no more, so ... my vamp three-card monte got busted. Ask Tara," Yonnie said coolly, watching the group blanch.
Tara nodded and looked at Berkfield. "Back when I found Yonnie and we hooked up to locate Carlos, we found out the feds only gave Carlos a pittance for his work with Berkfield. Yonnie sent him a hundred million to match whatever Damali had, like a safety net."
"That was a far sight better than what I could wrestle out of the authorities for the man," Berkfield said, shaking his head. "Damn."
"You know I was taking care of your shit, right, C? Had everything offshore in Swiss accounts, Cayman Islands, you name it. But it was still vamp illusion. Guess they took issue with how we've been on their asses and finally siphoned their cash back, huh? It was good while it was good, but damn." , "I know, I know, man," Carlos said, closing his eyes. "It's just the timing is so fucked-up. But then how else is it supposed to be, coming from them?"
"Maaan, you ain't said a mumblin' word," Mike muttered, releasing a hard breath of frustration.
"I don't know why I was even surprised," Marlene said flatly. I've been skating on grace a long time with those re-trees."
"But what the hell about whatever I was working on Wall Bet from the Warriors of Light?" Dan's eyes held Marlene's.
"Those earnings weren't illusion and didn't belong to the darkle!"
"It doesn't matter," Damali said in a weary tone. "Whatever wasn't vamp illusion that was ours, the Warriors of Light, has probably been seized by Homeland Security now. Every credit card, bank account, asset of any kind is on lock in the system. I'm sure the darkside saw to that in order to make up for the hundred million dollar loan from them that Yonnie and Carlos took out for the last coupla years, then grew to a half billion on the market. So now they've led the feds to everything we had in order to freeze our accounts worldwide."
"Ain't no getting around that shit, either," Shabazz said, standing and raking his dreadlocks. "First thing they've gotta do is starve out what they think are potential terrorists, which unfortunately, in this case, seems like it's us. We got played by the darkside, once again. They do the dirt, we take the weight."
"At least when the Light delivered us here, they made humans unaware of who we are," Tara said in a far-off tone, looking toward the door where the hotel manager had been. "You could see him struggling to remember, trying to put the pieces together."
"But how long's that gonna last?" Rider shook his head. "Like all we need is for some human with darkside leanings to be able to see through that veil or to get accidentally tracked somehow and it's over people." He looked at Marj. "Now you see why I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? I had my reasons."
"Rider's got a point," Shabazz said, his gaze raking the group. "Check it out. Radio frequency chips are now in the new passports, new money, and after this last disaster, you can bet U.S. citizens are gonna have to carry a real ID card, or get stopped and hassled. The same GPS chip they want everybody to embed in their bodies, just in case there's another catastrophe."
"The mark of the beast, bro," Jose said, nodding. "We gotta go off the grid."
"I've gotta get to my baby girl and my momma," Inez said in a quiet, urgent tone.
"We will," Heather said, taking up one of Inez's hands. Jasmine nodded. "Remember what the teams that met us in D.C. said? They were sent to protect the unborn. Dragon Rider said, 'I'm your new nanny.' Remember?"
"Yeah, but we've gotta get back to the States to recon with the teams there and pray our contacts didn't get blown away," Bobby said, panic lacing his voice. "They took a goddamned fallback position in Atlanta to get away from the plagues about to hit and all the military roundups, and a twister ... a freaking twister, hit downtown Atlanta for the first time in history? Be serious. How in the hell can we expect Carlos and Damali to do an energy pull through the fucking Bermuda Triangle with everybody's wife pregnant, huh? Or even risk trying to pull little Ayana and Mom Delores through that? The only reason we got here was because the Light shot us here--which I still haven't reconciled in