"I don't think he meant to," Carlos said quietly as they both lis�tened to Shabazz trying to reason with Rider down the hall. "It was the look in his eyes, and he'd asked me to heal her... but I couldn't. Her spirit had vacated her body before I could even touch her... Lopez came for her." That was all Carlos could say over the thick lump that had formed in his throat.
"Can I pray over her remains?" Sara asked, drawing Carlos and Damali's attention. She looked at Marlene. "Your mother-seer helped us all, helped me. Your team has taken us in, and no matter what your Tara had become, she was your family... therefore your loss some�how feels like ours, too."
Carlos nodded. "Yeah, it's cool. Thanks. She could use whatever Light you can send her way. The only thing that's gonna keep Yonnie and Rider from losing it might be knowing her soul really went with Lopez to Heaven and isn't down in the pit."
Damali nodded and grabbed Carlos's hand across the butcher block. "Need to talk to you. Open a channel."
He stared at her.What else went down?
She told him in fits and starts what Aset had said, fighting back a sob while looking him dead in the eyes.
They're not annulling shit.He looked away from her.Nothing comes between me and you.
Damali nodded.If I'm not already carrying for you, I might be sterile to you anyway. Aset said something about the council's ensuring that our genes would cancel each other out, which is moot anyway, because as long as Eve is grieving, there is no such thing as conception. But I'm still at risk for a fusion between you and Cain, or your seed could have beaten his to fertilize an egg first by nanoseconds. Even still, if it did... Damali swallowed hard and looked at the counter.Wedon't know what we've made.
I don't want to think about this now. I can't.
Carlos pulled out of the private telepathy and let his breath out hard. "We've gotta move this battered squad to Central Mexico with the quickness, but I'm nervous about moving them in a hard energy whirl until everything has set with their healing for twenty-four hours. Right now, with energy from Nod escaping, a new energy par�adigm has to be seeping into the planet-I can feel it."
"So can I," Damali said quietly, staring at him. "If the age-old truth is correct, 'As above, so below,' then maybe things are haywire on the darkside, because it sure is getting strange on our side."
Carlos leaned across the counter and dropped his voice to a tense whisper. "This hybrid energy, if it surfaces in humans, could mean anything. We've eventually gotta go clean out the nests of Cain loyal�ists in Nod, and let the good hybrids go back there, D. Long term, these refugees can't stay in the Gray Zone. Think about it. How long do you think it would take, if conception is ever possible again, before normal people would have all sorts of combinations with the entities in Nod, and superpowers to go with it-not to mention free will to use that strength? If we help that happen, we'd be going against the oldest banishment edict in the Good Book." Carlos glanced around and leaned in closer. "I'm trying to walk the straight and narrow dur�ing these last biblical days, D, for real. Maybe that's why the Light had to pull back from us... to see what we'd do, especially since you and I, technically, are hybrids ourselves."
She closed her eyes and allowed her head to drop forward, almost too overwhelmed to think about it all in one sitting. "You're right," was all the response she could muster.
"My other concern is this," Carlos pressed on, squeezing her hands tighter as his inner panic built. "Hubert and company are gonna have to get to Central Mexico the best way they can, because with a team that's dipping in life energy pulse, the added weight of hybrids can throw me off course-which cannot happen."
"I know," Damali said, her gaze now going to Tara's body, which was wrapped in a black silk sheet on the beach. "We need to bury Tara, too. If we get hit again tonight by vamps or weres..."
"It'll be just me, you, and Shabazz-maybe Hubert's squad. Every�body else is beat to hell. I'm not even feeling you in the mix, right through here, especially going solo against what just hit this beach."
Damali clasped Carlos's hands and sent the full battle into his mind, showing him the aerial assault, and how the Level One tunnels were used to hide Cain's hybrid army beneath the earth to then bring them up through the ocean in the Bermuda Triangle and Asian triangles near Japan, as well as through old battleground caverns beneath the sand. "I did all right."
He smiled and kissed her knuckles. "You did more than all right. You're one awesome gansta sister. I don't think I could have gotten to everybody that needed healing without losing one," he said in a pri�vate murmur. "I love you."
Shabazz's sudden footfalls rang out and made even the weary who were laid out on the floor look up. "Need a purge, people! Brother-man's eyes are glowing."
Carlos jumped to his feet and dashed down the hall with Damali fast behind him. But when they burst into the room, Rider wasn't in his chair. The sheet restraints were on the floor, and Rider was on the ceiling, staring down at them, and snarling. Carlos reached out and in�stantly contained Rider in a translucent black box that drowned out the curses Rider hurled as Carlos carefully lowered the containment cell to the floor.
"How's this happening?" Damali asked, her gaze steady on Rider. "We healed his last nick over a year ago." "I know. It doesn't make sense for-"
"Yo, yo, yo, got another man in turn-crisis!" Shabazz hollered from the next room.
Damali and Carlos almost bumped into each other as they rushed through the bedroom doorway and down the hall. When they entered the living room, the team was on one side of the room trying to find weapons, and Mike was on all fours on the other side of it, his jaw slowly and painfully extending in a werewolf transition.
"What's wrong with my baby?" Inez screamed, torn between go�ing to Mike and brandishing a gun.
"Lower the weapon, 'Nez," Damali said, trying to slowly divert Mike's attention while Carlos arced enough energy to ensnare him in a silver cage with bars.
"When's the last time he got nicked by a were, Mar?" Carlos shouted without turning around, now needing his full focus to hold the cage before him and the black box holding Rider in the bedroom.
"A looong time ago. He sucker punched one and split his knuckles wide open on its fangs," Marlene said in a low murmur that again parted the group. "But not as many times as I most likely took a were-nick or two on the astral plane."
Carlos and Damali pivoted just in time to catch Marlene's at�tempt to lunge out of an open window. Carlos had her by the tail in a long energy lasso. Guardians dove over the sofa and tried to take cover. Shabazz was shouting for Marlene. She hissed and turned to Carlos, eyes glowing gold, upper and lower canines extended as she growled like the angry jaguar she was quickly becoming. Marlene lunged again, but Carlos silver-caged her, sweat pouring down his face as three draining energy sources held him in the center of the floor.
"Inez," Mike crooned in a low rumble. "C'mere, baby, and open up the door... just cross his line with your body and break the energy hold, suga. I don't do silver."
Inez shook her head and began hiccup crying as she turned away.