The Thirteenth - By L.A. Banks Page 0,3

my head. And we're talking about going off the grid, which back home and with stupid resources was possible . . . but how far off the fucking grid can you go on an island when you owe people two grand a day in hotel fees you can't pay? How long will it be before they round us up, fingerprint us, then it's ball game!"

"The young blood is panicking, C. Got any remedies for that? I don't, -'cause as crazy as his ass sounds, he's speaking truth." Yonnie sighed and continued staring at the ocean through the door. "We have just officially become America's most wanted, like it or not. Maybe the world's most wanted, who knows."

"Maybe the angels will continue to conceal our identities long enough for us to find our hidden warriors? Uriel said to wait for word . . . we must abide the archangel's command to the letter," Val said, her worried gaze traveling around the group. "We cannot be outlaws. But for now, no matter the truth, we are blamed for the tragedy."

"That is so not right!" Krissy said, excited. "We didn't kill all those innocent people that got hurt during the battle--we tried to avoid that! The darkside did it, not us. Didn't the people see the angels; didn't they see how we were blowing away demons? How come none of that hit the news? What's wrong with people!"

"They didn't see it, baby," J.L. said quietly. "Council Group Entertainment is spinning what's on the networks and what eyewitnesses took into their minds that day. So, people saw fear, pain, blood, explosions. Everything was masked by dark illusion. They saw cops getting shot and choppers getting blown out of the sky by shoulder-launched rockets coming off our man, Big Mike--not him blowing away clouds of demon bats and Harpies, trying to give the choppers aerial assists. They saw what the darkside wanted them to see. They saw us."

"But that's just not fair. . . ." Krissy's voice trailed off in a horrified whisper.

Carlos just looked at Krissy in disbelief for a moment, ignoring the way Damali shook her head. "We were on the scene when the freakin' White.House got skewered by the Washington Monument. . . y'all didn't figure there'd be consequences? Being broke is the least of our worries. Fair ain't nowhere near a rule in this game."
Chapter ONE
Chapter ONE

Uamali rolled up the legs of her jeans, stood up, and absently ran her fingers over the stones in her silver divining necklace as she gripped it tightly in her left hand. Then she opened the deck doors and walked barefoot out toward the deserted beach. Even with a lightweight, white tank top on, the early morning sun beat down hot rays on her scalp, face, and shoulders. She squinted toward the beach and lifted her dreadlocks up higher in a ponytail scrunchie, searching for Carlos, then let out a hard breath of frustration when she didn't immediately spot him.

Why did everything on the team always have to be done by committee? Okay, sure, every man in the house whose wife was pregnant was freaking out, and the Berkfields were having a fit because their daughter, Krissy, and daughter-in-law, Jasmine, were carrying their first grandchildren, but she and Carlos couldn't just do an energy fold-away this close to the Bermuda Triangle! Basic quantum physics made that impossible. The Triangle was magnetically unstable. J.L. knew that. Every tactical Guardian on the team should have been able to grasp the implications. Why they had to argue that fact with the team was beyond her.

It was simple, at least in her mind. Deviations in the magnetic field around the phenomenon were caused by micro-wormholes, otherwise known as transit tunnels--the same tunnel system that the team seemed to have forgotten that Cain had used to lead a full aqua-demon army out of Nod before.

Damali blew a stray strand of damp hair up off her forehead, exasperated. The damned Bermuda Triangle, just like all the other vortexes on the planet, was filled with rips in the cosmic fabric, some only a gigafraction of an inch--a tear so small that it could be represented by a decimal point and the number one preceded by something crazy like thirty-three zeros, where unstable mini-black holes of virtual matter and mini-white holes of virtual antimatter fluxed on a dime in and out of the geometry of space.

Only Cain was insane enough, and driven enough, to risk bringing his armies through a temporary black hole