The Shadows

SHOWDOWN

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Vlad, you muthafucker!"Carlos shouted, the moment he cleared the church steps.

"Likewise!"Vlad hollered from his position across the street. "You attack my wife and expect no redress? Arrogant, young fool!"

"And there's no fool like an old fool, but I'ma teach you some new era shit tonight!" Carlos shouted, bringing the Mustang around the corner using the sheer rage that was blistering his mind.

He ducked a flaming pike as it whirred by his temple, grazing it before it disintegrated the moment it crossed the threshold of hallowed ground. Carlos punched the dashboard as he leapt over to the side of the vehicle, too furious to even sit behind the wheel. Instead he stood wide-legged, one foot on each bucket seat, a blade in one hand, shield in the other, revving the engine with his mind, and then allowed the tires to spin until they smoked against the blacktop. "You are gonna so wish you had stayed your ass up in the Carpathians-"

In a snap, both combatants charged each other, moving forward in headlong, breakneck velocities-Carlos rocketing forward in a car, Vlad on his nightmare. The blade of Ausar was clenched in Carlos's right grip as a huge burning pike filled Vlad's. At the moment of sure impact, both combatants left their mounts-the car slamming into the steed, sending the warriors airborne, twisting, as they slashed their weapons at each other, missed, and then hit the ground in a hard roll, only to jump up more enraged.

Lilith brought her head up with an angry jerk as she spied Sebastian skulking around Council Chambers. Her gaze narrowed on him, leaving the black vision mist of the pentagram-shaped table to concentrate on him for a moment. Absently she stroked the golden-fanged crest so that it wouldpause its replay of the action occurring topside while she studied Sebastian. A slow, annoyed growl filled her throat.

"What is it?"

"I have something for you, Madame Chairwoman."

She stared at him. He'd engaged her inDananu , the bargaining language. But what, at this juncture, would Sebastian have to bargain with? Curiosity tugged at her, despite the fact that she had little time for games.

"Be swift," she commanded. "A pivotal battle rages topside."

"Indeed it does," Sebastiansaid, his voice oily with triumph. "I have raised the ultimate information."

"Oh, please!" Lilith said, waving him away and returning her focus to the table. "Your ex-wife raised Vlad. Every scheme you've launched has been a debacle."

"Raising Elizabeth and Lucrezia was not a debacle."

Lilith looked up and glared at him. "Speak to me, you toad, or become one!"

"I have located the Neteru prophecy child . . . the one that can avert the loss of one-third of the earth's population during the Armageddon, as told in their holy Kemetian scrolls of Sebek and in the lost books of their Bible."

When Lilith became stone-still and stopped breathing, Sebastian nodded and smiled.

"You lie," Lilith whispered.

"No . . . not this time," Sebastian said with triumph. "It was so easy and I must thank Vlad and Elizabeth for creating the perfect diversion."

"How?"Lilith said,her excitement barely concealed as she swept toward Sebastian, rounding the black bargaining table.

"The female mother-seer had an Achilles' heel. The father of her only child was a Guardian but became one of ours . . . and on that day she slew him with her walking stick to his chest in a domestic dispute. But his head was never severed by a Neteru blade." Sebastian circled Lilith, rubbing his hands as he spoke in rapid bursts of excitement. "I knew something was amiss when the entire team went into hiding. The stench of human pregnancies filled the air as Vlad battled and it was hard to tell which one . . . so many of the female Guardians gave off the aroma." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, inhaling deeply."Decoys. Instinct said if that many were surrounding the female, and the males had gone into complete suicide attack mode . . . then they were protecting something extremely precious."

He swept away from her and rushed to the table, causing her to nearly run behind him to keep up as he pointed to the black mist. "Look at him, Lilith. There's your evidence! The male Neteru left his wife inside a white-hot cathedral that is impenetrable with an entire team to take on Vlad and his entire army alone!"

"Unbelievable . . . Mr. Rivera, where did you find the time?" Lilith murmured, her hand over her dead heart as she stared at Sebastian and then into the mist. "But we must know for sure, before I report mission-critical news like this to our Dark Lord."

"My raised essence of soul-stolen Guardian, in demon form, touched the mother-seer . . . felt her panic over the loss of her potential grandchild," Sebastian said, making small quotes in the air as he said the wordgrandchild . "My demon siphoned it all from the Guardian, Marlene Stone-every single panicked thought that she telegraphed. The moment Damali hit the ground and didn't immediately get back up, the older woman sent out SOS radiating prayers of white heat. Go back in the mist's record," he ordered, causing the captured scenes to reverse to the point where Damali's body collided with the runaway vehicle.

"Look at the blue-white heat waves radiating from the mother-seer who was on the ground already . . . watch them wash over the female Neteru." Using his long index finger, he craned it toward the dark, vaporous mist. "Look at the charge that explodes from the male Neteru to wash over her and to keep all falling debris from her. Then look at the murderous response in his eyes that gave even Vlad a second of pause."

Lilith leaned in and studied the slow-motion, frame-by-frame image of Vlad's expression."Absolutely amazing."

"Does Carlos Rivera seem the least bit afraid of his fate at that moment?" Sebastian paced as he spoke, counting off evidence on his fingers. "Also look at the male Guardians. There's no human sense of self-preservation within them. They are functioning from the purely reptilian segment of their brains, down to the R-complex . . . which is a very dangerous thing, but also a very advantageous thing to exploit."

Lilith nodded."Dangerous indeed." She stroked the tension away from her temples. "This means angels will be involved." Her gaze shot toward the table. "But if this is true, then why haven't the ancestral Neterus come to her aid or the angels simply shown up to protect her?"

"Could it be they're deployed in a search-and-destroy mission seeking your heir?"

"Or," Lilith murmured, lost in thought as she stroked her chin, "they must know that a premature, heavy-handed show of force by their side would tip us off. It is still human, this prophecy child, and as such must navigate the vagaries of fate on the earth plane in order to be born. It doesn't get a free ride.Interesting."

"While Elizabeth is fighting the Neterus with Vlad . . . and Lucrezia and Nuit are raising the Antichrist's war chest, replacing the recent incalculable losses that their territories just sustained, we could raise the pale horse of the Apocalypse. We could do this while no one, not even the Neterus, would be aware."

For a moment, Lilith simply stared at Sebastian.

"At the end of the battle in the Greek isles to protect the heir," Sebastian said coolly, "their side raised the black stallion that shall harm not the oil or the wine . . . but that is the last one that they can alone raise-the next one is our pawn . . . remember that for balance, in a sense of Divine equity and just after the Dark Lord's fall during the Big Bargain we were given access to two horses at the end of days to use to tip the scales, true?"

"Yes . . . it is true," Lilith said in a faraway voice.

"Ah, but you have rightly been focused on the healing and development of the heir in his hidden North American caverns beneath Washington, D.C. However, I beg you not to overlook this opportunity, Lilith. We get to raise the pale horse, then their side can break the fifth biblical seal . . . which will give them access to bring back the souls of all those slain and martyred-even those stolen from Dante's infernal Book of the Damned."

"Hence the reason the release of the pale horse is not to be taken lightly by our side. That would give the Light the edge to possibly annihilate us with all those-"

"Think of it though, Lilith," Sebastian said quickly, cutting her off in his excitement. "We have a chance that allows our Dark Lord to raise the pale horse of human plagues. It is what we've been waiting for. And if there is a plague upon the land, after Lucrezia's and Nuit's shadows poisoning through the airwaves, the babies will die. Even the Neteru Guardian team, and even the Neterus, had been weakened by sustaining the poison for a time . . . their females, if carrying, will not be able to fight off the pandemic outbreak wielded by the pale horse."

"We must be careful with that one, though," Lilith warned. "The heir is still healing and has human code in his DNA . . . it came through the pollution of Cain's seed merged with my husband's . . . and while I'm sure my ova and the Dark Lord's seed cast a dominant darkness around his immune system, we must still take care."

"Understood," Sebastian offered, but undaunted, pressed on. "Do remember, however, what it says in the texts;the rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him ." Sebastian spun and clasped his hands together. "Weare Death. That isour rider.Our province. Hadesis Hell . . . our armies. The pale horse, as it states even in their tomes, was given power over one-fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, plague, and by wild beasts of the earth. No child will escape the plagues, death, Hell, and destruction that our fallen angels of the Apocalypse release. Our heir will be a fully matured male when he finally awakens from his chrysalis state. That compared to a human Neteru baby that will take twenty-one years to come into its own. If our plagues don't get it, how long can they run? How long can they hide? Even if we kill the Guardians' progeny, missing the Neteru child, it would decimate their team's morale, make them sloppy . . . and from there it is only a matter of time."

Sebastian opened his arms in an impassioned plea. "Lilith, even after the Light breaks that next seal to release their saints in a retaliatory strike, the chess move comes back to us again to break the sixth seal. We still retain the upper hand. The great earthquake-"

"Where the sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned bloodred, and the stars in the sky fell to earth," Lilith murmured, warming to the idea and finishing Sebastian's scriptural quote.

"A fitting coronation for your heir."

The two demons stared at each other once more.

Lilith inclined her head ever so slightly, her eyes glowing black. "Your proposal has significant merit. Let me think about it."

Hand-to-hand combat met black magic steel against Neteru blade. An elbow to Carlos's jaw opened him up to swing range as he stumbled back for a second, but then he severed Vlad's pike in half with a double-handed blow from his sword. Pikes coming at his back from Vlad's demon forces made Carlos duck and pivot to avoid being fatally impaled. Vlad had to quickly throw up a black-box to avoid fire from his own troops.

"Siege the citadel!" Vlad ordered, pointing to the cathedral. "Leave him to me!"

"We can't, milord! It is impossible to get near the gas and power lines under it," one of his demon captains shouted back. "Everything below the fortress is white-hot."

Clearly fearing retaliation for being unable to fulfill the command, the demon pointed a human-draped pike toward the large copper statue of the archangel that guarded the bell tower. "This is Uriel's-"

A lightning bolt cut through the sky before the archangel's name had left the demon's lips, simultaneously smiting the demon to ash as it lit the huge copper statue. The statue's eyes glowed with white fury, and from that unflinching glare, a crackling white envelope of protection sealed the cathedral.

"Seize the infidel to our dark empire!"

In the three seconds it took for Vlad to bark out his command, Carlos had fallen back to his vehicle and begun sending white-light pulses from the tip of his blade to the holdout position Vlad's army had taken on top of neighboring buildings, exploding demons everywhere he could see. Vlad called his injured stallion to him, pulled three innocents through the glass of an office building, and flung them to his nightmare creature.

"Feed!" Vlad ordered, watching Carlos grapple with trying to keep his demon army away from the perimeter of office buildings, while also trying to fight against his black shield to get to the screaming humans being cannibalized by his stallion. Vlad threw his head back and laughed as the horse disemboweled a man that was still alive, and then snapped off the head of a terror-stricken, shrieking woman. "That is what my army will do to your Guardians the moment we find a weakness in that fortress-and know that all human domains, even those perched upon hallowed ground, have a weakness in the end of days!"

Choices contracted within Carlos's mind. Something very fragile within him snapped as he looked at the three dead bodies on the ground being consumed. Demons had begun sacking the buildings around them to feed and replenish their fallen warriors. The images of human carnage haunted him in the tense few seconds as windows exploded out to the street, the sounds of screams pierced the air, and bat-winged, skeletal creatures began to feast. It was the battle of Nod happening all over again, but this time on the earth plane.

Sickened by what he witnessed, a charge filled Carlos's hands, but when he released it, what came from his fingertips was a fury-filled black charge that sliced through Vlad's shields and knocked him off his mount.

"Itold you thattonight I'd had e-fucking-nuff!" Carlos yelled, and then sent his vehicleforward, standing on the seats and riding it like a surfboard up the side of the building in a crazed zigzag pattern, heading for Vlad. Plate-glass windows exploded under the screeching tires; demons lifted their heads from their victims and temporarily stopped feeding. Carlos threw his head back and released another Neteru battle cry, but this time as a blinding white-light charge left the tip of the blade he held in his right hand, a pure black charge of dark power tore from his left hand.

"They used to callme the Chairman, bitch!" Carlos shouted, sending alternating black and white pulse mortars at Vlad, whose shields wouldn't hold against the onslaught.

In a rare display of uncertainty, Vlad glanced around at his thinned troops and called them to safety.

"Retreat!"

But no sooner than the word had left Vlad's fanged mouth, Carlos sent a combined black-and-white charge to blanket the ground around them for a mile.

"If you're gonna go to Hell tonight, then let's go together, motherfucker!"

Vlad leapt toward his crippled stallion, which had not yet regenerated from the Mustang collision. A white-light charge from the tip of Carlos's blade instantly entered through the creature's eyes and exploded its head, leaving flaming reins in Vlad's hands. Demons that surrounded him immediately paid the ultimate price, melting and bursting into flames from Carlos's silver glare as he dashed toward Vlad like a man possessed.

Through a splinter of night, a thick black cloud of transporter bats emerged and swarmed, forming a hissing, screeching tornadolike funnel to collect Vlad. Hurling debris, cars, street signs, and anything not firmly secured into Carlos's path, the swirling manifestation surrounded Vlad and then took off, heading deeper into the heavily populated area of downtown Detroit.

Beyond fury or sanity, Carlos became a white-light blur behind the dark funnel cloud, closing in on it as it ate up asphalt and flung debris in its wake. Attempting to knock Carlos off course when the debris didn't deter him, a retinue of brave but foolish bats defected from the cloud and dove at Carlos, only to fall to the ground screeching and burning from his silver sight.

Gaining momentum, the dark twister lifted above street level, moving like a horizontal cone along the People Mover monorail-the wide top end of the funnel sucking in power from the rails, siphoning in bodies from the train cars to strengthen and feed the demons, and then jettisoning metal and gore behind it.

Clarity came to Carlos in the form of a quiet place in the midst of the fury . . . a place that he'd never found before. There was no noise, no time, no forward thrusting velocity, even though his body was traveling almost at the speed of light. He could see another train car in harm's way just ahead of the ravenous funnel.

Carlos reached out his hands, abandoning his blade. The blade of Ausar fell between the fabric of the universe and the power from it leapt into both palms. A ball of black light fused with the white light that shot from his hands, creating a thick energy rope that instantly wound around the bottom tip of the funnel cloud. Then the time-space differential snapped back into real time the moment he yanked on the cord.

Demon bats fell out of the funnel's centrifugal orbit. Vlad crashed hard on the People Mover rails in a sliding collision as the combatants entered Cobo Center Station. Battle-frenzied, disoriented bats screeched and flew at humans, smashing the plate-glass windows leading into the convention center while Vlad and Carlos began a low altitude flight chase through the glass-and-chrome structure.

Vendors dove for cover, workers and tourists scattered, as the two missilelike forms rocketed past them, ripping up carpet, scorching the air, busting out glass panels, and upending furniture from the sonic boom shock waves of their energy signatures.

But concern for collateral damage slowed Carlos's roll. It also tapped his dwindling energy reserves as he soft-flung people out of harm's way, and shielded the innocent from exploding glass and twisted metal as he passed civilians while trying to stay on Vlad's tail.

Reality warred with his conscience; he had to get Vlad out of the building before there was enough structural damage to bring it crashing down on thousands of innocent people.

In a partial ruse, Carlos momentarily slowed enough to come out of an energy whirl, panting, wiping silver sweat from his silver-soaked body. The hint of vulnerability was all he needed to reverse the chase and to get Vlad to come after him.

Bursting through the glass-and-chrome doors, Carlos allowed himself to be pursued by the enraged entity, crossing the pristine white concrete that led to Hart Plaza. A wide circular fountain on one side of him and with the Detroit River in sight, he knew he could battle away from the population density of office buildings and possibly pull Vlad into the water while chanting a blessing to holy water fry him. But the moment he swerved his course toward the riverbank, Vlad veered off, blowing away traffic along Woodward Avenue then careening toward the Detroit-Windsor tunnel that would take him into Canada.

Carlos didn't need to see more; he knew where Vlad was headed. If he got to Nuit's Toronto offices, another refreshed army awaited. But in Vlad's immediate path were motorists who'd be trapped in an inferno as black Hellfire scorched the tunnel entrance. It would take all of his power to send instant cooling and fire retardant into the opening behind Vlad, who was using the innocent as body-shields.

In a quick fold-away, Carlos came out on the other side of the tunnel and hovered right in Vlad's path. The sounds of car accidents, multiple collisions set his teeth on edge and jarred his skeleton, but he had to stop this threat.

The impact of Vlad slamming into Carlos almost flattened him. But fury and old street ball made the contact flip into a tackle, ending with Carlos's hands around Vlad's throat in the middle of the highway.

Black charge cracked down Vlad's arms as his hands also found Carlos's neck. But the silver glare that raked Vlad's face made him cry out and cover the burns with his palms. Both warriors struggled to knock the other off balance, using their legs as weapons in the vicious dance. Razor-sharp, talon-edged bat wings exploded through Vlad's armor to stab into Carlos's shoulders and a spaded tail whipped out from Vlad's spine to drive itself into one of Carlos's kidneys. Carlos bellowed from the pain and arched, but didn't let go of Vlad's throat, reveling in triumph as his silver-saturated blood began to incinerate any appendage that molested him.

"How you like me now, bitch?" Carlos said through his teeth as Vlad scrabbled at his throat. "Go ahead, put your thumbs in my eyes, open up a jugular with your fangs, get all up in my silver shit and watch your ass get neutered one appendage at a time!"

Battle-length fangs filled Carlos's mouth as he turned Vlad's head to the side to deliver the ultimate vampire indignity-dethroated by an adversary with longer fangs.

"After I rip out your throat, Count, your head by the Neteru blade is mine."

The chime of his sword filled the air at the same time Carlos released his right hand to have the searing heat of the weapon fill it. Injured and exhausted from the battle and chase, Vlad struggled-buta millisecond movement of his eyes made Carlos drop him, spin away, and allow Elizabeth to gore him with a black blade.

A black charge hit both Vlad and Elizabeth, hurtling them backward before Carlos could think. It was instinct sparked by fury. Nuit opened a section of night with Lucrezia and quickly dragged the injured couple through it. However, before he could completely shut the dark portal, Carlos sent several combined mortars into it.

The earth belched out huge international messenger demons with barrel chests, straight from the Vampire Council on Level Six. Blade swinging, crazier than crazy, Carlos took the rush as he took heads, the new onslaught actually giving him energy rather than depleting it.

But the sudden urge to feed from the gore sobered him. He was getting lost in the memory, had to follow the fast-moving red-glowing pulse point on the ground. Carlos spun and took off, his eyes on the ground as his body again became a blur with scythe-wielding messenger demons in hot pursuit. Suddenly he was in a tunnel, underground, but not in Hell. Disoriented he slowed, looked around, and to his horror he was in an underground mall beneath the city of Toronto!

Humans were everywhere. The potential for catastrophic losses made him surface, breathing hard, dirty, sweating, injured, and gore-stained. Carlos turned and simply looked at the few straggling demons that had chased him this far, incinerating them, and finally began to feel the deep stabs to his shoulders along with the kidney injury.

His palm went to the wound site on his back, and came away with thick, silvery-red warmth. But the beacon had stopped.

Carlos smiled and stared up at the massive building. He was standing in front of CGE's Toronto headquarters . . . a gorgeous modern glass structure that he was so tempted to implode, were it not for the very real loss of human life that would occur. Instead, with his last ounce of energy and before Nuit's forces rallied to attack, he simply white lighted it from the roof down to the gas mains beneath the street, chuckling as demons fried while bailing out of windows . . . then dropped from sheer exhaustion.

Damali opened her eyes and sat up with a gasp, toppling Marlene and Berkfield. "I have to go get him!"

"He said-"

"He's in an enemy hot-zone, Marlene! I don't care what he said!"

"You were just out for twenty frickin' minutes, D," Berkfield argued. "And in your condition-"

Damali pointed at Berkfield to say no more, but didn't speak. Her eyes said everything. She took a breath and composed herself. "I'm going to get him."

"No need," Carlos said, staggering into the sanctuary, "Seth and Abel gave me a lift."

"You look terrible!" Damali said quickly, going to him. "What happened?"

"I'm all right," Carlos replied, weaving a bit and catchinghimself against a pew. "Better questionis, what happened to you?" He looked at her hard, studying her eyes and then let his voice drop to a tone of gentle concern. "Tell me you're all right, boo?"

"She is," Marlene said, jerking Carlos's focus to her. "Open a channel to me while Berkfield works on you-you look like Hell."

Carlos nodded and half fell, half sat on a pew. Berkfield simply shook his head as he studied the wounds for a moment. But when Damali came close, Carlos yelled at her with a wince.

"Back up-you know better than that! I don't even want the Caduceus near me if you're touching it."

"But you've got a serious kidney wound, Carlos," Damali shot back. "You broke team protocol, left out on a suicide mission-what if you'd been gored out there or are bleeding to death! What if the ancient Neterus were battling darkside forces and couldn't get to you in time? Obviously, they and the angels were elsewhere while we were scraping over on Livernois Avenue."

The need to feed was almost as excruciating as the wounds. He couldn't answer her immediately, had to breathe through the agony, suddenly realizing that by allowing his dark side to surface for added strength, that bonus dividend came with a severe price in the recovery process.

"Just back up," Carlos muttered, not wanting her to know about the black charges his hands had unloaded on Vlad. "No Caduceus or Neteru angel wing healings. I'm cool. It ain't that bad. I got two kidneys andthey only got one . . . wasn't like it was my heart-which it would have been if something had happened to you. So, we do this old-school healing method, 'cause I've just been in a demon free-for-all. What's the matter with you?"

Carlos closed his eyes as Marlene laid a palm on his forehead.

"You ready to open a channel?" Marlene asked as the rest of the team glanced between both Neterus with curiosity.

"Yeah," Carlos breathed out in pain as Damali began to walk in a circle, biting her lip as her fingers laced on top of her head.

I immediately called Aset for a healing and to send me the Caduceus to help her. Berkfield was scanning, but he couldn't find anything wrong. There were no internal injuries, no hemorrhages. Aset finally answered and said Damali didn't need the healing staff of Imhotep-the fetus shut her down. Right now she's got a newly formed silver-and-platinum layer shielding her entire pelvic region.

"What!" Carlos struggled to sit up, but Berkfield flat-palmed him.

"Easy, buddy. You gotta get better . . . so lemme work while Mar informs, deal?"

Marlene looked around the team, making up a flimsy excuse for such a rude and blatant telepathic exchange. "We're in a cathedral, brother needs to tell me stuff to flash to the other seers, but we don't need to take chances by saying any forbidden names."

Begrudgingly, Carlos leaned back down, his gaze riveted to Marlene's. She'd told the team the truth, but with some serious omissions along with it. But it worked. Bodies around him began to slowly relax, even though no one took their eyes off Marlene's stoic expression.

When the black charge sent the car into her . . . oh, yeah, it slammed her hard, all right. Marlene never blinked as her mind sent off a rapid-fire flurry of information that made Carlos's eyelids flutter.But the jolt, along with the adrenaline, made the baby spike something within its system that flooded hers. That effectively shut her down . . . made her stop battling this early in her first trimester -which both Aset and Ausar said would make you go nuts. You are the one at this early stage, they said, who needs to draw the heat. Later, she'll be back in business . . . but for now, you've got some kinda crazy thing time-releasing in your body that's ridiculous.

"Tell me about it," Carlos said, too weary to respond tele-pathically. He glanced around the rapt team and then tried to focus on Marlene, while ignoring the pain shooting through him from Berkfield's ministrations. But his attention kept drifting to Damali.

"I'm all right," she said softly. "Just a little scared, but I'm cool."

Again, teammates shared confused glances that Marlene tried to body-block from Carlos's view as she redirected his focus.

We've got three definite pregnancies on this team, in addition to your wife's. Marlene closed her eyes for a moment and let out a hard breath.Eve said these aren't decoys . . . so before you go there in your mind like I did . . .given what happened to my own daughter, know that it's a sacred number .This situation we're in now is different than what happened years and years ago . Marlene paused.Your child will have three Guardian protectors from birth . . . with a fourth mother-seer . . . little Ayana .

"Seriously . . ." Pure awe filled Carlos's voice as it trailed off and his jaw went slack.

Yeah, Marlene said in a quick mental whisper.Seriously.Your kid has a serious burden to carry in the future . . . I'll tell you about the prophecy in a bit. But the ancients didn't want Berkfield to know, on account that he has a grandchild on the way and he could have started to think negative thoughts about his daughter's baby being sacrificed for yours -when it's not like that.

Oh, man, Mar . . . this could get really twisted . . . really set the team back years in healing and cohesive strength. Can't be no dissention at this point, Mar. One team, one mind, we've gotta stand strong to face what's out there.

Precisely . . . if not handled right we could revert to old, unproductive behaviors that will indeed be the end of us if we do. But now that the cat is halfway out of the bag, who knows what the Queens will say about telling everybody else? But truth be told, this secret is wearing me out. Marlene let out another hard exhalation and glanced at Berkfield. "How you doing, buddy?" Marlene asked, trying to cover for the sigh.

"Working on the man," Berkfield said, sweating and panting through a surge. "But I sure wish he wouldn't get so busted up then come to me."

Marlene returned her gaze to Carlos.He found out when he scanned Damali to help her . . . his hands felt another pulse, felt another energy as he touched her pelvic area to try to stop whatever internal bleeding she might have had. There was nothing I could do. But the Queens didn't want anyone prematurely told because the information could have been siphoned and used by the darkside . . . and the others who are carrying on the team might also panic, thinking their child would be an expendable decoy . Marlene shook her head.In these end of days, our side will not be using babies as cannon fodder, Carlos, believe that .

"That's good to know," Carlos said, releasing a weary breath and finally relaxing for the first time since they'd left San Diego.But it's still a lot on everybody's head . . . I mean, aren't most Guardian teams made up of seven warriors around a Neteru?

Yeah, Marlene said again, this time giving Carlos a quizzical glance before she looked at Damali.

Do the math, Carlos mentally replied with his eyes closed.If 'Nita, Krissy, and Heather make three, plus we got 'Nez's little girl, making four . . . it's only a matter of time before we're looking at Val and Jasmine .

"Oh, my God," Marlene accidentally whispered aloud. "You are so right."

Marlene's statement made Guardians look from her to Carlos then toward Damali as though observing a fast-paced pickup basketball game in the park.

But that's only six, Damali mentally shouted,butting into the conversation she'd been listening to so far without comment.

Don't count Tara out, Carlos said flatly, turning his head to look at Damali squarely.She might be in her forties, but what dat mean? Stranger things have happened. Yonnie and me are alive, so's Tara, for that matter. If the Great Divine wants something to go a certain way, you know that's the way it's gonna go .

"Oh, my God . . ." Damali murmured, her hand going to her mouth.

"Yeah," Carlos said, vindicated as he felt his body beginning to heal. "So gimme a break for going after Dracula solo.That's why I was out there like a madman. End of story."

Lilith never looked up from the black mist in the center of the council table as Nuit and Lucrezia helped a badly beaten Vlad to his throne. Nuit caught Elizabeth by her waist as she stumbled forward, trying to make it to a goblet of blood. Thick bruises covered Elizabeth's torso from the hard white-light charge that Carlos had hurled at her. Had it not been for Nuit's shield, her heart would have exploded out of her back onto the highway.

Lucrezia hurriedly filled a goblet and then rushed over to bring it to Vlad's lips. Nuit materialized one in his fist and lifted Elizabeth's head so she could feed.

Both councilmen regarded each other warily-weakness in the dark empire was a direct threat to one's existence.

"He is not so easy to kill, after all . . .oui,mon ami? "

Vlad snarled at Nuit, but didn't answer as he regarded Elizabeth's bruised upper body.

"You were fortunate," Nuit chided inDananu . "But we respected your decision to war under the incentive of passion. But I have lost more than a limb to the man . . . therefore, next time, let us be more strategic in our approach. We should combine forces."

Vlad's gaze narrowed. "So be it," he replied in gravellyDananu .

"Where is Sebastian?" Lucreziaasked, her gaze on Lilith's back.

"He had a proposal for my husband," Lilith said without looking up from the mist.

Silence strangled the members of council for long minutes,then Lilith lifted her intense gaze from the black mist and smiled. She surveyed Vlad's ragged condition and chuckled. "Oh, yeah . . . Sebastian was right this time. The male Neteru flipped out and kicked your ass."

"I will avenge this dishonor!" Vlad slammed his goblet down on the arm of his throne and struggled to stand.

"No, you won't," Lilith said coolly."At least not right away."

"I will have my vengeance. As soon as I have regenerated I will seek them out and exterminate them all! Why will you refuse my request for the dispatch of immediately replenished resources?"

Lilith wagged her finger at him, making a little tsking sound with her tongue. "Because it's bigger thanyou being pissed off and your ego being bruised. Simply said, the female Neteru is pregnant."