MUY CALIENTE

CHAPTER SIX

Damali opened her eyes with a yawn and stretched, then looked over at the vacant space in the bed beside her. Immediately she became aware that the sun was at its apex. It was too bright in the room! She'd neveroverslept her shift like this and never needed an alarm clock to rouse her. Damn!

She sat up quickly and rubbed her palms down her face and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It had been turned around so that the digital display faced the wall.

"Oh, man . . . baby. . ."

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she stood and hurried to the bathroom. A note was folded in half to form a tent over the toothbrushes so that she wouldn't miss it. She smiled as she looked at the big hand-drawn heart on the front of it. The words inside were typical of Carlos-brief:Relax. I got this .

"Yeah, you do," she said with a pleased sigh. "I love you, too."

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. . . .

Father Patrick stared up at the cardinal from his wheelchair as his Covenant-provided nurse-bodyguard bowed discreetly and left the room.

A heavy oak door closed behind him and the elderly priest listened hard for the turn of a lock, but detected no additional sounds beyond retreating footsteps echoing down the long corridor. Philadelphia had become the murder capital of the nation . . . primarily young people were committing the murders and were dying. His heart ached as he stared out of the large, leaded, beveled glass windows with failing eyesight. Why, God, did he have to be old and sick now when there was so much left to do?

Silence echoed loudly as the two clerics considered each other with no love lost or trust between them. There had always been strained tolerance between the secret activities of the Covenant and the mainstream diocese operations. One viewed the other as being akin to unregulated special ops with an unspeakable budget and very little accountability, while the other regarded the mainstream as the unflattering face of political debauchery.

Father Patrick stared at the man who'd called him out of his convalescence in New York. Pride had made him answer the call without an escort of his remaining Covenant brethren, rather than admit to being infirmed. Rage made him refuse to be a captive in a safe house afraid of the Devil. At this point, he didn't care if these personal attributes that had made him take leave were considered sins. He was a warrior to the end, and if he died en route to a meeting, so be it. But he would not be a hostage to a nursing facility! Perhaps that was arrogance or vanity, he couldn't be sure. But he was very clear on one thing, he was not about to allow the Unnamed One to make him bow down to his wishes.Ever.

Seeming unsure how to begin, the cardinal folded his hands behind his back. Father Patrick didn't make it easy on him. He kept his expression stern, brows knit, remembering the last cardinal that had betrayed him, his Covenant brethren, and the entire Neteru Guardian team. Suddenly becoming paranoid and feeling trapped, he glanced around.

The meeting room within the cathedral basilica of Saints Peter and Paul was deep and wide, cobbled out of huge gray stones that seemed more suited to an eleventh-century castle than any modern era edifice. Cool, damp air soaked into the elderly priest's bones, making him gather his blanket around him more snugly. He hated needing a wheelchair. Heavy brass lamps flanked the gleaming mahogany table from the vaulted ceiling above. Prisms of colored light poured into the chamber through exquisitely detailed stained-glass windows to coat the high-back, crimson velvet upholstered chairs. He watched his superior's troubled brows knit into one long, furry white caterpillar before he spoke.

"You have been well while on the mend, I take it?" the cardinal finally said, failing miserably at his attempt to make small talk. "That is a blessing."

Father Patrick sat up taller in his wheelchair, feeling old annoyances beginning to rise within him. "Given who I did battle with, I would have to agree."

The cardinal blanched and nervously clasped his hands before him. "Indeed. Indeed. You are one of our finest exorcists and we are glad that you did not succumb to the demon attack."

Fury made Father Patrick's hands tremble. He wanted nothing more at this moment than to be able to stand on his own and to propel himself out of his confinement.

"I am a warrior. A Knight Templar, one of the last of my kind and we would never bow to Satan. We are used to attacks from all quarters. It is we who held true to the cross when even our own papacy denied us and believed the lies of the debtor, King Phillip. We renounced nothing as we burned at the stake and died vindicated in our own souls, if not on paper. So, yes, I waswell and amblessed . Thank you." A wheezing fit stopped his angry diatribe, but his burning gaze finished his point without words.

Hurrying to the center of the table, the cardinal took up the crystal pitcher and quickly poured a small tumbler of chilled ice water for Father Patrick. Bringing it to him, he held his hand firmly around the glass so the priest could sip from it, but did so in a way that allowed the infirmed man his dignity. Once he'd drunk his fill, the cardinal took the glass away and set it on the table. Still agitated, Father Patrick watched the cardinal's robes sway as he walked, regarding the man with open disdain.

"Please hear me this time, old friend," the cardinal said in a quiet, shame-filled voice. "I know much has transpired and there were times when you felt we'd abandoned you-"

"You did abandon me!" Father Patrick wheezed. "You abandoned those children. You attacked the Neterus with benign neglect and so much more! What you attempted to do to Damali is unforgivable. Were it not for the vast resources of the hidden Templar treasuries, that entire Guardian squad would have been at the mercy of the Darkness!"

"Yes, yes, we know. It was an unfortunate set of very political circumstances before . . . and we are now trying to make restitution."

Father Patrick sat back in his wheelchair and eyed the cardinal with a hard glare, causing the man to turn away to stare out the window. He followed the cardinal's line of vision, which had become fixed in the direction of the Masonic lodge only blocks away. There was an agenda, he could feel it. The very fact that they were meeting in Philadelphia was part of it, he could tell. But with his second-sight weakened from the ultimate demon attack, he couldn't be sure. Frustration riddled his being as he quietly acknowledged the loss of yet another part of himself.

"Why?Why now, after all these years?" Father Patrick lifted his chin indignantly, his tone more of an accusation than a question.

The cardinal blotted his brow with a neatly folded white linen handkerchief that he'd extracted from the deep pockets of his robe. "Because we must . . . we need the Templars to return to restore order. We need this secret group that you all whispered of for centuries to be victorious."

Father Patrick leaned forward. "Are you saying that you are finally recognizing the existence of the Neterus?" His voice was an awed whisper.

"We were wrong," the cardinal said, coming in closer to speak to Father Patrick in a conspiratorial whisper. "The Vatican has released the scrolls of the Templar trials and has reversed the decree of heresy. After seven hundred years, the Templars will be exonerated. We need you as warriors in these, the end of days."

The senior cleric spoke quickly, fervently, bending so that his and Father Patrick's faces and eyes were on the same level, his hands clasped in a plea. "You Templars have secrets; have guarded even the Holy Grail. Your organization was the richest in all of Europe and the entire banking institution that we know of today is based upon the development of your treasury. Cathedrals, castles, and enduring monuments were built by your financing, and there are secret passageways and tunnels that could lead people to safety now as then. Our resources are strained from all the . . . litigation of late." The cardinal briefly closed his eyes as shame filled his voice. "We must change the way things have been done or lose all credibility in the eyes of humanity, but more important, within the eyes of God."

"Somethingspecific has happened." Father Patrick stared at the cardinal. "It had to or you wouldn't have come to me. The Vatican never reverses itself."

"King Phillip was an animal . . . a debtor who was under the sway of dark forces and used the Templars to rob their treasuries-but he didn't get it all, only a small portion," the cardinal replied tensely, not directly answering Father Patrick's charge. "Back then we thought he was the Antichrist, but it was not time . . . there is one that has been made now."

"Yes. I'm well aware," Father Patrick said dryly. "I reported this to you and it was probably taken as seriously as any of my other reports. Now you want me to lead you to the Templars' hidden treasury because the mother church is falling on hard times for covering up the sins of her pedophile priests?"

"No! This is not about the money." The cardinal's hands trembled as he blotted his brow again. "This time the pope knows what you say is true."

Tense moments of silence passed as both men stared at each other. Father Patrick leaned forward, dropping some of his resistance and the shield of resentment he had toward his superior.

"What has changed?" Father Patrick placed a hand on the cardinal's forearm.

"The Beast has grown bold, confident,flagrant . It came to His Grace and made him an offer he was told not to refuse . . . and then laughed at him."

Father Patrick blinked twice, stunned.

"It threatened the pontiff's life and then cited all the abominations in the church's history . . . all the blood on the hands of so many popes and showed him a . . . a catalogue of souls from our ranks.From the Crusades to the Inquisition to even turning a blind eye to the holocausts of slavery and Hitler. Our treasuries have blood on the silver. And then it laughed and said that we could not even raise our mightiest warriors against him because we had even betrayed our Templars."

The cardinal dropped to his knees before a stunned Father Patrick and gathered up his hands within his. "Patrick, we must make amends and make our peace within our ranks. If the pontiff doesn't go along with this diabolical plan to endorse the Antichrist as a unifying world leader, he will be assassinated, a demon will replace his seat, and all that we know and love will cease. The human devastation will be quantum. We must reach out to all faiths, all denominations, and bring all people together who believe in the Almighty . . . join our treasuries to keep this disaster at bay. We can no longer have sects and remain fractured as a house divided."

"Who is the one the Beast asks him to endorse?"

"That's just it. We do not yet know. The Unnamed One is making his rounds, going to various senior political sectors within all the nations, striking his deals and positioning for the imminent ascension. The Catholic Church is a huge block of worldopinion, hence we are in the crosshairs of this travesty. But we have word that he's going to all the other major religious leaders, too-if any accept this deal, there could be complete chaos."

"The pontiff cannot yield to this."

"No. He will not. He would give his life, he will die first for the love of God . . . but he is playing along for now, just as the others presumably are." The cardinal gripped Father Patrick's hands tighter. "He will wait until the last moment . . . until he gets a name. That name will come to you from us, only to the Knights Templar, so that it can be given to the Neterus. There has also been secret agreement by Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, andHindu religious world leaders . . . the pontiff has met with them all, the Dalai Lama among them, and each has vowed to give the name they receive to their warrior representative within the Covenant."

Father Patrick closed his eyes."Finally." He let out a hard breath and then opened his eyes to stare at the cardinal. "It took the end of times for men to see that the angels preside over us all . . . how sad. Maybe the Devil serves a purpose after all."

"We have heard there are angels that have actually come to you . . . to your warriors." Nervous eyes stared back at Father Patrick.

"You are now reading my reports." Father Patrick's tone was even, years of struggle with the church hierarchy and all its bureaucracy making it tight and unsympathetic.

"Yes," the cardinal said, nodding fervently. "The angels have protected your warriors, true? They will hear your prayers in this most critical endeavor?"

"Yes." Father Patrick's eyes held his superior's, but now rather than being filled with rage, sudden compassion caused tears to rise within them. "You have gotten to this level and never been witness to a miracle, have you? It was all politics and positioning. Until this happened, you didn't truly believe that evil existed, did you?"

"We . . . we thought . . . people. . . . But this was an entity!"

Awed by the revelation, Father Patrick pressed on. "You knew men were evil. You knew people also did angelic things. Therefore there was no unseen for you, right? You believed in the deeds of mankind, but in your soul were very unsure of there being a real mystery of faith . . . so, in truth, you had lost the faith, had lost your way-you thought all this was theoretical, didn't you? Answer me, man!"

Agitated, Father Patrick fought off the cardinal's hands and unsuccessfully tried to stand. "You sent us out as exorcists really thinking human beings simply had psychological problems, and only kept the practice so that the so-called ignorant, common masses would stay with our church . . . but until Lucifer himself showed up in a chair facing the Pope and smiled at him, you didn't believe that the Devil existed, did you?" Father Patrick sat back in his chair, winded. "That old demon must have had quite a laugh . . . but I could have saved you and the pontiff the trouble of being surprised.I saw him and fought him . Foryears I tried to tell you this-for years, man, I tried to get through to you all but you treated me like a mental patient . . . or worse, like a child to be indulged and dismissed."

Two large tears rolled down the cardinal's cheeks without censure. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned . . . it has been years beyond your comprehension since my last honest confession. Do not forsake humanity because I, we, so many of uswere arrogant and vain. Come back to us and protect us. Pray for us. Forgive us. Bring the angels into our company. We are afraid."

"That was all I ever wanted," Father Patrick said quietly."The truth. I never got that from the Vatican hierarchy . . . just evasions and political equivocation."

"I'm sorry," the cardinal said, beginning to sob against Father Patrick's clasped hands. "We're all so sorry and know not where to turn."

Father Patrick made the sign of the cross on the cardinal's forehead. "I, as only a man, can grant you absolution and have, but the Father is the one you must commune with during these most difficult of times. I will not abandon you, nor will the Templars. God most assuredly will not, if you seek him with a true heart. We Knights took a vow, we have no right to dishonor that vow-because it was not a vow between the vagaries of men, but a vow between us and God. Beyond our prayers and attempts to ensure the safe passage of innocents and the pontiff, what would you have us do? Tell the pontiff that the Original Order of the Knights of Templar is at your service in the battle against the Antichrist." Father Patrick bowed his head slightly and then stared at the weeping cardinal.

"Once the Antichrist has been identified . . ." Mucus strangled the words in the cardinal's throat, halting his statement.

"You need us to be the church's assassins-like old times."

The cardinal closed his eyes. "Let us pray."

Every step she took felt like invisible springs were helping her walk as she bounced down the hall in search of her teammates. The ever-present scent of fresh brewed coffee drew her toward the kitchen. Mike and Carlos had never succumbed to herbal tea, despite all of Marlene's and Shabazz's urging. Damali took another deep, satisfied inhalation as she walked. The scent of burning wood from the fireplace was everywhere and the comforting smell of it wrapped around her.

Practically giddy, she studied the air, noticing how she could now almost actually see subtle shifts in the molecules within it. She could nearly make out the variation between floating ash, sunshine, and the haze left behind by smoldering embers. Everything had an aura . . . but unlike when in serious battle or trying to do a divination, somehow her second-sight was on full blast without her even trying. As she entered the kitchen, she felt Carlos round the house and come up the deck stairs.

Damali looked down at her arms and stared at the goose-flesh the sensation had produced. "Whoa . . ." It was beyond profound. She could even hear him breathing and he hadn't opened the sliding-glass doors that led in from the deck yet. Her attention snapped up to look at him. It was too freaky. Carlos's normal panther-stealth footfalls against the wood outside had sent a minor vibration through the kitchen floor that she felt like an earthquake aftershock. Yeah, okay, she had normal heightened Neteru sensory capacity, but this was ridiculous.

"G'morning, sleepyhead," Carlos said with a wide grin, coming over to give her a quick kiss. "What?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "Everything for a few seconds there was real intense."

He gave her a sly grin and went over to the stove without comment and flipped on the burner under the teakettle. She smiled and sucked her teeth. He didn't have to turn around for her to know he was smiling wider.

"You know what I mean . . . and not because of last night."

He shrugged and fished down a canister of loose chamomile tea. "See, I wasn't even going there."

"Uh-huh . . . okay," she said with a soft chuckle. "But you shouldn't have let me oversleep my shift," she said in a more serious tone. "Folks will really start to wonder, you know."

"No, they won't," he said with a broad grin. "Mar and 'Bazz already know the deal. Mike was like, 'Where's 'Mali?' I just pounded his fist and said, 'Still in bed.' He just gave me his most classic shit-eating grin, shook his head, and said, 'My brother.' Men keep things real simple. We ain't into conspiracy theory unless it directly affects us."

Damali folded her arms and had to laugh."Outrageous as always. Now every time I see Mike he's gonna be giving me his famous my-name-is-Bennit-and-I-ain't-in-it-big cheesy grin. But you forgot about Inez. She'll be suspicious."

"Baby, relax," Carlos said with an easy sigh. "It's cool."

Damali chuckled. "Uhmmm-hmmm . . . everything isreal cool this morning, isn't it?"

They both looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing.

"More cool than it was last night, right?" She came in close to him, but rather than hug her, he pounded her fist and made her laugh harder.

"Ya heard?" he said, avoiding body contact with her while filling the tea ball, still laughing. "But see, girl, you've gotta learn how to surrender."

"I thought I did that?"

He gave her a look that said puhlease, and kept fidgeting with the process of making her tea. "You kept pushing till you got what you wanted."

"Not fair," she said, cuffing his shoulder and then planting a kiss against it. "Like you didn't want to . . ."

He looked at his shoulder. "Not fair, but true-and exactly why I got up and got out of bed and left you there."

On that note she held up her hands and crossed the room to sit on a stool. "Guilty as charged."

"Completely."He took the kettle off the stove before it sounded and poured hot water over the tea ball, then hunted for the raw honey. "But I also wanted you to get some quality rest," he said, hesitating for a moment to look at her as he found a spoon.

"Thank you," she said quietly, holding his gaze. "I know this lull in the action won't last long . . . and it was nice to just have a little time to be normal, you know?"

Carlos nodded. "I hear you, baby." He brought her tea over to her and set it down carefully on the counter. "You feel up to some fruit . . . maybe some cereal?"

She studied his face. "What's wrong, Carlos? It's all in your eyes, the tone of your voice-something's happened, hasn't it?"

"I just want you to have a few to yourself. I want you to have your morning tea, some breakfast-"

"It's afternoon, I have a job to do, and-"

"So doI ," he said, rounding on her. His tone was firm and all play had gone out of his expression. "My job is to protect my wife,comprende ? It even says so in the Bible."

"Where?" she said, trying not to smile.

"I don't know, but it's in there, trust me."

She lifted up her mug of tea and blew on the surface of it to cool it, then said a quiet prayer over it before sipping it. "Thank you for the tea . . . for the sleep late coupon . . . for last night, and for loving me. I'll eat some oatmeal, too, even. But I want you to take the second-sight barrier off me, Carlos."

When he looked away, she knew she had him.

"I'm picking up strange distortions despite the shield you lowered over my senses-I'm seeing colors brighter, auras, hearing better than Mike, all sorts of stuff because my third eye obviously knew it was blocked even when I didn't. And even though I know weswore to each other that we'd never block each other from picking up environmental information . . . under the circumstances I'll let thisone time pass because I know you did it from a loving standpoint." She paused and allowed her silence to challenge him. "But don't do that to me again without my permission. I wouldn't do it to you."

Carlos let out a hard breath. "Okay, all right. I'll admit it. I put you in a bubble.My bad."

"I'm not Ayana."

He turned to look at her, his eyes pained. "But you're carrying precious cargo."

"How bad is it?" she said quietly, setting down her tea.

He let his head hang back and closed his eyes for a moment. "Bad. You want a banana with the oatmeal?"

"Drop the barrier, Carlos."

"Eat, first." He walked over to the stove and pulled out a small pot.

"Talk to me," she said in a calm tone, studying the stress in his back.

"It's the perfect storm," he said, adding water and a pinch of sea salt to the pot before hunting for the canister of oatmeal. "Last night about twoA.M. , Yonnie shot me a jolt. The West Coast is on fire from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Even Malibu is in flames. Multimillion-dollar homes going up just like shacks. Fires sprung up outta nowhere-the National Weather Service is claiming La Nina and the Santa Ana winds blowing from east to west out of the mountains and valleys with no humidity . . . down to like a 4 percent factor, saying that after the drought in the region, the dry condition is what's caused the tinderbox. Now, this morning, they're saying arson may have started it-but we already coulda told 'em the darkside was behind this bull."

Damali looked out the window and covered her heart with her hand. It wasn't fireplaces . . . damn. "Drop the shield," she whispered. "Please."

"I'm begging you, D. Let me tell you what I know, and after you've had breakfast, I'll drop it. You trust me?"

Begrudgingly, she nodded, but she hated being treated as though she were so fragile she might break.

"Thank you," hesaid, his voice quiet and tense. "They've already evacuated two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand residents as of six o'clock this morning. I-15 is shut down, and by now more than half a million people have been evaced. Four hundred thousand acres have burned and it's still blazing out there. Meanwhile, New Orleans is getting hit with flash floods again-the Gulf is about to be targeted, it seems, for major flooding, while the central part of the country is getting beat to death by tornadoes and while the Southeast is getting hammered by a drought so bad that Atlanta . . .Atlanta , D, is rationing water. Their pipes might go dry within the next ninety days."

Her gaze remained fixed to the horizon beyond the sliding-glass doors. "The fires make sense. They know we're located somewhere in the region . . . somewhere close to our old stomping grounds."

"Yeah," Carlos said with disgust, shaking too much cereal into the heating water. "They know L.A. was my old favorite zone. Know we had a Beverly Hills joint at one time, might have even felt our vibrations down in San Diego-but because we're cloaked by prayer, and they can't find us, the Beast took a torch to the entire region. Firefighters are calling this the worst siege they've ever seen and as soon as they put out one fire, another one explodes.Just like in Athens."

"They thought we were gonna fall back to Athens after that last battle, our team thinking we were victorious . . . oh, shit," she murmured. "So he burned down the capital."

"That motherfucker knows no bounds, D," Carlos said, pointing at her with a wooden spoon, causing her to stare at him. "He's burned down an entire U.S. coastline! They've had to stop Hollywood productions, got almost a half a million acres of primo real estate up in flames, burning down the entire West Coast to get to one house of rats-us."

"They want us out of hiding, Carlos. We can't stay here. Our prayer barriers hold against evil, but not natural events like fire and floods.Brilliant move on their part. The house is gonna get consumed, sooner or later. All those people . . ."

"I know. I know." Carlos angrily stirred the bubbling slurry of cereal as though it had offended him. "But he's trying to herd us into his trap." Carlos jerked his attention up from the task of making cereal. "Check this, Damali. He burns out the West Coast to get us on the move. Makes the old areas we would have fallen back to, like the safe house in Arizona, unlivable with insane tornadoes. Floods out the Gulf, dries out crop country, and will no doubt be sending plagues there shortly . . . the only place to go is to the highly populated areas down the eastern seaboard where there areserious military installations and nuke plants, feel me? Where, if we take a stand like we did in Greece, a lot of human casualties will result. It ain't gonna be like that brief firefight we had in Harlem-naw. Next time they'll try to box us in wherethere's so many innocent civilians that the blood on our hands will haunt us till they get us. I know it like I know my name."

Damali nodded and sipped her tea. "Then we need a counterstrategy. Oughta do what they least expect."

"Been working on that," Carlos said, spooning globby, lumpy oatmeal into a bowl for her. "Hail Mary full of Grace!" He shouted the half prayer over her food and snatched a banana off the platter of fruit on the counter, peeled it like he wanted to fight it, and then yanked the drawer out to find a knife. Cutting the banana over the oatmeal like a sushi chef, he then flung the knife toward the sink and missed, only to have it mount into the wall to the hilt.

"Thank you, baby," she said calmly, accepting his furious attempt at breakfast. She didn't say another word as she sweetened the thick, sticky oatmeal with honey and made herself eat a good portion of it.

Damali forced peacefulness to ooze from her being. Her husband was so upset the man was practically levitating. By this point, she'd seen so many phases of Carlos that she should have been prepared for this one, too-but she wasn't. She was pregnant and halfway into the first trimester. That reality and the fact that the worst of Hell was chasing them had clearly sent him to a place of pure primal reaction. Yet, the best of who he was had always been his intellect under fire. If he divorced that, none of them would make it. But to reach that place that had retreated so far behind the panther was going to be a delicate process. Right now, the panther was feeling cornered, hunted, its mate and progeny at risk, and itwas bearing fangs.

"The problem," she said in a nonjudgmental tone after a while, "is that you've been working on this alone." She covered his hand with hers as he sat across from her, staring out the sliding-glass doors. "Two heads are better than one, especially when there's this much heat in the system. I'm your better half, remember?" She smiled but knew it was bad when the offhanded comment didn't break through his stonewall expression. "Drop the veil around me, baby . . . seriously. I need to be able to see."

"Fine.I can't argue with you, Damali. Never could."

"I don't want to argue . . . I understand why you didn't want me to know-but in these end times, we have to have each other's backs . . . I have to have yours, if only as an extra pair of eyes and ears right now so you can do what you have to do. I also need to know as co-general of this team."

"I respect your position on the team, D, but how about respecting the fact that I don't want my wife and baby traumatized, all right?" He looked at her hard."How about if I wanted you to get one good damned night of sleep. To let you eat one meal that ain't been tainted or poisoned."

"I know that," she said softly, trying to pour balm on his shattered nerves. "And I love you for that . . . respect the hell out of you for doing that. But the only thing that will truly traumatize me is having something happen to you while I am blindsided. Please don't shut me out of our future, Carlos." She'd made her voice as tender as shecould, knowing that to fight him like she had in her old ways and days would just make the panther roar louder, when the objective was unity.

When he didn't immediately respond, she touched his arm and looked at him deeply. "I know the weight of the world is literally on your shoulders right now in a way that, as a woman, I probably can't imagine. But as your woman, let me have your back by helping you dissect this threat so we can come up with a serious strategy as one. Would you trust me, baby? I'm not demanding . . . I'm asking you, as your wife, to let me in."

He stood and walked over to the sliding-glass doors and stretched out both arms to bracehimself against them. She heard him let out a hard breath and watched the thick muscles in his shoulder blades knot with tension.

"Damn, I loved thishouse, D . . . wasn't trying to move again. Not in this lifetime.Pisses me off!"

Within seconds she saw plumes of smoke and fire lines decimating the landscape. The relentless sound of chopper blades beating the air made it appear like a scene out of an old Vietnam War movie. Everything as far as she could see was being consumed by a fast-moving, glowing red carpet as though Hell had vomited itself topside like napalm. A quick, unimpeded scan sent the deafening roar of new fires exploding, gobbling up land like a moving freight train at her. That sudden, intense sound, followed by a blast-furnace of heat almost knocked her off her stool.

Fire planes crisscrossed the horizon, dropping plumes of ochre-colored flame retardant. Yet as she scanned she could feel the unnatural heat within the flames, could see the metal alloy in car hubcaps turn to molten, liquid amalgam as it leaked down blistered streets. A sickening awareness then hit her; the National Guard ranks were all deployed in Iraq-culled down in numbers so critically low at home that the local human population didn't stand a chance against natural disasters at home now.

It took everything in her not to yell at her husband for keeping this from her while she'd slept or to jump up and run hollering through the house for an emergency team meeting. Instead, she stared out at the surreal scene and took another bite of lumpy oatmeal from her spoon and then quickly shoved several pieces of cut banana into her mouth with it. Five more minutes wasn't going to change what was happening, and she needed to use that time to chill Carlos out.

Yeah . . . to keep him chilled out, she needed to remain chilled out. That was the only way they could pull it together and think. The third biblical seal had been broken on the beach in the Greek isles, breaking the economy with it. The black horse was riding hard, devastating industry, crops, tanking the insurance industry, screwing with jobs, thus the housing market-this fire, not unlike the billions being plowed into the war, would have a long-term economic impact that she couldn't even fathom.

Damali briefly closed her eyes. Revelations 6:6 entered her mind as a black scale flashed through her second-sight."A ration of corn for a day's wages, and three rations of barley for a day's wages." But the oil industry and the pharmaceutical industry, known then asthe wine , would not be hurt.

Panic was unacceptable. Panic was deadly.Futile. But at the moment, there were simply no words.