by Angela Foxxe
He was gone. She had found a note from him earlier in the day at the Tiki, saying that he loved her and that they would never be separated. She had it in her pocket right now. Even if it was risky to have the note on her, she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. It hurt not having him with her. It was like someone had cut her open and scooped everything that was her out and thrown her aside. It was an unimaginable pain.
As she rose to the applause of the meeting hall, she looked at the Jaguar Clan applauding, but they weren’t happy about it. Clearly, King Ronald had sent someone to speak with them, probably Jonathan and Wahir. There was nothing more intimidating than a man that could rip you in half with his bare hands. Maybe they would be lucky and the Jaguar Clan would get the hint. Something inside of Josie doubted she would be that lucky. Right now, she was all about the bad luck.
The only luck that she had found was that Karen was more than happy to see her friend return and Karen had volunteered to watch little Ony whenever Josie needed a sitter. Karen’s daughter was infatuated and obsessed with Ony the way only a young girl could be. She was old enough to actually help out and to babysit, something she adored with all of her heart. Josie had been fortunate there, but that was where her luck ran out. She felt like a prisoner.
As she walked down the stage, she was quickly approached by a familiar face, but one she rarely had the opportunity to speak to. It wasn’t that she kept missing the chances to speak with them, but rather that she didn’t want to talk to them under any circumstances. They were creepy and they were violent. The Hyena Clan was not to be messed with unless you were in serious trouble and you had no other options. Josie thought she always had other options, even if death was the last option.
“Congratulations on the adoption,” Dubaku said with a smile on his lips. Because of their crimes and their persistence in meddling with the external affairs and wars among the Shifters, the Hyena Clan had been stripped of a seat on the Council. That wasn’t much of a loss in anyone’s opinion, even their own. Dubaku was their leader by reputation and that was all that Josie needed to know.
“Thank you,” Josie said, sidestepping him to try and move away, but Dubaku kept up with her. She looked at him and she felt for the first time that this was a man that didn’t want to have sex with her. No, this was a man who wanted something infinitely more precious. This was a man who peddled souls and innocence. “Can I help you?” She asked him.
“How’s the job at the Tiki?” He asked her, avoiding the question. “Paying well? I hear that it’s getting difficult for people to pay for multiple persons on the island. Even at the Torch, we’re finding it hard to pay our ladies who find themselves with an extra mouth to feed. If you’re ever looking for a little extra cash, I’d be more than willing to give you another job.”
“I’m not stripping at the Torch,” Josie told him firmly.
“Yeah, but you do intend on keeping this child, right?” Dubaku asked with a smug look on his face that made Josie want to slap him and demand that he simply speak what was on his mind.
“Of course, I am,” Josie answered.
“Children are expensive,” Dubaku shrugged. “You just always looked like the kind of girl who enjoyed her independence and didn’t like having to be tied down by anything. Hell, you’re the only person I know on this island who has ever gotten a pass to leave from both King Roland and the Hunters. No one has that kind of luck, but you. No, Josie has the luck of an angel. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t biting off more than you could chew with this whole child thing. I know that it’s a big step from someone who has spent their nights dancing and partying with the tourists. Are you ready for all of that?”
“I think I’ll manage,” Josie said coldly to him.
“Whoa, no need to get angry with me,” Dubaku grinned as if he’d done nothing wrong. Maybe he hadn’t, but his tone and the way he was insinuating things to her was really getting on her nerves. “I’m just being frank with you, sweetheart. I know there are a lot of people on this island that support having another Shifter here, but who knows, right? Maybe the Hunters are okay with this now, but may be they’re not a little later, right?
If you think that you want to have some peace and quiet at home or you’re looking to get back some of that freedom that you lost, I know some families off the island who would be more than happily to take him in and raise him right. I mean, they’ll give him the works. There are rich families in Europe that will put him in the finest schools and make sure that he has an amazing home to live in—the kind you see on those fancy television shows. After all, there isn’t even a school on the island that’s more than one room. That’s not a life for him, right?”
Josie’s fingers had coiled into fists and she knew that she was dangerously close to striking this bastard where he stood. There was nothing more hideous and horrifying to her than a man who was willing to cheapen the life of a child into something that was nothing more than a bargaining chip for them in their twisted games of wealth and poverty. She knew she had to control herself if she wanted to get out of this without making an enemy and it was the hardest decision that she ever made. All she could do was try and focus on her breathing.
“You need to get out of my face, Dubaku,” she said to him with the most serious, hateful tone that she could ever find inside of her. She reached deep down inside of her and she pulled the voice out with pleasure. She pulled at it like a magician pulling a scarf rope out of their sleeve. “If you ever talk about that child like that again, I’m going to make sure you never step foot in this room again. Not because you’re banished, not because the King told you to, but because you’re going to be feeding the sharks.
I don’t mean that in a stereotypical mafia way, but in a legitimate way. I will rent a boat, take you out into the ocean, slit open your foot and dangle it over the side of the boat. When the sharks come after an hour or so, I’ll let them have you. Do you understand me? I let them have you piece by piece until you’re just a head bobbing on the water.”
Dubaku was smiling but she knew that he was thinking about what she was saying to him. She could see the thoughts turning over and over in his twisted little head and as he took a step back from her, letting her pass on her way, she couldn’t help but see Tendai whispering with Sipho who stood like a golem next to her.
She knew that rather than keep the peace, she had probably just helped her enemies form an alliance. Thankfully, she knew that Wahir had seen everything from the back of the auditorium. There was nothing that escaped his gaze.
* * *
It was strange for her to be called up to a penthouse suite, but it wasn’t the first time Josie had been called to a specific room to have a meeting with someone. There were plenty of times where political actions were discussed in hidden rooms behind closed doors that others didn’t have the right or the privilege to be a part of. This angered a lot of the Clan members who weren’t privy to this sort of thing, but it was how these things worked. She suspected she was going to be meeting with the Crocodile Clan who were still eagerly trying to get the Python Clan out of Africa and onto the island, something King Ronald would never go for.
Slipping the key into the lock, she waited for the click and walked inside of the Penthouse. It looked as if someone had been living here for a while and there was a spilled bottle of champagne on the floor. She stared at the bottle and wondered who could be so careless and reckless with such an expensive drink. It seemed like she had possibly been given the wrong key card to the wrong room.
“Hello?” Josie called.
“I’m sorry,” Kheem’s voice drifted from around the corner.
Without hesitating, she felt her feet carrying her to Kheem who was standing around the corner. She wanted nothing more than to run to him, to grab him and hug him. It had been days since she had seen him and all she could do was see specters of him all around the resort. Every time she saw a reflection in glass or on the surface of a mirror, she thought that it was Kheem.
She couldn’t take it.
She wanted to see him so badly. She wanted to have him in her life and yet, she was denied him. She wanted to rip off whatever it was that maintenance was making him wear and she wanted to ravage him, to remind him that she still loved him more than anything else in the world.
Taking a deep breath, she paused when she rounded the corner and saw Kheem standing in front of the bathroom with an arm wrapped around his throat. She could see the tribal tattoos on the forearm and she knew whom they belonged to before she even had to say anything.
It was Faraji.
Faraji was a bit of a staple in the town of Tarobi. He was the scummy bartender in the Torch who spent more time staring at the strippers than he did actually doing his job. Everyone claimed he was a terrible bartender and that didn’t surprise her a whole lot. He was the kind of man who wore a derby hat and thought that it helped define him as a person. His long, wiry sideburns only helped to accentuate the fact he had no idea what he was doing with his life or who he was.
She could see his yellow eyes in the shadows behind Kheem who was bleeding from his forehead. Obviously this had been the trick all along. They must have lured Kheem here and then lured Josie here. But what was the plan now? Faraji was the farthest from the smart one in the Hyena Clan. The others had to be somewhere in the wing, waiting to swoop in.
Thirty two stories up and she felt more trapped now than ever.
“What do you want, Faraji?” Josie asked him, tired of this nonsense.
“My brother tried to be polite,” Faraji said with a sick, sneering voice. She could see the glint of his gold tooth shining behind Kheem’s ear. “He tried to be civil with you, but you spit in his face—threatened his life.”
“Good for you, Josie,” Kheem smiled through the pain at the woman he loved. Josie wanted to tell him to just relax and not to worry about this. She was capable of handling it herself. Instead, Faraji punched Kheem in the kidneys. Kheem winced against the pain and tried to go down on his knees, but the arm wrapped around his throat kept him standing.
“Shut up,” Faraji ordered. “Now, we get to do this the hard way, Josie. That child is going to get us a lot of money and it’s going to get us a lot of friends in high places. It’ll get us a ticket back to Kenya, even. We’ll be able to leave Ronald McDonald and his house of chickens once and for all. The rest of you assholes can rot here.”
“I’m not giving you my child,” Josie told him definitively, unwilling to discuss the matter further. There was no way that she was giving up the child that she loved more than anything else in the world. That just wasn’t happening. It wouldn’t happen today and it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. They were going to have to kill her.
“Oh yes you are,” Faraji said with a sneer. She saw him reach into his pocket and pull out a switchblade. With a click, the blade shot out of the handle and she knew that he probably knew a little something about working that blade. He was, after all, a notoriously stupid man, but a criminal nonetheless. She wasn’t willing to take a chance. “You either cooperate, or I’m going to gut your lover boy here.”
“Don’t worry about this idiot,” Kheem said to Josie. “He’ll probably end up stabbing himself.”
“Shut the hell up!” Faraji shouted, bringing the butt of his knife down on Kheem’s head and she watched as the lights went out in Kheem’s eyes and his eyelids closed as Kheem’s mass crumpled to the floor, bringing Faraji down with him. That was the problem with knocking someone unconscious. This wasn’t the movies. A blow to the head was going to make him black out.
Rather than panic about the fact that Kheem was on the floor unconscious, bleeding from yet another part in his head, Josie reacted. She grabbed the golden tray on the table next to the wall and swung it at Faraji with all of her strength. The decorative pan was probably made out of brass and painted gold, but it was enough to make a loud crash when it made contact with Faraji’s head, crunching his derby hat and sending it flying across the room.
She wasn’t playing around with him. He toppled backwards and she brought the pan down on his head again. His knife flew out of his hands and he tripped over Kheem, crashing into the wall and sliding down it.
“You threatened me, Faraji,” she shouted, throwing the pan at his face and hitting him in the nose.
Faraji screamed in agony as he clutched his face. Josie could feel the rage coming out inside of her. She knew if she didn’t keep it in check, she’d transform soon and there would be no way of saving Faraji. The wolf would come out and it would want to kill him and rightly so. It would want to eat him and tear him apart with ferocity and rage. She looked at him and tried to control her breathing as she reached down for him.
Grabbing him and throwing him across the room, he hit the doors onto the balcony and screamed in pain. She was probably on a short schedule right now with Faraji as well. He could only take so much pain before he would start to transform as well. She launched over the bed and charged him, throwing open the doors again and listening as the glass shattered as the doors buckled on their hinges.
She reached down and grabbed Faraji who was still trying to assess the damage to his face. She wanted to say something witty at this point, something cool that would be impressive to everyone who heard this. She wanted it to be infamous and legendary, something other Shifters would spread like wildfire, but she came up empty. She couldn’t think of a thing to say to him.
So, instead, she hurled him over the balcony and watched as Faraji twisted and writhed in the air, spiraling and plummeting downward. There were going to be people who talked about this, who whispered behind closed doors about the time that Josie hurled a member of the Hyena clan from a balcony on the penthouse floor and how he fell twenty-three stories to the ground.
She watched as he hurled toward the pool and with a loud splash, Faraji impacted with the water, getting a belly flop that he would never forget and sinking straight to the bottom. She watched the people scatter and knew it wouldn’t be long before Wahir or the others showed up to investigate what happened.
Turning, she watched as Kheem slowly tried to push himself up and get back onto his feet. She didn’t know if there were more Hyenas waiting in the wings, hoping they would be able to ambush them if they tried to escape out into the hallway.
There was something deep down inside of Josie’s stomach that told her she should just stay put and that the smart thing to do would be just to wait for someone to come for them. If it was the security in the resort, then word would get to Wahir and they would come help clean up whatever mess had been made.
They would come and deal with the situation before there were any more questions or concerns that were leaked. She looked at Kheem and rushed to help him up. Any moment however, the door might fly open and it could be the Hyenas that were coming for her.
The only thing Josie could think of right now, was the fact that the Hyenas had risked war to get Ony. They had done something that was forbidden among the Shifters. The fact that they had violently tried to take Ony from Josie or to force her into giving them her child meant that they were willing to stop at nothing to get what they wanted. Josie had a horrific feeling deep down inside of her that told her they were probably willing to do more than that if they had the chance. She looked at Kheem as she sat him down on the bed, wanting to kiss his face and take all of his pain away.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said with a smile slicing through the pain that he was feeling. She wanted to laugh, but it was too hard to look at him and laugh at the same time. He was in agony from the fight that Faraji had put him through. “I got a note from you and I came up to meet with you, to tell you that this was too dangerous of a game to play.
When I came into the penthouse, he smashed the bottle over my head and started to beat the crap out of me, asking where you were and if Ony was my child. I refused to tell him anything and pretended like I didn’t know anything. He would have killed me if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
/> “Did you tell him anything?” Josie asked. The answer didn’t matter to her as much as the truth of it.
He looked at her with serious eyes. “Would I ever give you up? Would I ever give up my child?” He shook his head. “No, I didn’t tell him anything. If he survived that, the Hyenas are going to be short one man and that’s all.”
Josie wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, forgetting he’d just been brutally and violently beat just moments before. She loved Kheem and knew that there was nothing she had to worry as long as he was out there fighting with her. He was the only ally she needed.
But the truth was a little stickier than that. The peace had been shattered and the truce was up in flames. If word of this got back to the Hunters, and it most definitely would, then there was going to be an inquiry. If the Hunters thought that the Shifters were starting to fight amongst themselves and that the tourists of Tarobi were in danger, they would act.
They would intervene and make sure that there was nothing to harm the tourists any longer. Josie didn’t like the thought of a war. If the Hunters stormed the island, then the Shifters would unite and defend themselves. They wouldn’t go without a fight. The war would leave dozens dead. Josie shuddered at the thought of it.
Most of the Shifters on Tarobi had fled a war in Africa and come here to be at peace once and for all. They all knew what the horrors of war were like, but some people found them hard to give up and to turn their backs on. The Hyena Clan was proving to be one such group. Josie doubted that the other Clans would be sympathetic toward them after this.
When the lock on the door beeped, Josie let go of Kheem and kissed him on the lips, holding him close to her for as long as she could. His lips welcomed her, kissing her back and his hands slid up her sides, holding her there for him as well. Together, they were locked as one when the heavy footsteps of Wahir and the others he brought with him came into the room.
