Ian laughed with him as the two of them wove through the dancers and the loud students.
“I’ll keep all your secrets, my brother,” Ian said mentally.
“Ian, Kitty and I are close, and we were intimate for a short period a hundred or so years ago, but there’s no secrets there. Dot knows what I’m telling you. I’m an honorable man who loves his wife.”
“I’ve never known a mated Hunter who wasn’t. Have you?” Ian asked sincerely.
“No, now that I think about it. I’ve seen some serious flirts, but no cheaters. I’ll have to ask Fox about that. Maybe it’s not possible after mating. I know a Hunter whose wife died who is finally dating again, but that’s about it. Umm, that’s really interesting.”
They were as close to the dart board as they needed to get to confirm that there were indeed three Sangsue playing. It was usual to find them in an odd number.
Ian could never tell if the Suckers could smell them as easily as Hunters could smell the Sangsue. He found them most peculiar. He often thought that Fox should commission somebody, maybe a retired Hunter or two, to study them. The fact that they fought like weaklings interested him the most. In recent years they had begun to use weapons, but most seemed to prefer running away to fighting for their lives. Some Hunters said this was because they were soulless and didn’t care about any life, including their own.
Ian had a difficult time wrapping his mind around a notion of life that, as a group, didn’t embrace self-preservation. Recently he’d been hearing rumors of an elite unit who were being trained as warriors by devil worshiping humans. That made little sense to him, but he’d seen stranger things. The thought that it could be true terrified him.
“They don’t seem to be paying any attention to any of the Ketier,” Kingsley said.
“Have they spotted us?”
“Who knows? They never seem to see us until the last moment.” Then he spoke mentally to Kitty so Ian could hear too. “It’s your call, babe”
“Come back to the bar. Follow them out when they leave. There’s no need to stop time if we don’t have to.”
Her words disappointed Ian, but he knew she was right. Any time one of them altered nature there was a chance of exposure.
For the next twenty- five minutes or so, Ian tried to appear interested in the young people around him while Kingsley and Kitty caught up with each other’s lives.
Two bold women at different tables sent him drinks, but he didn’t join them. In each case, through the waitress, he bought drinks for the co-ed and the rest of her friends, but told them he was waiting to pick up his girlfriend.
Things sure had changed. He wasn’t sure if he liked the new emboldened women or not. He liked the sex and the willingness to show their brains, but he was a man who enjoyed taking care of his dates. Nothing thrilled him more than the look on a woman’s face while she was opening a surprise. He never knew anymore how to give gifts.
In South America, where there was a greater division between the rich and poor, he always wondered if he was being sought for his obvious wealth. In North America he’d been accused of trying to buy affection or treating a lover like a prostitute.
He thought about Nesta. So much had changed and then changed again in such a short time. Earlier in the evening his only thoughts had been about the end of the night when he could again meet her in one of their beds. Before meeting her parents, he’d had to force himself not to obsess about parting with her on Sunday.
He looked at Kingsley. Kingsley felt Ian’s probe and turned away from Kitty to smile.
“Drink up, little brother, I’ve got you covered,” he said. Ian held up his half full drink, and Kingsley nodded. His attention then returned to Kitty.
Meeting him and liking him had changed things. I’m an honorable man, Ian told himself again. Honorable men don’t sleep with their friend’s, their brother’s, only child.
“They’re moving,” Kitty said mentally. No sooner had Ian heard the words than he looked up and saw the Sangsue walking toward the door. Ian drained his glass and stood. He saw Kingsley give Kitty a peck on the cheek before rejoining him. “Wait a sec, I want to leave Kitty a tip,” Ian told him.
“No, I paid the bill. It’s all good.”
“But. . .”
“But let somebody take care of you, little brother.”
Ian smiled. Nobody had ever offered to take care of him before.
“Thank you,” he said, but it wasn’t easy to just accept it. There was a part of him that wanted to put down a twenty anyway and an even bigger part that could have cried.
Ian flashed on a little African boy. It was too long ago to think the child was him, but logically he knew he had to be remembering his own past. The child was alone, playing with a stick in the dirt. He looked at a gathering of older boys who were sitting in a group, pretending to be adult men. They were pretending to be the village’s Awa society, a group of men responsible for carrying out the rituals. Then the little boy looked over at his cousins, two of the oldest girls in a group of five girls. They adored him when he was the baby in the family, but there were now two younger cousins. His time had passed and he wasn’t even eight yet. But as much as he missed playing with his girl cousins, he knew he was better off playing alone and waiting for his age to catch up with the older boys.
That was the day he identified the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach as loneliness. That was the day he had his first headache. As an adult, when watching an overweight person overeating, he wondered if they ate because they never realized that lonely bug wasn’t hunger for food.
Neither Hunter had taken their eyes off the Sangsue. Ian saw one of them look him in the eye, and then the other two turned to find him.
“We were just spotted.”
Kingsley nodded and spoke aloud, “I saw that. Might as well get out there.” They hurried through the remaining steps to get to the door. The Sangsue were running by the time the door opened into the night air.
This running part is what I hate, Kingsley thought for Ian to hear as he took off in pursuit.
Ian noted that for a guy who didn’t like running, Kingsley did it well. It took everything Ian had to keep up with Nesta’s father. What the Sangsue had wasn’t enough to get away.
Kingsley grabbed the first one he came to and jerked him off his feet. The thin Blood Sucker fell and, on his way down, tripped one of his boys. Ian dove and tackled the third one.
Both men knew it was ambitious to think they could stop and neutralize all three, but both Hunters fought with that goal in mind. Ian wished he could stop and watch Kingsley in action.
The older Hunter had a powerful punch. Each time he hit one of the Suckers, he had to pick him up to hit him again.
They heard voices coming from the bar. It was time to stop toying with the Sangsue. Ian took out his dagger and handed it to Kingsley. Kingsley stabbed the one he has hitting. He jumped back to prevent the pixelized body from staining his clothes. The third one tried to get away.
Kingsley threw the dagger and hit him in the back. The Sucker fell. Kingsley pulled out the dagger, kicked his body over and stabbed him in the chest. Again, he jumped back in an attempt to stay as clean as possible.
Ian had stopped fighting. He held the Sucker and waited to get his dagger back. He’d worried when he saw Kingsley throwing it in the dark, but his aim was impeccable. “Shut the hell up,” Ian told the man in his grip. The Sucker was cursing loudly at him, trying to attract the attention of a couple who were trying to find their lost car. He knew they would never kill in front of Ketier.
“I really thought that was it,” a woman’s voice said. She started laughing. Before she said anything else, Ian and Kingsley could hear a male voice laughing just as loudly. Clearly they were two people who didn’t need to be driving home.
“Here it is, baby,” the man said. The next sound was keys dropping to the pavement.
“Do you want it back, or shall I?” Kingsley asked.
“Be my guest.” Ian let go of the man and jumped out of the reach of floating body ink. He didn’t care if Kingsley stabbed the Sucker. Unlike most of his brothers, he got nothing from the final act. He didn’t think of it as killing in the same way he thought of the demise of other beings, but it could still bother him later in his sleep.
The third one had recently fed. Blood pooled where the pixels fell. Ian looked down at the blood that looked black under the streetlights. It never failed. Whenever he thought about the morality of taking out the Sangsue, he would get one who’d recently fed from, maybe even killed, an innocent human, and he would be reminded why they did what they did.
“We need to walk over this way for a minute,” Kingsley said as he walked in the direction of the couple looking for their keys.
“What did you lose?” he asked.
“Our keys,” they said in unison.
“We’ll help you look,” Kingsley offered. Ian wondered what the Hunter was doing. Both of them could clearly see the keys. Their night vision was at least fifty percent better than a human’s. Ian watched Kingsley silently pick up the keys. I’m going to give these to Kitty. It’ll give them some time to sober up.
“I’m going to go see if they have a flashlight in the bar,” Kingsley announced.
Ian hoped Kingsley would hurry. The drunk couple were laughing at every little thing, and it was getting on his nerves.
Kingsley did return in a timely fashion. Ian wondered if it had been difficult for him to say goodbye to Kitty again.
“They’re looking. The bartender said to come back in a few minutes if you can’t find them.”
“Thanks, dude,” the guy said. “I was just going to call my roommate and tell him to bring my extra keys, but I’ll check on the flashlight first.”
“Sorry, we can’t keep looking,” Kingsley said.
“No problem. We’ll find them.”
“Are we late?” Ian asked.
“Not yet, but we will be a few minutes late by the time we get there. My wife knows what we’re doing. She’ll be able to come up with something to tell Nesta.”
“Were you still Hunting at the beginning of your marriage?”
“Just for a few months. Just long enough for Fox to bring in a new guy.”
“You miss it, don’t you?”
“No, not like you would think. I miss hanging out with other Hunters and Trackers and even the immortals. I miss the unpredictability of that life and the stories about a time in history that humans can’t begin to imagine. I know Hunters who have worked stints as slaves in this country.”
Ian nodded. “I’ve met a few of those myself. Can you imagine how hard it must have been for them to not kill the cruel Ketier around them or just transport away?”
“I’ve thought about that too. One Hunter I know stayed on a plantation for six months because he wanted to make sure there was a better overseer there before he left. The one who was there had a reputation for increased cruelty whenever a slave escaped. My friend said he worked on the man’s neuro-pathways trying to wash him of his cruelty and racism for almost two months, and it didn’t work. He eventually had to kill him and then wait to see who came next.”
“That was brave. I got here just at the tail end of slavery, and I looked white.”
“How weird is it for you to look in the mirror and see that light skin?” Kingsley asked.
“I’m used to it now. I have a bigger problem with people not accepting that I’m African, even after I tell them I am. Or asking me if I’m South African. And I don’t think I look white!”
“Actually, you don’t. But you don’t look black African!”
“I know. This race thing is such a drag. Especially here in the States.”
“Yeah, it is.”
They drove a little while in silence before Kingsley asked, “I’m having a big party next week. I guess I should say we’re having a big party. You should come back and either stay over or go back after the party. It’s an anniversary party—thirty years.”
“Wow, congratulations. And thank you for the invitation. Let me talk to my staff and Fox and see what I can work out.”
“You can stay with us. We have plenty of room.”
“Isn’t that the kind of thing you should talk to your lady about first?”
“She’s used to me inviting Hunters to stay over. As I said before, Fox has a room in our house, and whenever he tells me he’s relocating a new Hunter or Tracker to the Chicago area, I always offer to let them stay with us the first few weeks.”
Chapter Eleven
The women were late returning to the motel. When Nesta thought about it later, after she checked her father’s car clock and was shocked to see they were late, she couldn’t pinpoint the reason they’d wasted so much time. Time just wasn’t an issue while they were lagging in the movie theater reading posters of upcoming movies and talking about various actors and movie plots. Nesta was pleased and surprised to learned that she and her mother liked the same kind of leading men. She wasn’t sure why that pleased her, but it did.
Nesta found that they agreed more on the white male types than the black ones. Nesta preferred darker-skinned brothers. Her mother wasn’t as interested in skin color, but she liked the bald heads that a lot of men of color were sporting. Nesta preferred hair, lots of it. Surprisingly enough, they parted ways over one actor in particular, Will Smith.
Dot agreed that he was sexy but cringed every time Nesta said it. Dot thought Will Smith reminded her of a best friend’s son or grandson—in other words, somebody’s baby. It wasn’t an age issue, because she could find lust for younger men, but there was something about Smith’s personality that seemed family/friend familiar.
They were on the way back when Nesta said, “Mama, it’s not that I can’t see what you’re saying about Will Smith. Had there been a black boy in my high school and he was silly and had been my best friend since elementary school while secretly liking me from afar, then he could have been Will Smith. But since that didn’t happen, I sure wouldn’t kick Will Smith out of my bed.”
Her mother yelped and then yelped some more between laughs. “Girl, don’t you let your daddy hear you talking like that!”
“I wouldn’t.”
Nesta was sure her mother didn’t hear her, because she couldn’t seem to calm down after that. Every few minutes she would begin to laugh again, which would cause Nesta to do the same. The mood was very lively when they pulled up to the motel in time to see the men entering the lobby area.
“We need to talk,” Dot said. She then relocked the doors Nesta had just unlocked.
“There can’t be some aspect of Will Smith we haven’t explored?”
“No, baby, this is serious. You know the party next weekend?”
“Yes, I told you I would help.”
“Okay, that’s not it. I was thinking earlier that your father is bound to ask me if he can invite your young man to stay over so he can come to the party. You know how your daddy has always done that?”
Nesta’s mind flashed on tall young men who had stayed in their home. It was the first time she ever realized how much the guys her father befriended looked like her father, which was not unlike her uncle and Ian.
Ian?
She remembered him asking earlier, “Do I remind you of your father?” She was being glib when she answered, not really commenting on anything but his height. But there was more.
“Honey, are you listening?”
“Uh huh.”
“Use your words.”
“What are you trying to say, Mother?”
“How do you feel about this young man? Do you want him in our house? Would you want to see him outside of this job?”
“You really think Daddy will invite him?”
“I know your father,” she said. And how much he enjoys being around other Hunters, she thought.
“I like Ian a lot, Mama. I doubt if there’s anything there for us, but I wouldn’t mind being around him again.�
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“Okay, good to know.”
“Don’t read too much into it.”
“I won’t, baby. You know me.”
Yeah, I do. So I repeat, don’t read too much into it.
Dot noticed how much both men lit up when they spotted her daughter. A part of her was pleased, while another part remembered when men looked at her the way Ian had Nesta. She mourned the loss of that look. Dot was, however, pleased to note that Kingsley gave her the look after he acknowledged his child. She wished it was enough for her, but she questioned if any woman was ever satisfied with just her husband’s adoration.
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