“Oh yeah, they’re a pair all right!” That was Artest.
Everybody laughed.
“No, they are not a romantic couple,” Jordan said.
“Pleased to meet you all. I hope you don’t mind me horning in on your business meeting.”
“No problem,” Jahia said.
Everybody nodded, but Jordan noticed Ian looked a little confused. Then she saw Roberta lean over and whisper something in his ear. He nodded and then smiled at Leeana. Maybe I’m just being paranoid again, Jordan thought, but she had a gut feeling that she was the one on the outside—not Leeana.
“Are you having a drink?” Leeana asked her friend.
Again, she had the thought that something wasn’t right. As a rule, Leeana asked more questions than the average three-year-old. But tonight she hadn’t even asked about their accents.
“Why not? Something fruity and sweet. What about you?”
“Same here. I imagine they won’t.”
“Why do you figure that?”
“All the books say don’t drink during business meetings, and you and I are the ones not on business. By the way, what is their business?”
Now that sounded more like Leeana. “Some kind of import and export thing. It didn’t sound particularly interesting to me, so I didn’t ask too much about it.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Importing and exporting, that explains those accents.” Then she picked up the menu again.
The waitress came to take their drink orders. Leeana and Jordan ordered Mojitos. None of the Hunters ordered alcoholic drinks. Roberta and Ian ordered soft drinks, and the rest asked for water.
“I need to find the ladies’ room,” Leeana announced.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, Jordan, I can manage.”
As soon as she walked away, Jahia said “excuse me” to Jordan and started a rapid fire conversation in what Jordan imagined was the Dogon language. The level of excitement at the table was kicked up by at least threefold.
“What’s going on?” she leaned over and asked Artest.
“This place is crawling with them.”
“Do you think there’s just that many, or cdid we luck out and find their hangout?”
“There are a lot in town right now, but we had intelligence that they hung out here.”
“Oh.”
That was interesting. She would have thought the place to be was next door. But maybe there were just as many or more over there. Or maybe this was their staging area and they went next door to snack. She’d been thinking they’d ended up at Mackey’s by chance, but maybe nothing in their world happened by chance. She looked around to see if she could spot them. None of the wait staff looked like the Sangsue she’d seen, but she did notice several tall, thin, pale men, both black and white, at the bar. Actually the black ones weren’t as much pale as they were sickly looking—all of them. There was a table with two women and a man that seemed to fit the bill. The hostess had the look too.
Before Leeana came back, Ian left the table, going in the direction of the men’s room.
Nobody seemed to notice how long Leeana and Ian were gone. Jordan decided to go look for her. She didn’t feel Leeana was in danger, since the Suckers had no reason to know anything about her, but Jordan lived by the single girl’s code—when out partying, take care of your friends.
She slid her chair out, trying not to disturb the Hunters. They were in a serious discussion.
“Where are you going?” Artest asked.
“Leeana’s been gone for quite a while.”
“Yeah, Roberta just said she thinks Ian went back there to talk to her.”
“Really? About what? They don’t know each other.”
“That’s his point, to get to know her.”
Jordan smiled, thinking how cool it would be for her friend to be with Ian and her with Artest. She looked up, and all the Hunters were looking at her.
“Ian wouldn’t let anything happen to her,” Tyler said.
“And if he happens to her, it’s a good thing,” Jahia added.
Everybody laughed. They seemed naturally interested, which she found strange, but she relaxed and pushed back her chair.
Leeana and Ian appeared just as the waitress returned to take their dinner orders. Jordan watched them as they approached the table. Both of them were laughing. When they came to a narrow opening between the tables, he let her go in front of him and held his hand in the air behind her back as if he was guiding her. He didn’t touch her, yet it seemed awfully familiar for two strangers.
Before they got to the table, Leeana stopped walking, and Ian almost ran in back of her. She looked around the room as if she’d forgotten where they were sitting. Jordan was just about to get up again when she noticed Leeana was looking at something near the kitchen. She smiled. Jordan looked to see what caught her attention. She didn’t see anything at first, and then Fox stepped from around the corner.
Now that’s really strange, she told herself. She couldn’t see if Ian was the one who’d first spotted Fox, but she was fairly certain he didn’t know why she’d stopped. He hadn’t looked in that direction until she said something.
The three of them came to the table together.
“Did you know Leeana before Friday night?” Jordan leaned over and asked Artest.
“No, Friday was the first time I laid eyes on her. Why?”
“I don’t know. She seemed as if she knew Fox from across the room.”
“I doubt it. I imagine Ian said something like here comes my boss.”
She hadn’t realized the others were listening, but they all nodded.
Before Jordan could give it any more thought, the three of them were at the table. Fox said something, and they all responded with “sewa.” There were three more “sewas” while he pulled up a chair next to Roberta.
Again, Jordan found it odd that they would have a call and response in front of Leeana, and Leeana never asked her or any of the others anything about it or the word “sewa.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
They were going to do a sweep. That was the word of the hour. Each of them said it in Dogon at least twice, but the word they used was the same one for broom because that was as close as they could get. There were just five of them on Artest’s team, and normally he wouldn’t begin such a project with so few, but his partners all believed that Fox had set up Hunters in other locations throughout the city doing the exact same thing. It would be just like Fox to have multiple teams out doing the same thing and not tell them. He was definitely a need-to-know kind of person.
Artest had never known more than four or five Sangsue to be in a city at the same time. He suspected they didn’t do so well in groups with each other. He knew there was a lot of in-fighting between the Sangsue and the hybrids. His understanding was that they couldn’t live together because hybrids reveled in leaving victims dead, while the Sangsue had regular humans (cows) and they tended to develop a degree of affection for them.
Then there was the presence of Jordan and Leeana. He wasn’t as worried about Jordan’s safety as he would have been had Leeana not been with them, but it would’ve helped to know Leeana’s true identity.
While she was reading her menu, Roberta asked Leeana in Dogan to tap her glass if she was able to understand. Leeana casually picked up her knife and looked at it as if she was inspecting it, and then she tapped her glass. Jordan looked at her and laughed, which really threw us for a loop. My girl has great instincts. Then Jordan asked Leeana if she was getting impatient.
“No, I was just wondering if the glass was crystal.”
“This stuff looks like crystal to you?” Jordan asked in a teasing voice that still made Artest wonder if she understood what was being said around her.
“It sparkled like it at first glance.”
Leeana’s response made him wonder again if she was a god;, Fox was the only person he knew who could lie that easily and that well.
Then Ian asked Leeana in Dogon to meet him in the back by the restrooms. He told her to go first. A few minutes later, Leeana announced in English that she was going to the restroom. They all heard Jordan ask if she wanted company, and they held their breath. Again, Leeana played it off as casually as if this were a typical night out with friends.
Speaking in Dogon, Artest asked his compatriots if they knew Leeana. He called her “bathroom girl” so Jordan couldn’t hear her name. Tyler and Jahia had met with her before, and Roberta had talked to her on the telephone. They didn’t know if Ian knew her. They didn’t have any more information on her than Artest, but the consensus was that she was a powerful being. Jahia suspected god, but like Artest, Tyler said he’d never met a god from any pantheon who wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous and taller than average.
“Especially some of the African nations’ gods—they might be as vain as the Romans and the Greeks,” he said. “Their appearance is under their control, and I’ve never seen one who didn’t opt to be dark and striking. It’s a chance to show the world that black is beautiful, and they do.” Then he mentioned two, one male and one female, who worked occasionally as fashion models. Both were very dark and very lovely.
Leeana wasn’t likely to be kicked out of any man’s bed, but she certainly wasn’t the best- looking woman in the room. She wasn’t even the best-looking woman at their table, and a goddess would have been. Wearing white, black, red, or yellow skin, a goddess would have been fabulous.
Jordan was starting to make noises about going to look for Leeana.
Artest knew it wasn’t polite for them to be having so much conversation that didn’t include her, but he figured he would explain it all after everything was over—if it all worked out. If it didn’t, their rudeness would be the least of her problems.
She’d handed Artest her purse and was pushing her chair back to leave when they saw Leeana and Ian returning. Before they got back to the table, Fox appeared.
Artest’s heart jumped. Fox’s presence immediately added a layer of seriousness. Of course, his presence has been known to make a problem where there wasn’t one too.
Fox went around the table several times with his greetings as if he hadn’t seen them in years. He then pulled a chair from another table and said, “Don’t worry about talking around Ms. Greene’s friend. I gave her a suggestion that will make her forget anything unusual, said, heard, or seen tonight.”
He was looking right at Jordan while he spoke, and Artest knew he was lying. Artest felt he could just about always tell if Fox was lying when the conversation wasn’t directed at him. Jordan couldn’t know Leeana’s secret identity. He understood why Fox was doing it, but it bothered him nonetheless. He couldn’t help but wonder if she would blame him for all the lies when they were revealed. And he had no doubt that the truth would come out—it always does.
“What took you guys so long?” he heard Jordan ask Leeana. She was whispering, but he imagined they all heard her. The Hunters’ hearing was exceptional.
“He asked me out.”
“Which one?”
“Ian did. The other guy, the one who he introduced as his boss, wasn’t back there with us.”
“I got the impression you knew him.”
“Who?”
“Fox, the boss. You didn’t know him before tonight?”
“Where would I know him from?”
“I don’t know. I just thought you looked like you recognized him.”
“Really? That’s odd. Have you decided what you’re going to order?”
Leeana was cleverly avoiding lying to Jordan, and Artest appreciated her need for honesty such as it was, but he wondered if it would be enough. He was very conscious of her non-answers; he suspected Jordan would be too.
Artest wondered if the Sangsue knew they were there. They were usually too self-absorbed to notice the Hunters in a one-on-one situation, but in groups, the Hunters stood out. Their collective height alone was a giveaway. The one fact that might have saved them was the presence of Tyler and Jahia. They were too old in appearance to be the usual Hunters, but the creature that underestimated them would pay dearly. Both of them were as strong as Hunters come.
When Artest was training under Jahia, she had only been in Service a few years and was already an instructor. The Dogon were peaceful people, and fighting or even arguing was taboo. He had to learn aggression, and he learned it from the best. Jahia had natural killer instincts. The one thing she said often was to use what you have.
“I’m a woman, and nobody expects me to fight. I kick their asses while they’re getting used to the idea of throwing a punch at a woman,” she told him.
The food came back fast. Mackey’s wasn’t known for great food, and their fare was no exception. As usual, Fox didn’t eat or drink, but he talked more than usual, most of it directed to Roberta and too low for Artest to hear. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought Fox was trying to sweet talk her, but he wasn’t like that. Fox was friendly with Sam, and he’d told Artest several times that getting women wasn’t Fox’s problem—getting rid of them was his bane. His magnetism was one of the qualities that some of the Hunters used to argue his divinity. They said only a god could have no personality, creepy eyes, and zero game and still have to fight off beautiful women.
The two women, Leeana and Jordan, spoke softly between themselves while they ate, for the most part ignoring Fox.
“All we need to do tonight is clean up the Sangsue here,” Fox said to the group. “Then one day next week, we’ll figure out how many are left and storm their house. If all goes well, they’ll be gone before the games start.”
“You want us to confront them here?” Ian asked.
Fox nodded, giving him a look like the question was idiotic. Artest was glad Ian had asked, since he was sure they’d all had the same question.
“What about the Ketier?” Jahia asked.
“Leave them to me—they won’t remember a thing.”
“Are you staying?” Artest asked him.
“No, I’m already gone.”
And he was as soon as the words were out.
Neither Jordan nor Leeana seemed conscious of his leaving or, for that matter, his presence before he left. He imagined Leeana was pretending, but whatever spell Fox had put on the Ketier, it was working on Jordan and the rest of the room. Earlier, when Fox was talking to Roberta, he looked around the room; nobody was staring at Fox, and he always got stares.Right after their waitress came over to ask if any of them wanted dessert, the hostess came to their table. “Mr. Fox told me I should come and introduce myself after you finished your dinner,” she said. Before any of us could respond, she shook her head like she was trying to clear the cobwebs. Then her unfocused eyes looked directly at Tyler, and she smiled, her fangs visible.
Ian was sitting with his back to the woman but saw Tyler’s reaction and the reaction of the other ones facing her. Before Artest could move, Ian was standing behind her. It was his first time seeing Ian’s extraordinary speed and fighter’s instinct of which he’d heard. Artest saw him put the gold-handled dagger to her throat. “Call out to your friends,” he said to her.
“Don’t play with her, Ian. Do your job,” Jahia said.
“Nanateea,” the hostess screamed out.
They didn’t know what language she spoke or what it meant, but every movement in the room stopped for a split second.
Ian growled as he cut the woman’s throat.
Artest looked at Jordan. No, Leeana will protect her, he told himself. The horrible smelling black pixel-like dots that had appeared as a twenty-something woman fell to the table and sizzled as they disappeared. Ian wiped what little blood there was left on his hand onto the tablecloth.
Then Artest jumped across the table to intercept the two Sangsue males who were rushing toward Ian’s back. He and Roberta reached them at the same time. She was holding her sword—she was one of the few Hunters who still used one. One powerful swipe and a head fell. He
wouldn’t have thought she had that kind of strength. Artest pulled out his dagger and stabbed the Sangsue in front of him in the throat.
“Step back,” Roberta said.
Artest recovered his dagger and moved aside. He had to look away while her sword finished off the cut he’d started. Another head rolled. The smell always got to him. He stepped away. Across the room, Tyler was fighting a Sangsue with a woman on his back. He saw Roberta rushing toward him, so he came up behind the Sucker who had just kicked Jahia. Artest stabbed him in the back. He screamed out something in their language.
Artest pulled out his dagger. Jahia cut his throat, apparently hitting a jugular vein that had recently fed, and blood squirted out like a fountain.
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