Scented Dreams ((A Dogon-Hunters Series Novel))

by Turner Banks, Jacqueline

  The other three would hold back, continuing to sit at the table. When they were sure the two in the back had enough time to follow Matt and Austin, the other three would follow them.

  Whatever was going to happen would have to happen fast because the men, or whatever, who were holding the owner in the back room would have to expect the police to be called.

  “They’ll probably tell them not to call the police or they’ll return,” Austin said.

  “Would that be enough to stop you from calling?” Kingsley asked.

  “No, but I’m not Asian. They tend to keep the police out of their business as much as possible.”

  Ian noticed the other Hunters nodded. That wasn’t necessarily his experience with the Asian-

  American Ketier in his town, but he knew different communities had different customs.

  “Let’s get this started. If I’m not shot in the back today, I’m coming back to talk to that waitress,” Matt said.

  “Focus, Matt,” Vincent said, sounding like a father.

  “He is focused on the only things he cares about, food and women—in that order,” Austin teased as he stood.

  “I’m going to get you some business for your birthday so you’ll stay out of mine,” Ian heard

  Matt telling Austin as the two active Hunters walked out. Ian hoped they were more aware of their surroundings than they seemed.

  Vincent went over to the counter to talk to the waitress as Matt and Vincent headed out the front door.

  He returned almost immediately and noticed the look on Ian’s face. “Don’t worry about them, Ian,” Vincent said. “I’ve seen a lot of Hunters in action, and you just met two of the very best.”

  “True that!” Kingsley added.

  Ian nodded, but he still had his doubts about how two such playful men could turn it off when the time came.

  The waitress returned and nodded at Vincent.

  “Okay, that’s the signal that the two in back just left.”

  When they got out front, Ian could see that Matt and Vincent were about a block and a half ahead of them. Two men followed about a half a block behind. Ian noted there was nothing remarkable about them. They weren’t close enough for him to be sure, but they appeared to be human. Matt and Austin seemed to be looking in a store window. He figured it was a ruse to position themselves to see what was behind them though the plate glass reflection, but then they both entered the store.

  “I’ll be damned, they’re shopping,” Kingsley said, giving voice to Ian’s thoughts.

  “No they’re not. That store has a second store in back of it that opens to the café connected on the side of it. It’s a perfect store to see if they’re being followed.”

  Ian and Kingsley nodded.

  “And the café has an alley exit. Which is where I’m headed. You two stay behind them.” He took off across the street before either man had a chance to comment.

  “Are you getting that?” Kingsley asked.

  “What?”

  “A scent,” he said as he stopped with his back to the buildings. He took out his wallet and handed Ian a card. Ian took the card as if it was something they’d been speaking about. He looked down at the card, but inhaled deeply.

  “There’s a lycanthrope or something similar nearby.”

  “Yeah, I just got it. Faint, but I smell it,” Ian said. He looked at the reflection behind Kingsley.

  Ian’s eyes met the eyes of the same Wolf he’d seen earlier in the week while walking with Nesta.

  “Kingsley, can you count to about twenty and then give me a time pause?”

  He knew he had no time to lose. Ian turned and moved at his fastest to reach the man. He had his hand on the Wolf’s shoulder when everything stopped. With Ian touching him, the Wolf couldn’t change to his animal form. Everything around them stopped, except the three of them.

  “A moment of your time, my friend?” Ian asked. He looked up the street and confirmed that the two men following the Hunters were frozen too.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “We always have a choice.”

  When movement started again, Ian and the Wolf were back on the sidewalk next to Kingsley.

  Ian still had his hand on the Wolf, and Kingsley had a dagger in his side. “Talk to us, Wolf. Tell us, why are you following humans who are following our friends?” Kingsley questioned.

  The Wolf laughed. “I don’t have to tell you anything. People pay me for what they want to know.”

  “Okay, then I’ll just call Fox. He’s in charge of those kind of negotiations. . .”

  “Wait, no need to bother Fox. It’s real simple. Those two humans work for me.” He nodded his head in the direction of the two men who were entering the store. “I’ve been hired to document how your boys spend their days.”

  “By whom?” Ian asked.

  “I didn’t ask, and I wouldn’t tell if I did.”

  “Then tell us by what.”

  “All vamps look and smell the same to me, but I believe you call them Sangsue.”

  “We’ve got a treaty with your pack,” Kingsley told him.

  The Wolf laughed again. “Look around, Hunter— do you see a pack?”

  Ian let go of the man’s neck. “You’re a disgrace to your kind.”

  “Yeah, you have a nice day too.”

  The Wolf was making his way across the street again when Fox stepped out of the nearest store.

  “What took you so long?” Kingsley asked.

  “I sensed you wanted to jab that dagger into his side, and I was curious to see if you would do it.”

  “He said. . .”

  “I heard. I’m on it.”

  Fox was gone in a blink, and Ian noticed that the Wolf as well was no longer visible.

  “What do you think Fox will do to him?”

  “Take him back to his pack. If they’ve washed their hands of him, Fox might eliminate him or at the very least take him out of commission for a while.”

  “We’d better get over to that alley or we’ll miss all the fun,” Kingsley said.

  They arrived in time to see Vincent in his glory. Matt and Austin were standing aside as the retired Hunter fought the two men. Both were resting against the back wall watching, laughing and cheering, as if a parade were passing.

  “Why aren’t you helping him?” Ian asked.

  “I wanted to, but Matt said to let him handle it. . .”

  “I figured this would be good for bragging rights for at least a year or two.” Matt interrupted.

  Ian looked up again in time to see Vincent throw one man into the other. They both landed hard against a trash bin. They weren’t going to be moving anytime soon.

  “Why do you want to do this to me?” Kingsley asked. “Now I’m going to have to go pick a fight with a goddamn Yeti or Werebear!”

  Ian stopped in his tracks. “Are Yetis real?”

  Matt and Austin busted out laughing. Kingsley touched Ian on his shoulder. “No, Pun’kin, Yetis aren’t real,” he said in a voice one would use to humor a child.

  “What’s so funny?” Vincent asked as he approached the group. He casually wiped at his clothes as if nothing more exciting had happened beyond his discovering some lapel lint.

  “Kingsley’s new son-in-law is ‘scurred’ of Yetis!” Matt teased, with the ghetto emphasize on the word scared.

  Ian felt the blood that had already rushed to his face burn. “We’d better get out of here,” he suggested.

  They all started moving, but it didn’t stop the teasing. Matt, Austin and Vincent walked them all the way back to Kingsley’s car.

  “It was nice meeting you, brother,” Austin said, and Matt nodded.

  Ian stuck his hand out the window and shook with all three.

  “Yeah, we’ll see you on Saturday,” Vincent added.

  The final words were said in unison by the three Hunters, as if they had been rehearsed. “Ian, don’t be scurred!”

  Chapter-Twenty-Eight

  �
��You wouldn’t believe how they used to tease me. That’s just their way of letting you know they like you.”

  They were in the spare bedroom, lying across the bed. Ian was proud of himself for waiting for her to finish every small detail of her afternoon with her mother before telling her about meeting with the other Hunters.

  She was feeling proud of herself for not laughing when he told her about the teasing he suffered at the hands of the men she’d known since she was a child.

  “How much did Austin like you?” Ian asked. He hadn’t planned to ask her about whatever her father had been implying, but he couldn’t pass up such a great opening.

  She giggled. “What’s that supposed to mean? He was already a grown man when I met him.”

  “Nesta, there is no current Hunter, me included, who wouldn’t have been a grown man when you were a child.”

  “That’s not the same, and you know it.”

  He nuzzled her neck. “Just answer the question. There’s nothing you can say that would make me care any less about you.”

  “I might have had a little crush on him. . .”

  “And?”

  “And he knew it and he didn’t tease me.”

  “Which looked like what?”

  “Which looked like him actually asking my father if he should take me to the junior prom after I asked him.”

  “What?” He sat forward, displacing her from against his chest.

  “Junior prom, not senior!”

  “He took you to your junior prom?”

  “Of course not. My father told him he could take me if he felt he no longer had any use for his legs!”

  Ian started to say something and stopped. He laughed. “Kingsley is really a funny guy.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  Ian continued to laugh. “He is— you should hear him when he’s with his boys.”

  “Ian, he’s my father; he doesn’t have boys. He has old ass men he pals around with.”

  He held her cheeks in both of his big hands, a move that was slowly becoming theirs. “One day our kids will be as misguided about us.”

  Maybe sooner than you might think. “I hope so,” she said aloud. She again rested against his chest. “We’ll stay in the City tonight?”

  He kissed her neck. “Do you feel that?”

  “I’d have to have botox in my butt not to. What about it?”

  “We’ll get a room somewhere, but I might not be able to make it all the way down to Chicago.”

  “Why don’t I just get up and lock the door?”

  Before he could answer, they both heard the doorbell.

  “That’s why we don’t just lock the door.”

  They heard a scream. Before Nesta could fall back against the empty bed, Ian was halfway down the stairs. Kingsley was already in the kitchen when Ian got there.

  Both Kingsley and Dot looked up as if he’d interrupted something intimate. “What’s wrong, dear?” Dot asked.

  “You screamed.”

  Dot and Kingsley laughed. “Oh, you heard that? I was just so excited. Come look at this.”

  Nesta entered the kitchen.

  “Look at what, Mama?”

  “Come see the flowers that just came.” She led them to the screened-in back porch. The young people were surprised to see that there were no less than fifteen flower arrangements.

  “Wow,” Nesta said.

  “Yeah, these are from the people who have sent their regrets. These three just came. Those over there are yours, by the way.”

  “Mine! When were you going to tell me?”

  “They just came, Nesta.”

  Nesta looked at Ian and grinned.

  “They’re not from me,” he said. “Unless I really do owe Rico a raise.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Ian shook his head. He knew she didn’t believe him, but he also knew she would know the truth of his denial soon enough. He tried to continue to smile and appear interested as Dot removed the cards from the two arrangements that were hers. The only thought in his mind was, who had the nerve to send my woman flowers?

  “Here, read these,” Dot said, handing the cards to her daughter.

  “Sorry we can’t make it. We wish you both another thirty years! Best, Oprah.”

  “Oh, that was so nice of her.”

  “It was. I didn’t expect her to come, but I hoped.” Dot looked at Ian and added. “We’re not friends, but we’ve been to a few of the same parties, and we served on a committee together when she first came to town.”

  Ian nodded. He felt like he was going to explode waiting for Nesta to read her card.

  “This one says: ‘You go girl, Happy Anniversary, we’ll see you both soon. Signed Michelle & Barack Obama and the girls.’”

  “Oh, Mama, this was so sweet of them.”

  “Wow,” Ian said, his attention temporarily diverted. “Do you know them?”

  “Yes, socially. They’re younger than us, but we know a lot of the same people. They’re very nice. I grew up a few blocks from Michelle. My sister is her age.” She looked at Nesta. “Those over there are from Sybil Wilkes. Help me think of a way to display my cards without looking like I’m bragging.”

  Nesta nodded as she took her card from the display fork. She stopped before she pulled the card out. “Oh, I know. Why don’t you get a big glass frame and have them mounted so people can read them but not touch them?”

  “That’s a good idea. I like that a lot.”

  “Like a shadow box effect,” Nesta added, again pausing from reading her card.

  Open it already!

  Dot left the room, calling out to Kingsley as if he might have been out plowing the lower forty instead of two rooms away.

  “She’s so happy,” Nesta said.

  Ian nodded.

  “I hope we’re like that.”

  He nodded again.

  “Now, for your flowers.”

  “They’re not mine, Nesta. But I would’ve blanketed this whole house in flowers had I known they would make you smile like that.”

  She handed him the card. “If you didn’t send them, then it doesn’t matter. You read it.”

  “Nesta, read your card.”

  “My mother, my Aunt Ife and my Uncle Ogo have now had occasion to tell me about the notoriously jealous Dogon-Hunters. I don’t want to play games with you, Ian. I couldn’t care less about any flowers that didn’t come from you.”

  “And I know you have people in your life who love you, and one of them might just be congratulating you for having parents married for thirty years.”

  She smiled again. “Hey, that’s right.” She pulled the card out. “Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday. Love, Andre.”

  He fought hard to keep the smile on his face. Time to have a little talk with Andre about the one who got away, he said to himself. “I didn’t realize you had invited him,” he said aloud.

  “Actually, I don’t remember that myself. Maybe my mother said something that day he dropped by.”

  “Umm.”

  “Their parties are always big— we might not even see him.”

  “Okay, Nesta.”

  She wondered why two such simple words would cause her blood to run cold.

  * * * *

  They found a motel not ten minutes from her home. This time she packed an overnight bag and told her mother they were spending the night in the City.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling of being chastised. I haven’t done or said anything wrong, she kept reminding herself, but she nonetheless felt as if she’d disappointed him somehow. And there was no doubt he was still bothered by Andre’s flowers.

  “Ian, I’ll throw out the flowers as soon as I get back to the house,” she said while he set the sandwiches they’d picked up on the only table in the room.

  “Why would you do that? Those flowers are innocent.”

  “And I’m not?” she asked.

  He laughed. “What are you talking about? Of course you’re innocent
too. But I have plans to corrupt you very soon.” He started unbuttoning his shirt. He wanted to touch her so badly his hands ached. “If you plan to wear those clothes again, you’d better get them off before I get over there,” he told her.