Carlos snarled when they hastened to sit Father Lopez down and bring him a glass of water. "Sonofabitch needs a cold shower, not a glass of water, gentlemen. Unless I'm losing my touch."
Watching them try to restore order and help the disoriented Lopez, while issuing nasty glances over their shoulders in his direction, truly got on his nerves. Carlos paced, hating how they flinched at his every move. "All right, all right. My bad. I'll chill."
"This is going to be a long seven years for all of us, Carlos, if you keep this nonsense up," Father Patrick snapped.
As soon as the priest reminded him of the length of his sentence, he reached out toward the door, ripping it from its hinges from where he stood across the room. Wood and metal splintered and bent as it came to a hard crash against the floor. Seven years, f**k that. Seven more minutes was a stretch. The fact that everybody was on their feet was of little consequence. Yeah, he was getting stronger - they needed to know that, too. So were the urges that came with the increased power he owned.
A thick, blue-white band surrounded the house from the threshold out a hundred yards and heat rushed through the door as though he'd opened a furnace. He'd never make it across without torching himself. Carlos waved his arm in frustration and immediately repaired the door and then paced from the door to the window.
"You f**king lied to me. That's a sin! Fucking clerics and you lied? You brought my coffin over that shit out there... and... and - that shit ain't right! Don't tell me about being a master of deception! All you want is for me to go to Brazil with Damali - track her, protect her, go hunt down and kill whatever is over there - just f**king work for your asses like a mule! Deliver the package, untouched, right? But I'm not allowing her to get in harm's way. You think I'm crazy? Stupid?"
"No," Father Patrick said calmly. "You're not crazy. We did conceal the full purpose of our mission."
"What!" The sofa hit the wall and three lamps blew out. "You admit that shit to my face?"
"Yes," Father Patrick said with a sly smile. "We had an agenda. No sense lying about it now." He glanced at the others who had weapons firmly in their grip in the darkened room. "Carlos knows this is how business is done. Fair exchange. We work on saving his soul, all the stuff he wants... well, almost all, and he works on what we want."
All sarcasm and amusement went out of Father Patrick's tone as his glare narrowed on Carlos in the dark. "We want the Neteru safe at all times, just like you do. We want whatever is causing chaos to be eliminated - just like your vampire world probably doesn't want anything harvesting humans from their territories, we don't either. We have the same end goal in mind, but for different reasons."
Begrudgingly, Carlos righted the furniture and repaired the lamps.
"You're getting stronger," Father Patrick said.
"Yeah. Goes with the new territory - literally," Carlos muttered as he sulked and paced away.
"Power concentrating from Nuit's old areas?"
"Yeah. What's it to you?"
"If you're strong, that's a good thing," Father Patrick said carefully. "A heck of a thing for us to cope with in here, but something you'll need where you're probably going."
"If you had any sense, you'd let me talk her out of getting herself in harm's way... and just let me go over there and dust whatever's lurking... if that would shorten my sentence." Carlos stared at the old man, trying to keep a plea out of his tone.
"You know that tonight wouldn't be a good time for you to talk to her. Let us focus on the Brazilian problem instead."
Carlos sighed and found a stationary post by the window. "Yeah, I know the deal. We can do this the hard way, or the smooth way."
"Correct," Asula said in a harsh tone.
"No more attacks on our junior member, understood?" Lin said evenly. "He's young, and it's not a fair match!"
"Tell me, what about any of this is fair?" Carlos didn't look at them as he asked the rhetorical question. This shit was royally pissing him off. "What if I made Lopez feel it every time I did? Made him lose his goddamned mind like you're trying to make me lose mine... for seven years?" Carlos glanced at the young priest, considered just taking him there on general principle, then decided not to for the sake of his own sanity. "Shit," he said, going back to the window. "Don't mess with me, tonight, about what's fair. I am not in the mood."
"You have not answered my question about the mountain killings."
Father Patrick said with a glare of disapproval blazing in his eyes as he tried to wrest back Carlos's focus.
"Yeah, well... whatever. Probably not vampires." Carlos sighed. This was really getting on his nerves. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared into the darkness, wishing he were an invisible part of it. "Those bodies were mauled, found, and pronounced dead - with no signs of a ritual near them. The hybrids from Nuit's camp have probably been hunted down and killed by the Vampire Council's squad by now."
Carlos placed both hands on the windowpane, as if trying to touch the moon through the glass. "These guys fell in some pretty remote locations - by the time the search parties found them, whatever was out there in the wild had gotten a piece of them as well. Wasn't like they dropped in a city park. Dumb bastards were out in the freakin' Amazon and dickin' around on some nature jaunt. One thing I've learned is, if you ain't where you're supposed to be, you'll get f**ked up - and do not mess with Mother Nature. Heads probably rolled when a predator went for their throats. Motherfuckers should stay out of the jungle. Period, end of story."
Carlos smiled as he studied the clerics' drained expressions. "You know how delicate the human throat is... how very few bones keep it attached to the shoulders? Something eating or attacking could easily decapitate a victim without even trying that hard." When Father Lopez looked away, it was all he could do not to chuckle.
"Are you sure?" Father Patrick said, his tone firm, sending a quiet warning to stop scaring the young priest.
"Yeah, I'm sure," Carlos muttered, defiance claiming him.
They nodded, and he enjoyed the worry on their faces.