"And in the meantime, we're ass out."
Damali fought a smile. "Yeah, I guess our credit card problems aren't a top priority, given what the Light is hunting ... or as much of a priority as trying to contain the pale horse of the Apocalypse, huh?"
"I don't even see how you can crack a smile at a time like this." Incredulous, Carlos raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head'. "We've got a serious problem, boo."
"Yeah, I know," Damali said, finally going to him. "Listen . . . I wasn't making fun of you; I was just trying to put things into perspective. So, we leave Mr. Fontaine a Rolex--which should cover the nights we stayed, along with a note saying that due to the Wall Street crash, everything liquid we had got jacked. This way, we're not breaking cosmic law by stealing, which means the darkside can't track us ... then we--"
"We what, D?" Carlos pulled away from her to begin pacing. "What the f**k are we supposed to do!"
"Go to the hills, and--"
"That's just it, Damali. They're hills, not mountains! The whole island is only twenty-one freakin' square miles big. You can get from one end to the other in an hour. Hide? Hide where, boo? You wanna go to the place called Shadow Mountain here, which is really a big hill--or maybe wall-up underground in their crystal caves that look like you've entered Level Seven of Hell? No, no, better yet, we can hide in Hungry Bay or Mangrove Swamp with you being pregnant! Or maybe we'll just hang out at the golf course green of the Duns Resort until we bump into Tiger Woods and then I'll ask him if he has a coupla C notes he can drop on--"
"Or maybe we could just go to a church, and call the Covenant?" She stared at Carlos. He was starting to get on her last nerve. "The oldest church on the island, Marlene said, is the Cathedral of the Most Holy. To me it's as good a place as any to wait for word from an archangel, don't you think?"
Carlos gave her his back to consider as he put his hands on top of his head and walked off a ways. She'd wait. She knew the drill--he had to blow off enough steam to let good, old-fashioned logic kick in. The fact that Father Pat was no longer around had .simply closed off the Covenant as an option for support in her husband's mind. She could feel it, knew it as much as she knew her name. There were so many things eating the man up from the inside out that it was obvious he couldn't think straight.
"Listen," she said quietly after a moment. "The Light always works in code and yet always provides. We're in Bermuda, man. No one knows who we are, courtesy of the Light. Truth be told, we could eat off the trees and live off the fish in this weather for a long time, if we had to, and we've avoided the pale horse plagues for now. We could still be scraping in the streets of D.C. trying to get past military checkpoints. So,/here's gotta be something about why we got dropped here, of all places."
When he didn't immediately respond, she pressed her point, trying to give him something positive to hang on to. "Did you ever consider that maybe the Light put us here because during this all-out war, even the darkside would be afraid to send their troops through the Triangle to risk their resources right now? That network of interdimensional tunnels fluxes both black and white, right? So, this could be the safest place at the moment. . . I'd bank on that, since an archangel set us down here and not in a hot zone. Make sense?"
To her relief, she watched the intricate tumblers in Carlos's mind begin to turn with that new awareness, as though her words were the necessary lubricant to get the heavy mental gears that had been paralyzed by rage to move.
Damali motioned to her necklace. It was important to give the man who she knew wanted to rip out an entity's heart something more productive than vengeance to focus on.
"Twenty-one square miles--do the math." Damali looked at her husband in an unblinking gaze. "Two plus one is three, a trinity. Even after the Light sent old man Cordell back to rejoin his D.C. team, there are still twenty-one members of core Guardians and clerics combined on our team--eighteen Neteru Guardians here with three remaining members of the Covenant back in the States. This place is made up of seven main islands within the cluster of tiny coral islands and islets--seven, Carlos. A lucky number; a power number. C'mon, I thought you were a betting man."
Carlos looked out to sea, his eyes glazing over with a seer's mild trance. "Yeah. Blackjack. Twenty-one, a trinity. All right, I hear you. Spanish mariners got here in 1503, which when you do the math comes to nine ... an end number. But if Bermuda is being represented by an end number, and they left us off outside the Bermuda Triangle--why would they drop us near what is also known as the Devil's Triangle, baby? Cain got his troops through this way before, and you know his granddaddy, old Lu, is crazier than him." Carlos turned to look at her, the trance suddenly gone.
Damali shrugged and looked down at the necklace in her fist. "Let's ask Pearl."
"He released the pale horse," Fallen Nuit murmured to Lilith discreetly. "Does this mean Sebastian was correct in his theory that the Neteru heir has been conceived? We've scoured the eastern seaboard for three days and three nights, have sent out search-and-destroy teams everywhere, and it's as though the entire Neteru Guardian team simply vanished without a trace. This can only be the work of angels . . . perhaps there is information that we should be apprised of by our master? Why aren't the Neterus here at the epicenter of the disaster fending off our demon attacks and helping the innocent as they are so led to do? Something's wrong, Lilith."
Lilith shot Fallon a glare. "Do you want to be the one to question my husband about his war strategy at a time like this?"
She waited a beat as they stood in the shadowed ruins of the White House. "I didn't think so."
Undaunted, Nuit lifted his chin, wanting to make use of the rare opportunity of having Lilith's ear in a private conference. "Then what of [email protected] heir? Surely this contagion that has been unleashed could harm his development."
"Have you seen the angelic dispatches?" she hissed with a smile. "They are of more harm to him than mere pestilence-- which, by now, he thrives on like the rest of us. He has been safely moved, rest assured. But the heavens will pour out to attempt to protect their precious humans. A beautiful diversion, don't you think?"
Nuit didn't immediately reply as he watched demons scampering between the rubble with bits of dead human flesh in their clutches. It would be weeks before all the bodies were recovered and the damaged structures were repaired. Chaos reigned . . . but there was a part of him that was actually sad. He allowed the odd sensation to invade him for a moment, letting it coat his insides and flow over his evil palate like a new wine that he'd never tasted.
"I shall miss the old days," Nuit admitted quietly, waxing sentimental in a rare display of truth. He lifted his chin to stand taller, brushing flecks of dust from the rubble off his black designer suit and then tugging on his cuffs a bit. The glimpse of vulnerability he'd given his Council Chairwoman could have been a mistake, but it was so close to his surface that she would have sensed it regardless.
Resigned to whatever she would do with the information, he turned his black glowing gaze on the carnage and ran his fingers through his thicket of onyx curls. New Orleans was calling him, as were the good old days of plantation ownership in his Creole bayou.
Clearly horrified, Lilith didn't immediately answer. Instead she pressed a graceful hand to her voluptuous chest and allowed a slight scowl to overtake her eerily gorgeous face. She studied Nuit with soulless dark eyes.
"I have not grown soft, dear Lilith, calm yourself." Nuit let out a deep sigh and then motioned before him. "There was once a certain order of things. A balance. There was exquisite beauty in that balance. The greatest honor to become daywalk-ers, and no longer haunted by the searing sun, will unfortunately allow us to witness a loss of what we'd been."
"Fallon," Lilith murmured, coming closer to him, "what have you learned? What haven't you told me at this critical hour of battle?"
"We were bound by the blood and the night . . . now we will all become flesh-eaters before long. The human populations will soon be thoroughly diseased. Pristine blood in the goblets of old shall be no more, shall pass away as have all the old-world ways that once held a level of dignified charm. The erotic thrill of turning an innocent will be a thing of the past as well. . . once the humans all become the walking dead." He shook his head. "Such a pity."
Lilith stroked his jaw, seeming relieved as her black irises considered his for a moment. "I will never admit this in open council. . . but I understand you, tnon ami. It is quite a pity and I will miss the days of pure vampires, too. Pure bloodlust. The beauty of deadly seduction versus brute force." Lilith sighed. "We were majestic creatures, yes?"
"Oui. It was tres ban." Nuit allowed her silky, raven-hued hair to fall through his fingers as he slid it off her bare shoulder with strange affection. "Vlad will also weep . . . how could the count, for all his insanity, not miss the old empire?"