"Where people have been mauled and beheaded." Damali grabbed Marlene's arms and stopped her words. Two weeks of getting ready, going over battle plans, preparing for the show, doing promo hype for an impromptu venue, and staying away from the subject of one Carlos Rivera, had left a hole in their strategy. Her gaze locked with Marlene's. It was in her mother-seer's eyes. The team had been too concerned about her sense of privacy, not wanting to violate it, needing her to fathom the facts on her own, and had not gone over this essential data... all for her. They needed their Neteru to come to her own conclusions on her own terms, and within her own time frame. Marlene just nodded. Fury at her own selfishness claimed her.
But Marlene simply looked at Damali with gentleness in her eyes. "Baby, don't disbelieve everything you saw in him during those ten nights - and yeah, you deserved to have a little respite, a little happiness all your own - not shared with anyone but him. All right?" She waited for Damali to nod. "Recognize that the team was conflicted, too, about not being able to just blurt out what was happening. That was hard, as well as necessary. It was easier when things were black and white, not all these shades of gray. We've all been selfish in our own way - even Shabazz didn't want to come here and do our job... because he has a personal issue at stake. That's human."
Damali let Marlene's arms go, and went to lean against the wall. "You guys were right, though; I was still blind... and it wasn't all Carlos's fault. I played myself."
"We all do that the first time out," Marlene said quietly. "That's the process, and it's normal... it's just that, given your level of responsibilities, you had to come to these conclusions fast and on your own so that your judgment never gets clouded again. We didn't have time to burn - but we all wanted you to have that small window of joy. All of us did, even the clerics. Child, you have a bigger responsibility than any of us know."
"Mar," she said, her voice strong, even though she wasn't completely sure what Marlene meant about a bigger responsibility than known, "all right. I'm over it." She looked at her mother-seer and snapped her focus to the mission. "These deaths are possibly history repeating itself, right? You and Father Pat knew that, didn't you?"
"Yup. What's going down here is just like what the angry mobs did to the Jesuits in Belem, and Para, and Maranhao - because the Jesuits went against papal edicts and were trying to stop the human trafficking. The church was at war with itself. The Jesuits were the only ones against the Amazon slave trade... there was an old Vatican letter that Father Pat showed me, it said a cleric had even written a plea... 'What is a human soul worth to Satan? There is no market on earth where the Devil can get them more cheaply than right here in our own land - an Indian for a soul.' But even the Jesuits created havoc from the diseases they imported while going out trying to stop the violence. It was a mess. It was all a big mess - the conquistadors were insane barbarians searching for gold and the mythical El Dorado... burned people at the stake, even cut up and fed the Indians to the alligators. That's why we're not sure it's vamps running amuck, or what. The moon-phase killings make me say it's the work of demons."
"How much of this did Father Pat tell you, and how much of this did you pick up in visions?"
Marlene sighed. "Half and half. I saw wars, saw mauled bodies, and went to Father Pat... he told me I was seeing the conquistador history, and he was ashamed that the highest levels of his particular church at that time had a hand in it. That's why he didn't want to come over here. He thought he'd dredge up more of this near the team, and was ashamed. Then he confirmed it with the letters and sat me down so we could talk about the history, where a sixth of the native population was murdered. Then we started scavenging as many facts as we could from the Internet and the news sources, and did the astronomy on when the bodies began turning up."
Marlene drew a long breath and shook her head. "Until the lobby thing, I just assumed I was picking up residual vibes from the past in a place that had a lot of bloodshed on its grounds... that happens to seers sometimes, so I didn't put a lot of stock in it. Didn't pick up vamps, demons - so, I let it go... till you and Jose freaked quietly in the hotel. I was hoping that the music thing, with the sounds of Brazil in it, was just your sensory systems kicking in to feel this location, and groove with it. Truthfully, I was praying that we only had another twisted master vamp to contend with, and that perhaps he'd brought up foul energy with him... but, baby, now that I'm here and watching the effect on the team, I know it's way more than that. I just can't put my finger on it, though, because I can't get a lock. That concerns me."
Again, silence passed between them as both women looked at each other, slowly nodding.
"All right," Damali said, holding her hands out, trying to make sense of the jigsaw puzzle that had eluded them for almost two months. "We have seen the killings around that specific region in the Amazon - and near Brazil, which also means red... which Carlos has a thing for. Don't ask. But it also makes a metaphor for blood, and red peoples, peoples of color, and war, and he's connected to all of that somehow. Correct?"
She waited until Marlene nodded. "The Catholic cleric of European descent can't get into it, because his line already has blood on their hands, so to speak, past karma on this one... and those that weren't directly dealing with it from that perspective, did as much harm from the diseases they brought with their attempts to convert native peoples. It was genocide - a sixth of the people were wiped out here, is what you're saying. So Padre Lopez, of Indian descent, or . Asula, of African descent, and even Monk Lin - because his people weren't in it - could have come, but not Father Pat. Deep."
"Yeah, seems so," Marlene said, her voice heavy, matching her heart. "It all went down so long ago, and is in perfect alignment with the stars, too. Remember, right before your birthday, when me and Shabazz saw the trinity in the sky - Mars, war, Venus, love, and Saturn, the planet of big karmic lessons - make a huge triangle in the sky?"
Damali nodded. "How could I forget?"
"Yeah, well, Mars is the red planet. Saturn is dealing with lessons and karma... and Venus is about powerful female energy, love, plus is the planet of female warriors... girlfriend, we just thought it applied to you - but it appears that, wherever there's some mess to be worked out, this alignment is affecting more than just you. And, let's not forget how close Mars is coming to the earth. It's the closest transit in sixty thousand years. Red war."
"I almost can't even wrap my mind around this right before the concert, Mar, for real. The fellas are going to freak. They think they've died and gone to Heaven here. They're not even thinking about chasing evil, they are too distracted chasing tail. I ain't mad at 'em, ain't throwing no stones, believe me - but you hear what I'm saying, right?"
Marlene sighed and nodded.
"Have you told them all of this?"
"Some of it, most of it... but it's not sinking in - which is also very strange."
Damali paced in a slow, thought-filled stroll back and forth across the room. The last thing she wanted to do was blow the groove on some hypothetical past yang. And after experiencing what she had with Carlos, she could appreciate the guys' need to break out and have a little fun. However, all stress-relief therapy aside, there was definitely something to go after. But it didn't register like anything she'd ever experienced. It also gave her pause as she thought about Carlos. If this mess was in his territory, and he was vibing on it hard, maybe it had already drawn him here ahead of her? That could not be good. She wiped her face with both hands again. It could be a past life, or a present danger, or a combination. Oh, this shit was complicated. She needed to be angry with him, and to put what was going on into a neat box - but none of it fit. One thing for sure, something was dropping bodies in a very nasty way.
"Maybe we're just feeling what went down before, and it's unearthing everything that should have stayed buried, or something." Damali's tone was hopeful as she stared at Marlene. "Or maybe there's an ancestral link that a few of us on the team are extra sensitive to? Something we've all experienced before, in some way?"
Marlene had a crazed look in her eyes, like she'd just had an eerie epiphany. "Or... what if this is reverb from a past life, Damali? What if it isn't so much that we've lived it before, but that each of us fits a role to something that went down before?"
Again, both women just held each other's gaze.
"Whichever scenario is correct - and we'll figure it out - after the church conversions, the conquerors brought in Africans. So you have the same ancestral ethnicities that are represented on our team... Spaniards, Africans, Portuguese, with native Indians here, children and women and villages held hostage with men beheaded and ripped apart... all for the quest of gold, and sugar, rubber, and - " Marlene stopped herself and slapped her head. "Damali, your eyes! Gold! The flickers of gold! That wasn't a vamp trait from those love bites Carlos laid on you! It wasn't because you temporarily overdosed your system with vamp virus from repeated bites - your body has been giving clues like a road map!"
Marlene had flung herself around the room like a madwoman as she snatched up her mud cloth satchel. "I have to look this up in the Neteru Temt Tchaas," she said with a wink. She pulled out her huge, mystical black book, the one that nobody in the compound dared touch or ask her about.
Damali got very, very still. "Mar? When did the first Neteru show up in this neck of the woods?"
Marlene shushed her with a wave of her hand, going through the symbol-covered leather bound book and then sat down very slowly. Then she stared at Damali. "There was no Neteru in this area. Just guardians... the one before you came from the Nubian empire in Africa." Then Marlene fell silent, and her body tensed.
"Look it up," Damali said firmly, and then sat by Marlene. She could tell Marlene was holding something back as she peered down at the pages with Marlene, trying to read the symbols and gleaning some phrases that her mentor had taught her.
"Okay," Marlene said on a weary sigh, "I'll look up the guardian history here again. I've been over this section of the book a hundred times, if once, Damali."
"Humor me," Damali said quietly. "Read it to me out loud as you go."