Mental anguish made sleep next to impossible, but the Guardian team's battered bodies demanded it. Chairs, sofas, love seats, the main couch, rugs, anything that would allow someone to lie horizontally for a few hours were pressed into service. Every now and then some�one could be heard weeping. Male and female alike; it didn't matter. Acute trauma was no respecter of age or gender. But the privacy of all whispering, crying couples or the sobs of an individual just work�ing things out between themselves and their maker, was thoroughly respected.
Damali and Carlos took turns sitting vigil with Rider. He'd curled up in a fetal position with his head in Damali's lap. She sat that way with him for the duration, humming a low, easy melody, stroking her fingers through his hair with tears dropping off her nose to wet his cheek. The moment she dozed, Carlos would awake to lay a sup�portive hand on Rider's shoulder, watching the horizon like a stoic centurion, and wondering how in God's name he'd be able to deal if something like that had happened to Damali.
The process was a brutal cycle of heal a bit, cry a bit, tense for pos�sible danger, doze a bit, become philosophical while briefly asleep, only to awake to realize that all of this really did go down... then quietly cry some more, just let the tears roll without sound, look over the shoulder and hunker down against panic as hybrid guard demons walked the beach, and then listen to one's body knit, going to sleep from the sound of one's own heartbeat and staggered breaths, thank�ing Heaven that you'd made it out alive.
Dawn made everyone stir. Moving to an internal, silent dirge, people filed in and out of the bathroom and then went outside to take a seat on the sand beyond the edge of the deck. Church would be outdoors under the sky-the original cathedral. Grateful eyes offered Hubert and his crew a chance to crash indoors on softer surfaces for a few hours. Although, out of genuine concern for the team's most re�cent fears, he respectfully declined. Everyone knew that the unpleas�ant but necessary task of burying the dead was before them. All eyes went to Rider as he came out to stand on the partial deck and looked across the beach at Tara's body, which was amazingly still there. Guardians slowly stood and waited for his instructions.
"It's almost full sunrise," Rider said softly. "She's gone but she never even smoldered."
Sara slipped beside him and slid her delicate hand into Rider's. "She won't. When I went inside your body to heal you last night, I felt that you wanted to see her again before you said good-bye. She had a good heart, like you do, and never killed a soul, or fed that way. I begged any angel of compassion that would listen for her not to burn in the sun, given she was to be a Guardian and was turned against her will." Two big tears slid down Sara's cheeks. "It wasn't fair. Come." She looked up at Rider, her expression pleading. "I gave her back her lavender, too... just the way it always remained in your si�nuses and memory."
Carlos bristled and rubbed the shadow of new growth that dark�ened his jaw. "Sis... the man has been through a lot, and-"
"I want to," Rider said in a quiet, resolute tone, then gently squeezed Sara's hand and followed her.
"I don't know which is worse," Carlos said, his voice reverent as he watched Rider cross the beach. "If he sees her actual remains, it might help him make the separation and finally allow us to put her to rest." He rubbed the tension away from his neck as Damali touched his shoulder. "But if he sees her repaired, sleeping peacefully like an an�gel... smelling like lavender..." Carlos shook his head when his voice broke. "It's f**ked up either way, even though Sara had good intent."
"We never thought..." Hubert closed his eyes.
Marlene turned her back to the beach and covered her mouth with her hand. "He'll never be the same after this," she whispered. "None of us will. She was one of us."
"I'm going down there to stand with him, man," Shabazz said to Big Mike. "Original three."
"Original three," Big Mike said. "Me, you, and Rider."
Damali watched the procession of older Guardians walk to meet Rider with their heads high, shoulders back, dignity and compassion within their strides. One day, if she ever lived that long, she, too, would be going to gravesides with younger onlookers who would be unable to fathom the length and depth of a bond that not even death could destroy. There would be no way to quantify the profound loss with words, or to convey how many years of shared laughter, hopes, drama, and tears linked one to another. It just was. No definition re�quired. You had to be there, experience the phenomena for yourself in order to know that those three older protectors silently wept inside, one for the other, bled the same blood as though it pumped from one heart, one set of veins, sharing the same soul... maybe they did.
Carlos squeezed Damali's hand as he neared her. "I know," he said quietly
"Me and Jack Rider go way back. That's my buddy... ." Marlene's voice trailed off as she pulled herself away from the house and walked down the damaged deck steps with care, going toward the standing stones of men.
Marjorie turned to her husband and then looked at Krissy, Heather, and Jasmine, and then finally sent her gaze toward Damali and Carlos. "We have to find Gabrielle. If this happened... I have a bad feeling."
Damali and Carlos nodded, neither wanting to give voice to the nagging feelings that gnawed at their guts. They drew closer together as they watched Rider kneel, pull the black drape away from Tara's face, and kiss her lips gently as the breeze blew her long, dark hair. Damali quickly pivoted and turned into Carlos's embrace, shaking her head, unable to watch more, lest she wail out loud.
"Sara made her look like she's just asleep. Lavender is all in the air."
Carlos squeezed Damali tightly and kissed the top of her head. "She is. She just fell asleep on this side and woke up on the other side in the Light." He glanced at Marj. "We'll take an extraction team to look for Gabby after the burial."
Jose was rocking, tears streaming. "The man had to go through this once, and shouldn't have to again... I was just a kid when Tara died at my grandfather's house. Jesus, don't a man with a good heart get a break?"
"Why don't me and you go do the honors, man?" Carlos said to Jose. "It's our turn to step up. We dig the grave this time and let the old-heads fall back and mourn. They've earned that right." Carlos looked at the haggard faces around him. "The original team has been at this war since the beginning, people. But this time, there just ain't no answer and we've all gotta step up like you did yesterday. Soon, we'll be the old-heads, and the ones who come behind us are gonna be standing where we are this dawn... wanting to just break down and sob 'cause the shit hurts so bad, watching the ones we love who paid the ultimate sacrifice hurt so bad. The only way I know to repay the debt in full is to suck it up for them, pick them up when they stumble, and do 'em proud. Now let's move out and bury her with full Guardian honors."
Damali watched her husband throw his shoulders back, inhale a shuddering breath, materialize a shovel in each hand, and jump off the deck with Jose behind him. In that very fragile moment, standing near the abyss of living emotional hell, she realized she'd definitely married a king.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After the battle in La Paz, during true nightfall, while the Guardians healed, Cain sat listed to one side in his throne with his eyes closed. He clung to the armrests to keep from crying out. His face was twisted into a grimace and his entire body shuddered with agony from the shorn-off wing and his dismembered tail, which he hung over the edge of the throne armrest, unable to retract it. A slow, steady drizzle of blood still seeped from the gaping wound, stealing his energy away in minute degrees.
Even though he'd tried to staunch the bleeding by scorching the opening that still yawned with torn gristle, muscles, flesh, and bones, the Neteru symbols from Damali's Isis kept them burning silver to disallow the injury to properly scab over. Glowing brands from each symbol that had sliced through his tail broke through the charred, black flesh, and a steady stream of blood from the severed tail created a pool of muck at his feet.
He heard Fallon Nuit standing nearby with Lilith, and sensed a new vampire presence in their midst. Pride made Cain open his eyes and attempt a kingly repose, but pain won out and he was forced to close his eyes again.
"What do you want?" Cain rasped in a surly tone. "Leave me!"
"Your Eminence, you must feed," Lilith said, her voice a strained murmur as she approached him with caution.
Nuit caught her arm. "He is severely wounded," he said in a tight whisper. "Beware the lion with a thorn in his paw."