Chapter Nineteen
The debate raged on about what could possibly be lurking near Brazil, but Rider sat silently, just looking out of the limousine window. He hated not knowing the lay of the land, and felt handicapped by not having fluent knowledge of the language. He felt trapped, could feel the sensation rising within him fast, threatening to suffocate him. He studied the dark, mountain road. Mist surrounded the vehicle, and there was no other traffic. The limousine bounced along the uneven asphalt, and the moon shimmered overhead. They were going down another dark path that felt like one more blind alley. He had been down too many in his life, and this was the last one he was willing to explore.
"Let me out," he said, his voice low. The walls of the vehicle seemed like they were closing in on him.
The group stopped talking and looked at him.
"I have to get out," he said again softly. "Please let me out." He looked at the team's stunned expressions. "This is where I get off," he said, his voice beginning to become strained, rising as he spoke, each word becoming louder and louder. "I don't want to go see some fellow guardian team in the hills. I don't want to make another goddamned choice about shit. I'm exhausted - mentally wrung out. I do not care if it's demons or vampires or a fucking drug dealer, just as long as the bastards kill me quick!"
He drew a ragged breath and placed his hand on the door, and nodded toward the driver. "Tell that motherfucker to open the door before I shoot the window out!"
"Rider, man, be cool," Shabazz said, his voice low and comforting, but steady. "I know you're tired. We all are," he said, trying to reach some rational part of Rider's mind. "Marlene's been getting wild visions just from the land we're on. My reflexes have been hair-trigger, like I'm about to go off any minute, which ain't good in a foreign joint where there's no such thing as parole. Feel me? There's so much stimuli here that Mike is picking up everything and nothing at the same time. The young bucks are wigging, and are overextended after the concert. Your nose is off, 'cause you're exhausted."
"Right now, you could light a Cuban cigar next to me, and I wouldn't know it."
Shabazz kept his gaze on Rider's, waiting for him to remove his hand from the door. No one else spoke. All that could be heard was the drone of the motor. "Man, it's gonna be all right."
"It's not going to be all right!" Rider drew his Glock and pointed it toward his window. "She looked like Tara."
Big Mike exchanged a glance with Shabazz and Jose, then sent a warning glance around the team. No one said a word and Marlene swallowed hard.
"It's all right, man," Big Mike said slowly, his voice low and steady. "That was a gift."
"It was not a gift," Rider said, now looking at Big Mike, but his hand was no longer on the door handle. Angry tears shone in his eyes and his gun trembled as he lowered the weapon and pointed it toward the floor. He shook his head. "That chick in the club... she looked just like her." He breathed in a shaky inhale. "It was a curse that just brought it all back, Mike. I shouldn't have taken her back to the room."
Quiet enveloped the group as Rider's breathing steadied.
"There comes a point in a man's life where he reaches his limit," Rider said, his voice just above a murmur. "When you gotta let something go, no matter how much that shit hurts. Then you start over, and try not to look back." His gaze sought the window again, and he stared out past the blackened windows. "That's all Rivera is trying to say. I can dig it. Been there. This bullshit going down over here is part of his territory - let him handle it. Damali isn't in any danger from him, she's in danger from not letting go when she should."
Shabazz slowly reached out and put his hand on Rider's shoulder. "Gimme your gun, man. Let me hold it for you tonight... I wouldn't want you to get hurt."
"Yeah, man," Jose said, his voice dropping to a soothing octave. "Give 'Bazz the gun, me and you can talk this out... just like old times, just like we always do around this time of year. It's gonna be all right."
Rider chuckled. But the sound of it was distant as he lifted his Glock, ignored Shabazz's open hand and Jose's pleas, and put the weapon to his temple. "I wouldn't want anything else to happen to me, either," he said, his gaze never leaving the window. "There was only one person I'd take a bite from, and she's history."
"Rider," Marlene said, her voice quiet and strained. "Baby, listen. If we're dealing with demons, one just got to your head... remember I told you that you and Dan were more susceptible on this mission... Dan has German in his line, you've got European, and whatever's out there has an ax to grind. Put the gun down, honey. We love you. We've all got a past that haunts, and you're right. The past is hard to live with. Why don't we go home, figure this all out, huh? Let's just live through one more night, and when this child comes back to the hotel, she'll be baptized by the experience of a broken heart, too. And every one of us in here can testify, one by one... Carlos will be able to, as well."
"We'll let the man clean out his own territory," Big Mike said, reaching across Shabazz and putting a gentle but firm hand on Rider's biceps to lower the gun away from his skull. "There's a hundred and forty-four thousand guardians on the planet, brother. We're just one team of seven that happened to get the hard task of guarding a Neteru. We can let a couple of vamps get smoked by the other teams. And in those other teams, who knows... there might be somebody worth taking a bullet for. You understand, man?"
Rider nodded, swallowed hard, and put the safety back on his gun before putting it in his shoulder holster hard. "That's all I was saying," he whispered, and looked at the stricken expressions of the younger guardians. He could feel the muscles in his jaw pulse as he blinked back tears and they burned away. "Rivera is a good man," he said, his voice steadier as his gaze went back to the window. "Had a tough choice - one of his own, or one not like him... didn't matter where his heart was. He could do this quick and draw that knife out of the wound in one hard pull, or drag this shit out for seven years in fucked-up increments." He nodded again, just staring. "Quick is always better." Then he sat back and slung his arm over his eyes and took a deep breath.
No sooner than he'd sat back, the window shattered, the limousine swerved, and then hit a tree. The team tumbled out of their seats and scrambled to right themselves, their nervous gazes shooting around to see if anyone had been hurt. Rider yanked an arrow out of the upholstery by Marlene's head, his hand shaking. Two seconds earlier, if he hadn't sat back, it would have gone through his temple.
The fractured radiator hissed, and the entire front of the limo was an accordion of crumbled metal. The tree didn't even lean. The driver was slumped over the wheel.
"Incoming!" Rider hollered, as another arrow whizzed through the missing windshield and hit the empty front passenger seat.
Big Mike quickly looked at the driver through the partially broken separation window. He kicked out the remaining glass, reached over the seat, and forced the man back. He looked down and pulled a bloody arrow from the center of the driver's chest with a rip. "We got a major problem, people."
The limo rocked as something landed on the top of it. Mike adjusted his shoulder cannon, aimed at the ceiling, and fired, opening a large hole in the roof. "We've gotta get out, or we're sitting ducks in here."
Rider put his head up through the gaping hole, cocked his gun at the blackness, and ducked down again fast. "I didn't see anything," he said, breathless.
"You won't," Marlene told him in a flat tone. "Look at this arrowhead. Amazon. Shaped just like an Isis blade point. Just like you'd find on a guardian team's weapons."
"Oh, shit..." Rider was about to go up through the hole again when the vehicle rocked from sudden weight. A jaguar peered down through the blown-out steel, snarled, and vanished.
The group stared at the drip of saliva that was now sizzling a hole in the limousine floor carpet.
"I smell it now, if I didn't before - sulfur." Rider looked at his junior tracker partner for confirmation.
Jose concurred. "Demon with a heavy animal tracer. Gotta be a were."
"We've got one choice," Shabazz said. "We can sit here while they pick us off one by one, or get out and go down swinging."
"We swing, dude," Rider agreed. "On three?"
The team looked out the missing windshield through to where the divider used to be.
"We'd better swing hard, because I count several pairs of green glowing eyes dead ahead." JL glanced over his shoulder as six jaguars materialized out of the dense mist.
"There're too many of them to go out there," Dan whispered.
"Shit," Marlene whispered, clutching Damali's sword. "The only way we can - "
But her words failed her as a hand punched through the driver's-side window and yanked the dead driver out. Shabazz opened fire and missed the black hooded entity. It snarled, brandished a battle-ax, and leaped with five other hooded figures in front of the advancing row of jaguars.
"What the fuck?" Rider's voice trailed off and he knelt on the vehicle floor, facing the windshield with his gun pointing toward the missing pane. "Vamps, too? All in the same night?"
"I'm going over the seat!" Dan hollered. "C'mon, JL. I'll cover you. Try to see if we can start the engine!"
"Dan, sit your ass down! You're a target, like Rider. The engine and radiator are done. You see that front end?" Big Mike pointed with his shoulder cannon. "Everybody, conserve artillery, and only shoot at what comes near us. If they fight over us as dinner, maybe they'll thin their own numbers out. We pick off what's left."
"Sounds like a plan," Shabazz said, covering a back window as the limo rocked with weight again.
They were moving backward away from the tree. Shabazz squinted, trying to get a visual on what had them, in order to get off a solid shot. The team's attention darted between the standoff before them and the invisible force pulling the wrecked vehicle away from the tree trunk.
"Hold up," Marlene said fast. "I can see. Hold your fire."
"What?" Rider put his left hand under his right wrist to steady his weapon.
JL, Dan, and Jose had crossbows assembled and aimed.
"I said, hold your fire! It's our only way out of here!"
The back windshield peeled away like it was a piece of paper, and two red, glowing eyes stared back through it without a face. Massive incisors opened and a snarl emanated from the creature. Marlene's hand went to Rider's trembling arm, and she held up her other hand to keep Shabazz and the others steady.
"We will repair your engine and radiator. But you must be quick. The demons are upon you. Daylight comes soon - and makes our assistance limited."
But as the entity spoke, it suddenly burst into flames and disintegrated.
"I can fire now, huh, Mar?" Rider shouted, opening a round of gunfire with Big Mike and Shabazz.
A dart flew past him, lodging in the leather seat a millimeter from his upper arm. Dan released a crossbow stake, but it simply passed through thin air. Before them, the standoff broke into a free-for-all battle as the jaguars lunged at the hooded creatures. Horrible snarls and hisses echoed into the night air.
"Keep that back window covered!" Shabazz ordered, tumbling into the front seat with Dan.
"Shabazz, no!" Marlene yelled, another dart missing him by inches. "They use poison! Use the holy-water grenades, Dan. The crossbow arrows aren't fast enough. They don't work on the demons, and don't shoot the vamps. They're allies!"
A blue electric arc shattered the side window upon Marlene's words. Shabazz yelled, "Noooo!" his gun firing toward nothing, passing through the light that wracked Marlene's convulsing form. The arc was unbreakable. The front window was vulnerable as the team scrambled to help Marlene, unable to touch her as the current riddled her.
The energy that held her was as bright as lightning, and as her body shook from the jolt that paralyzed her, the team drew back, not knowing what to fire at. The energy receded, dropping Marlene in a smoldering heap, and an albino human female face lowered into the side window. Her light brown locks were woven with gold bands, and her eyes glowed green, her evil grin disfigured by fangs. She disappeared before Big Mike's shoulder cannon payload passed the horizon of the window.
Just beyond the side of a limousine another vampire guard was felled, disintegrated by a hail of silver-tipped arrows. Shabazz was over the seat, holding Marlene to his chest, one arm extended with his weapon, his body swinging wildly as he quickly aimed in different directions. A hooded creature jumped into the driver's seat that Shabazz had abandoned, and when Dan raised his crossbow, the vampire slapped it away, put his finger in the ignition, and the engine fired.
"Drive!" Then the creature was gone.
Dan slid over and took the wheel; Rider jumped in the front with him to cover their driver. Big Mike put one hand on Shabazz's shoulder, covering him as he tried to revive Marlene. Both JL and Jose stood up through the hole, using it like a machine gun turret, leveling crossbows at the misty night while Dan drove the vehicle down the street in reverse. Spinning fast, he wheeled the limo in a circle, threw it into drive, and stomped the pedal to the floor.
"You know where you're going? You can't see shit out here!"
"No," Dan yelled at Rider. "But anywhere is better than where we were. Fuck it. If we have to drive around like maniacs till dawn, what dif does it make?"
"Point taken," Rider admitted. "How's Mar?"
Rider peered over the seat. His eyes met Mike's. Big Mike shook his head. Shabazz brought Marlene's limp body closer against his, and rocked harder, saying nothing, nuzzling her cheek with his own.
"Son of a bitch!" Rider punched the dashboard and swallowed hard, blinking back the emotion.
Dan simply drove.
Sudden motion at the door brought Damali to her feet, crossbow raised, chin lowered, her sight on the target; anything that came through the door would be toast.
Big Mike barreled through the hotel-room door first, an Uzi leveled as he kicked it in, and Shabazz came in carrying Marlene in his arms, followed by Jose, JL, and Dan, Rider bringing up the rear
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