by N. D. Jones
The presence of the goddesses in the skies above the Eastern Seaboard of the United States stilled to a slow, churning trot. The temperature rose and fell with each spoken word, and the clouds performed a waltz, gliding counterclockwise around the newly formed electrical discharges all gods emitted while in their natural, fluid state. There were no bodies, human, animal, or otherwise, just neutrons, protons, and electrons, forming the basis of all that was, is and will be. The gods were life, down to the tiniest atom and molecule, and mortals, their creations, were life incarnate, born from their essence, their breath. But the essence was borrowed, limited, and once the last of it flickered, stilled, and then returned from whence it came, the body it inhabited was no more.
“The child told Sanura I saved her.” The voice was hard, barren, and dry, not unlike the hyper-arid region of the Sahara Desert with its infrequent rainfall, dry valleys, salt flats, gravel plains, and stone plateaus. It was the voice of a tough military commander who had seen much, done much, and did not give a damn about either beyond the rules of engagement and the win.
“We knew she would. Was that the only reason you saved Elizabeth Ferrell, Sekhmet, when you allowed all the others to perish at the hands of that monster?” Unlike the first, this voice was gentle and soothing, emphasizing each word with a wispy leisure that had nothing to do with age, but cold, wet power.
“They died for a good cause, Yemaya, you know that. But it took a child, a mere fairy of a girl to do what all the others failed to do.”
“And what was that?”
“She displayed proper respect as all good children should. Prayer and faith, Yemaya, saved the child, nothing more, nothing less.”
“I should have known.”
“Yes, it is why we are here, why we continue to exist.”
“How long before Sanura and Assefa are ready?” Yemaya asked of Sekhmet.
“Give them a few weeks to get to know each other and bond. Then we will start.”
“My daughters are growing anxious. It has been five hundred years, and they have waited patiently, but I fear they will not wait much longer.”
“I know. Tell them to set the board with their pieces, make a move or two but nothing more than that. They are forbidden to leave their prisons, but they may begin the match.”
“But you just said Assefa and Sanura are not ready.”
“They are not. Yet there is no explicit rule that says we cannot intervene as we see fit. Ra set this in place and charged the two of us to serve as referees, but I take no true pleasure in using good witches and their familiars this way.”
The goddesses vanished before the clouds finished the last rise and fall of the waltz, taking their electrical energy pulses with them.
CHAPTER FOUR
“It’s an adze,” Assefa said once he closed his office door behind Mike and Sanura, assured no one would overhear their conversation. And this conversation, the one that had nothing to do with hunting a human serial killer, was a discussion best left to those who understood the world the way it truly was. To date, Assefa hadn’t bothered with full disclosure, he and Mike dancing around each other and the truth. Time for that to end.
Mike and Sanura both nodded their heads at his proclamation.
He gestured to the two wooden chairs in front of his desk. They sat, Mike’s face hard and grim, Sanura’s beautiful but equally as grim.
“What do you know about adzes?” Sanura asked Assefa after he rounded his desk and settled in his leather chair.
The image drawn by Betsy Ferrell of her parents’ killer was on his desk between them. They all stared down at the grotesque creature. The girl’s drawing was surprisingly detailed and lifelike, a natural artistic ability her parents probably encouraged. But who would encourage young Elizabeth Ferrell now? Who would watch her grow and marvel at all those critical milestones yet to come?
Anger suddenly surged within Assefa. He wanted the adze dead. Not caught, not locked up, just dead, as dead and cold as all its victims. His inner cat snarled, reflecting Assefa’s vicious thoughts of death and loss of control. But he wouldn’t lose control. He was no longer a boy unable to master the beast within. No, those days were long behind him.
Assefa leaned back in his chair and forced his mind and body to relax. “The adzes of folklore were vampiric beings described in tales of the Ewe people of Ghana and Togo. They were said to have the body of a large bat, but they could also transform into human form which, I’m sure, helped them blend into society, or escape capture when they hurt or killed someone.”
He sat forward, thinking, forearms going to the desk. Then he looked at Sanura, the beauty who had invaded his dreams last night, who was invading his rational mind right now. He kept looking at her, and then she subtly shifted. Assefa’s eyes slid from her face, down her breast, and to her thighs. Bad idea. Very bad idea.
Sanura crossed long, delectable legs, her ivory dress formfitting and sexy as hell. It was bad enough the woman wore her hair up today, revealing the slender column of her neck, the sweet-smelling body oil she’d apparently dashed there affecting more than just his nose. So, he pretended not to notice exactly how distractingly appealing she looked today, how mouthwateringly delicious she smelled, and how much he wanted to mark that tender, brown neck of hers with tiny nips of shifter possession. But she was saying something, adding to the conversation that he’d started. He should probably listen.
“My Nana told me adzes once had the ability to possess witches with or without their consent. For some reason, the adze could only possess a witch, never a warlock. These adzes would commit horrible crimes while they were in the witch’s body. This resulted in claims of witchcraft in every village an adze would pass through. The witches were hunted and persecuted, but the adze would take leave of the body before the witch was captured, leaving the witch to pay for the crimes committed by the adze.”
“Our killer can’t be an adze, Sanura,” Mike said, grabbing the drawing from Assefa’s desk and glaring down at it. “Based on our interviews of family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers, there’s no evidence any of the victims did or said anything, or went anywhere that would’ve been considered uncharacteristic prior to death.” He raised his eyes to Sanura. “I know the girl’s drawing may look like an adze, but she’s clearly mistaken.”
“No, Mike, it’s you who’s mistaken. Don’t forget, I spent most of my teenage years studying under my grandmother in Nigeria. She taught me the old ways of my people, making sure I knew all the legends, both popular and obscure. There’s more to the adze myth that’s not found in most of the texts witches’ study today.”
“I believe I know the extended version of the adze story.” Sanura gave Assefa a puzzled look, and he understood her confusion. Not wanting to reveal too much of his heritage in front of Mike, Assefa added, “I’ll explain everything to you after the ritual. For right now, just listen to my version of the story and feel free to jump in if I miss something important.”
“After the ritual,” Sanura repeated, confirming his statement as a promise.
“If the ritual goes the way I believe it will, we both will have a lot to share with each other, starting with where on your body you keep your charm hidden.” This he said with a flirtatious grin, followed by an open, lazy gaze of appreciation at those enchanting, crossed legs of hers. Damn, the woman really needed to stop waving those mile-highs in front of him or start wearing pants. Instead, she uncrossed her legs and demurely returned his smile.
“Would you two stop that?” Mike slammed his fist on the desk to get their attention. “Just tell me the damn story before I get any older or throw the hell up.”
“You know, Mike, even for a dwarf you’re extremely rude and impatient. If we didn’t have to work together, this scene would play out very differently.”
Assefa had never in the month and a half he’d known and worked with the detective led on that he knew Mike was anything other than the full-human he pretended to be. Assefa knew it wasn’t
a good idea to antagonize a dwarf, especially one who carried a sidearm, but he was tired of all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Assefa was convinced Mike knew he was more than an ordinary FBI agent, and if they were to capture the adze he had to be himself, even if that meant going toe-to-toe with an old war veteran.
The room suddenly filled with hearty laughter. To Assefa’s surprise, the snorts were coming from Mike. He slapped the desk again with his strong fist. “Well, it’s about damn time you stopped pussyfooting around with me and manned up. I wondered how long it would take you to play that card. Hudson and I had a running bet as to how long it would take you to admit you knew what we were, thereby revealing your own secret in the process. I knew Sanura’s father too long not to be able to spot one of you. You had me the first two weeks. You’re exceptionally good at covering your tracks, pretending you don’t hear, smell, and see things you shouldn’t. But I haven’t survived this long, kid, without having picked up a thing or two along the way.” He laughed again.
Astonished by Mike’s reaction, Assefa rubbed his temples in disbelief. The man was annoying as hell. True, he was an excellent detective, but also a real pain in the ass.
It was unusual for dwarves to take jobs that kept them out during the daylight, preferring night jobs, which suited their light-sensitive eyes. Mike was different from an ordinary dwarf in so many ways, which was probably why he was friends with a leopard shifter posing as a full-human medical examiner and had a witch as a goddaughter. No matter the frostiness between them, Assefa knew he could trust Mike with his secret. Dwarves would go to their graves fighting before they would betray their friends or dishonor themselves with weakness.
Finally getting his laughing and coughing under control, Mike asked with more interest than Assefa knew he meant to reveal, “How did you know about me and Hudson? No one makes a finer scent disguise charm than Sanura, yet you made us. And I want to know how you did it.”
Taking pleasure in Mike’s discomfort with being “outed” by someone he considered a rookie, Assefa decided to make the little man squirm by refusing to give him what he wanted. It was petty, he knew, but the dwarf needed to learn a lesson.
Ignoring Mike, Assefa returned his focus to Sanura and his story. “After the witches went underground, there was no one left for the adzes to possess or spiritually feed off. Most of them began to die out. When only a handful remained, the witches finally felt free to resurface. They formed secret societies and developed ways to hide their scent from all predators, especially the adzes. However, there were a few determined adzes left, as the myth goes, and they kidnapped a young witch. They tortured the poor girl, demanding she reveal the whereabouts of her sisters, but she refused. As punishment, they bled her to death and drank her blood.”
Assefa paused, waiting to see if there was something Sanura wanted to add. She said nothing, just continued to sit quietly, her hands clasped in her lap, lips glossy and full, legs crossing yet again.
Assefa sat back in his chair, the desk hiding Sanura’s runner’s legs from him, all sleek muscle and unstated strength. “The strangest things started happening to the adzes once they tasted witch blood for the first time. They became stronger, bigger, and more aggressive. They were suddenly able to do all that the witch could do whose blood they consumed. They could cast spells and turn curses. They realized they had the world at their fingertips, and it was all due to the blood of the very beings they’d been possessing for years.”
“Okay, I think I see where you’re going with this,” said Mike, “but why keep killing witches if one or two would do?”
“Because,” Sanura interjected, “the effect is temporary. Only a true witch can hold and wield such power permanently. In order for them to maintain the level of strength they probably desired, they had to keep going back to the source. You see, Mike, adzes can live for a very long time. Witch blood can sustain them, increasing their lifespan to a near-immortal state. With a regular supply of our blood, an adze can live hundreds of years. But such a long life comes at a price. From what I was told, they must hibernate once or twice a year, and the bloodsucking adzes we know today are all that’s left of their race. The younger adzes have forgotten how to possess a witch, which would allow them to live a relatively normal life. Now all they know is the blood. They will seek it out at all costs.”
Mike snapped his fingers. “That’s why there have been lulls in the kills, and the FBI has been hard-pressed to link the victims from one state to the next and over long periods of time.”
“Exactly. They only need to feed for a few months at a time, but it’s enough to maintain them throughout their hibernation. The blood also enables them to take human form, so they can walk among us and hunt,” Sanura said, her voice clear, words precise as if she was delivering a mini-lecture.
“They hunt independent of each other and are very competitive,” Assefa said. “They know no loyalty and have been known to kill their own during a blood frenzy. They believe blood and bone marrow contains a witch’s essence, which is why Dr. Peterson found wounds to the victims’ neck, wrists, and chest. All major blood arteries that can be easily ripped while in bat form.”
Assefa grabbed a bottle of spring water from a side drawer, twisted off the cap, and took a drink. He pulled out a second bottle, along with a BCPD mug, and offered them to Sanura. She took both, her soft, dainty fingers coming into contact with his, sending a spark of magic through him.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a bottle of your precious water, kid? Or do I have to bat my eyelids and cross my legs to get your attention and a bit of hospitality?”
Assefa wondered how upset Mike’s chief would be if he snapped the detective in two, shoved him in the trunk of his Mustang, and sank both in the Chesapeake Bay.
“The Preternatural Division of the FBI,” he said, not offering Mike a damn thing, “has been tracking this thing for a while, building up a reliable profile. And this is the closest we’ve come to capturing it. We need to catch and destroy the adze before it goes underground for hibernation, and we’re forced to wait months before it reappears.”
They all sat back in their chairs.
Assefa contemplated what lay before them. Up until the last few years, all the adze attacks he’d ever heard of or read about had been exactly that, mere attacks. It made no sense for them to kill off their main source of blood and power. No witches meant no more adzes. This change in the adze’s hunting pattern bothered Assefa. Adzes were depraved creatures, sure, but they were also survivalists. And survivalists never threatened their own future with shortsighted acts. No, there must be more to this. I just need to figure out what.
The next day, Sanura was back in Assefa’s office. Surprisingly, Mike was nowhere to be found and neither was the good-looking special agent. He’d stepped out, ten minutes ago, and had yet to return.
She sat in the same chair as she had yesterday. It was wooden but not as uncomfortable as it looked. Besides, she didn’t want to get too comfortable. She didn’t particularly like coming to the police station, or the courthouse where Makena worked, for that matter. Too much residual energy from the auras of criminals and the mentally unstable.
Sanura reached into her satchel and removed her iPad. She might as well get some work done while she waited for Assefa to return.
Five minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Sanura stood. “Enter.”
The door opened revealing a surprised and quite pretty Latina with jet-black hair pulled into a tidy bun at her nape. No necklaces. No rings. No earrings, not even studs, just a sturdy leather watch that looked as if it could take a beating adorned her stalwart frame. Dressed in navy-blue dress slacks and a white button-up blouse, the woman’s large brown eyes skated over Sanura, taking her measure in a quick but thorough perusal.
“Where’s Special Agent Berber?” the woman asked. But Sanura heard the unspoken question of, “Who are you?”
From a badge she’d seen most of her life, like Mike, the woman was a de
tective, her shield attached to the side of her belt. Almost as tall as Sanura, the detective radiated self-assurance, her posture steel-pole perfect.
“I’m not exactly sure, but you can leave him a message.”
“With you?”
Ah, tone there. The detective may have carried a weapon, but the full-human would do well to not awaken Sanura’s fire spirit.
Sanura grabbed a pad and pen off of Assefa’s desk, then turned back to the detective. “I was thinking you could just write him a note.” She extended the items to the woman.
Apparently, that steel pole went beyond her back because the detective didn’t move, didn’t smile, didn’t take the items, didn’t do anything other than stare at her. Sanura smiled. The woman clearly had no job-related business with Assefa. No, the pretty detective was on a different sort of business, the kind that obviously required a fresh coat of lipstick and too much perfume.
“Please let him know Detective Pilar Salazar stopped by.”
“No problem, detective, nice to meet you.” Not that we introduced ourselves. But Sanura knew when a woman thought another was encroaching on her territory, whether she could rightfully claim the male in question or not. And Sanura couldn’t help but wonder if she was referring to herself or Detective Salazar. Because no, she didn’t like the crestfallen way the detective looked when she’d discovered it was Sanura, not Assefa, on the other side of his office door.