The Hunted Read online

  Danger was all around, certain eyes flickered gold beneath brown irises but didn’t approach her. They betta act like they know. Betta recognize. She laughed as third- and fourth-generation vamps steered clear of her like she was their predator. She walked to her Hummer without a care in the world. Yeah, they were gonna get back in the game, start touring, shake the fear and frustration—would kick some more vampire ass. That was all she needed to focus on.

  But then she stopped and listened. The night air stirred behind her. Something familiar caught her nose . . . a deep, male, sensually musty scent—then was gone. She was tripping. Probably an average, run-of-the-mill vamp trying to push up on her. Demons always left a sulfur trail. Despite the warm night, the sensation had made gooseflesh come out on her arms. The erotic pull this one left was ridiculous, almost made her wet her panties. What was that all about? Adrenaline had shot through her, not fear. Damali put her palm on the handle of Madame Isis, slowly closing her fist around it. A deep ache almost swallowed her as her hand relaxed and the sensation eased.

  God, she missed Carlos.

  He just needed to go to the graveyard before going back in. The club was nearly a disaster. What had been on his mind? Human bodies, vamps present, and Damali glistening with sweat. Just seeing her had messed him up, bad.

  Yeah, he’d eaten, but not what or how he’d wanted to. But this visit was destined to bring him down, make him think, help put things into perspective. It would have the same effect as Valium, no doubt. That was important before going back to the safe house just before dawn.

  He drifted like vapor over the markers, watching disembodied spirits float by, dazed. Poor bastards were locked topside and didn’t have a clue, couldn’t feel, were just a waste of ectoplasm.

  As he neared his brother’s headstone, he materialized and walked toward it, stopping to touch the name. “You were too young, hombre,” he whispered. A dull ache in the center of his chest wiped away all the hungers that had been competing for his attention. He glanced over at the others that had been buried side-by-side by request.

  Shit, as young men they had all told their people, “If I go down, put me on my boy’s flank.” And so the families had honored those requests. All of them. His entire territory stretched out in a long, military-like row of men under twenty-five. The only marker that was missing was his. His body had not been found, didn’t make it to a morgue to be tagged. Even though his brothers got up and walked, they were known by humans to be dead, so a memorial service had been conducted.

  He studied each headstone. They were all so young . . . It hit him now, finally, after going down to council again and having a seat. The throne had centuries of wisdom emanating from it. Twenty-something years on the planet was nothing. If he’d only known. And Father Pat had been right about one thing. He and his boys, as bad as they were, he seen shit that gave them pause.

  Carlos closed his eyes, fully seeing how Alejandro was turned. He should have ripped Raven’s heart out himself. No man deserved to go out like that. He could also remember his dead posse sitting around just kicking it. They’d watch the news together sometimes while laughing and drinking, or would read something in the paper, and despite their own proclivities to violent solutions, they’d been taken aback by some things they’d seen.

  Yeah, every man had a limit. Bombs that went off and took out innocent bystanders were off limits. Molesting children was waaay off limits. Shooting up women and kids in a sloppy drive-by was off limits in his territory while alive. People’s moms and elderly family had always been off limits. He and his boys would debate the craziness and become outraged that some things just weren’t done. Even for them. Deep.

  Shit . . . until he’d turned, he didn’t think God gave a rat’s ass about a little spec of blue planet in his universe. Before he’d seen what he had, he’d assumed that the Almighty didn’t care and was too busy to be worried about things like that. But, if what everybody from both sides kept telling him was true, as above, so below, then territory was territory. If anybody moved on even the smallest bit of his, he knew he’d have that foolish individual seen . . . so why not the Almighty? He wouldn’t brook the disrespect, neither.

  Carlos slid his hands across the cool marble and spoke to his brother softly. “Damn, man, if I had known. Didn’t think He put his eye on the projects, or anything going on in the barrios. Moms told us, right, though. I had no idea of how much one soul was worth to both sides—serious product, hombre, worth a lotta weight. Hope you understand why I had to dust you . . . was just trying put it back in the right territory.”

  Had he known that it wasn’t all superstition, he might not have ever picked up a gun or sold product to finance himself out of Hell on earth. They’d all been deceived. Was messed up that he had to die to find out how much truth there was to the rumor about this thing called Heaven and Hell. And here he was, a lost soul trying to get his shit back together, and they wanted him to talk to Damali about hope . . . in a mind lock? With cold blood in his belly because the microwave would make the shit clot, they had expected him to just go in and chat with her.

  Didn’t they understand? He glanced down the row of graves. They shared too much. Both had sustained heavy losses. It was beyond the physical with her. This shit between him and Damali went way back, before he’d turned and she’d ripened into mature Neteru. It was volatile. Her music was like the language of ancient Babylon, it bent wills, morphed as she gained new experiences. It was the light’s secret weapon. Her voice touched millions. Was as strong as anything he could bring. Yeah, they were too much alike, just on opposite sides of the fence, and ironically, she was all that he had left from his old life, topside.

  Sudden tears blurred his vision as he drew back his hand from a headstone and looked up at the sky. Dawn would chase him home soon, and he needed to go check on his mother and grandmother . . . Juanita, too, just to make sure his markers had held. But as he concentrated on them, he couldn’t even detect them. Only a searing heat entered his brain and made him back away from the thought.

  He let his breath out slowly, the tears now coming down his face. He wiped them away quickly, and blinked new ones back. All right. They were safe. At least the light had done their part to make sure his people had a solid prayer ring around them that even he couldn’t cross, if he got tempted to feed from home. If that failed, he’d marked them as off limits within his zones. It was cool, he told himself. It was all good. He wasn’t gonna cry like no punk just ’cause he couldn’t see his moms and grandma no more. Fuck it. The DEA had taken his club, liquidated the rest of his shit, moved them to safekeeping under the Witness Protection Program. Human drug lords he’d bested probably wouldn’t find them. Vamps wouldn’t violate them; the Covenant had surrounded them with light. It was all good, he repeated to himself as he wiped his face hard and swallowed down a sob. He’d watch their backs at night if they ever took a vacation outside his territory—but that cop bastard Berkfield had better have given his mother a maid!

  Damn straight. Carlos began walking and then turned back to look at his row of homeboys. “I dusted your asses so you could go to the right place, motherfuckers. You best be looking in on my peeps as guardian angels. You owe me.” His voice became gentler as he vaporized to nothingness. “Just do that much for me.”

  “I don’t like it! The Covenant can’t just call us and ask us to deal with a nuclear time-bomb like that!” Rider yelled. “Carlos is back—that part is cool, but the other half of the deal the Covenant is trying to work is some seriously risky shit.”

  “Damn, though, Mar,” Big Mike said slowly, giving Rider a nod. “If brotherman can’t go down with a stake—”

  “You’re saying the only one that can plant a sword in his chest is our Damali?” Shabazz, who was normally cool, was on his feet now, pacing with Rider. “If boss comes into this compound again, and loses control like he did on her before . . . you feel me?”

  “Yeah,” JL said nodding. “Remember what happened last tim
e? He waltzed right in here on her invitation, which I don’t think she’s ever rescinded, and faked out our alarms, blew our generators, cut the power, held back the sprinklers—and that was after he’d just turned. Dude has been one of them for a while, at this point. He might have given that old Templar the wrong vision, might have compromised his judgment, ya know?”

  “And if he presses up on our little sister like he did before,” Big Mike said, growing more tense, “if we gotta put him down, the situation could get real ugly real fast. I agree with Rider. Too risky, Mar. For real, for real.”

  “But, guys, Carlos saved my ass when he was already a vamp, remember?” Dan stood and kicked a metal stool. “He kept me from getting eaten alive in a parking lot by Raven.”

  All eyes went to Marlene at the mention of her turned daughter’s name. None of the team wanted to ever mention the incident that had broken Marlene’s heart when Damali had to do Raven, but the facts were the facts.

  “I know,” Marlene said quietly. “But the last remaining members of the Covenant are strong, and they’ve been accurate so far. Plus, the choice is hers.”

  All eyes went to Jose who had been quiet. It was as though they were straining to hear the opinion of the one person in the group who knew what it was like to experience the loss of a lover. The team didn’t move as they waited for him to speak.

  “If I had the chance to see Dee Dee again . . . and learned that there was hope for her salvation . . . that there was a tiny window of light that she could grasp onto—I’d never forgive you guys for not having the faith to try it. I’d be done with you all until the end of time, if you didn’t tell me.” Jose sighed and closed his eyes, wiping his face with his palms. “Maybe if she really sees what he is and plants the Isis herself, it’ll be over, once and for all, and she can live a normal life with a regular guy—once Rivera’s soul rests in peace. Don’t ask me to lie to her, though.”

  “Jose, do you know what they want him to do?” Rider used his hands to speak as he talked excitedly. “They want him to block the shot, dude! What part aren’t you getting? These fucking crazy monks want a vampire to keep a normal human guy from coming near her by keeping her hope and attention on him!”

  “It’s fucking nuts,” Shabazz said, shaking his head.

  “What are you talking about, man?” Jose was off his stool, pacing.

  “They think, rightfully so, that a regular guy—any guy, who is an innocent, who gets near her in the next seven years will be vamp bait.” Marlene nodded and pursed her lips for a moment. Then she looked at Jose hard. “And, he will be. All heroics aside.” She ran her fingers through her locks and looked out the window. “We could lose a lot of good, well-intentioned men that way. Conversely, if a vampire helper in the music industry gets to her, initially starts helping her career, sweet talks her, gets inside her head and then burns her, she’ll become jaded. It’ll come right out in her music.”

  “She’ll have a strong façade,” Mike said, his voice mellow. “The young lady has class, Jose, a tough exterior, but her heart, man . . . her heart. Another good man dies on her watch, or a snake burns her . . . So, the Covenant wants Carlos to cut a deal with the vamps to be the primary one to watch her, and to block the shot.”

  “Are they crazy?” Jose was nearly stuttering. “They want us to go along with that? And what if they just track him and snatch her, then what, people?”

  “His name is stripped from their tracking capacity until his atonement period is over,” Marlene said, trying to make her statement sound logical amid the bizarre facts. “The dark side can’t register him, or track him, other than through crude methods because they don’t have a hold on his soul. He still has a margin of choice. The Covenant has boyfriend under heavy prayer—”

  “This is too crazy, Marlene,” JL said. “But I hear you,” he added, glancing at Jose, who was speechless. “If she was to hook up with somebody, have a kid, and the vamps went after it, she’d flip. Right now she’s half blind and impulsive—just imagine if somebody else she cares about like that goes down.”

  Dan nodded. “If she can’t see all the way, then she can’t see into a man’s soul, a human, to truly know a good one from a bad one. The vamps can manipulate things to happen to screw her career, too, and to leave her exposed without capital. Bad press. Shift in popularity. Fans swayed to lower sales. Blocked from hot venues. You can break a star in less than six months, fellas. I’ve seen it happen. We all have.”

  “That’s what Father Pat was saying, Dan,” Marlene added. “That’s when they’ll send in the vamp human-helper to be her lover. He’ll be their conduit. Yep, I can see it: He’ll be the one sent to enter her mind when her spirit is weary, when her own human needs are at their worst—when she ripens the next time.”

  Dan let his breath out hard. “I’m not trying to be negative, but she’s human. Like, he’s probably hovering around her now in the industry, we just haven’t seen him yet?”

  Marlene just nodded along with Shabazz. Rider had closed his eyes and Big Mike was slumped in his chair staring at the wall.

  JL looked at Jose. “Man, I’d rather take a chance on Rivera than having some human-helper devastate her, or see a regular good guy get jacked.” The two younger guardians stared at each other until Jose looked away. “Rivera needs to be the one to block the shot—I’d say, let’s take the risk. He’s already dead. Go with the clerics on this one, man.”

  “Right,” Dan said quickly, his gaze going to the other guardians. “We should do this. Step out on faith. Rivera is strong, fast, has fangs like the other vamps . . . knows how to spot ’em, can even see marked human-helpers. Plus, he’s street smart. Got enough resources to keep harm at bay. And we can’t ice a human, bad or otherwise. Rivera might not be able to, either, if his soul is hanging in the balance, but I bet homeboy’s got enough juice to draw her from some mere human. Shit . . .”

  JL agreed emphatically, but didn’t look at Jose, trying to get the others to listen to him and Dan. “Last time I saw what brother was bringing, hey. Besides, the risk ain’t all that much. She can’t turn if he does slip and bite her, and we know he won’t take her underground, because he doesn’t trust the tunnels . . . he laid his life down for her, too, to keep her from all the vamps—whatever side they were on. Saved all our asses in the mix.”

  “Yeah. We owe him,” Jose said grudgingly, and then walked out of the room. “Whatever will keep Damali safe. Fuck it. Do it.”

  Rider slapped his forehead. Shabazz found a stool and sat down hard, and began cleaning Sleeping Beauty. Dan smiled. Marlene closed her eyes and leaned on her wooden walking stick. JL picked up a set of wooden crossbow stakes, threw them to the side, and began rooting around on the table for silver arrow tips to attach to them. Big Mike just shook his head.

  Carlos stood across the street from the diner as pure mist, watching the rose-orange light filter through the clouds. He only had a few moments, but would not miss the sight of her in near daylight even for personal safety. It was the eeriest thing, but he knew he was okay, would be all right. The clerics told him they had a gift for him, if he’d promise on his honor to come back without incident, no bodies, no vamp females, no escapes . . . and he’d immediately known what carrot they dangled. A little bit of light.

  Damali stepped out of the diner, turned her face to the not-yet full sun, leaned her head back, breathed in the surf, closed her eyes, and smiled. Her blood-red, spaghetti-strap tank top clung to her torso, proving her nakedness beneath it, and her black leather pants fit her like a second layer of skin. Dawn glinted off her Isis blade. Fans thought it was just a prop for Damali; the press, interestingly, found it funky and eccentric. If they only knew.

  It was hard for him to inhale as he watched her simple joy. He wasn’t sure if it was the dawn weakening him, thickening the air with slivers of light, or just the sight of her. The way the cresting sun played with the colors of her cocoa-bronze skin paralyzed him. Her lush mouth looked so soft, were it not so clo
se to the hour of bright danger he would have made himself breeze to kiss it. And what that red cloth covering her breasts did to him . . . He could see her hardened nipples beneath the shirt, the tiny dark caramel pebbles of them pouting, straining to be tasted.

  With his last ounce of discipline, he projected himself far away, back to his mountainside prison with the monks.

  “It’s done,” Carlos announced, kicking open the flimsy steel cabin door.

  Immediately four sleepy clerics scrambled to stand, brandish weapons, and gather their wits.

  “We were worried!” Father Patrick fussed. “You were only supposed to be gone for two hours. Where have you been all night?”

  “To Hell and back,” Carlos grumbled. “The Vampire Council took my offer. I’m her cargo transport. I came back as promised, so dawn didn’t burn me. A deal is a deal. I’m tired, and I need to sleep. Good new night.”

  “Wait,” Asula said. Carlos stopped and looked at him. “You haven’t fed—”

  “I ate take-out,” Carlos said, his lips curling. “Venison. Again.”

  Asula continued to eye him. Padre Lopez had gone white. Monk Lin raised an eyebrow. Father Patrick simply shook his head.

  “How do we know that’s true?” Padre Lopez stammered.

  “You don’t,” Carlos warned. “Look, I am really not in a good mood, so I suggest you get out of my way and let me go downstairs in peace.”

  Father Patrick quietly chuckled and lowered his weapon. “Oh, yeah . . . he ate in the woods, and has not breached his promises to the Covenant.”

  Carlos gave the seer cleric a hard look and brushed past the others that had blocked his lair entrance. Once the door slammed shut, the stunned clerics gathered around Father Patrick.

  “How can we be sure? He may have—”

  The old seer held up his hand, cutting off Asula’s question. “He is angry, surly, very agitated.”