Scented Lust

by Jacqueline Turner Banks

  “A little help?” Fox asked.

  Artest put away his dagger and came to Fox’s side.

  “I need to talk to her,” Fox told him.

  Artest knew what that meant. He held the girl still from behind while Fox faced her.

  “What your name?” he asked her.

  “Sharetha Elliott.”

  Fox took off his sunglasses. The girl looked away, as most people did when first faced with the nearly colorless eyes. “Sharetha. Look at me, please,.” he said in his soft, gentle, whispery voice. I’m very sorry these gang members attacked you and your boyfriend.”

  “Gang members?” she said, the confusion already setting into her voice.

  “Yes, gang members. How lucky the two of you are that the off-duty policeman came to your aid.”

  “We were very lucky.”

  “It’s a shame you can’t remember anything about what the policeman looked like and there were no other witnesses.”

  “It all happened too fast,” she said.

  “Yes, it did, but you’re both are safe now, and you want to put it all behind you.”

  Fox walked over to the boy and touched his forehead. The boy’s eyes popped open. He scrambled to the girl without so much as a glance at the two tall men.

  “Sharetha, are you okay?”

  “Yes. I think we should just try to put it all behind us.”

  The boy nodded, and he slowly led her away. Artest called to him to tell him he was leaving his ball, but he didn’t hear him. They were less than ten feet away. Fox kicked the ball so that it landed in front of them. The boy picked it up, but neither he nor the girl looked back.

  Fox nodded at Artest, and they walked away. There was no hurry. Artest had seen Fox wash before, and not only would those kids not remember them, they wouldn’t have appeared on video had the whole thing been recorded.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  With the motor running and the radio playing, the first ten minutes Artest was away passed quickly for Jordan. She kept telling herself that he had lived for centuries without her help; whatever was happening on the other side of the school, he could handle it. Jordan didn’t consider herself an impatient person, but she would readily admit to being nosy as hell. By the time she heard a second commercial for the same used car dealer, she was bouncing in place in her eagerness to know what was happening.

  Hoping to get her mind off his absence, she started rummaging around in her purse. At first she decided to clean it out, but she found some tweezers and decided to take advantage of the exceptional sunlight to clean up her eyebrows.

  Jordan’s left eyebrow was in the best shape ever and she was just starting the right one when she saw a guy running toward the car. She was already in the driver’s seat. Taking a deep breath, she put her hand on the gear shift. Can I really do this? she asked herself.

  The man stopped running and looked directly at her, as if he heard her mental question. He looked back in the direction from which he came.

  I really do believe I can do this.

  They stared at each other as he just stood there. He was tall and skinny. There was no doubt in her mind that he was one of the Bloodsuckers. He was dressed in a dark suit like the other two she’d seen, and he was pale. He reminded her of the actors she’d seen in a SNL skit about ‘Eurotrash’ dance club boys.

  She couldn’t figure out why he was just standing there. She saw him put his hands to his sides as if he was about to do something, maybe shoot straight up into the sky or burrow down into the ground like a jackhammer.

  At the last moment, he looked around as if he’d heard something that told him it was time to choose a direction. With one final look at her that included a menacing display of his fangs, he started toward the car, walking slowly but with unmistakable determination.

  She put the car in gear. It lunged forward a little as it moved from park to drive.

  He stopped moving. His eyes bored into her as if he was trying to decide if she would hit him.

  He must have been a good judge of character, because the next thing she knew, he was squatting on the hood of the car, seriously baring his fangs.

  Jordan floored the gas pedal as she screamed—and then she hit the brakes.

  She expected to see him flying off the hood and landing on the basketball court. The stop didn’t throw him, it barely jarred him, but it made him angry enough to hit the front window with his fist. The window broke. She hit the gas again. From the corner of her eye, she saw two figures coming toward her. She turned the wheel slightly in the direction of the two people she thought were his companions. She figured before he got to her with the next hit of the window, she could at least mow down his buddies.

  She recognized Artest’s clothes seconds before she floored the gas. She saw the man who was with him, but then a blink later, she saw the strangest thing she’d ever seen.

  The man who’d been by Artest’s side was in front of the car. He was hovering in mid-air over the Sucker. It looked like something out of one of those flying ninjas movies. Though the guy wasn’t even touching the Sucker, she saw blood running out of every visible orifice on the Sucker’s body.

  The Sucker fell off the car.

  By that time, Artest was standing on the driver’s side of the jag. She was so transfixed by the man, who was now standing in front of the car, that Artest had to knock on the window for her to unlock the door.

  * * * *

  “Jordan, this is Fox, Fox, Jordan.”

  He took off his sunglasses, and she had to hold back her scream. As if he knew, he bent his head to take her hand. He kissed it. He had replaced his glasses before he looked up again.

  The three of them were standing on the driver’s side of the car. After Artest tapped on the window, she had gotten out of the car so she could give—actually so she could get a full body hug. “I’m also called Ogo, but Fox is fine,” the man said with a strange voice.

  “Ogo., I like that—it sounds like a character’s name on a sci-fi show,” Jordan said.

  The two men exchanged looks before they laughed. “See why I like her?” Artest said.

  “That, my friend, was clear even before she opened her mouth.”

  His voice was weird, like he might have been recovering from a very sore throat or even surgery. It was a whisper but loud enough to hear. Somehow forceful and yet quiet. The accent was more pronounced than Artest’s and Tyler’s, but African nonetheless.

  “Hmm., I guess we need to find a car wash,” Artest said.

  Jordan looked in the same direction as Artest. The hood of the car was covered with blood.

  “Why don’t you just ask?” Fox said, smiling.

  “Will you be so kind?”

  Fox nodded his head once.

  She didn’t know what they were talking about.

  Fox moved about ten feet from the car. She couldn’t say he walked ten feet, because from what she saw, he looked like he was floating. She looked down at his feet; they were touching the ground, but they didn’t seem to be impacting it. Featherlike was the word that came to her mind.

  Artest took her arm and led her to the passenger side. She wanted to see what Fox was about to do, but Artest opened the door, and she got in.

  Artest walked over to where Fox was standing, and the two men talked. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, so she used the opportunity to really check him out.

  With his sunglasses on, he was the most beautiful black man she’d ever seen. The thought crossed her mind without prompting, but the word but came to her immediately as well. There was something “off” about him. She studied his skin; it was flawless, not even a mole in sight. His skin color was rich. It was the creamy brown of expensive milk chocolate, so much so that she would have expected him to smell and taste like candy. She imagined his was a face that babies, in their mother’s arms, would’ve reached out to touch.

  The hair atop his head was long and blue-black. His dreads were so shiny and loose they could have b
elonged to an expensive Shirley Temple doll.

  If Artest was drop-dead gorgeous, and he was, there was no description for Fox’s features except beautiful. They weren’t thick, flat, sharp or pointed—–just perfect for his face.

  His body was an inch or two taller than Artest’s and about twenty extra pounds of solid muscle.

  But then there were his eyes.

  His eyes were tight and slanted. Their shape and size reminded her of the Creoles she’d seen in Louisiana. It was the color that made them so odd. His eyes were gray with flecks of yellow and pale blue. They were so luminous they were like light beams or beacons. She couldn’t imagine a human looking at him and not thinking Fox was blind or about to focus on them and cause their blindness.

  She saw Fox wave his hand in the direction of where the Sucker’s body had fallen. From where she sat she couldn’t see the ground, so she got up on her knees. It was gone; the body was gone, and so was the blood.

  Then he waved his hand at the car. She looked at the hood. The blood was gone. There was the hardest shine she’d ever seen on the clean car. During all of this, Fox never stopped talking or looking at Artest. His manner was that of a person waving away flies. He waved again and the window was repaired.

  Artest got back in the car, but Fox stood there for a moment or two.

  “What’s he doing?” Jordan asked.

  “I don’t know. He prays a lot. He could be praying. Did you do something to your eyes while I was gone?”

  “I plucked my eyebrow.”

  “You plucked your eyebrows?”

  “Well, actually I only got to pluck one before the Sucker showed up. I had to do something to take my mind off of worrying about you.”

  He’d been smiling when he asked about her eyebrow, but his expression changed when he heard her answer. Jordan got the impression it touched him that she would care. The thought that he wasn’t used to having anyone care affected her deeply—it was a feeling she knew well.

  “Who is this guy?” she asked.

  “He’s the Pale Fox. I guess you could call him our fearless leader.” He laughed when he said it.

  “Okay, does that laugh mean he’s really not fearless or he’s not your leader?”

  His face became serious again. “Oh no, he’s fearless, and he’s definitely our leader. Some would say fearful leader. I laughed because he would never claim either.”

  “He’s a Dogon-Hunter too?”

  “No, I’m not sure what he is, but most of us believe he is a god.”

  She just looked at him. He smiled, his expression sheepish. When she didn’t return his smile, he took her hand. “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I know I should get out right here and catch a bus home. But I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe you should just wash me. In a few weeks we’ll start over.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. But when we meet again, don’t tell me what you do for a. . . I guess for a living.”

  “Never? Even if you ask?”

  “Of course I’ll ask. Spend the interim time working on a back story. Make it believable or I’ll pick it apart until I end up back here again.”

  “Yeah, you probably would.”

  “Not would, will, Artest. I’m serious—wash me. I can’t deal with lowercase gods!”

  “Who’s a lowercase god?” The question came from the backseat.

  Since the voice that asked the question wasn’t Artest’s or hers, the next sound they heard was her scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Why did you do that?” Artest asked Fox

  “You were going to tell her that you couldn’t wash her.”

  “And that would have been a problem because. . .?”

  Artest didn’t expect Fox to answer, and he didn’t surprise him. He looked in the rearview mirror and found him text messaging somebody. Fox was finally embracing technology, and, like everything he touched, he was taking it to the extreme.

  “Fox, I really like this woman.” Even still locked with her mouth open in a frozen scream, she was so cute he wanted to kiss her.

  “Have you talked to the Priest about her or should I?”

  “Come on, don’t give me that! You couldn’t care less about whom we sleep with.”

  “Not true—I care about everything in my crews’ lives. As much as I can care.” He laughed and switched places with Jordan.

  “Will you close her mouth?”

  Fox gave him a look, and Artest added, “please.”

  The thought that he would call the Hunters his crew let Artest know he’d been in the States for a while. One of the other Hunters had told him that Fox had developed a fondness for hip hop music, which was actually an improvement over some of the fourteenth-century sounding stuff Artest once heard coming out of his MP3 player.

  “Certainly, I meant no offense, my friend,” Fox said.

  Artest knew there were not many active Hunters Fox referred to as “friend.” He always appreciated hearing it. He never took his eyes off of Jordan, but he somehow missed the closing of her mouth. It was just closed, as if that was how it had always been. In the hundreds of years that Artest had been trying to catch Fox’s handiwork in action, he’d never been able.

  They heard sirens, and Artest pulled out of the school’s parking lot. They passed a police car about a block and a half away.

  “Fox. What’s happening here? Why are all these Suckers in town, and since when did they start traveling in double pairs?”

  “I believe Tyler’s theory is correct.”

  “You’ve talked to Tyler?”

  He laughed. Of course he hadn’t talked to Tyler. It never ceased to amaze Artest how Fox always seemed to know what was happening and being said.

  “I’m not sure why they’re traveling in fours, but I’m not worried about it.”

  “Because you’re not the one fighting them?”

  “I would have called what just happened me fighting them.”

  “You’re right—sorry.”

  “No problem. I’m not worried because they’re still the same Sangsue, even in fours. Take her back to Tyler’s. Your assistant is shopping for her even as we speak. I’ll see you later.”

  “Tonight?”

  He didn’t answer. He rarely answered a direct question. When Artest blinked again, Jordan was back in the front seat, and Fox was gone.

  “What happened? When did we leave the school, and where’s your homie?” she asked.

  Smiling, Artest pulled the car over to the side of the road. Any person who could refer to the Pale Fox as his “homie” deserved his undivided attention.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “The sweet, fragrant curves of your body, the soft, spiced contours of your flesh invite me, and I come.”

  “Oh my God! That’s from the Song of Solomon. I love the Song of Solomon!”

  He scooted toward her and took her in his arms. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Something weird happened with the time. Jordan tried to piece the events together, and they wouldn’t fit. She knew they had been parked in the school parking lot, and she’d been watching the handsome stranger who was standing in front of the car, doing his own weird thing. The next thing she remembered was screaming because she heard a whispery, evil voice from the backseat. After that, the next remembrance was riding in the car, headed in the wrong direction on Folsom Boulevard.

  “You did something with the time!” She wasn’t even trying to disguise her fear.

  “No, I didn’t, it was the Pale Fox.”

  “He can manipulate time?”

  “Well, actually. . . yes, he can.”

  She sensed he wanted to say more, but she also sensed he knew she didn’t want to hear it. “Okay then. I’ll tell you what. Take me back to my apartment. If the Suckers show up again, I’ll pretend that I’ve been washed. Or better yet, just wash me!”
<
br />   “It would be that easy to say goodbye to me?”

  She looked at him. He was driving and looking as good as usual, but she could see the hurt. It had settled around his mouth. Jordan didn’t want to hurt him, she wanted to love him, but it was becoming increasing clear that that was impossible. “No, Artest, it wouldn’t be easy, but little in my life has been easy. It would be necessary.”