Chapter 19
The medium had already drawn the cards and given her verdict on Isadora's future and was analyzing what the decks told her about Shantaya. She was meditating and doubting the meaning of what she saw lying on the table.
"Well, what do you see?" Shantaya´s tone of urgency brought Saraphina out of her trance.
"It's ... confusing." The medium did not dare to give a firm opinion.
“But tell me something!”
“You're going to be in unpleasant and even dangerous situations... you are going to go through a period of uncertainty ... but you will be able to get around it if you move with cunning, not letting yourself be carried away by your emotions ... and in the end ...”
"In the end what?"
"In the end you'll get a great pleasure ... the biggest you've ever had.”
Shantaya stopped breastfeeding her sleeping baby, adjusted her bodice, and sat down. No doubt the prediction of the medium was cautious but auspicious and satisfying. She turned her body and from a dresser behind her took a picture and placed it on the table.
"And what about her?"
Saraphina recognized the woman's face.
"If it is a friend of yours you must congratulate her."
"Why?" The Madame answered with suspicion.
"Because she's finally got pregnant."
Narcisse Decoudreau felt the buzz of his cell phone and pulled it out of his jacket pocket.
“Hello.”
"I'm Shantaya.”
“How are you?”
"Did you get passage to Nairobi?" The woman did not even bother answering the assassin´s rhetorical question.
“Yes. We're leaving in two days. I'm going with two of my men you know, Martin ...”
"I do not care who you're going with. I want them to be efficient." The hard answer made it clear that the woman was in a bad mood.
"You owe me the money."
"I'll transfer it to you this afternoon. Listen, I am changing my previous orders.”
"What do you order now?"
"Kill them both!"
Kitwana listened pleasantly to Zahra's meticulous description of what had happened under the waterfall. When the girl told him how she had to turn aside the other women who had been eyeing her husband, the shaman burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at? He was about to go with other girls instead of fulfilling his marital duties.”
"It's not the man's fault. The entire dance and the scene are armed to seduce the male.”
"But I already know Federico and his attraction for black women.”
"Do not say I did not warn you." Then Kitwana returned to his complicit gesture.
"Tell me, did it work?" He winked. "You know.
Zahra blushed but answered without hesitation.
"Yes, from the point of view of our activities in the waterfall. I do not know if I will achieve what I seek ... you know.”
“It's the most effective for women who want to get pregnant. There are very eloquent stories.”
Narcisse and his two thugs searched for clues in certain circles in Nairobi and then toured the hotels where the couple they were looking for might have been accommodated. Two days later he called Shantaya.
"We hit the ball. I know where they stayed and we are trying to find out where they went.”
Shantaya nodded absently almost without paying attention, which surprised the killer, who had spoken to her a couple of days earlier when the woman burst into fury and ordered to kill the people who had somehow irritated her. Narcisse shrugged, he already knew the volubility of women and of Shantaya in particular. The issue did not affect him because he had already received the payment requested for the dirty work he was to perform.
Shantaya had something else in mind. She had asked her secretary to hire a man to carry out the night surveillance of the building where the agency had its offices, since the one they had until then had retired. Mira knew her boss's tastes well and on this occasion had found a young man who fulfilled all her expectations. Agnar Sigurdsson was nineteen years old and had come to New York alone traveling from Iceland, where his family had remained. Although he spoke little English he had the illusion of making his way in the Big Apple. With very white skin, blond hair and clear eyes, he complied with the demanding requirements of the owner of the agency, who had seen him from the window when he arrived. Shantaya called Mira and said.
"I want to meet the new employee." Take him to the second floor and wait for me there.
Mira knew immediately what would happen. Shantaya would dress in her usual uniform and test the newcomer in all his sexual capacity to determine if he accepted and managed to satisfy her unusual demands and whims. As Mira loved her boss she was actually a bit jealous of the boy she'd just hired, but she knew it was best to keep Shantaya satisfied to allow her to share her body at a time when she needed a woman, that would surely come. In addition, the continuity of her job was at stake.
Shantaya put on the entire dominatrix outfit and as she was to go down the elevator she put a coat of natural skins on top. A sixth sense told her that the boy whom she had glimpsed from the window would accept her mastery and his appearance gave her a pleasant warmth in her gut, anticipating what would come immediately. Zahra and Federico were momentarily erased her fickle mind.
Chapter 20
Shantaya had ridden Agnar until his face turned red and his lips swollen. Particularly in the most violent moments near orgasms she had to hold her belly still sore by delivery. The woman stood up and then demanded the boy to carry her on his shoulders with his face in front of her genitals as she wrapped her legs around his waist. The Icelander face turned red from the effort but he obeyed meekly and instantly all her commands. In one of his favorite activities Shantaya started scratching with her fingernails -as strong as claws- the back of the boy whom she ordered to walk and face a mirror she used to monitor the results of her sadistic impulses. Agnar stood with his back to the mirror so that Shantaya could observe the action in front of the mirror. The young man's white skin was furrowed by the bleeding streaks produced by the nails, which produced a growing degree of excitement to the woman.
Satisfied with the results Shantaya stood in tiptoes on the floor and then placed her mouth on his neck biting it until it also bled and then bit his left shoulder leaving it covered by wounds. The woman felt that the excitement was at its maximum and that she was about to climax, so she ordered Agnar to sit on the cot and lie on his back. Then she sat on his face just in time for a stream of fluids to enter his mouth causing him to choke.
Released from her urgency Shantaya stood up, looked at the boy lying down, his face swollen and wet and told him.
“It's okay. You are accepted. You will work with me. You must not forget anything of what we have done today as this is what satisfies me. You have understood?”
At the nod of the Icelandic the woman turned and headed for the gym door without further comment. In her mind she was drawing conclusions with the cold realism that was common to her because she knew well her emotions. Agnar was able to satisfy her desire to have a man, but he could not fill the void in her soul produced when Federico left her. If the Icelandic did not fill it, no man would do it because the young man was perfect for her tastes.
Concluded bitterly.
Arriving at her office Mira looked at her quizzically.
"He's accepted," Shantaya said. "Make him fill the papers to hire him." As she opened the door to his private office she turned and said.
"Ah! Mira. We are going to share him. You can sleep with him. Go to the gym right now because I left him with a huge erection." In her own way Shantaya also took care of his secretary and was interested in her.
Mira smirked. Although she had chosen Agnar having in mind the tastes of her boss she had actually chosen him for herself. Being a maid and mistress of a powerful and ruthless woman gave her some benefits. Shantaya and she had the same tastes but
gave their male lovers a different treatment. Also Mira was determined to erase Boris from her life and the young Icelandic was perfectly fit.
As she entered the gym Mira saw Agnar still lying on the cot. His appearance was deplorable and the boy was bleeding from several wounds. Mira looked sideways at the protuberance produced in the sheets by the man's erection and felt a tingle. She took out gauze and alcohol from a medicine chest and said.
“Come here. Mira is going to heal your wounds.”
Narcisse Decoudreau stopped the car in the middle of the dusty road, in fact only a path in the savannah. He unfolded a map on his knees and then pointed to a dot marked on it. He folded the map back, put it in the glove compartment, and said to his men.
"We're near the village now. We'll do the rest of the way on foot." He drove the car under the trees of a grove some fifty paces from the path and the three men stepped down. Narcisse opened the trunk of the car and took out a series of elements of it. Then he gave each of his henchmen a backpack and took another for himself. He then extracted rifles of great power which he also distributed. At that moment, one of the thugs, a middle-aged New Orleans black man who had been with Narcisse since his first run, looked around as he usually did when he was about to take action. Suddenly he jumped and whispered into his boss's ear.
"Narcisse, someone is watching us.”
The boss followed the eye of his associate and saw a hundred paces from the spot a tall, thin native boy who stood staring at them. There was no doubt that he had seen them in their display of arms.
"We cannot leave loose ends, we must eliminate him. Jerome, you go behind him.”
The three assassins ran in different directions surrounding the young man who as he noticed the intentions of the strangers ran with the incomparable speed that natives of Kenya naturally have.
The race lasted for some time after which the three foreigners were exhausted by the effort and Narcisse despaired to see that the distance with their prey increased.
Duma Obonyo walked alone on the deserted plain trying to avoid meeting some villager leading goats or returning from some other task. Inside he was excited by the appointment he had made with Shaaban, Kitwana's distant nephew. The shaman, who had barely concealed homosexual tendencies, had noticed that the two young men also had them and had presented them and protected their relationship, which should nevertheless remain in the shadows because Duma was the son of the head of the village. For that reason both lovers usually met in places far from the village. On that day they had arranged a meeting in a forest that due to the distance was protected from the eyes of eventual passersby.
Duma was anticipating in his mind the joy he would find in Shaaban's body and walked in his pleasant thoughts. Suddenly a distant sound called him to reality. He looked at the sky thinking that it might have been a distant lightning but it was completely clear. Alarmed by the fact he sped in the direction of the source of the noise. His agile legs devoured the distance as dark omens circulated in his mind. He looked up and in the sky saw birds of prey flitting about in a forest that was isolated in the savannah. He redoubled the speed of his career trying to erase any threatening idea from his brain.
Shaaban lay on grassless ground because he was sitting under a large baobab tree. His body had been dragged to that place to hide it from the sight of the eventual passersby but the birds had betrayed its position. Desperate Duma threw himself on his lover's body and found that he was dead. An ominous stain of blood was widening in the middle of his chest.
Chapter 21
Narcisse cut off the call from his satellite phone cursing the volubility of his employer. The previous order to kill both Zahra and Federico was easy to execute and the only problem was to find the two lovers in the vastness of the African savannah, which had already been solved by Narcisse, a man of many resources in his trade . But now the last instruction Shantaya had given him was to kill the woman and abduct the young man and take him back to New York. The task was not impossible because Narcisse was aware of trafficking networks from East Africa to the United States and New York in particular, and even knew some of the traffickers who were responsible for carrying out these despicable activities but it was still a major logistical problem and involved kidnapping the man and carrying him drugged for a long journey on Kenyan territory and embarking him on some port in the Indian Ocean.
The whole deal gave him a bad feeling. And now that fool Jerome had killed the boy with a shot that had reverberated across the vast African plain rather than surrounding him like a frightened lamb and toppling it with knives.
A dull resentment overcame the intense pain that had torn Duma's chest. He managed to calm his spirit and rediscover the experience of tracker and hunter that all the men of his tribe acquire from puberty. He immediately determined that the trail left by Shaaban's assassins was clear and that those who had left them were not experts in the art of erasing their footprints. The traces were of three adults wearing big size western shoes, surely boots. Something indefinable told him that they were black and bulky men. Duma was following the trail that went into a densely wooded area of the savanna and clearly deduced that the killers were approaching the village albeit indirectly. The hours elapsed and it became evident that he had markedly cut off the distance with the men he was following, no doubt from his greater experience in walking in the woods. At nightfall an unmistakable scent reached his nostrils, indicating that Shaaban's assassins had lit a fire.
Slowly and with infinite care, Duma approached the source of the scent and then saw them, sitting on the ground around a small campfire. Long guns lay sprawled on the floor with their backpacks. The men were playing cards and every now and then burst out laughing. Then the fatigue of the journey prevailed in them and coupled with a false sense of security they fell asleep. After waiting an additional half an hour Duma took the knife he always carried with him when he entered the woods, stood up and silent as an immaterial shadow approached the fire.
Chapter 22
From the previous night Nkwame Obonyo was waiting for his son at the entrance of the village. One of his wives had alerted him about the boy's absence and the chief immediately associated it with a love affair with Shaaban, since his son's tendencies were not hidden from the father who knew all the stories of the village through one or other of his several wives.
Duma looked at his father sideways but did not stop and continued walking straight to his hut. The young man's depressed air anticipated his progenitor part of the story. Without a word Nkwame followed in the footsteps of his eldest son.
Nkwame Obonyo successively led the two groups that went to both sites of the previous night's drama. In the first place they went to the spot where Shaaban's body lay covered with branches and leaves by Duma to delay the action of the forest animals. Kitwana broke down at the discovery of the one who had been his only relative and one of the chief's wives had to succor him. Then several of the villagers loaded the body in a wheelbarrow to bury it in the village where the boy had lived.
Obonyo decided to ask Zahra and Federico to accompany them in the group that headed later to the site where the bodies of the raiders were. His son guided the group with certainty since he was moving in a well known area near the village.
The three men lay scattered where Duma had left them. Their necks were severed and there was no doubt that they had been killed in their sleep. The chief turned them up; leaving their faces exposed, and then looked questioningly at his daughter and son-in-law.
“No. I've never seen them." Said the girl obviously shocked.
"And you?" Nkwame asked the young man.
“No. I do not know them either.”
"But look at the clothes." Said Zahra, approaching and watching at some labels on the collar of one of the men's shirts and the ja
cket of another.
"They're from Macy's in New York," Added the woman.
While Zahra and Federico checked the contents of the pockets of the dead men in search of clues, the boss ordered another of his children to search the backpacks of the fallen.
"Check this out!" Exclaimed the boy as he stood up and displayed some good-sized photos in one of the bags. The chief looked stunned and handed the photos to Zahra.
“I cannot believe it! It's you and me. " She exclaimed addressing her husband, who nodded silently.
“My photo was taken at the flower shop.” Zahra said as she pointed some details of the store decoration. “And yours?”
“I was in the gym. No doubt Shantaya took it”.
Nkwame Obonyo cleared his throat and then said in an authoritative tone.
"Four men died last night in the village. It's time you two and I had a long talk. You have a lot to explain.”
Mira stood up in silence, trying not to wake Agnar. They had spent a night of lust where the boy had excited every woman's erogenous zone to the point of having her writhing when caressing areas of which she had no record in her memory. For this purpose the Icelandic had used his hands, his mouth and the entire extension of his skin with an unsuspected savage intensity, which certainly was not the fruit of previous experiences but instinctive. Accustomed to sexual intercourse with Shantaya, ardent but infinitely softer, Mira could only refer to the last evenings with Boris to recall such intense experiences, but what in Russian was violence and coarseness, in Agnar was passion and imagination.
After all the variants of reciprocal oral sex the young man had penetrated her repeatedly, delaying his climax until both could reach it together.
The Sorceress Page 9