Her Perilous Wolf, Julie Steimle [howl and other poems TXT] 📗

support for Troy. I work for Deacon Enterprises in the New York branch office. Rick is funding Troy’s research.”

Paling a little, Doug wondered again about what Troy had said. Rick would flip a lid if he found out he and Troy planned to meet together. It now made him wonder if Rick was reading Troy’s emails and texts. For some reason he could not put it past him.

Walking back to his car, Art waved, package in hand. Doug closed the door, wondering exactly how controlling Rick really was.

 

*

The first day, Audry met once more with her old friends, Luis Khamisi, Sefu Aikiwe, and their good friend Akachi James Aboye. Juma took them to eat nyama choma, which was at BBQ place—teasing Audry for still only eating the fruit and vegetables on the menu.

“Meat is good,” Akachi said, “How can you live without meat?”

Juma waved him off. “You do not have to listen to him, Ife. He does not understand. You are like a delicate antelope—”

“Who shoots guns,” Luis snickered into his barbecued meat.

Sefu chuckled with him, but both were grinning like friends.

Audry shook her head, cheeks coloring. There was no point in arguing with them. Their culture did not see vegetarianism as a viable lifestyle. And she could not entirely blame them. The Bantu culture was a grazing culture, most evident in the local Maasai people who had herds in the near Ngorongoro crater. Though they had gardens full of greens, tubers, gourds, and plentiful fruit, the people simply could not imagine an entirely vegan diet. One could not fight against indigenous paradigms no matter how hard you tried—especially of you were a white foreigner. It was none of your business. However, they did like to tease her.

After the first night in Arusha, Juma began to arrange all their paperwork for them to travel into Kenya. Audry stayed at the Mount Meru Hotel, despite Juma wanting her to stay at his place. He lived alone. And though the man did not forcefully cross the line with her as her previous boyfriends tried to, even to spontaneously kiss her, he was constantly offering (politely) for her to change her mind.

But she told him firmly that it was not appropriate for her to stay alone with him, as they were just friends.

“We could be more than friends,” Juma would occasionally say with flirting eyebrows.

But she merely laughed and told him to go home and that she would see him in the morning.

The following two days, as all the legal details were getting arranged, Sefu gathered and packed up supplies for their journey. They would take two jeeps together, with legal permission to cross the border into Kenya, where they had been tracking a particularly troubling case that was always one step ahead of them. They had friends in Kenya who had been on the tail of an unusually elusive set of poachers who had been decimating the black rhino population, along with elephants and cheetahs. Audry had been having fun with the dogs while she got over her jet lag, packing what they needed while also making sure her equipment was fully loaded and in good condition—both guns and cameras. Darth scampered about Sefu’s yard with Mixie and Brutus, excited to see her. Audry got the impression that Mixie might be pregnant and had told Juma.

He nodded with a grin, pointing to Mixie. “Yeah. Brutus is the father. We expect pups not too far from now. But no worries. It will be weeks before that actually happens.”

She raised her eyebrows, not so sure it would be wise to bring a pregnant dog on a trip like this.

On the third day, while they were walking through town and having chips maya and chicken from vendors, Luis reported that their contact from a local Maasai village had located another dumping ground, and he was begging them to hurry up and get there.

“We’ll ride up with some tourists this afternoon,” Luis said. “Then we will meet out informant and go on foot to see what he knows. We will spend the night in the village.”

Audry inwardly groaned, hoping it was not that group from the airline. She did not know why, but she dreaded seeing that Asian American lady again. She definitely didn’t want to put on a show for them.

They loaded their jeeps, Juma giving Audry his passenger side seat in the first one, Akachi in the back with Darth, while Sefu drove the second jeep with Luis and most of their supplies, and the other two dogs. When they pulled into the Serengeti, they connected with a train of safari busses. Happily, they were not the same group. Most of these were British tourists, or at least they sounded British to her ears.

“Why are we traveling with these people?” Audry asked as the jeep rumbled and bumped along the dirt path behind the last bus. “Are you having trouble getting all the legal papers you need?”

Juma laughed, Akachi joining in. “Not at all, Jabari. All our papers have cleared. But it seems we are being watched. Lately, the poachers have been one step ahead of us, and we are starting to wonder if there is a spy in our midst.”

Audry glanced back at Akachi who nodded. It was true they were not with Juma’s normal team. They used to go out with three jeeps, taking two other men with them. David Adezola was not there. Neither was Noah Aboye. She had wondered if Akachi was related to him, but he had said he wasn’t. Last names in Africa were not the same as last names in English speaking countries. They were not family names that everyone in the family had, but given names, often praiseworthy or descriptive of that person.

“Unfortunately, money seems to buy human souls,” Juma said, staring grimly ahead at the tail end of the safari group and the road, easing the brakes. The safari halted whenever they spotted interesting wildlife—and they had just found a herd of oryx to watch—with possible cheetahs stalking. Juma seemed deep in thought as he murmured, “They sell our land, our food, and our wildlife for cold cash. It is sickening to watch.”

Audry pulled out her camera, since they were stopped. Spotting the two cheetahs stalking towards the herds, she lifted the camera to frame the shot.

“How much do you think you’d sell your soul for?” Juma asked.

“It’s not for sale,” she murmured, rising out of her seat for a better angle. With the telephoto, she could see partly concealed in the grass, the cheetahs creeping up—one pausing, the other moving. The way their muscles moved in their shoulders as they stalked their prey was beautiful.

Juma chuckled sadly, his eyebrows rising together. “Are you so sure? You might be the kind to sell it for a photograph.”

Audry paused, looking down at him. “No.”

She took the shot—several actually. Juma was not usually this cynical.

He grinned up at her, waggling a finger. “Ah… you say that, but I have seen people who have done exactly that.”

“Everyone has a price,” Akachi interjected.

Darth barked, startling the herd in his excitement.

Patting Darth’s head, ignoring the dirty glares those from the last safari bus, Audry thought Akachi was also being rather cynical. There were people with integrity in the world. Not everyone could be bought. She knew this too well. She had heard that her grandfather was never able to convince the Deacons to go into business with him, no matter how lucrative it would have been. Vincent once said he was furious over it. It was one of the reasons she had not entirely disliked Rick. They were ethical businessmen.

And yet her mind drifted to Rick. His family bought loyalty and land to protect themselves. It was for their wolf survival, but nonetheless, they bought loyalty. The price for some was a steady job. For others is was a well-paid income—neither inherently bad. Audry wondered if indeed she had a price.

Then it struck her—she certainly would have liked Rick more if he had become a vegan. But that just made Audry laugh. A vegan wolf.

Yet she wondered what Rick’s price was. What would he sell his soul for?

“A picture is just a picture,” Audry said, lowering back into her seat. “And I don’t do this for fame or profit.”

The safari continued on, the busses once more rolling ahead. She knew there were people with integrity who just did the right thing.

When they finally arrived at the village where the tourists bought trinkets from the locals and got to sample the different culture, her group parked to the side, let loosed the dogs, and hiked up their back packs. Audry slung up one of her rifles, made sure her pistol was at her hip, and double-checked to make sure everything was loaded yet on safety. She sprayed on more mosquito repellant. Their Maasai guide quickly met up with Juma, and together they slipped into the bush so they could see the dumping site for themselves.

It was not far.

That bothered Audry. Who would dump so close to a local village like that? Was it for spite to spread disease? Or was it done by a traitorous local who was too lazy to dump farther away.

She took pictures of the carnage while their Maasai contact explained the circumstance of how he had found the dead rhino and elephant carcasses. The stink was horrendous, but the sagging skin on bones, animals with missing horns and tusks, all piled together, was worse. The maggoty mess was beyond waste. It was abominable. At least animal predators when they left a carcass, did not leave such a rotting heap. It was utterly excessive.

“…he thinks it could have been a madimo,” Juma murmured to Audry as she took one final picture of the butchery.

“A what?” Audry frowned, not familiar with all the tribal names, figuring he named one who was an enemy of the Maasai.

“An amazimu,” Sefu said. “An ogre.”

She blinked at him, shuddering. “Ogre?”

Juma laughed, patting her on the shoulder. “You have no need to worry. You are with us.” But his eyes said an amazimu was something to worry about. Were there ogres? And in Africa?

“Ogre is just a word for cannibal,” Luis explained.

Audry nodded, breathing easier. Cannibals, though awful, were at least comprehensibly human.

They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing their travel route to track down the poachers. Mostly they spoke in the local dialect with their Maasai contact, which they did not always translate for Audry. She took photos until they headed back, thinking of whom she could send them to. Internet outrage had some use. She just had to outrage the right kind of influential person.

When they went back to camp, Audry was allowed to set up her tent within the village. Juma and his three friends set up theirs, not wishing to burden the locals by taking up space within their homes. Audry made sure she had her pistol, but she also took out her tazer—which was a replacement for the one she had gotten from Rick’s mother but had passed on to Jandra Washington to use.

She examined her new tazer, thinking about that. Rick’s mother had given her the tazer at a moment of need—just after Rick’s mom had used it on her ex, Harlin. She now wondered if Rick’s mother knew how badly she would need one, considering her son was a werewolf. Was it some kind of intuition? Or just experience?

As Audry helped out at the campfire where Juma was cooking up some dinner—beans and squash mostly, but with fish on the side—Juma jerked up his chin and said, “What happened to your bullet charm? You’re not wearing it.”

Audry glanced down, taking a second to remember what he was talking about. Then she recalled it.

“Oh, my necklace.” She blushed, fiddling with her bare neckline. She had left that necklace in her suitcase. It had been a habit to take it everywhere, but since the day Rick had revealed that he was the wolf, she felt strange wearing