog food. They'd rather bring down a kill themselves... get a good run on. I watched them, as a kid, and never understood it until now. After a while, even the kings of the jungle just lie there, defeated. You can see it in their eyes." He turned and looked at the men around him who he knew had no concept of what he was talking about. They had never been on a blood hunt, or probably never had a woman. "Have you ever looked in a lion's eyes, or a panther's, for that matter?"
Each of them immediately averted their eyes, and he let his breath out hard. He would have showed them what it felt like - all of it, even what being with a woman was like - if they hadn't turned away. He was getting stronger by the moment, by each night that his true master vampire status took root within him. Things that he never knew before had finally lodged into his awareness. Power like he'd never felt was threading through his system. Even his vocabulary was changing, making him multilingual.