Chapter SEVEN

As the team boarded the yacht, Damali kept her senses sweeping. Isis blade at the ready, despite Carlos's concerns, she walked point, giving the sweep team the all clear cabin by cabin, closet by closet, shadowy corner by shadowy corner. Nothing crazy could debark with them--not on her watch.

She murmured the Twenty-third Psalm as she walked the lower deck, clearing out negative energy, blessing the vessel, and ready to kick anything's ass that was not from the Light. Time was of the essence and it was about efficiency.

But Montrose Sinclair's dream boat had the bright, clean feel of the uninhabited. The shame of it all was, it almost seemed as though the man had never even gotten the opportunity to ever take her from her berth. Damali stopped in the first bedroom she spied, checking under the queen-sized bed and along the sleek walnut finishes. Nothing. Just a bright and cheery room.

She met Jose on the steps on the way up. He gave her the all clear nod, and she could see Big Mike's huge shadow pass.

"We cool on the main," Big Mike said, walking with an Uzi cocked up toward the ceiling. "Nice digs, though."

Damali smiled and pounded Jose's fist as she passed him. "As soon as the away team gets back, tell Juanita that shower she wanted is hers."

"Thanks, D," Jose said, giving her a look that stopped her in her tracks.

Their eyes met and suddenly he hugged her. "I really mean it, D. Thanks for everything." "You aren't getting all sentimental on me, are you?" Damali said, trying to laugh off the deep emotions that had begun to surface.

"Yeah, I am," Jose said quietly. "I'm scared to fucking death that I might not be able to protect this kid or her, ya know . . . and when the money got blocked and all hell was breaking loose, I was like--shit. But then you and your crazy divining-rod senses found this real cool old dude who is about what we're about. . . and, like, I don't know what to say, D." He swallowed hard and looked away. "Our house burned down, we almost bought it in D.C. battling . . . my woman is pregnant."

He looked back at Damali, shaking his head. "You're pregnant. C is flippin' out like the rest of us, and we've gotta do war with the Nameless. Every man on this ship is feeling the same way, like, what the fuck, you know? How're we supposed to do this? How're we gonna raise kids in all this bullshit? This is much worse than when it was just us fighting monsters, D. I ain't never been this scared in my life--because it's not just my life, am I making any sense? I'm not the only one feeling like this; the team is buggin'."

Damali just nodded and let him get it out. She held Jose's hand tightly, trying to send as much love and peace into his system as she could through the vehicle of touch.

Suddenly Jose laughed nervously and looked up to the ceiling, blinking back tears. "Then you find us a luxury yacht to give us all a little hope, a tiny break in the action so we can get our heads right. . . where my wife can take a shower and lie down for a few hours--one with a gourmet kitchen. That's just like you, D."

There was nothing she could immediately say, and she didn't trust her voice to hold. She just pulled Jose into another hug and stroked his back. "Wasn't me," she finally said, listening to his moist breaths pelting her hair as he battled for composure. "Something way bigger than me found this for all of us."

"Clear," Rider shouted, running to the far side of the huge cruise ship galley, and opening the stockroom door, leveling his gun barrel at it.

Yonnie waited a beat, and went in quickly, and began flinging unopened boxes into the center of the floor for Carlos to jettison to the yacht galley. "Yo, C, send those huge watercooler bottles first. If we get jacked in here, the main thing is water."

"I'm. on it, bro," Carlos said, keeping his blade at the ready, trying to keep a steady relay going without depleting himself too much on the first run.

But a quick swishing noise stopped all motion. Rider, Yonnie, and Carlos looked up at the same time. A pot fell from a partially opened cabinet and Rider shot it. Immediately a tide of rats poured out onto the counters, spilling onto the floor, and screeching in demonic outrage.

"Fall back!" Carlos yelled, kicking open the door behind him, giving Rider and Yonnie a narrow escape.

His eyes went silver, fury sending heat into his deadly gaze, cutting a burning swath in the wriggling, squealing flesh and fur that charged him. Then lowering his sword, he sent a white-light pulse from the tip of it to ripple pure energy across the floor. Everything from the darkside in its wake disintegrated as the blue-white nova nuked the area. But the sound of Rider's gunfire report and Yonnie's growls made Carlos spin to see the threat quickly moving down the narrow hallway.

"I shoot 'em and these bastards keep coming!" Rider yelled. "I'm running low, man!"

"Drop!" Carlos yelled.

"You crazy?" Yonnie shouted.

"Drop, man, or take a charge!" Carlos yelled again, rushing forward, and both Rider and Yonnie flattened themselves to the floor.

Tossing down a transparent shield of Heru on top of his men, Carlos lit the area with a white-light nova. Popping, crackling flesh splattered the walls with ash and grease from body fat, and yet Carlos could still see more diseased coming from behind the wave he'd just fried.

"We gotta go!" Carlos shouted, lifting his shield.

Within seconds the threesome dropped out of his fold-away onto the next ship.

Rider gave Carlos a sidelong glance. "Yo, dude, when you said we've gotta get out of here, I was thinking more like, we have enough supplies and we'd get on the nice yacht in the distance . . . not another zombie cruise!"

As Damali walked the main deck, a deep sense of melancholy wafted over her and then settled within her. Instinct told her the ship was clear, but habit and security protocols kept her moving. Instead of looking for nasty little beasties and the walking dead, she was looking at rooms--safe havens--for her teammates to fall back to for just a few hours on shifts. It was just as important as fighting, the business of watering one's horses. Jose had been honest. That was a cry for help that couldn't go unanswered. He was just the most forthcoming in the group, but she knew what he said echoed through all the male members of the squad.

She peered into the master suite, her eyes roving over the exquisite woods before she turned to go down the hall to the galley that had been sectioned off" to create a smaller but comfortable guest bedroom with a queen-sized bed.

"Girl, look at all this stuff the brothers sent us from the ship," Inez said, laughing, holding up a huge box of pancake mix. "I don't know where I'm gonna put it all? Marlene said water jugs, like those big ones from office coolers, are up on the top deck. And I don't know what the heck I'm gonna do with all the frozen veggies."

Damali glanced around at the small breakfast table, six walnut bar stools that pulled up to the eat-in bar, stainless-steel appliances, and the Corian counters that were laden with dry goods, bottled juices, and flash-frozen freezer bags of green vegetables and fruit. She smiled when she saw items that would make Marlene pull her hair out--whipped cream in a can, frozen ice cream sandwiches, ice cream, and Jack Daniel's. "I hope Monty's got another freezer."

"Yeah, can you get Carlos to work on that while he's out?" Inez called behind her.

"Uh-huh," Damali said absently, as she continued her second pass patrols.

Worry nagged her gut in an insistent way that gave her pause. What was it? The distortion near the Triangle was the only logical explanation she could come up with. Maybe she was tapped into the general horror energy of the population here? Yet, it didn't feel like piercing danger, rather more like shattering sadness that gripped her. Then, again, was that unusual, given the circumstances?

Unable to put her finger on it, she kept walking, sorting things out in her mind as she went along the short, wide corridors that welcomed sunlight. Two large salons with comfortable, mint-green sectional seating, a bar, game tables, big-screen televisions, and thickly cushioned lounge chairs each shared a common wall that had been removed, per Monty, to make space for two additional bedrooms with queen-sized beds.

Large ferns added a sense of cool tranquility to the space. Small hutch window seats stored the overflow of towels and sheets and toiletries that wouldn't fit in the linen closet. Monty had created a floating hotel, a showcase home on the water. That had to be where the melancholy came from. Seeing all this that had been built with such hope, and to have those hopes destroyed, was in and of itself tragic enough to make her cry. Add pregnancy hormones and the end of days to the equation and it was a wonder that she didn't just stop, break down, and bawl.

Half jogging, half walking to get away from her thoughts, Damali scaled the steps to the top deck, where she found Mar-lene and the rest of the team managing water bottles and newly imported military weapons, gazing out from the rails, and lounging on the comfortable, white wicker sofa that sported fat, lemon-yellow cushions. A refrain pelted her mind. Thank You, thank You, thank You, God.

Bobby and Dan had settled into chairs around a glass and wrought-iron table, and had pulled out a deck of cards as though they were on vacation. Good. Darnali released a quiet breath of relief and glanced over the rail to see Mike loosening the moorings as Monty coached from above. Berkfield and J.L. were in the pilothouse, as giddy as two little boys, oohing and aahing over the high-tech nautical controls.

She peeked her head into the large room that was covered in glass and winked at Berkfield, who was at the helm.

"Oh, maan, Damali ... all my life I dreamed of being behind the captain's wheel of one of these." Berkfield tipped his new captain's hat to her, laughing. "Monty is all right--look. He had an extra and said that us guys with the horseshoe deserved to wear these."

"But, look, D," J.L. cut in. "The generators, the radio, aw, man ... all the radar and sat gear on here is ridiculous. Monty's got his own server, too, so I can tap into what's left of the Internet. Even though the main service providers have collapsed, there're still independent guys out there trying to keep a pulse on the Web, trying to filter the bullshit on the Council Group Entertainment news. Bet I can rig a way to get secured Guardian transmission relays hooked up ... and Carlos sent us all kinds of deep sea fishing gear, like harpoons and whatever, that me and Jose can retrofit for weapons! He must have raided the naval ships, too, D--you know our boy is insane. Look at this, shells and launchers, and oh, my God, D, sweet, sweet ammo." J.L. kissed a grenade. "I love you, man!"

"Carry on, gentlemen," Damali said, waving and quickly getting out of Dodge before J.L. could get too deep in technical explanations. But where were Carlos and company?

Trying not to panic, she went to a starboard rail and looked out at what still appeared to be a gorgeous, tropical paradise. Nothing moved between the moored vessels in the marina. The bar and bait shops sat eerily idle. There was no calypso blaring, no tourists, and no happy, honeymooning couples. No taxis or moped traffic could be seen. Pedestrians were nonexistent. It was as though everyone had simply vanished.

Beaches were strangely still; only the surf provided lapping sound. The gulls were gone. Huge cruise ships off in the distance loomed on the water like large steel shadows, nothing moving on any of the decks that she could see from where she stood. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath at times. And there was that sense of dread filling her again.

Damali wrested her mind away from the unseen and glanced around at the only life she could wrap her mind around--her team and Monty Sinclair. Four couples would have to stand watch, one on each of the four cardinal points, while a fifth guarded Monty and learned navigation so he could rest, while the other four couples could sleep. That made sense. Four seer Guardian sisters could hold the Atlantis grounding and their navigation on course, sending energy to the submerged pyramid that Pearl had told her about, while the male at each seer's side could cover her with artillery, in the event something wasn't cool.

But something was still eating at her mind. Damali pulled her locks up tighter in her topknot and walked back toward the stern. What the hell was taking Carlos and the fellas so long? Before the thought had fully completed, a massive blast rocked their vessel, toppling Guardians onto the deck like bowling pins. "Heads up!" Shabazz hollered, scrambling to his feet. Mike was over the gangplank in seconds, kicking it away from the vessel and rushing to the top deck so he could see. Damali jumped up and strained at the rail as she watched a fireball consume the furthermost cruise ship. Everyone gathered on the top deck watched in horror as the ship listed and began to go down.

"We've gotta get her out of her slip and away from the dock!" Monty yelled, running into the pilothouse. "The waves coming in will batter her royal."

Another huge blast rocked the yacht again, sounding like distant cannon fire. Damali looked at her team. Her husband was crazy. "He's gonna blow 'em all." Disbelief claimed her as she craned her neck and shielded her eyes to the sun, searching frantically for any glimpse of Carlos, Rider, and Yonnie.

"Up anchor, they're all gonna blow!" Berkfield shouted, running back into the pilothouse with Monty.

"Yo, yo, yo! Three o'clock, hit it and quit it, man!" Jose I yelled, causing Big Mike to pivot, then spray the marina planks with machine-gun fire. "The blasts woke something up, D!"

"Monty, get us away from that dock!" Damali yelled, suddenly noticing activity in the moored boats near them. Quick moving shadows ran through smaller, docked vessels and then came out of hiding into the sunlight, bearing bloody fangs. Sallow-skinned predators with black, sunken eyes and mangled teeth scampered over decks onto the dock, running toward their yacht. Some still clutched the body parts they'd been feeding on in the lower decks of the neighboring crafts.

"Mike, where's your shoulder launcher, man?" Inez screamed, rushing to the pilothouse.

Berkfield met her with it, heaving a new launcher to Inez, who tossed it to Big Mike. As soon as it hit his grip, he took aim and separated the dock from the marina. The blast rocked the yacht, and a third cruise ship explosion put everyone down hard on the top deck.

"There's gonna be all kinds of wreckage and eddies out there!" Damali shouted toward the pilothouse, and then looked at her Guardians. "We have to get to deep water before those cruise ships go down and create a whirlpool!"

Krissy and Bobby jumped up, shock-charging the water with sibling-connected wizard skills.

"Keep all those jellyfish and seaweed out of the engines," Krissy yelled to her brother, causing everyone to scramble up and lean over the side of the yacht.

Millions of jellyfish had coalesced out of nowhere and bonded with deep ocean kelp, creating a mucuslike, thick, gray-green sludge that slowed the yacht's escape. Working with Shabazz, Bobby used his wizard strength to merge with Shabazz's tactical charge, jettisoning flotsam from the fallen cruise liners out of the yacht's path. Heather called the stones, her stoneworker skills merging with Dan's tactical current to propel beach pebbles, and any natural debris that would respond to her magnetism, at the speed of ricocheting bullets into the foreheads of the swimming undead.

Running from belowdecks, Jasmine clutched a sheet. Immediately Berkfield was at her side and he slit his wrist with a Swiss army pocketknife that he always carried and gave her his arm. Working at a frenetic pace, Jasmine quickly painted the sheet with Berkfield's blood, both father and daughter-in-law uniting in the effort to use the healing, life-giving blood that flowed through his veins with her ability to animate from pictures.

Jasmine hurled the bloody sheet to Tara, who flung it overboard into the water and then began firing rounds to protect it. Anything undead that had been on the smaller crafts that hadn't exploded dove after the bloodied linen as though frenzied sharks. Jasmine closed her eyes and a blue-white light rolled down her pretty face. Within seconds a huge water dragon formed out of the sheet, its scales glistening bloodred amid opalescent white.

Careening toward the misshapen bodies, it gorged, clearing a path. Krissy raised the strangling seaweed, craning her fingers, binding the undead and slowing their escape so that Jasmine's dragon could feast. Jasmine rushed to Krissy's side and slapped her five, both sisters-in-law momentarily jubilant as a fourth blast rocked the yacht.

Monty's hands slid from the captain's wheel as Val's wings unfurled and she took to the portside rail, running down it with perfect balance, a bow and arrow raised, headed forward to the bow of the ship. Intermittently Val would stop, take aim, and spear a demon with a dead-aim arrow.

"Keep that man on focus!" Damali shouted, taking the stern rail, wings Spread, her eyes keened for predators or survivors.

"Incoming!" Marlene hollered, using her walking stick as a pointer the second Damali jettisoned it into her hand.

Crazed sharks broke the water's surface with massive gray dorsal fins, eyes gleaming red and teeth gnashing. Guardians were at the rails, firing to keep them back from the hull, but it was a numbers game that the sharks would soon win.

"Supercharge that exterior!" Damali shouted to her tactical members of the squad. "All hands on deck!"

Shabazz, Bobby, J.L., and Dan hit the decks with a fast-moving, blue-white charge that immediately spilled over the sides of the craft, exploding any demon body that touched the vessel's skin.

Inez, Juanita, and Marj had been firing into the water with 9mms, but then glanced up at the same time as Marlene, all women pointing in the same direction at the same time.

Damali lowered her Isis and released a white-light energy pulse that hit the water like a depth charge. A great white shark, four times its natural size, pirouetted out of the water like a marlin and slammed into the surface, creating a massive wave.

"Stop time!" Marlene shouted to Damali. "The crabs, fish, and barnacles in that wave are carrying contagion from the cruise ships. Don't let it onto the boat!"

Damali flung her arms open wide, her eyes glazed over, and suddenly she felt her body snatched through a rip between time and space where everything slowed down. She could hear Marlene shouting to Monty to bless the water . . . him arguing that he wasn't a priest. Then Marlene grabbed him by both arms as she entered the pilothouse and made Berkfield take the helm.

"Ship captains can perform clerical duties," Marlene said, her voice slow and muddied in Damali's ears as she clutched Monty's arm.

She watched Monty make the sign of the cross before the slowly rolling, incoming wave . . . saw his mouth move, and then watched tiny blinking lights go off within the translucent, blue water as though a million mermaid paparazzi had gone insane.

Pops and crackles and white-light explosions cleaned the water. Shabazz and Dan were poised, hands craned, biceps bulging, trying to reverse the momentum of the incoming wave and send it away from the yacht. Then suddenly time snapped back to real time and a fifth blast made Damali lose her footing, but aerial mastery and a good wingspan kept her aloft.

The team hit the deck again, but this time they had three more dirty members that tumbled to the surface of it with them. Carlos and Yonnie jumped up, both pulling Rider's arms to get him up. Val dashed down the rail as Damali flew over the starboard side of the craft.

"Yo, man," Shabazz shouted, laughing as he saw Carlos. "What the hell was that? You coulda warned somebody before you started World War III!"

Elizabeth smiled as Sebastian stroked her arm. Darkness in the Carpathians always made her nostalgic ... if only it were Vlad and not the sallow-skinned little weasel, who was unfortunately gifted with superior spell-casting.

"This is what I do best," Sebastian murmured seductively, trying to kiss her, but she turned her head to give him her cheek.

"Let me see, first," she murmured in Dananu with a false smile. "Then, if I'm impressed . . . who knows, I might become aroused."

"I promise you will be," Sebastian said excitedly. "Watch."

He licked his fangs and settled himself, opening his arms wide .1 that his robes billowed in the unnatural breeze. Elizabeth glimpsed up at the full moon and then down at the Ibloody pentagram he'd drawn on the ground. She would again J'Watch and learn. Sebastian was such a fool. The thing that in-� "trigued her most was that she never knew what elements or el-j1 ementals he added to his black cauldron to bring it to life, to 1 make it spit and hiss and do his bidding. However, one day, if I she were careful, she would.

She watched him draw a long, onyx wand into his hand that held a crystallized human skull on the end of it. He drove it into the cauldron and began to stir, muttering words beneath his breath so that she couldn't hear. Her gaze narrowed . . . the little worm had learned something after all. No matter. The larger goal was at hand.

Then without warning he flung a handful of teeth and bones into the center of the pentagram, along with a Viking helmet and a German war horn.

"Arise!" Sebastian commanded, making the wind howl and the barren trees quake. "Awake and come to me, mad for conquest, lusting for battle, and I shall fulfill your desires for victory! Do my bidding and you will again war!"

Fascinated, she could not conceal her excitement as the teeth and bones drew together, and then the helmet and war horn melted with them into the earth.

"It didn't work," she said smugly after a few minutes. Everything had gone still. "I'm bored. I'm going back to--"

"Wait," Sebastian hissed, his black glowing eyes filled with anticipation. "All good spells take a setting time. Vlad cannot offer you this."

She didn't move when Sebastian's talon grazed her cheek. All she offered was a slight nod in response.

"And once I've raised them, let you see ... what is my reward?"

He'd spoken to her in Dananu, but he was so eager that he didn't really need to say anything at all. She considered his small erection and the small beads of perspiration beginning to form on his pocked face. The fact that he was struggling to hold back the finale of his spell so he could bargain with her truly made her smile.

"I didn't come here for an evening parlor trick, Sebastian," Elizabeth coolly remarked.

He hissed and lunged at her, holding her throat in a threat. "Raising the dead of this magnitude and of this age is no easy feat!"

"All right," she murmured. "I'll grant you that. It is rather spectacular . . . but I was hoping you'd share them a little with me--maybe just a small retinue, since Vlad doesn't really believe in my ability to lead a small army."

"He is arrogant and pigheaded," Sebastian crooned. "Don't forget, we led some of his demon warriors together before he was reanimated."

"How could I forget," she murmured, stroking his fist in a very suggestive way.

But he closed his grip tighter on her throat. "And how could I forget the very fact that it was you who double-crossed me and raised him?"

She swallowed hard, feeling his claws dig into her flesh and an icy current of blood begin to seep down her throat.

"You owe me," he said quietly, and then took her mouth. "Not the other way around."

"Yes," she whispered. "But if you would do this one thing, I will always align with you against Lucrezia and Nuit--to make up for my earlier offense, plus make this night worth your while--if you'll allow me control over a small dispatch of your Berserkers.. Deal?"

Sebastian licked the blood from her throat, trembling. "Deal."

Fallon Nuit lifted his head from Lucrezia's throat and then rolled off her body, peeling himself away from her damp skin.

"What's the matter?" she said, slowly sitting up as he paced to the war-room table and placed both hands on it.

"Come, see for yourself. Apparently Elizabeth wasn't choosy about taking sloppy seconds." Fallon spread his hands out onto the gleaming black marble, watching images on it come alive as though he were staring at a flat-screen HDTV.

Lucrezia came to him, wrapped in a crimson satin sheet, her gaze hardened to a glare as her arm threaded around his waist. Thousands of pelt-wearing, demon-riding avengers broke through the crust of the earth. Their massive bulk writhed with snakes and maggots, their faces mere flesh-rotted skulls that shrieked, each entity a nightmare unto itself with weapons raised.

Chains and maces, black swords of death, animal-headed horses with bat wings and monkey tails took flight, spewing an unending launch of vile manifestation against the bright light of the moon.

"They have no class," Lucrezia said, rubbing Fallen's back.

"Eastern Europeans ... so baroque," he said, sniffing in disdain. "We, the French, have a style all our own. And those of us from the era of ladies and gentlemen that hail from the refined Creole families of Louisiana prefer politics and courtsmanship-- versus brute force, which is very, very sloppy."

"I am glad that you were given Dante's old lair . . . which gives you access to seeing what is afoot and being plotted against you," she murmured, kissing his bare chest.

"A strategic advantage to be sure, darling . . . which is why I asked you to play along with me." Fallen kissed her slowly and deeply. "Your essence was a tracer. Thank you, darling. So now we know what they are up to ... and I just needed to keep them diverted while I went on my walkabout."

She chuckled softly, nipping his shoulder. "I don't know what you found there, but I like what Australia does to you."

"Shush," he whispered playfully. "Mustn't let the cat out of the bag that I made my little trek. However, in the meantime, when you call in your marker to reanimate your father ... I'll be working on another strategy. Let them have their fun and waste resources with the brutes he's raised. All that will do is piss Lilith off. I assure you, they won't find what they're looking for and it will not net results."