by Vered Ehsani
I remember clearly that the stairs and the upper floor were made of wood, because they creaked mightily as something heavy eased its way upstairs. The pace was unhurried, as if the creature was enjoying the architecture, each creak and groan of each and every stair mocking me.
On the landing, I could hear the insect snuffling about, like a hunting dog seeking the trail of her prey, a trail that led her to the room in which I hid. The wooden door splintered and cracked under her weight and she was there.
I clutched the bronze-coated steel fist that topped my walking stick. I remembered my hands, shaking with unaccustomed emotion, pushing down on two of the metal fingernails, releasing an internal spring. The smooth slide of the short blade exiting the other end of the stick and softly clicking into place had scraped against my nerves, but surely she couldn’t have heard such a soft sound?
I prepared myself as best I could, with my walking stick my only weapon, and made peace with whatever force had created me. For I was under no illusion: I would in all likelihood die in that place amongst the men who had been put in harm’s way because of an investigation they had no knowledge of. I had glimpsed in her energy field a strength and power I’d never seen before. I knew I was out of my league.
This was a few years ago, before I met Gideon, and thus I was far less battle hardened. But even then, while I prepared to die, I resolved that it would not be without a fight, as brief as that effort may be. My one regret that I bitterly mulled over as I listened to her stalk into the room was that all the sacrifice would be in vain: Koki would defeat us and continue on her way without a second thought for the corpses in her wake.
When I peered through the keyhole, I beheld not a monster but a beautiful vision of a woman, her every limb full of strength and grace, her skin so dark it glowed with a blue undertone. Her eyes were those of a skilled hunter, confident in the outcome of the hunt. As she glided into the center of the room, she spoke in a voice that could seduce any unwary heart, even as she mocked me.
‘Are you really the best that Prof. Runal has?’ She clucked her tongue in a disapproving manner even as her lips lifted in a cruel smile. ‘My, my, the old dog is slipping, isn’t he? Or perhaps he fears facing me himself? And rightly so. But to send a girl child in his place is truly shocking, even for him. Come girl, come to me and I may spare you.’
I despise long-winded, self-aggrandizing speeches, but her voice was so attractive I couldn’t remember what I’d planned on doing.
She spun about, a warm smile on her full, temptress lips. ‘Out you come, my child, and I will take care of you. Of all the mortals in this building, you have the least to fear. Together we will remind men why they should fear the night and respect a woman.’
Ah, such bold and encouraging words, for hadn’t I had enough of the patronizing tones men used with me when I presented myself as an investigator? The smug grins and conspiratorial winks they gave each other as they looked me over? The sentiments often expressed that this was no job for a woman?
I felt my grip on the walking stick and reality slip, so alluring was her speech, her dark eyes beckoning with promises of glory and companionship the likes of which I’d never experienced nor had I any hope of doing so.
For one bright moment, I believed her and the vision of my lofty place as a woman of power in her world. I was preparing to open the wardrobe door and relinquish my weapon when one hand brushed a wetness on my skirt. I glanced down and, in the dim light, I could just make out a dark patch damp with a heavy, sticky liquid.
Blood.
Not mine. But I must have brushed against a corpse in my frantic dash to escape the massacre.
In that memory of what had occurred on the floor below me to innocent men doing their job, her spell was broken. For how could I ever worship a creature that had such disregard for life? And that’s what she would demand in exchange for her vision: a path of violence.
Before I could change my mind or submit to her velvety spell, I gripped my stick, blade pointed up, and with a yell to stir my blood and nerves into action, I burst out of the wardrobe, blade before me.
Faster than I’ve ever seen anything transform before or since, Koki shifted from her lovely womanly form to that of the Mantis. Her mandibles, wickedly sharp, clicked as she lunged to meet me and cut me in half.
My momentum was too great for me to change direction. All I could do was slide under her belly, swinging my stick in the hope that the sharp end would connect to some part of her and inflict enough damage that I could once again run away.
Fortune was with me, for I couldn’t claim much talent at that stage in my profession. The blade thumped against the joint of a back leg, and slipped into the narrow gap formed between the armor covering the leg and that covering the body. With a firm jerk on my part, the blade sliced through the soft flesh of tendons and cartilage. The leg clattered by my side, still twitching with some of life’s energy.
Koki shrieked at such an octave and volume as to leave my ears ringing all night and into the next day. She spun about, partially collapsing and off-balanced, but clearly determined to annihilate me. Her triangular head transformed into a human head but gone were any attractive features. Her dagger-like teeth gnashing, she screamed her undying vow to exact revenge.
I can’t clearly recall how I managed to reach the doorway without being impaled by one of her thrashing claws but I did. I slipped and slid through puddles of coagulating blood and around piles of warm corpses. I didn’t stop running until I reached the small pension I was staying at.
My mind nearly incoherent with terror, I had barely enough presence of mind to change into clean clothes. Abandoning my bloodied outfit, I hastily grabbed my necessities while shouting at my astonished hostess to ready a carriage to rush me to the port. I planned to board any ship that was preparing to leave, regardless of the destination.
The entire mad dash to the port passed in a blur of dark colors. I can’t remember the details of my pleas, threats and promises given to a reluctant captain, only my relief when he agreed to allow me passage. My ears rang painfully throughout, but more disturbing were Koki’s final words, screamed at me as I exited the room where she lay:
‘There is no place too far, too remote, for you to hide. I will find you, little girl, and I will consume you limb by limb while you beg me to end your miserable existence. And I will.’
Chapter 6
With Koki’s words, I ended my story.
The barn was silent apart from Nelly’s usual bodily noises.
It was Dr. Ribeiro who spoke into the void. “That is a most very intriguing tale, Miss Knight,” he said with that sideways head wagging movement of his.
“Especially the part about the decapitations,” Mr. Timmons noted dryly.
“Yes, sir,” Dr. Ribeiro said, eager to elaborate. “That is in fact very typical of the Mantis. Although they are preferring to eat their prey very alive, but if it struggles too much, the head is being removed then.” He leaned into the circle. “You know, they are ambush predators. Very fierce. Although,” and he held up a finger and wagged it. “I’ve never met one that is speaking English.”
“Bee, what a dreadful situation,” Cilla murmured, pointing out the obvious. “You poor dear, to have a death threat lurking over you.”
I laughed with little mirth. “Oh that? Well, death threats are par for the course in my line of work, dear Cilla, and I’ve not been too fussed about it before.”
“Then again, you’ve never had a homicidal Mantis after you,” Mr. Elkhart pointed out, his forehead crinkled up.
“How true,” I said, hoping my flippant attitude would keep the tremor of fear out of my voice.
Lilly frowned. Perhaps she was concerned my death would necessitate a postponement to her wedding plans, I thought uncharitably.
Instead, she shamed me by stepping to my side, hugging me fiercely and gently enquiring, “What must we do to save you, my dear Bee?”
“Kill Koki,” Kam said with no intonation or emotion,
his voice an echo of an accompanying roll of thunder.
I shuddered, and Lilly and Cilla both crowded close to me, as if to ward off the imminent danger I faced. I knew it was futile, for there was no killing the Mantis.
“Where’s she now?” Mr. Timmons asked which, on reflection, should’ve been my first question.
“A couple weeks away, past the Mt. Kenya region,” Kam responded.
“How do you know that?” Cilla asked.
“I saw her there,” Kam said as if that should’ve been obvious.
“But how could you possibly have been there and back so fast?” Lilly demanded, not convinced.
“He is Kalu Akanu, also known as Kamalu,” Jonas said from above.
We all peered up at Jonas’ wizened face staring down at us from the loft. We must’ve appeared universally confused, for he added, “Kamalu, he comes and goes very fast, like lightning.”
Kam smiled softly. “You recognize me then?”
Jonas scratched his head as he tended to do when in thought. “Yes, of course, bwana, sir,” he said with more sincere respect than he’d ever used with us. Actually, he’d seldom demonstrated even insincere respect toward his employers, of that I was sure. I eyed Kam or whatever his name was with renewed interest.
“And who exactly is Kamalu, Jonas?” I asked, determined to learn about the man whose energy field was strangely absent, whose powers escaped my attempts to read them.
Jonas eyed me as a teacher would a wayward student who insists on asking a stupid question despite being repeatedly given the answer. He shook his head with a dramatic sigh, and said, “He is God of Lightning, of course.”
Chapter 7
Having a god in your barn is rather like having a ghost in your kitchen; you’re not really sure what to do with the apparition, if anything at all. So we did what most sensible humans would do: we just gawked at him, our mouths hanging open.
Unruffled by the bizarre announcement or our incredulous stares, Kam gazed back, his skin markings glowing with such force that even the others could see the result and I didn’t have to squint at all.
“So very, very exhilarating,” Dr. Ribeiro enthused with a head waggle. “I must be visiting you more often, Miss Knight. Giant insects, werewolves, lightning gods, Mrs. Steward… It is too, too much excitement.”
“And you haven’t even met her dead husband yet,” Mr. Timmons quipped, much to the doctor’s delight. I feared the man would pop out of his brown skin if he heard any more.
“Is it true?” Lilly demanded as she dug her nails into my arm, breathless with all these startling revelations of a reality she had been wholly ignorant of up until a couple nights ago.
I sighed and wondered how the Society for Paranormals & Curious Animals would respond if they were to discover how many people were being unwittingly initiated into the secretive paranormal world. I resolved to neglect that detail in my next report to the Director, Prof. Runal.
“Oh yes,” I said in answer. “Gideon is still very much with us.”
She huffed at me. “Not him, Bee. Him,” and she gestured with a sharp motion of her arm at the stoic African god.
“Well? Are you really the God of Lightning?” Mr. Elkhart queried quietly, his fetching face set in a soft, meditative expression.
“So they say,” Kam said.
“And what do you say?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t in one of his infuriating non-communicative moods. The investigator in me was too eager for answers to tolerate it.
“I prefer the term ‘Lightning Deity’,” he said.
“God, deity, same same,” Dr. Ribeiro enthused.
“He’s also known as the God of Thieves,” Jonas added, which only confused the situation further. “And in some places, God of Thunder.”
“God of Thieves?” Lilly asked dubiously, pursing her lips and fingering a bracelet, as if to confirm it was still there.
“Then you should get along brilliantly with Mr. Timmons,” I said.
“In fact, there are very many thieves to be getting along with,” Dr. Ribeiro added.
Kam crossed his arms over his chest, muscles flexing magnificently with even that casual movement. “The word ‘god’ is just that — a word.”
Lilly scowled at the elusive response, Cilla looked at Drew who had resumed his pacing, and Mr. Timmons shook his head. Accustomed as I was to Kam’s brevity of speech, I wasn’t as discouraged, for he seemed more open to conversation than usual.
“How would you describe yourself then?” I persisted.
His full lips softened into a near smile, but his eyes were unrelenting in their ferocity. “I am a lightning spirit who can take the form of a human,” he said in his rumbly voice that hinted at storms and deluges. “Those unfamiliar with reality might think me god-like and many have worshipped me over the millennia and across cultures. But I am only a part of creation and thus with my limitations.”
Lilly could barely contain herself as she was squirming with questions I knew Kam wouldn’t answer. Still, I decided to press the advantage provided by this rare effusion of chattiness on his part.
“So as a lightning spirit, are you able to defeat Koki?” I asked, trying not to allow the flicker of hope to flare too high.
His head shifted to one side, as if to measure me more accurately. “I am not.”
My shoulders slumped, something I seldom allowed them to do, for I really couldn’t afford to lose any of my modest height. All my breath whooshed out along with my hope. If a thousand-year-old Lightning God or spirit or whatever couldn’t defeat the Mantis, then what hope had I? Even armed as I was with my meager powers, a walking stick, and…
“You have us,” Mr. Timmons interrupted my dark reflections and my head lurched up to meet his intense grey gaze.
Had I said something aloud? Or was my posture so defeated as to communicate my innermost demons? Whatever the case, Mr. Timmons had an unnerving habit of touching on my thoughts. I realized the others were nodding in agreement, except Jonas who frowned until his face shriveled up with wrinkles. He perhaps better than the others had understood the situation and the futility of fighting it.
I straightened up and pulled back my shoulders. “Thank you, but your offer is your death sentence. Koki is…”
I struggled with the words that could adequately describe all she was and all she could do. How could I communicate how hopeless any resistance would be? “She’s simply too powerful and I can’t in good conscience allow any of you to come to harm. It seems, Mr. Elkhart, that your original idea of depositing me on the next outbound ship was the correct one after all.”
I smiled to soften the harsh edge my voice had adopted as I made reference to the Popobawa’s initial plan to rid East Africa of the Society and its sole operative (me). That plan had been abandoned when he realized, to both our dismay, that he was in love with my cousin. It was a very awkward situation really.
Mr. Timmons scowled at Mr. Elkhart, but it was Cilla who spoke. “No, we can’t allow that,” she protested, her dark blue eyes blurring with tears. “We’re not going to send you away on a ship, and you mustn’t give up, must she, uncle?” She looked between us, imploring me to stay, and for her godfather to intervene.
Before he could say anything, Drew spoke. “If you run,” he said, his sad yellow eyes gazing at me from the edge of the circle, “she will follow you, destroying everyone else along the way.”
As his subdued words filled the barn and silenced us all, so too did a vision of carnage, of roads and hotels littered with the bodies of innocent bystanders, just as in the constabulary in Lagos. Wherever I went, she would leave her signature, a trail of death and headless corpses.
“He is so very correct,” Dr. Ribeiro said in his head-wagging way. “There is no running to be had.”
“I agree,” Lilly said, her sky-blue eyes flashing as she shifted to face me, hands on hips. “And even if you managed to leave here, she might take out her anger on your family anyway. Did you think of that?”
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br /> I shook my head, impressed that my wallflower, fashion-obsessed cousin actually had a backbone and a logical mind, when she chose to use them. Perhaps the experience of being possessed had had a fortifying effect on her character.
“No, of course you didn’t,” she continued with a touch of scorn. “You’re such an unnaturally independent-minded woman that you don’t see how dependent we all are on each other.”
My estimation of her was further elevated, but she wasn’t finished. She shifted her ire to Kam and pointing a finger at him, she said, “You’re supposed to be a god or spirit, so you must have some idea how we can defeat Koki. Otherwise you’re not much use at all. Everyone has a weakness, even a giant bug. So what is hers?”
Now I was beyond impressed, and bordering awe. Mr. Elkhart beamed with pride while Mr. Timmons allowed a begrudging smile, as if he couldn’t quite believe it either.
“Tell us,” she yelled, shaking but not in fury. Her eyes glowed with tears and I reflected that perhaps my cousin might actually care about me.
Unmoved, Kam twitched an eyebrow at her. I wondered how often in his long life anyone had dared raise a voice to him and decided it probably wasn’t a common experience for him.
“Her husband,” he said. “That’s her weakness, assuming she hasn’t bitten off his head. Given how thick the Trickster God’s neck is, that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Her husband can help us?” I asked, grasping at the strand of hope he offered.
“I didn’t say that,” Kam warned.
“But that’s her weakness? Her husband?” I asked.
“Yes.” Kam paused, his eyes fixed on a point above us. He nodded his head and lowered his gaze to me. “We must find him. We must search for the Spider.”
Chapter 8
So ended the impromptu meeting, in which more revelations occurred than was healthy for the mind, and more secrets unearthed than was legal. Upon the pronouncement that we had to track down a giant arachnid who might assist us defeat a giant Mantis (but could as likely devour us), we all went our ways, presumably to absorb the barrage of information provided.
