Rider cocked back the barrel of his pump shotgun. "Thanks. Give the man an audience. In five we move out, like Damali said."

Carlos nodded and the group withdrew to the foyer area to give Yonnie and Carlos space.

Yonnie glanced over his shoulder and walked in close to Carlos. "Is it true?" he asked, his tone nonjudgmental. "It's just me and you. Talk to me."

Carlos nodded. "Yeah, man. I burned in daylight, and came back." He stared at his friend. "I don't expect you to understand it-and if you can't roll with me like this, then, I can respect that. You have to do what you have to do. I have to do the same."

Yonnie shook his head. "No, you're the one who doesn't understand." He swallowed hard and closed his eyes, two quiet tears wetting his face. "Since this happened to me, I always wondered if there was ever a way out of the life." He sighed and opened his eyes, his gaze furtive as it held Carlos's face. "It means there's hope. Even if I go to ash, something could come through the barriers and at least let my soul rest." He walked closer to Carlos. "Two hundred years, man, and I've been living like an animal. But you got out. Tell me how you did it."

"There was a slipup in supernatural law, man... I don't know. But-"

"You went down with honor," Yonnie said quietly. "Were always a good man. Had the love of a good woman. Took care of family and pulled yourself out of the bowels." He motioned across the expanse toward Tara with his chin. "She was supposed to be one of yours on the side of Light. Was supposed to guard a Neteru, and not a night has gone by that I haven't felt it in my bones." He paused to steady his voice and force the emotion out of it. "You two have even got the head of a coven sitting up here contemplating change." Yonnie smiled sadly. "The least likely, me, for instance, is standing here wondering what it would really be like to be free."

Carlos nodded and extended his fist, and Yonnie pounded it softly.

"Put in a good word for me when I go down," Yonnie said, his voice far away. "If council is on our asses, sooner or later, you know that's where it ends, right?"

Again Carlos nodded. "My word as my bond, I'll tell them about you, Tara, and Gabrielle. But let's try to get them before they get us. Cool?"

Yonnie began walking toward the group. "Yeah, man, the only problem is, once you blow council chambers, we're ash." He stopped and looked at Carlos, tilting his head. "But I'm okay with that."

Damali stood just beyond the door; her senses keen while contemplating the moon. She hadn't expected her reaction to locking with Carlos. The visit from an incubus had rattled something loose in her confidence as well as her conscience. That type of level-two entity could plant seeds of discontent and confusion, but it had to have something to work with. The private discovery made her shiver. She remembered too many times when things had become awkward between her and Jose, and they'd both been wise enough, or maybe afraid enough, to simply play it off and let the silent tension go undisturbed. And when she thought Carlos was really gone, there had been moments...

Damali shook the thought and sealed it away in a silver vault within her mind. Suddenly the early November night felt so cold. She hadn't felt it go down to her marrow like this before, not even in the park dressed in her lightweight African garb. Now she felt every bitter chill in the air. Never again. Never happen. It didn't happen. That was then, this was now. She had to open a channel to Carlos to not only get the mind lock done, but that was part of who they were together. This Jose thing was just a reality specter.

She felt a light touch on her shoulder and knew it was Tara without having to turn around. Without needing to look, she could sense Tara glance back at Rider, who was still in the foyer. Her Neteru instinct was stronger, but her soul heavier. Always the dichotomy of being human and gaining wisdom.

"For whatever it's worth," Tara said quietly, her voice a soothing balm, "I have been there." She sighed as Damali finally glanced at her. "So have they," she said, discreetly motioning with her eyes to the men in the room behind them.

Damali just stared at Tara wondering how she knew.

"It was incubus," she said quietly. "Male energy, and I could trace it by following its illusion." She placed her hand on Damali's arm. "Don't worry. They can't."

Damali let out her breath slowly. "Thanks." She hesitated and then dropped her guard a little more. "But how could it be so strong? Phantoms and poltergeist-type energies are from levels one and two, right?"

"Yes," Tara said, calmly. "If it materialized here, with such force, then something very strong opened their portals and gave them free reign to materialize. Carlos got the female, but the male is still hunting." Her hypnotic dark eyes held Damali's. "But I will answer your real question. You live with unwanted knowledge hour by hour, until it gets further away to become something that you only think about once and a while."

"Thank you," Damali said quietly, and offered Tara an embrace.

Tara was slow to accept it, unsure of hugging Damali back. "You are unafraid of me. I understand your trust of the councilman. He is different now and always loved you. But you're a Neteru, and I am still what I am."

"Yes, you are," Damali said, looking Tara in her eyes. "You are on my team, and in my Guardian brother's heart and soul. Your destiny was to fight with the Neteru. We don't leave our own."

Tara swallowed hard and stroked Damali's arm as she pulled away. "Thank you for that-it is a supreme gift." She clasped Damali's hand. "As we say-until I am ash, I am with you."

Damali touched Tara's shoulder. "Until I am dust, you are with me."

Tara wrapped her arms around herself but continued to stare at Damali. "Live alone for a while. Gabrielle and Marjorie will tell you the same. Neither of us did that before we made our choices. It was a different generation, a different time." She glanced back at the house, noting Rider's shadow behind the foyer glass and Yonnie and Carlos's forms in the parlor. "It is hard to separate from family, especially a mother who loves you. It is even harder to pull away from a man who adores you more than his next breath. But it is far harder to live with yourself never knowing if you can save yourself, stand on your own, be who you must be, and be all right with that."

Tara's hand dropped away from Damali's, but their eyes held each other's with greater admiration. Thanks wasn't necessary. It was implicit. They both understood.

For what felt like a long time, neither woman spoke. They released their mutual gaze and parted as warriors, both with a cause and a secret bond.

"May I ask you a question?" Tara finally said as she glimpsed Gabrielle coming down the stairs through the glass door.

"Yeah," Damali said, her line of vision following Gabrielle.

"Did you love him back to life?"

Damali stared at Tara. "I don't know, exactly. Maybe?"

"Then I still have hope."

Again, silence draped them under the moon. Both women stood quietly side-by-side, lost in her own thoughts. But when Tara hissed, Damali tensed.

"Succubus," Tara said through her teeth.

Damali touched her shoulder. "I know her."

Tara stared at Damali for a second before her eyes trained on a floating mist near the curb.

"We don't have time," Raven said, her voice lilting on the breeze. "They've followed your essence."

"You double-"

"No," Raven said quickly. "They only know about you, from trailing your essence off of me. We were together, only you and I. Ask yourself, when the incubus attacked, did he still search for Carlos, or did he know he was in the room with you?"

"Something attacked our councilman," Tara said in a snarl, but glanced at Damali, obviously ready to keep the ruse up before a potential enemy.

"It was a restrainer, and then the Amanthras came to finish off the job to be sure he wouldn't intervene. They thought the newly located female Neteru was with just a Guardian, a lover," Raven whispered, glancing around quickly. "Those who hunt him can't identify him. The only reason they got to you is because of our meeting. Ask him if the succubus that came to him spoke, or probed for questions. That's how you'll know."

"I can't ask him that without him wanting to go, too-and he can't." Damali looked at Tara.

"Then it's now or never," Raven urged. "Hurry!"

Damali nodded and stepped forward. Tara bristled.

"Don't trust her after what just happened," Tara warned, her gaze ripping toward the house and then back to Damali.

"Cover me," Damali said, holding Tara's gaze. "I need them blocked for a few minutes so they don't try to stop me."

"Hurry," Raven urged again, beginning to dissolve.

"Where are you going?" Panic widened Tara's eyes and lengthened her fangs.

"To pay Mr. Chairman a little visit."

It was quite possibly the most insane, thing she'd ever pulled, but she'd had to leave her weapons on the steps and take Raven's hand. Before Tara could make up her mind what to do, she was being escorted to Hell by a phantom.

Raven's chest heaved like a frightened bird as they landed in the rocky realm of the undead. "Level two, but the one who chased you, is also looking for me. The incubus is-"

Raven instantly dissolved, leaving Damali standing alone.

Punk bitch. Damali shook her head. She could buy the part about the weapons carrying hallowed earth setting off alarms, but this didn't make no kinda sense!

"So, we meet again," a deep baritone voice murmured, its hot breath way too close to her ear for comfort.

"Yeah, we do," Damali said, her night vision sweeping the terrain for something to crush the entity with. "Was looking for you, baby."

The dark form slowly circled her and suddenly materialized with her in its putrid embrace. "And here I thought I'd have to go topside again to find you."

"No," Damali whispered. "You were right. The vision really turned me on, and my old friend, Raven, brought me to you as a peace offering."

The entity's eyes glowed with excitement as a cruel smile stretched his hideous gray lips into what was supposed to be a grin. "Then I guess I owe her, don't I?"

"Yeah," Damali murmured, stroking his foul cheek. "I know you have to turn me over to Lilith, in order to collect... but, uh... maybe in an hour?"

"Yes..." he whispered. "Maybe in an hour."

Damali motioned toward a cliff side. "Y'all got any flat surfaces around here that might accommodate a sister?"

The entity laughed and transformed into a handsome male that resembled a taller version of Jose. "I see why Lilith is green with envy over you, love. Youare special." He wafted away from her toward a rock-studded wall and crooked his finger toward her. "I'm very nontraditional. We can do this standing up."

She could feel his magnetic pull forcing her to walk forward. There was nothing to work with, not a loose branch or rock anywhere. Then she smiled. They were beneath the earth's surface, true, but inside the womb of the earth was where the supernatural had taken up parasitic residence. Inside Mother Earth, and she was all natural.

Damali stretched out her arms and closed her eyes. She saw the entity smile in victory, as her outstretched hands seemed to beckon him. "Permission to use you," she whispered.

"Done. Name the shape," he murmured.

"Rock."

Instantly, energy ran though her arms, into her fingertips, and struck the formation the incubus leaned against. He screeched as he attempted to quickly convert his form back into vapor, but the huge boulders that slammed against his humanlike male body sent black blood spewing from his mouth. Damali turned her wrists like she was screwing a faucet, grinding the boulder into his chest cavity, crushing his ribs. His eyes blazed green with rage as the boulder jettisoned off his chest, but his jump forward wasn't fast enough to avoid the razor-sharp stalagmite that took off his head.

Raven was at her side in an instant, coughing through the billowing smoke, her eyes wide. "We have to get you down to three before this crag fills with gangs."

Damali didn't argue, she just grabbed Raven's hand and closed her eyes as a black plume sucked them away into the tunnels.

The wet, dripping, serpentine realms gave her the creeps. When maggots dropped into her hair and cockroaches skittled over her boots and up her pants legs, she covered her mouth to keep from screaming.

"I know. I know," Raven said, breathlessly. "But this is as far as I can go."

Damali refused to look around the writhing swamp and held her breath as the intense, humid funk made her nearly vomit.

"You know the way to the were-realms from here." Raven motioned with her arm and then melted into the wall.

How in the world did Carlos deal with this? She could feel things watching her, the trees moving, and it was time to run. Something huge was uncoiling behind her as she fled through the passageway, seeking the were-demon energies, but when she heard a loud snap, and felt the breeze of a bite at her back, she was liquid motion.

Whatever was on her ass, she couldn't outrun for long. Not through the dense swamp and gnarled, wet tree limbs. She kept losing her footing, falling, and losing valuable distance. She remembered the Amazon and the ridiculously huge serpent that had a head the size of a Mini Cooper.

Tree branches dropped before her with what seemed like a thousand black adders.

"Oh, shit!" Damali covered her head as more bugs and debris fell. Of course the passage between realms would be guarded by whatever level's finest fighting machines! Variable.

Fetid bodies lay strewn and moaning, flesh-rotted skeletal hands grabbed at her, begging for help. She was out. Her legs gave out beneath her, her body hit the floor, and to her amazement she was moving at a dizzying speed over the wet terrain with ease on her belly.

She didn't want to think about it. It was all about motion, snakelike or otherwise. She just hoped that when she came out into the next realm, she could do it again.

When she crested the barrier, snarls and snaps and howls greeted her. This was a bad place for a lady snake to be. But she didn't know how she did the first shape-shift, let alone this one.

Yellow glowing eyes stalked forward in a blackened forest, then disappeared. Beneath her stomach, brittle, sharp gravel dug into her. Then to her horror she realized it was bones! But there was no time to be squeamish with five zone-guard were-wolves moving in.

Images slammed into her mind. The only thing that jumped into it was Carlos. The next thing she knew, she was off her belly, on all fours, with tremendous black paws. Her leap up to a tree branch was so agile she stunned herself. Her roar stilled the howls. The wolves backed up and looked at each other nervously.

"Madame Senator?" one of the wolves said, lowering his head in a canine-submissive manner. "We caught the scent of Amanthras at our gate, and saw a black adder slither into our realm. We meant no offense."

Damali could feel her eyes narrow to slits and her tail twitch. "Be gone!" she growled, pacing back and forth on the high limb. "Fools. Why do you think I'm here? I saw it first, and I will deal with it."

When they nodded and apologized for the affront, and then began to back away, she nearly fell off the limb.Now she understood, totally, what Carlos had been saying about power. It did have an intoxicating kick to it, and the panther shape was awesome. But she had to focus and live long enough to square off with the chairman.

In one fluid motion, she was down out of the tree, loping toward the last barrier. Level six.

"You let her go where?" Carlos shouted, banging his fist on the door.

Rider yanked Tara's arm. "Are you crazy?"

Yonnie bulked and it stilled the dispute. "If youever , in my presence, grab her like that..."

"Easy, man," Carlos said. "Keep your head. The main thing is to find D."

Rider dropped Tara's arm as she snatched it away.

"Raven came to-"

"Raven!" Carlos hollered, stopping Tara's words, and began pacing. "Inside. Everybody!"

The group rushed inside, slammed and locked the front door, going to the parlor.

"Yonnie, mam Get me down there. My baby's walking into an ambush."

Yonnie's eyes held so much regret that for a moment he couldn't respond.

"What do I have to do, beg you?" Carlos shouted.

"I can't. We're topside locked, man. Chairman's orders. We can't go sub anymore!"

"Oh, shit. Oh, shit." Carlos walked in a circle.

"We've gotta get to Mar," Rider said quickly, holding his gun on Yonnie and refusing to look at Tara. "She's the only-"

"Marlene doesn't know the dark realms!" Carlos yelled, pounding on the table with both hands. "I was the master, a councilman. I'm the only one who knew the route and had the black blood strong enough to open council doors, if I went with formal summons! Marlene can't even begin to fuck with my old world!"

"But I can," Gabrielle said, quietly, making everyone in the room look at her. She nodded and went to her large walnut cabinet to pull out her crystal ball. "The Guardian mother-seers work with the Light. They see realms above." She placed the ball that sat on a dark brass pedestal in the center of the table. "But in order to do what I do, trust me, I have looked into the dark side."

Her comment drew everyone around the parlor table as Gabrielle sat down.

"Why'd she do it?" Carlos whispered, as though talking to himself.

Gabrielle stared up at him. "Do you really want me to tell you in mixed company-or in private?"

"Just spit it out," Yonnie said, his patience gone along with his nerves.

"What the fuck," Carlos said, walking between the wall and the table.

"She did it because Lilith has her egg. Yes, you gave her seed to bring it to life, but what Lilith stole was supposed to grow and thrive in Damali's womb.This is the part of the equation that men will never understand." Her narrowed gaze raked Carlos. "This wasn't your fight-this time it washers . This wasn't your vendetta. She will do this or die trying. It is natural law. A mother versus a robber mother. Even the supernatural cannot avert that."

Tara leaned down as she peered at the swirling black smoke that had begun to spiral within Gabrielle's crystal. "It wasn't my place to stop her, and if I could have been her escort to help her smoke that bitch, I would have. If Raven double-crosses her,she's mine ." Tara looked up at Rider. "A baby... a precious little baby that's only a spec of life now. Do you know what I would give for the chance that Damali was robbed of?" She pushed away from the table and glanced at Yonnie. "None of you will ever experience the loss ache like that!"

The males in the room gathered to one side of the table in a slow, defeated huddle. Gabrielle and Tara glared at them. All eyes were on the crystal ball.

Gabrielle pointed at it and covered her mouth and then laughed. Tara smiled. Yonnie ran his fingers through his Afro as Rider shook his head. Carlos blanched.

All he could do was watch as his baby girl finessed an incubus like an all-pro vamp and slaughtered him. When she went black adder, he almost looked away. The sight of her agile flight at lightning speed on her belly was almost nauseating. But when she shifted and went panther, donning his old form, he had to walk away for a moment to get his head together.

"She's all pro, man," Yonnie said quietly. "She ain't no baby no more, not shifting like that." He shook his head. "Damn, man... I've never seen the Neteru work. Now I totally understand."

Carlos glared at him and came back to the table. If he could have still dropped fangs, he would have. But as he watched her cross into level six, everyone at the table sat down slowly.

"Oh... shit..." Carlos whispered. "She went bat."

Gabrielle nodded as they watched Damali fly in under radar and affix herself to the ceiling, huddling with the swarming masses. "I can try to send her support via a spell, since I do have a willing master vampire in the room with a strong second lieutenant, but then our position will be given away." She shook her head and closed her eyes. "This is suicide."

"Do it," Carlos said. "If you can give her a shield, any-"

"I don't know," Gabrielle said as calmly as she could. "I cansee into the dark realms, not influence events going on there. My spell shields are for topside only."

"But she's gotta watch out for the couriers at the gate!" Carlos paced back and forth like a trapped animal. His heart was pounding so hard that he could barely hear anything else. Then he stopped and his jaw dropped. "A roach?" He ran to the table and clutched the edge of it. "A fucking cockroach, with starving bats all around? Damali, no!"

The moment the aerial assault began, she knew the choice was a bad one. But a mouse was too obvious and was warm blooded, and a roach moved faster, not to mention could better withstand the heat rising off the hot rocks. All she had to do was scurry down the long crag-strewn path and squeeze under one of the doors. But bats dove at her relentlessly. However, the one thing she knew from her days on the streets, a roach was a hard thing to kill.

She scooted over the edge of the narrow path that led to the chairman's front doors and gripped the wall. Hair-raising wails from the Sea of Perpetual Agony echoed up with tortured moans. Molten lava below her made her eyes burn, but the bats avoided her when she squeezed herself into a crack. After each attempt they veered away from the surface as their wings began to smolder, then finally gave up. One tasty little morsel of a cockroach apparently wasn't worth it.

As she righted herself, she tested the air for danger with her antennae, stole under the massive black doors, and then skittered along the edge of the wall like so many vermin probably had done. A mixture of rage and awe temporarily held her transfixed. So this is where Carlos had to run his best game...

The chairman was sitting by himself at his throne, his eyes closed, his gray, bald head slowly throbbing with an eerie pulse of sluggish black blood. She would slaughter this motherfucker in his sleep.

As soon as the thought entered her mind, his eyes popped open, his fangs grew to lengths that were alarming, and he stood. Oh, shit.

Two more councilmen swished into the room from the shadows. Now she had three of these bastards to deal with alone and no weapon. Staying concealed as a roach was no longer an option. It wasn't about coming all this way to be squished like a bug. Damali stood.

They backed up, blinked twice, and snarled.

"You're crazier than he was," the chairman said, holding out his arms so his fellow councilmen didn't lunge.

"Nice to meet you, after all these years," Damali said calmly, looking around the weaponless room. "So. Here we are."

"And to think I've gone to all this trouble to locate you, and you simply waltz into my chambers." He smiled. "Charming."

"I aim to please," she said through her teeth.

The chairman stepped forward. "You must have been magnificent with fangs."

Inside her mind she could hear Carlos yelling for her not to fuck with the chairman and to get out of there. But rather than make her heed his advice, the fact that he'd locked with her during her hit bred an insane level of defiance. "I was," she finally said. "You should have seen me in full bloom." Then it came back to her.Dananu .

"You don't know how sorry I am to have missed that," he said with a wicked smile. "Maybe you'll stay a few years so I won't miss it again?"

"Shall we dance?" she said in the mind-bending language. The dark-realm power had her in its grip, and everything from Carlos's old throne was wafting toward her like a toxic gas leak. But it did have the interesting effect of making her bolder.

The chairman cocked his head to the side. The other council-men's eyes blazed with wonder. "He taught youDananu , too... and you understand it?"

"I'm fluent in it, among other things... And can take battle-length in the jugular like a love bite." She leaned her neck over to offer him a tantalizing glimpse of her jugular as a taunt, and then straightened when all three of them licked their lips. "Been a long time since you boys have been topside, ain't it?"

"I can more readily understand Rivera's conflict," the chairman said in a low, seductive tone that had an implicit threat laced within it.

"He was your best, remember?"

"You won't mind if I have a word with the lady alone in chambers, will you gentlemen?"

She could feel Carlos's mind literally catch on fire as the two senior councilmen begrudgingly withdrew.

"We have a debt to settle, it seems," Damali said casually, beginning to walk around the edges of the room, positioning herself for an attack. Who knew what booby traps this old bastard had, and his power was no joke. She could feel it eating at her skin.

He nodded and began to match her moves. "We do, Neteru. But you have always been such a curiosity to me. An enigma. Soft, yet hard. Crazy, yet shrewd. Willing to take a bite all the way to the vanishing point, but then would just as quickly turn around and gore one from our realms. You utterly fascinate me."

"Youthoroughly disgust me," she said, and like lightning, drew a heavy section of the rock wall away from itself to fly at him.

The chairman ducked, but got up with black glowing eyes, and sent a wall torch toward her. She bent back, but the heat of the flame only grazed her cheek as a warning. She brought her hand to her face. He laughed.

"Six years with you down here will be the best years of my existence."

He raised his hand and a black lightning strike lifted her from her feet and pinned her to the wall. He moved toward her so quickly that he was a mere blur, and instinct made her reach for her hip. He laughed harder.

"What? No Isis, darling?"

His hot, stinky breath covered her throat and made her eyes sting with its fumes. But it was as though she were an amputee, feeling the phantom presence of a missing limb. She stabbed him with whatever had come into her hand and he backed up with a wail, clutching his shoulder.

She dropped from the wall. The combatants parted. He felt the wound and sealed it, his hand coming away with black blood.

"You... little... bitch!" he yelled, slapping her face from across the room, making her taste blood.

That's when she saw it, the beam of Light in her hand, and she hurled it at him with all her might. He ducked and then turned, trying to save the table. But the Light wand nipped quickly end over end and lodged into the center of the table's crest. Immediately, the other two councilmen reentered the room, and this time they would not be dissuaded.

One flew toward her as the table began to disintegrate. Damali reached for her hip and hurled the tingling sensation at him, dead aim, and he imploded above her, sending cinders to rain over her head. His throne smoked, and her name slowly burned into the stone headrest surface of it. Enraged, the chairman ejected the beam that was festering in his wounded table and hurled a thunderbolt toward her, blowing her through chamber doors.

Falling fast, the heat beneath her brought her to her senses. Strong bird.Strong bird , her mind screamed, and she flew at him as a falcon. Wrong bird, when both he and the remaining councilman became huge gargoylelike bats with wingspans that made her look like a sparrow.

Her back to the wall, them moving in rapid blurs, chamber doors open and about to fill with vampire warriors, she hurled rocks to block additional soldiers, and slithered under the table as a snake. When she came up behind Carlos's old throne, she was careful not to touch it.

They were breathing hard, so was she. But the table had been damaged, and they were a councilman short. Unable to measure the impact, she did something that would give them pause. She grabbed their black book from the beneath the broken crest and held it hostage.

"This goes up in flames, if you fuck with me, gentlemen. Try me!"

They stopped circling and stood still.

"If this burns, the harpies will come and ask how I breached your chambers, right?"

The second councilman withdrew. In the standoff she saw an opportunity and took it, spearing him with a wall torch from behind, and then threw a quick Light dagger to implode him. The chairman sealed himself behind a transparent black shield as Damali's name etched into another throne.

"Now it's just me, you, and the history book." Damali caressed the book. "This is closest and easiest to-"

"Stop!" He yelled, as she reached for her hip again to put a Light dagger into the center of the book. "I have something you want, you have something I want," he said in a rasping lisp ofDananu .

"What you took from me cannever be replaced," she said, her voice so low and lethal that it sounded evil to her own ears. "Your head on a silver platter is the only trade!"

"Wait," he said, inching forward and carefully drawing a black vial from the battered table. He stretched out his hand and then jettisoned the object toward her. She caught it and snapped her arm in tight against her body, but never loosened her grip on the book.

"When we bled Carlos out, I kept the last of theOblivion you two made. I was going to give it to Lilith as a surprise when we won the bounty, but, it's not worth the book."

Damali shoved the vial into the front pocket of her jeans with a sneer. "Oblivion? Fuck you. Where's my embryo?"

The chairman looked at her hard, his black glowing eyes going red, then gold, and then flickering out to a normal brown. "Embryo? That... that was destroyed in my haste, and..." He walked in a circle as he spoke, staring at the ground as though about to lose his mind.

"Stop playing with me," Damali shouted. "Not here, not now, and not about that!"

The chairman stopped walking. "Your side never saw its Light flicker out?"

"No," Damali said carefully. "The Neteru queens of old saw it descend and keep going until it hit rock bottom. Level seven."

The chairman de-bulked and walked back to the lopsided table and sat down. "Have a seat," he said too calmly. "Pick a throne, any throne, they're all destroyed."

"I'll stand, thank you," Damali said, unmoved.

"Whatever. But you and I need to have a real discussion, if I think what's happened has."

"She played you," Damali said from across the room, using the available information she had, along with a well-placed hunch. "You fucked her, didn't you, and thought she'd share the bounty with you?" Damali sucked her teeth. "Men are so foolish, especially when there's a baby involved."

The chairman didn't answer. That was all the answer she required.

"She's carrying what's mine," Damali said, seething. "You're her ally, that makes you my double enemy."

"You're lying," the chairman said in a strangled murmur. "I would have smelled-"

"No, you wouldn't," Damali said, renewed rage throttling her. She couldn't even keep up theDananu , she was so furious. "She's stronger than you, which is why she's on seven and not six. And what she stole is normally undetectable to your realms!"

She stepped forward as his stricken expression confirmed her hunch. "Do you think I would have left my own team to tangle with you in your own yard if it hadn't been mission critical?" She could feel herself moving closer to the table on her own volition, the need to wrap her hands around his throat becoming an ache. "Do you think some man is why I'm here? Revenge for a lover? Like some brother would take my mind, the Neteru, like that?"

From the pit of her stomach a war cry fused with the pain in her soul. Before she knew it or the chairman could react, the book was on the floor, her body prostrate across his table, and she had him by the throat. The tussle was futile, but she didn't care. His fangs gleamed and his claws pierced her hands like dangers, but rage had her in a stranglehold, too.

Eyeball to eyeball, they stared at each other, his hands around her throat, hers around his, until they both broke simultaneously and then went at it again, stalemated. When they released each other this time, she pushed back quickly, he zapped the book to his chest, and clutched it, leaving them both breathing hard.

"You're not even strong enough now to rip out my heart," she said, spitting on the floor. "Keep your dusty old book. But you will give me back what she stole!"

He stood and swished away from her for distance, but kept his eyes on her as he pet his book. "You're out of your mind. I'll crucify you on my chamber walls for this affront!"

"No, the fuck, you won't," she said calmly, but evenly, never losing eye contact with him. "You are about to be reduced to an insignificant part of the dark empire, and any remaining vampires along with it, and I'll be unemployed, then dead. Once she delivers the Anti-Christ, we're both history."

Damali swatted dust and debris off her jeans. The chairman smoothed his robes.

"You propose an alliance?"

She laughed. "Maybe I am losing my mind."

"You offered Rivera an alliance, albeit under different circumstances."

"True. Very different. But talk to me," Damali said, following him with her eyes as he walked.

"How do I know this isn't fabrication?"

Damali smiled. "Look at my throat," she whispered, trying to stop the two puncture wounds that had opened in it. "Earlier this evening, I thought... never mind. Let's just say I thought there was a little rough love play going on. My Guardian partner felt the bite because we were linked, but now, being down here,I know I got bitten. She found me."

The chairman moved forward, but Damali backed up. "I know her signature," he said cautiously.

"Then check it out from where you stand," Damali said, allowing him to see the wound.

He turned abruptly and walked back to his throne, billowing clouds of sulfuric smoke poured from it as he did so, spun, and turned to gaze at her with his eyes glowing black.

"I'll take that as an ID," she said, rubbing the surface.

The chairman sealed the wound with a sweep of his hand, closed his eyes, and trembled as he sat down in his throne. "I will behead her myself," he murmured. "All she wanted me for was bait, knowing we were the most likely ones to detect Neteru essence on the planet, and had your blood samples in our noses." He opened his eyes slowly, composed himself, and nodded. "Since we are being so forthright in this delicate negotiation, and have more pressing matters than old vendettas, I'm going to assume you hadOblivion running through you?"

Damali didn't answer, not about to give Carlos's position away.

The chairman sniffed hard and licked his palm where he'd sealed her punctures. "No need to explain. It's running all through your blood." He cocked his head to the side. "But since there was no blood transfer between you two this go round, all she got was yours."

"Would it be enough to spark life?" Damali held her ground, neither admitting to nor denying the chairman's charge.

He stared at her for enduring seconds. "Frankly, I don't know." He made a tent with his hands and allowed his lips to rest against his fingers before speaking. "But what I just tasted running through you, with the adrenaline spike, would make the dead come back to life. You tell me?"

"You know I'm coming for her, then you and I can settle our shit later."

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