Annoyed, Agbe picked up the last plate from the ground and marched back to his seat. Bleep Igho. Igho was kidnapped, just like him, why should he offer up his food and wait for Igho’s condescending nod like Igho was some sort of king. Agbe stomped angrily towards his seat and sat down, daring Igho to do something about it.

“Go and offer Igho your plate,” the boy sitting beside him said, in a low voice. It was the first time the boy spoke to him. “There are rules in this truck and that’s one of them. Hurry up before he gets angry.”

The piece of meat was the size of one of those unmarked Knorr seasoning cubes, the size of a cube of sugar. The rice was the most unappetizing thing he’d ever seen. It was pretty much white rice with a faint orangeness about it. Even though eating was the last thing on his mind, Agbe scooped up the tiny meat and a spoonful of rice and shoved it into his mouth. Ignoring the panicked “don’t” from the boy sitting beside him.

They were all looking at him now, all eighteen pairs of eyes, darting between him and Igho. Agbe stared into Igho’s eyes. So, this was what it took to get the scarred man’s attention. Agbe chewed. The food was tasteless, and there was sand in the rice, he had to force himself to swallow it down. He had to be way hungrier than he currently was to scarf down this filth.

Igho stood. He was taller than Agbe had imagined, tall enough that his head almost touched the ceiling of the trailer.

Through his peripheral vision, Agbe saw the boy sitting beside him edge away even before Igho started moving towards them. Agbe’s heart raced. He’d wanted attention and now he got it…his hands shook, maybe he shouldn’t have challenged the scarred man. His lips trembled.

“I told him that he had to offer you his food,” the boy blurted out hastily before Igho got close, “he didn’t listen to me.”

Igho ignored him. When he stared down at Agbe, he looked amused, he wasn’t smiling, but there was a hint of humor in his eyes. He bent down. The closer he got to Agbe, the more Agbe’s heart raced, till it thumped so hard that Agbe couldn’t tell if it was fear he felt or excitement. Whatever it was, it felt good.

Igho stopped when he was leaning a few inches away from Agbe’s face. Just a bit more and their noses would brush. Agbe wanted to run his fingers over the tattoos on Igho’s skin, the way Lolo had.

“You have to offer me your food if you want to eat. Don’t worry, pretty boy, I won’t take your food, but you do have to offer it.” Igho’s voice was teasing, his lips bent a little in a smile, but Agbe couldn’t stop the rage roiling within him. Why did Igho have to call him that? Why? The name that the groper had called him, the man who’d taken his mother’s ring and consigned him to a life of slavery. How could Igho call him that? Tears sprang to his eyes.

“Bleep you!” Agbe screamed.

Igho recoiled. All traces of humor fled his face. He pulled back away from Agbe. “What did you say to me?”

Agbe stared into those cold black eyes. “Bleep. You.”

Igho’s eyes narrowed on him. The entire trailer was silent, if people were moving, Agbe couldn’t hear them over the sound of his heartbeat. It seemed as if everyone was waiting to see what Igho would do, but all Igho did, was cross his arms over his chest and smirk. “You’d like that wouldn’t you,” Igho mocked.

Igho’s mocking hit so close to home that Agbe roared. All the rage that he’d had bottled up inside of him came pouring out. The man in blue had kicked him out of his own house and he’d done nothing. He’d just left. He hadn’t fought back, hadn’t been able to, he just did as he was told. He did it for Titi, to save her, and then she’d gone back anyway, without thinking about him. He’d been so worried and so angry, but then she’d returned battered, and he’d been unable to do anything but take care of her. Did he avenge her? Did he make sure that the man in blue, the police commissioner, was never able to hurt anyone else ever again? No, all he did was take Titi to a hospital and get himself kidnapped by fake police. What had he done when the slavers took his mother’s ring? Had he fought back, had he unleashed hell on them? No, he’d bleeped them, hoping that they’d let him go in exchange. Instead all they’d done was keep his mother’s ring, laugh at him, and put him in this truck. With this big overbearing loaf, who called him ‘pretty boy’ and mocked him.

Agbe threw the plate of rice at Igho’s head.

The look of shock on Igho’s face was so comical that any other time, Agbe was sure he would have laughed till his stomach hurt. But he was too blinded by rage to care. His life felt like a farce, a trap he’d somehow fallen into, and couldn’t find the means to escape. Where had all the joy gone? He couldn’t throw a punch at Titi, or the police commissioner, or the slavers, but he could punch this man, who called him ‘pretty boy’, and mocked him.

Agbe reared up from his seat and jammed his hands into Igho’s stomach, trying to shove him back. The man was like a mountain, he didn’t even budge.

“Don’t push me, pretty boy,” Igho growled.

‘Pretty boy’? Agbe decided to show Igho just how ‘pretty’ he could be. He jabbed his right fist into Igho’s bent head and drove his knee into Igho’s groin.

Agbe was preparing to land another punch when a boulder struck the right side of his face. The blow knocked him to the ground. It wasn’t till Igho’s foot slammed into his stomach that he realized it wasn’t a boulder that hit him, but Igho’s fist. His head throbbed. Blood filled his mouth, and he felt the teeth closest to where Igho had struck his face, shaking. The foot continued pounding relentlessly into his belly. Agbe coughed blood. He tried to crawl away, but Igho was merciless, he didn’t stop, didn’t give him room to breathe, or beg. Tears filled his eyes and came pouring out. He tasted the metallic zing of blood in his mouth as it trailed out, pouring onto the trailer floor.

Agbe tried to get onto his elbows and pull himself away, but the most he could do was flip to his side, shielding his stomach from taking any more beating. After the first kick landed on his side, he was certain he’d broken a rib. Agbe had never felt pain like this before. He felt every kick that Igho’s foot delivered to his body, felt the pain flow through him. Where was his mark? Why couldn’t he fight back?

Igho didn’t stop. Had he imagined it? The shock on Igho’s face when he’d first seen him? The smiles, the teasing? Did Igho really not care about him at all? Igho was killing him, this was worse than the whipping from the ancestry bitch’s wielder. Agbe’s entire body felt broken, and Igho still didn’t stop. Agbe’s heart broke.

His head dropped onto the cold floor of the trailer, and he closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.

Chapter Twenty-One

Agbe turned his gaze to the door and tried to tune the rest of them out. He would escape. He had to. He would not be a slave, he would find his way out of here. First, he’d find the groper and get his mother’s ring back, then he’d escape. He’d use his mamin’s earrings to fund a trip back to Benin and search for his family. He had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. His uncle Ejehmen was all he had left. He had to get to him. He had to escape this new hell.

They were back to speaking in the strange language that Agbe didn’t understand. They chatted amongst themselves in groups, making him feel like an outcast. Lolo was right, he didn’t belong.

Three successive bangs sounded against the door to the trailer. The conversations stopped. The sound of metal dragging against metal rung through the trailer and then there was a creak and the left door opened.

Agbe’s eyes bulged. Why didn’t anyone run out? Why did they stay seated when they were presented with such a chance for freedom? Agbe wanted to dart out, he was almost off his seat before he remembered what he’d seen outside. The men with machine guns. “Kill him.” Oga Johnny’s order. Those men were probably still there, with guns trained on the trailer, if he ran out, they’d gun him down.

A brown arm appeared inside the trailer, holding a grey pot. The pot was placed on the floor of the trailer and pushed in, then the door to the trailer slammed shut. Food. Jollof rice, from the look of it, though the rice looked more white than orange. Agbe stared at the other people in the trailer. He expected them to rush at the food, but no one stood up.

It was a few seconds before Lolo sighed heavily and then stood. She pulled out a blue paint bucket from under her seat and walked with it, over to the pot. Three other women stood. Two looked to be in their mid-twenties, the other eighteen, maybe nineteen. No one in the trailer looked older than mid-twenty. The man who’d jerked his head out threateningly at Agbe was probably the oldest.

They brought out a grey serving spoon from the bucket, with stainless steel plates, and spoons. Then they spread those plates out, and Lolo shared the food. From what Agbe had seen of her nature, he expected her to distribute the food unevenly, but to his surprise she kept it even. There were tiny brown cubes on the plates, meat, most likely, but one plate had a huge piece. That would be Lolo’s no doubt.

“There’s an extra piece of meat,” one of the girls said.

“Two for me then,” Lolo smiled. Agbe scoffed. She already had the biggest piece and she wanted to add another to it.

“It’s not extra,” Pascal said, “you forgot Agbe’s food.”

Patronizing eyes turned to Agbe, set over lips twisted in disgust. “I don’t have a plate for him.” Lolo said.

Which meant he wouldn’t eat, because she didn’t like him. He wasn’t particularly hungry, anyway. There was just something about being kidnapped, and locked in a trailer with strangers, that took the appetite away. He was too scared to eat. Only, Agbe frowned, he wasn’t. He’d been scared when the slavers pushed him in, he’d been terrified, close to crying even, but then the fear had gone away. Why was that?

“Put our food together and use my plate for him.” The gravelly voice spoke and Agbe felt a fizzle in his belly, like there were worms in it. He looked at the scarred man, but the scarred man didn’t look at him. Even after offering his plate, an offer Agbe very well knew Lolo would decline, because she didn’t want to give Agbe food.

It dawned on Agbe then when his fears had stopped. It was when he’d looked at the scarred man. He’d been terrified, close to peeing on his pants. They’d been speaking a foreign language around him, looking at him from strange faces, and he’d been so scared he trembled. Then his eyes had locked on the scarred man and his fears had gone away. Agbe frowned, shaking his head. No, that wasn’t possible, he was still scared, still terrified, of course, he wasn’t insane, he’d been kidnapped, of course he was afraid. He glanced back and the scarred man still wasn’t looking at him.

But Lolo was.

Now was when she’d tell the scarred man that she wasn’t sharing her plate with him. Lolo turned to face the scarred man.

“Yes, Igho,” her nod was almost like a bow. She reached for the plate with the largest piece of meat, and put the meat and part of the rice into another, then she began redistributing the food. The largest piece of meat was his, Agbe realized, not hers.

Igho.

I’m going to do you a favor, I’ll make sure you’re in Igho’s truck.

Agbe’s heart pounded. He turned his widened eyes towards the scarred man. The scarred man was Igho? The one the trailer was named after? The scarred man still didn’t look at him. Igho, Agbe corrected himself, the scarred man’s name was Igho.

Agbe couldn’t stop staring at him, but Igho didn’t turn. Couldn’t he feel Agbe’s eyes boring into him? Lolo went back to her seat at Igho’s left side, carrying a plate with two pieces of meat and double the rice in everyone else’s. The plate had two spoons coming out of it. Igho took the plate from her. He pulled out a spoon. “We’ll share one, put this in his plate.”

Lolo gave Agbe a sideways glare. Then she turned back to Igho and said, “Pia ani lo pia hanun.” Agbe frowned. Why did she have to use the foreign language when it was clear they were talking about him? Bitch.

“Are you questioning me?”

Agbe didn’t know if it was his imagination, but it seemed as if everyone stopped breathing after Igho asked that question. Lolo shook her head quickly. “Dadua,” she murmured. Then she took the spoon from Igho and put it in the only plate that hadn’t had one. After she went back to her seat, Pascal stood up. He picked up a plate off the ground and took it back to his seat, only he didn’t go directly to his seat, he went to Igho’s first, and offered his plate to Igho, almost as if he was offering him his food. Agbe frowned.

Igho nodded and then Pascal nodded though Pascal’s nod, like Lolo’s had been, seemed a little more deferential, more like a bow than a nod. Pascal took his seat and then the man on the other side of the trailer, the one who’d jerked his head threateningly at Agbe, picked up a plate, and like Pascal, offered it to Igho. Again, Igho nodded and again the man nodded/bowed and went back to his seat. One after the other, the rest of the people came forward, in some order Agbe couldn’t understand or predict. Each of them walked to the middle, picked up a plate from the ground, and then offered it to Igho. Every time, Igho nodded, and the person offering him their plate walked away. It continued until there were two plates left on the ground.

The boy sitting beside Agbe rose then. He went, picked his plate off the ground, took it to Igho and stretched it out in offering. Igho nodded, the boy did the same and came back. The last plate left was obviously Agbe’s.

Agbe stood uncertainly. He stared at Igho as he walked over to that plate, waiting for a sign from him, expecting Igho to look at him. Igho had offered up his own plate and spoon so that Agbe could eat, that had to mean Igho cared about him right? Agbe shook himself. He needed to think about breaking out of this trailer. How though? If all the marked people in the trailer couldn’t break out, then how could he? His best chance would be when they were let out.

Igho still wouldn’t look at him.

Then he leaned forward, placing his elbows against his thighs. “Mba churti de ki? Keni aham ude ki?” Agbe blinked. The man’s frown deepened. “Tan. De. Ki?” He spoke slowly enunciating each word, as if speaking slower would make Agbe understand a language he’d never heard before. “Nobi. Daga. De. Ki?”

Agbe looked at the ground.

“Ah. Bawani mba churti ude pia.” The man sounded dismissive, as if he was done trying to speak with Agbe.

Then he spoke. Agbe had never heard his voice, didn’t have any frame of reference, but once that deep gravelly voice sounded, he knew it belonged to him.

“He’s not deaf,” he said, Agbe’s head lifted, turning instinctively to the scarred man. He was looking back at him, watching him. Those eyes on Agbe made his heart race. “He’s not deaf,” the man said, “he just doesn’t speak bounder-tongue.”

The man’s hairless eyebrow lifted up, in silent inquiry, and Agbe found himself nodding before he even realized what he was doing. He cleared his throat. “I speak English,” he said. Why did his voice sound so breathy?

The man’s lips twitched. The man looked away. Why did he keep looking away? For once, Agbe wouldn’t have minded being gaped at.

The one seated beside the scarred one chuckled. “Then why didn’t you say so?” he turned to English.

Agbe frowned. Did they all speak English?

“What’s your name?”

“Where are you from?”

“What’s your mark?”

“Why can’t you speak bounder-tongue?”

“How come you’re not salted?”

“You’re so beautiful!”

“How old are you?”

The questions came at him from everywhere.

“Ah! Give him a chance to answer now!” It was the one sitting beside the scarred man again. Agbe wished he knew his name, ‘the scarred man’ was a mouthful. He looked like an Etinosa, or Zack, Osahon maybe? But he probably wasn’t even Edo.

“What’s your name?” The one beside the scarred man asked. The scarred man didn’t look at Agbe, he stared up at the ceiling.

“Agberukeke, Agbe for short.” The scarred man’s eyes didn’t even flicker, it was almost as if he hadn’t heard Agbe.

“I’m Pascal,” the one seated to the right of the scarred man said.

“Lolo.” The beauty to the scarred man’s left said, she still rested her head on the scarred man’s traps, and Agbe felt a strange twisting sensation in his gut.

More names came flooding towards him faster than he could place them. He probably would have been able to put more names to faces if he hadn’t kept his attention on the scarred man, waiting for him to say his name, so that Agbe wouldn’t miss it. But the scarred man never spoke, he just kept staring up at the ceiling.

Annoyed, Agbe glanced at the ceiling wondering what was so fascinating.

“You don’t have to stay on your knees, Agbe,” Pascal said, “you can take a seat. Sit anywhere that’s free.”

There was one open seat to the left, same side that the scarred man sat, but several seats removed. Agbe chose to sit next to the fair boy who wore a shirt, the one that seemed closest to his age. He walked towards the seat, released the latch that held the legs together, and lowered it to the floor, startled a little when the legs sunk into a slight hole on the base of the trailer and snapped into place.

Agbe sat gingerly, staring out at the sea of strange hairless faces. The scarred man had said Agbe didn’t speak bounder-tongue, but what was bounder-tongue?

“So, what’s your mark, Agbe?” the girl that asked him this had two golden loops on her ears. She sat on the right, close to the man who’d jerked out his head at Agbe. He hadn’t caught her name.

“He’s unmarked,” one of the few without earrings spoke before Agbe could.

The faces frowned at him. “A rustic?” Lolo looked disgusted. “Impossible, shanghaiers don’t trade in rustics. He has to be marked.”

“Lolo, I’m an augur now, I can see he’s unmarked.” The voice was deliberately deferential. There was obviously a power hierarchy in this trailer, and Lolo was above whoever it was that spoke.

“Well?” Lolo snapped at him. “What are you?” She wasn’t leaning on the scarred man’s shoulder anymore, but she’d placed her hand on his muscled thigh. Agbe’s gaze dropped to those thighs, his gaze inched upwards then, searching out another bulge. He snapped his gaze away before he got caught. What was wrong with him? He’d been kidnapped, locked in some trailer with people who wore clothes he’d never seen before, spoke a language he’d never heard, and used phrases like ‘bounder-tongue’ and ‘rustics’. He should be plotting his escape not lusting after some scarred up man.

“I don’t know,” he replied. Why hadn’t he lied?

“What do you mean you don’t know?” this voice was new, different, male. Another one whose name he’d missed because he’d been fixated on the scarred man.

Agbe shrugged. “My blood says I’m marked, augurs and spotters say I’m not, so I don’t know.” Why did he tell them the truth? After every confession his eyes inadvertently crept back to the scarred man, hoping to see that he’d elicited some sort of reaction from him, but while everyone else gaped at him, eyes wide in wonder, the scarred man kept looking at the ceiling.

Agbe glared at him.

The scarred man’s lips twitched, as if he was fighting back a smile, then he closed his eyes, and when his eyes opened, he was staring at Agbe out the corner of his eyes.

Agbe snapped his gaze away. Had the scarred man seen him looking? Why did his heart keep racing? Agbe placed his hand over his pounding heart hoping to massage it into some sort of calm. By the time he mustered the courage to look back, the scarred man was back to staring at the ceiling.

“And you don’t have any powers?” Pascal asked.

Agbe shook his head.

“Tch.” Lolo eyed him dismissively and then looked away. Beautiful or not, Agbe was starting to form a great dislike for her. “Why would Oga Johnny put someone like him in here? If he has no powers, he’s not one of us.” Starting to? Scratch that, Agbe really, really, didn’t like her. And the fact that she was back to resting her head against the scarred man’s shoulder had absolutely nothing to do with his dislike.

“Well, I think he’s gorgeous, and I’m happy he’s here.” Another girl whose name he hadn’t caught. The girl winked at him, but then Lolo glared at her, and she quickly looked away.

“He looks like a girl,” Lolo teased, and several people laughed. “Now, my man is gorgeous.” She stroked her hand over the scarred man’s tattooed chest and Agbe felt an ache in his chest that he couldn’t describe. He’d never felt anything like it before. It got worse when the scarred man kept staring up at the ceiling, not even bothering to come to Agbe’s defense. Agbe glared at him and then looked away.

Chapter Twenty

Agbe stumbled over the edge of the entrance to the trailer, falling face first into the cold flat surface of the trailer ground. He caught himself on his hands and only had a second to pull his feet into the trailer before the doors were slammed shut behind him.

Conversations halted around him. That silence only made Agbe’s fears worse. He could hear the sound of his own heart pounding frantically in his chest. He felt it too, the belligerent thumping against his ribcage, almost as if his heart was on the fringe of exploding. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this scared. The thud of those metal doors shutting behind him was like an ode to his past. It was done, it had actually happened, he’d been kidnapped and was bound for slavery. There was nothing more he could do.

His lips trembled. He should have hit his head against that tree. He’d bleeped them, three men he hated, and they’d still consigned him to this. He’d sold himself and they’d gone back on their word. He felt dirty, terrified, and more alone than he’d ever been in his entire life. Worse still, he’d let that slimebag groper take his mother’s ring, the ring Ehimen had given to her. Mama! He wanted to cry, he wanted to curl into a ball and weep for all that he’d lost. Why had he fought so hard to live? Why had he convinced the slaver that he was marked?

“Wee! Imama ude pia oh!”

Agbe’s head snapped up. He’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone, that there had been voices when he was pushed in, that those voices had stopped speaking. He didn’t know where he was, who they were, his right hand shook. He knelt upright, hiding his right hand behind his left so no one would see how terrified he was.

Agbe stared around him.

This trailer wasn’t like any vehicle he’d seen before. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, round, streaming white light, instead of the standard yellow prevalent in the unmarked world. It was cool inside, not hot as he’d expect in a tin can without windows, which meant there had to be air conditioning. The walls, ground, ceiling, all of it was grey, a lighter shade than on the outside. Agbe unconsciously deflected his eyes away from the people, almost as if his brain wasn’t yet ready to process what he saw.

He looked instead at the amenities. The far left corner of the trailer had a rectangular area coming out of it. There was a door to the side. It looked like a toilet, they had some in buses in the Community, not the unmarked world though, the unmarked world didn’t have any he’d seen. But this trailer did. There were chairs lining the walls, they looked like foldable chairs attached to the walls of the trailer. There were three unoccupied ones on the wall directly in front of him, he could see the folded legs tucked underneath the chairs.

A voice scoffed. “Imama ude pia? Mba gasiri kpi marama ude pia?”

Agbe’s head snapped to the right, towards the direction of the voice. Tears sprang to his eyes. What language were they speaking? His eyes widened when he finally took them in. He looked around, gaze darting from one face to the next. They were all the same. About nineteen, Agbe counted, and each one of them without hair. Not bald, but hairless. No hair on their heads, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no beards, no hair on the naked male chests or arms, no hair on their bodies at all. Agbe looked hastily at the ground when an unwelcoming face glared at him. Who were these people?

His hands shook. Why didn’t they have hair?

“Igho marama ude kpia, nka imama ude pia.”

Agbe’s head rose, moving to the left to track this new voice. They laughed. Whatever the person had said made them all laugh. Were they laughing at him? Had they said he was a coward? Were they talking about hurting him?

Most of them had a number of golden loops pierced into their ears. Those earrings lined the outer rim of their ears. It was hard to differentiate between male and female by just looking at their faces. Some were very obvious, even without hair, and some were not. Would they shave his hair too? This didn’t look like shaving, more like waxing, but a full body wax? Agbe shivered. He’d watched Prisca getting a bikini wax and it had sounded painful.

They kept chuckling, some whispered to themselves in that same foreign language Agbe couldn’t understand, and laughed some more. They looked at him, watching him, gaping at him the way that unmarked did. He stared back at them. One gorilla male on the right side of the trailer, who looked to be in his mid to late twenties, jerked his head threateningly towards Agbe, and Agbe inched back and looked away. He felt like a cornered animal, a display thing in a museum.

He looked in front of him, to the corner around the toilet. There were five seats there, the three closest to the toilet were unoccupied. One of the people sitting there looked back at him. He didn’t laugh. He had light skin, almost yellow, the lightest in the trailer. His eyes were brown almost as brown as mamin’s. Agbe could tell he was male, even without his hair. He was young, maybe about Agbe’s age.

Agbe couldn’t place the material in the clothes they wore. It looked a bit like lace, but it seemed more leather than cloth, though it wasn’t fully leather. It was a material that Agbe had never seen either in the unmarked world or in the Community.

His eyes moved to the left of the truck. After the last man that had caught him staring and had threatened him, he made certain not to stare at anyone for too long. There was a girl he wanted to stare at longer, she had a V chin, gorgeous face, even without hair, and breasts that pushed against the knee-length gown she wore. She wasn’t wearing a bra, none of the females were, just as none of the males, with the exception of the young one at the back, wore a shirt. She was young too, about eighteen or so, if he had to guess. But she had her head resting on the biggest man there, so Agbe made sure not to look too long, no matter how much he wanted to.

He glanced at the man she leaned on, intending to move onto someone else a moment later, but once Agbe looked at him, he couldn’t force himself to look away.

Agbe gulped.

The man had dark brown skin, and was big, even sitting down, Agbe could tell he was tall. Ripped too, all eight abs in his stomach were defined, even sitting. He had biceps, triceps, every cep that existed in a human body, bulging out. He couldn’t be more than twenty-one, but he had the build of a bolokhon player on steroids. Loops of ink swirled around his hairless chest and arms. Agbe’s eyes widened when he remembered what they were. Religious tattoos, of the forms of the elements. Blue ink, white, grey, red, the flames of fire seemed to leap to life on the man’s skin. The man had scars on his chest, one crossing over a firm black nipple, one tearing through the water drops of the man’s tattoo of a Seliat, the water element, several smaller ones around the fire element. One scar, Agbe’s eyes traced over the man’s neck, up his hairless square jaw, and it stopped right under an eye that looked bored and, luckily, was not staring back at Agbe.

Agbe breathed easily.

Then those eyes flicked to him and the breath was knocked right out of Agbe’s chest.

At first the eyes seemed just as bored as they’d been before, then they rose slowly over Agbe’s body, locked on Agbe’s face, and those eyes widened in shock. The man smiled, it was a slight jerk in the corner of his lips, and it almost seemed mocking.

Agbe wanted to look away, he wanted to pretend that he hadn’t been studying the man, but while those eyes held his, it was as if he was spellbound, he couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, could barely even remember to breathe. Then those eyes flicked away and Agbe sagged, falling back against his heels.

The man had a scar across his lips, several over his face, and a nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. The man looked rough, terrifyingly so, much scarier than the man who had threatened Agbe earlier, and Agbe knew he should look away. The man didn’t wear any earrings. What did those gold loops mean, and why did only some of them wear them? The man wasn’t handsome, in fact, with all the scars on his face and body, he looked downright ugly, still, Agbe wanted to know more. How did he get those scars? Did he worship Duraya, was that why he had all those tattoos of the elements on his body?

“Osiso. Imama pia, keni aham ude ki?”

The person who’d spoken sat beside the man Agbe didn’t want to stop looking at. Agbe reluctantly turned his gaze to the one who’d spoken. This one was also male, also looked big, and had a tattoo of a Sehinom on his chest, the all element. He didn’t have scars, but he looked pretty rough, like he knew how to fight. He had those golden loops pierced into his ears, two on his left ear and one on his right. Most of the others only had two, few had one, this man and the one who’d jerked his head at Agbe were the only ones with three.

He frowned at Agbe.

Odion was standing beside the door when he opened it. Ehimen held the door open till Aisosa walked out, then he closed it behind her. He could tell the minute Odion saw him. He felt Odion’s eyes on him and as soon as he looked at his brother, the man’s gaze jerked away.

“Teleport us there,” Ehimen ordered.

Odion’s gaze slunk back to his. “I need a source.”

“Of course, use me.”

Odion nodded. His eyes went red. Ehimen felt a sudden fizzle of rage, it grew in him, bubbling up into a fount that made him clench his fists. A bit more of this and he would be deranged. He wanted to slam his fist into something. The anger went away, all of it, as if it had been sucked out. Then a black fog appeared around them. It started, swirling low on the ground, and grew to cover the three of them completely. By the time the fog dissipated, they were standing in one of the outhouses, still on the Enikaro land, but outside the main house.

They’d narrowed their search for the Enikaro descendant down to this man. After they’d gone to the Lagos Community and found it lacking Ehizhokhaes, they’d backtracked back to the hospital where the blood had been drawn. The doctor told them everything he knew. A young man, looked to be about sixteen, came into the hospital with a girl, about the same age, he called his sister. The girl died of MRA AIDS, but the boy was fine. The doctor had sent the boy with two men who claimed to be police officers, but no one in the police station knew these men. The trace ended with the policeman Omon interrogated. He was the one who’d received the call from the hospital.

The policeman had blood trailing down his nose, but nothing too extreme. His uniform looked a little roughed up, and the wrists shackled to the hoop hanging from the ceiling seemed to have scratched up a bit, but he was still alive.

Ehimen stood outside the room watching. It was an interrogation room, empty, concrete, cold, just chains and shackles, no furniture. A worry commune from the third litter worked with Omon. Worry communes could alter a person’s temperature, heat them till they felt as if their blood was boiling, freeze them till they shivered with chills. From the way the policeman sagged in his bonds, Ehimen imagined the worry commune had worked him over well.

Ehimen saw a pair of blue eyes staring at him through the glass. He turned and nodded at Paul, the commune nodded back. He’d learned in Lagos that Paul was an anger commune like Odion and Omon, one of the ones who could teleport.

Ehimen rapped his knuckles against the glass.

Omon looked back over his shoulders. Ehimen gestured with his hands for Omon to come out.

“Has he said anything to cast doubt on the doctor’s tale?” Aisosa asked Odion while Omon made his way to the door.

“No, sister.”

Aisosa turned towards Ehimen. “A young man, named Ivie, with a sister, Titi, both about sixteen years old? That doesn’t sound like any Ehizokhae I know.”

“Ignore the names,” Ehimen said, “of course they’ll take new names outside the Community. The sister too, throw that out, no one knows who she is. There’s only one Ehizokhae boy that matches the age the doctor gave.”

“Omonoba Eromosele, Omonoba Ejehmen’s oldest child.”

Ehimen nodded. “But why would he be without his parents and his other siblings?”

“Could this, Titi the doctor mentioned, be one of Omonoba Ejehmen’s daughters, the twins?” Odion asked.

Ehimen shook his head. “The twins are eight years old, no one would mistake an eight year old girl for sixteen. Besides, the girl’s blood wasn’t flagged as Ehizokhae.”

Odion nodded. “You’re right, brother.”

“Omonoba Eromosele is fourteen though,” Omon mused as he stepped out of the room, closing the door to the interrogation room shut with a click. He leaned back against the door and gaped at Ehimen. Ehimen quirked an eyebrow at him. Omon cleared his throat and hastily looked away.

“Ever since he turned into a ferine, Omonoba Eromosele has looked much older than his age.” Aisosa remarked as Omon’s gaze crawled back to Ehimen’s face. The younger man couldn’t seem to stop himself from staring wide-eyed at Ehimen. Ehimen ignored him.

“It’s Omonoba Eromosele,” Ehimen concluded, “he’s the only one it could be. From what we know, the person is of Ehizokhae blood, is marked, male, and looks to be about sixteen. Omonoba Eromosele is the only Ehizokhae who fits this description.”

“What did the policeman say?” Aisosa asked Omon.

Omon cleared his throat. “It’s not good, sister.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, I asked you what he said,” Aisosa’s cool voice wiped the wide-eyed look out of Omon’s gaze. He snapped himself into form, standing upright, legs apart, hands behind his back.

Omon cleared his throat. “Sorry, sister. He said he was bribed to relay calls about requests for Marked transportation to the Lagos Community. At first, he claimed not to know who the people who bribed him are, but he finally confessed that he knew they’re shanghaiers.”

Ehimen’s heart froze in his chest. “Did you say shanghaiers?”

Omon nodded.

“I don’t understand,” the American accent broke their horrified silence. “What is this shanghaiers?” Paul asked.

“Slavers,” Aisosa’s voice was flat, “human traffickers, who only deal in the marked. They sell them to breeder camps, whorehouses, thugs, gangs, anyone who has money to pay and wishes to own a marked.”

“My God!” Paul exclaimed. “Th..that’s horrible. We have to find that child.” His voice broke. “Let me call the InCoSeM headquarters.” He rushed out of the room, horror-stricken.

“What kind of shanghaiers? Where are they based? Who do they most frequently deal with?”

“He doesn’t know,” Omon said, “they talk through the phone. If they have to meet, they do it in the dark. The shanghaiers disguise their voices.”

“Did you get a number?” Ehimen asked.

Omon nodded. “Already tried running a trace. It pings all over Africa, some sort of data clone.”

“Did you call?”

“No one answered.”

“Shit!” Ehimen kicked at the wall. Control. Emotionless. He needed a clear head.

“We’ll find him,” Aisosa stated.

“And the rest of Omonoba Ejehmen’s family?” Odion asked.

“Omonoba Eromosele is our only lead. We need to find him first.”

“There are no more leads sister.” Omon sounded frustrated.

“We’ll find him if we have to rip apart every shanghaier in Africa.”

“Yes,” Ehimen had gotten his temper under control, “Aisosa is right. Besides, Omonoba Eromosele is a ferine, so it’s not like they can kill him. He will survive, and we will find him.” Ehimen turned his gaze back to the policeman hanging from the ceiling. “Is there anything more to get from him?”

Omon shook his head. “We’ve interrogated him within an inch of his sanity, he’s told us everything he knows.”

“Then kill him.” Ehimen turned around.

“I’ll do it,” Aisosa offered, “this one doesn’t deserve a quick death.”

Ehimen didn’t care. He had to remind himself that anger was useless. Frustration even more so. He had to talk to Iye, they needed to go back to Lagos. They would sweep that state for shanghaiers and extend the sweep as far as it took to find Omonoba Eromosele. He was the only descendant of the Enikaro alive, that they knew of, they had to find him.

“Ehimen!”

Ehimen stopped when he heard the American accent. Blue eyes met his. “I might have a solution, a way to trace that poor boy, we’d need something he touched.”

Ehimen refused to let the hope swarm in him. No emotions. “That shouldn’t be a problem.” They’d find something at the hospital.

“Good,” Paul smiled. “Have you ever heard of an augur-apex werejackal-abaci tri-marked?”

Ehimen was just registering Paul’s words when alarm bells sounded throughout the compound.

Paul frowned. “What’s going on?” He looked up at the flashing lights alternating between adjacent streetlamps.

‘We have a problem, brother,’ the fourth litter augur spoke into their bond in his mind. ‘Uninvited guests. A whole army of them.”

‘What?’

‘There’s a wielder army coming right for us.’

Her left eyebrow jerked up and Ehimen hoped she would challenge him, give him something to lash out at. That was the hairing talking, Ehimen forced it down. If she challenged him, she’d pay, but he would be in control. He waited her out.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re no fun. It’s to catch up your whiphair, I came to shave you.”

He didn’t react to that. “Did mother send you?”

She shook her head.

He wanted to smile at her, to say thank you, to enjoy the fact that after all she’d said she really did care about him, but emotions were his problem, if he didn’t get them under control, the hairing wouldn’t stop. Aisosa was right. So, instead he simply nodded, and walked over to the bathtub. They worked on opening up the tarp together, then they draped it over the rim of the tub. He climbed in.

Aisosa bent to a squat. She placed her hands into the duffel bag. Her bunched together braids fell over her shoulder as she searched through the bag. Then she stood, tossing the braids back behind her, with a twist of her neck. She was holding a small whip, with thick silver-blue strands interwoven, only about the length of her lower arm.

Ehimen’s gaze dropped to that whip and he felt the urge to itch. He didn’t give into it, but it was there, reminding him that he was not emotionless, he longed for Enforcer and watching Aisosa with that dagger-whip brought the longing out.

He swallowed not unaware of Aisosa’s eyes boring into his face. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s hard,” he said, “fighting the emotions.”

She climbed into the bathtub beside him. She moved her hand in a series of wrist and hand flicks, releasing notches of whip strands from the whip, then hardening it. The final thing appeared as a curved, turquoise-blue, dagger, with a silver handle. It was beautiful. Aisosa had at least six whips Ehimen knew of, not counting her whipsuit…or the singer. He only had one, Enforcer was all he’d ever wanted or needed. The itching exacerbated.

Aisosa knelt beside his right side. She began her shaving with his leg. Only a whip could cut whiphair so finely. The hair curled around Aisosa’s dagger-whip, attracted to it, wrapping around it. She pulled and the hair came off from the root. It stung, but the pain paled in comparison to the ecstasy of being sheared with a whip.

“Give yourself a minute at night to feel the emotions you can’t reason away, the grief for Isoken and Agbe, the rage at the attack on the Enikaro. Just a minute, and then stop it. Every other emotion ignore. It makes no sense to long for your whip, you know mother will return Enforcer to you eventually, and until she does, longing for the whip won’t make it appear in your hand.” A few more swipes and she was done with his right leg. “Turn.” Ehimen knocked the pads of his fingers into her hair, hard. She lifted her gaze and stared up at him, eyebrows arched up. “Please.”

He turned around and she shaved his other leg. Then she stood and shaved the rest of his body, working silently. She asked more politely for him to turn around and he did, until she’d shaved as far as she could reach. Then he sat so she could shave his upper body. She saved his face for last. It would have taken at least two hours to cut with the sharpest blade, hours of taking hair off a few millimeters at a time. Why hadn’t he simply ordered one of his younger siblings to shear him before this? Shame, pride, emotions.

They faced each other along the length of the tub, he sat, she knelt. She stared into his eyes, running her fingers over the ends of the hair on his right cheek. “I’m sorry for your loss, Ehimen. Isoken was a fine woman, the both of you would have made a good family.”

“The three of us.”

Aisosa frowned.

“You forgot Agbe. The three of us would have made a good family.”

She pursed her lips, narrowed her right eye, and rose up her left eyebrow. It was the way she looked at him when she thought he was being stupid. She placed her dagger-whip underneath his chin and the hair curled around it. She combed her whip through the hair, and it all came off at the root. She stuck the dagger-whip into the hair on his forehead before she spoke again.

“Agbe was the son of Ovie Omoruyi, he would never have lived with you and Isoken. If not his father, then the God-born would have taken him.” She said it so matter-of-factly. And she was right, Ehimen knew, but it hurt to hear another man being referred to as Agbe’s father.

No emotions. Ehimen pushed the hurt away, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “not necessarily, Agbe was unmarked, I don’t think Ovie Omoruyi or the God-born would have been in a rush to claim him. You forget that Omonoba Ejehmen, the God-born’s own son, was cast out of ancestral grounds for having an unmarked daughter.”

“The clan of rulers cast them out, but the God-born didn’t. She provided for them, visited them, and never stopped fighting until the clan of rulers agreed to restore her marked grandchildren back to their lineage as descendants of the Enikaro. Besides, Omonoba Ejehmen and his family were forced out of ancestral grounds because of a bargain Omonoba Ejehmen made with the high priestess of Duraya, not because his daughter was unmarked. Agbe didn’t make any such bargain. Being unmarked would have prevented him from being a ruling member of the Enikaro, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from living on ancestral grounds with his blood family.” She pulled her hand down, and the last of the hair was gone from his face. Without beards, his face was as smooth as a baby’s and he loved it. He could feel the air from the house’s HVAC system all over his body. Goosebumps rose on his skin. Aisosa sat back on her heels. “It doesn’t matter now anyway, they’re dead. Do you want me to shave the rest, or would you rather I send for one of our brothers?”

Ehimen sat in a sea of hair. They chafed at his freshly shaved body.

He stood up, placed his fingers against the waistband of his underwear and stopped when he realized he was embarrassed. It was ridiculous, they’d both seen each other naked a number of times…before he’d met Isoken, before she started to teach him what it meant to live as a human in society and not a wielder in a horde. But she was dead now. His heart hurt but he ignored it. It wasn’t time for grief yet.

He pulled the boxers off.

She sheared the rest of his hair off quickly. By the time she was done, he had no hair left except for the one on his head and the lashes and brows on his face. Ehimen stared at his reflection in the mirror. He could finally see his face again, his pronounced cheekbones, his chiseled jawline, every carved out pack in his abdomen. His arms and legs ripped with muscles. His veins stood out. The silver oriakhi brand crept over every surface of skin. How long had it been since he’d had so little hair that he could see his wielder brand? This was his body, he’d missed it.

No more hairing, he decided, staring into his reflection in the mirror. No more.

There was a knock on his bedroom door. The door was far away from the bathroom, but he was simmering hearing evbaire, so he heard it easily.

“Who is it?”

“Odion, brother, I came to tell you that Omon is done with the interrogation.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Yes, brother.”

Aisosa was pulling together the ends of the tarp. “Leave it,” Ehimen ordered, “one of the eighth litter will gather it and take it to mother. You come with me. Unless you need to return to mother?”

She shook her head.

Ehimen felt his penis brush against his legs as he walked. He’d had so much hair that it had been so long since he felt his penis rub against his skin, and thump into his balls. He wasn’t ready for underwear yet. He grabbed a pair of khakhis from the unpacked bag on his bedroom floor and donned it. Then he reached into a bond with the youngest branded augur in their horde and sent a message for the eighth litter to gather up his whiphairs.

Chapter Nineteen

Ehimen needed to shave. His mind drifted to the Lagos policeman they’d brought back and the interrogation that was now being conducted, but those thoughts paled in comparison to his need to shave. He opened up the mirror cabinet over the sink, and impatiently rifled through its contents. The Enikaro had a number of holdings throughout Edo State, but it was his first time being in the one in Igueben. This one was just as palatial as the one they’d been at in Benin. He had his own room, over 1000 square feet, with a TV so wide it almost covered up the entire wall. He picked up the bar of soap and tore off the wrapping. Then he turned the faucet knob, watching as a steady stream of clear water came gushing out.

Ehimen pulled the stop up so that the water filled up the sink. Then he dumped the bar of soap into the basin of cool water. He blinked, staring at his reflection in the mirror. All he saw was hair. A carpet of black hair covered his face, it was like he was wearing a fur mask. He stripped out of his clothes. There was hair everywhere. Only his palms and the soles of his feet weren’t coated in curly, black, tufts.

Ehimen hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers, preparing to take that last bit of clothing off, when a knock on his bathroom door stopped him. His head snapped up. Why had she even bothered knocking? The bathroom door was open, and she stood in the doorway, resting her shoulder against the maple doorframe. She eyed him languorously, black eyes, trailing over every inch of hairy skin on his body. She took her time too. Black shorts that stopped high on her upper thighs, blue bra top, braids held back with a scrunchy, grey sneakers. She was dressed for a workout. Ehimen dismissed her, returning his gaze to the mirror and the daunting task of shaving all the hair off. Even with the sharpest blade he’d found in the armory, it would take him at least two hours to shave. He placed his hairy hand into the tufts of hair on his chest and wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t even make out the outline of his hand beneath the carpet of chest-hair. He pulled it out.

“Well?” she prompted.

He didn’t want to look at her. She had so much skin showing, and every inch of it was hairless, which only made his hairing that much more prominent in comparison. His chest itched. It was like wading through grass, trying to stick his fingers in deep enough to reach his skin.

Sixty hours since his last shave, and he had enough hair on his body to make two full-length whips.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

She chuckled. “Do you know the children are calling you Grumpus now?”

Ehimen growled. He glared at her out the corner of his eyes. “I don’t have the patience for this, get to the point, and get to it fast.”

She clucked her tongue at him. “Stop being such a bully,” she waltzed into his bathroom like she owned it. “Help me drape this tarp over the bathtub.”

He hadn’t noticed the black duffel bag until he saw it swinging in the hands she held behind her back as she walked. She dropped the bag at the foot of the tub and crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for him. Her muscles bulged when she stood in that position.

Ehimen sighed. He stared at her through the mirror, every hairless, silver-limned, bit of her. Women haired, he knew, but it was far more common in male wielders than females. Aisosa would never hair though, one had to be capable of feeling emotions to hair. He waded through the fields of hair sprouting from his neck to scratch at the skin. Aisosa was one of the few six-pack women in their horde. They were all fit, a fighting horde had to be, but Aisosa’s fitness was almost on par with his. The muscles in her abs and thighs were fully defined, easily revealed in her two-piece, as his was, or would be, if he wasn’t soaked in hair.

“I need to shave,” he spat out through clenched teeth. It was like admitting a weakness and he waited for Aisosa to pounce on it.

“I can see that,” she said, eyes climbing steadily over him, while her lips twisted into a slightly mocking grin. “Now come help me with this tarp,” she bent, pulled down the zip of the brown duffel, and pulled out a transparent tarp from the bag.

“Last time I checked,” Ehimen drawled, “I give the orders, I am the older one.”

She scoffed. “By two years.” She dumped the tarp into the porcelain tub and the sound of leather slapping against ceramic echoed through the bathroom. “Though,” she stood slowly, placed her hands on her hips and went back to eyeing him, “with you hairing like a little boy, it’s hard to tell right now who’s older.”

Ehimen’s hand clenched on the wooden handle of the blade. It clenched so hard that the curve of the handle left an imprint on his skin. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to breathe. His jaw was clenched, but there was so much hair on his face that he couldn’t even see his jawline jutting out. “Get out of here, now!”

“The brother I remember was a full-grown man, when did you revert back to being a teenaged boy?” she teased, completely ignoring his order, which only made his jaw clench harder. His temple throbbed. She chuckled, “you know, I was speaking with the nineteen-year-olds in the seventh litter, and they were asking me why brother Ehimen can’t control his hairing. They can’t understand it, because they stopped hairing a year ago, and they’re not even twenty yet.”

A bubble of rage exploded in Ehimen’s chest. He swiveled and threw the blade in his hand at his sister’s head. His aim was true. Aisosa lifted up her arm and knocked the blade away before it could land on her forehead. It tore into her lower arm instead, leaving a straight gash, deep enough that blood dropped onto the beige towel mat beside her foot. She didn’t even flinch at the pain.

The blade clanged against the tiled floor.

“Are you done throwing tantrums?” She asked, levelly.

Ehimen almost lunged at her. He was already leaning forward, pushing off the tip of his toes, before he mustered up the will to force himself back under control.

“What do you want Aisosa?”

“I want my brother back. You were walking around the Benin compound crying, Ehimen, crying.” Her face scrunched up in disgust. “Then you snapped at Iye, and now you’re hairing? This is ridiculous, snap yourself out of it.”

“I know this is hard for you to understand, but I’m human and I just lost the woman I loved.”

“No, you didn’t just lose her, you lost her a month ago, you’ve mourned her, move on.”

Ehimen stared at her. Hard eyes stared back at him, emotionless and unflinching. Blood trailed down her arm, but it was a nuisance to her, just a tiny cut. He’d been like that once, cold, unemotional, a soldier. He sighed. “What if I can’t?”

“Then join her,” she jerked her chin towards the blade on the floor, “you’re useless to the horde like this, maybe you’ll be of use to her.”

The hurt Ehimen felt at that callously delivered statement tore through the irritation of his hairing. Did his life really matter so little to his own sister? He’d always thought Aisosa was cold, but he’d been sure she loved him in her own way. His gaze dropped to the ground. He stared at the tiles, the alternating pattern of curly lines painted onto the white background. Was he better off dead? Right as his gaze snapped contemplatively towards the blade, a roaring voice broke through his subconscious. What was wrong with him? Aisosa was right, when had he turned into this?

He snapped his gaze away from the blade, back to his sister. She was watching him, keen eyes tracking his every movement. “What’s the tarp for?”

She smiled, it was a slight thing, a tiny tug upwards in the corners of her lips. “Come help me put it over the bathtub and you’ll find out.”

Ehimen’s gaze turned cold. “This is the fourth time you’re ignoring me, don’t do it again.”

“And you said you’d be the best Bleep I ever had. You were good, but you weren’t [i]that [/i]good.” The men laughed.

Agbe felt as if something inside of him was breaking.

“Don’t worry, I’m not all bad. I’m going to do you a favor, I’ll make sure you’re in Igho’s truck.” After saying that, they pulled him along, dragging him in their wake, till they reached another empty field in the vast forest. This one had about seven to eight large trailers arranged in a circle.

Over thirty armed men stood around the middle of the circle of trailers. Agberos, all of them. Agbe stared apprehensively at them. The groper and the sniper pushed him towards a man seating on a high stool in the middle. The man appeared to be older, in his forties, bigger than all the other men, and much cleaner looking. He could have passed for a businessman, someone with legitimate work.

They pushed him to his knees in front of the man. Agbe bit back the urge to beg.

“Oga Johnny, na him be dis,” the sniper said.

The man on the stool stared at Agbe. He was the only man seating on a high stool, the rest sat on lower stools, the ground, or stood. This man had to be their leader. The man reminded Agbe of the Lagos State Police Commissioner, the one who’d led to Titi’s death. He had that same aura of quiet authority, even amongst thugs.

He lifted a stainless-steel cup to his lips, drank from it, and then lifted his gaze from Agbe to the men who’d brought him.

“He’s unmarked,” the man on the high stool said dismissively. He had to be an augur, only an augur would know.

“No sah, they did the blood test, he’s marked.”

The man on the high stool frowned at Agbe. “So why can’t I smell his mark?” ‘Smell his mark?’ Agbe repeated the question in his head, the man was not just an augur then, but an augur-werejackal bi-marked, a spotter. “Well, boy, are you marked?”

Agbe was about to say yes, the doctor had said he was, but then he shook his head instead. Maybe they only kidnapped marked people, maybe they’d let him go if he was unmarked. “No,” he shook his head, “no sir, I’m not marked.”

The man nodded. “I thought as much. Kill him.” He tossed his head to the side, dismissing Agbe.

“No!” Agbe screamed. “I was lying, I’m sorry, I’m marked. I’m marked!”

The man turned back to him. “Now, you’re lying.”

“No! The doctor did the blood test, he said I was marked.”

“Show me the mark then,” the man said.

Agbe’s heart raced. “I don’t have the mark on my body, but I’m marked. I swear, that’s what the doctor said.”

The man scoffed. “I’m a spotter, boy, if you were marked, I would smell it. If you were marked, you would have the mark on your body. Shoot him.”

Agbe glanced nervously around. “Not if I’m a remem!” He yelled, pulling at straws. “Reincarnates on their first life don’t always have the mark on their skin, and augurs can’t always sense them.” It wasn’t true, but it sounded close enough to the truth that Agbe ran with it. “It’s not till their next lives that their marks really become prominent.”

The man frowned. “What use is a reincarnate though? You might as well be unmarked.”

“I can store information between lives. When I’m reincarnated, I’ll still have the memories of this life. That has to be worth something.”

The man stared consideringly at him. “Perhaps,” he mused, “at least you’re not bad to look at.” That led to a number of titters. “Put him in one of the slum trucks. If he survives the journey, we’ll sell him.”

A throat cleared behind him. The groper came forward. “Oga Johnny, I was thinking we could put him in Igho’s truck.”

The man on the high stool scoffed. “Why would we do that? He’s a reincarnate, pretty much worthless. Throw him in the slums.”

The groper darted a glance at Agbe and then looked back at the man in the high stool. “Look at him, Oga Johnny, look at his face, his body. They don’t only need fighters. They will spend more for the chance to Bleep him, than they would to own the strongest fighter we have. Look at him. Have you seen anything like him before?”

The man on the high stool turned his gaze from the groper down to Agbe. He studied Agbe, his eyes roaming over every inch of his face. “I’ll admit that the boy is good looking, but Igho’s truck isn’t just for anyone. If not the slums, put him in one of the other trucks.”

The groper pushed on. “Haba, or are we not seeing the same thing? Good looking is an understatement oh.”

Agbe frowned. He eyed the groper, and then stared at the man on the high stool, and then all the others. Most of them gaped at him the way the unmarked did, but not the spotter on the high stool. Was this insane reaction to him only an unmarked thing then? What was Igho’s truck? The way the groper pushed for it, Agbe wasn’t sure he wanted to go there. Agbe opened his mouth to ask to go to another truck.

The man seated on a low stool to the right of the spotter spoke before Agbe could. “Oga Johnny, my guy is right oh, this one is special. There’s something about him, once you look at him, it’s hard to look away, and I’m straight. Put him in Igho’s truck, powerful marked or not, he’ll sell well.”

The spotter nodded slowly. “Okay. Put him in Igho’s truck.”

The groper grabbed onto Agbe’s arm and pulled him to his feet. He pushed Agbe forward. They made space for them. Any thought of fighting died off in Agbe’s head, seeing all the rifles and knowing how little value the man in charge placed on his life. Whatever the others saw in him, the man in charge didn’t. He would order Agbe killed without a second thought. They stopped in front of a grey trailer. It was the only grey trailer in the field. There were two blue ones, three red ones, two green ones, but only this one grey trailer. Igho’s truck presumably.

“I did you a favor, pretty boy, you owe me.” The groper whispered into his ears.

“Bleep you,” Agbe spat out. “I had sex with you, and you reneged on your word. I don’t owe you a thing.”

The groper chuckled. “We’re even then.”

Agbe was shoved into the truck before he had a chance to respond to that.

“You shouldn’t fight so much pretty boy,” the man with the rope said, “this is your life now. Accept it.” He tied the rope so tight around Agbe’s neck that he could barely breathe, and then he jerked forward on the rope, forcing Agbe to either move forward or get strangled to death.

Agbe considered letting it end there. What was he fighting for? Death had to be better than slavery.

“You know,” the man holding his leash said, “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to Bleep a pretty, marked, boy. If you don’t want to move, maybe you want to satisfy my curiosity.” He grinned at Agbe, exposing crooked, yellow, teeth. Agbe moved forward.

“Return the car to the police,” he heard a gruff voice ordering behind him. It was the sniper, the one who’d been hiding in the trees, presumably to shoot Agbe if he’d ended up revealing a mark. “And pay the officer, bribe him well so that the next time they get a marked sighting he lets us know.”

“Should we come back after?”

“No, go straight to the next pickup site.”

Agbe stalled for a moment and the man tugged hard on the rope. The material dug painfully into his neck. He blinked back tears and continued walking. He didn’t walk far, they just took him to the edge of the cleared field. There was a loud horn, and the headlights that had been lighting up the field, withdrew, leaving them in darkness. A second later the sniper lit a lamp.

The shackles around his wrists were removed.

“Take off your clothes,” the sniper ordered in a gruff voice.

“I’m going to enjoy watching this, pretty boy,” the man who’d groped him smiled.

Agbe shook his head. There was no way he was going to strip for their enjoyment. His refusal only made the man’s smile broaden. “I’ll be more than happy to take them off for you,” he stepped closer. Agbe remembered the feel of the man’s hands on his dick and backed away.

“I’ll take them off,” his voice shook. He forced his gaze to the ground and reached for the bottom of his singlet. He pulled it off slowly, and then took off his trousers and underwear. He placed his hands over his penis to shield it from their lascivious gazes. They laughed at him. The sniper searched his trousers.

“That’s a nice ring,” the groper jerked his chin at Agbe’s chest.

“No,” Agbe shook its head, “it’s very cheap.”

“It’s bijou,” the groper grinned at him, “think I’m a fool. Give it to me.” He stretched out his calloused hand.

Agbe’s eyes watered. “Please sir, please, it belonged to my mother, it’s all I have of her. Please she’s dead, this ring is the only thing of hers I have left. Please, abeg.”

The groper eyed him. He clucked his tongue at Agbe, shaking his head, and then stretched out his hand, reaching for the ring. Agbe swung wildly, and felt victorious when his fist made contact with the groper’s face. Then he took a step back, but the muzzle of a gun stopped his retreat. The cool metal poked into his back.

The groper grabbed Agbe’s right wrist, dodged Agbe’s attempt at another blow, and then grabbed Agbe’s left wrist. He held both wrists together and forced them above Agbe’s head, then he looked Agbe over, every inch of his exposed skin. “You can’t fight, but you’re pretty enough that where you’re going, it won’t matter.” He chuckled, and then he latched onto Agbe’s mum’s ring, despite Agbe’s howling for him to stop, and yanked, breaking the silver chain. He stuffed the ring into his pocket and released his hold on Agbe’s wrists.

Agbe dropped to his knees, broken. Mama. That ring was all he had left of her. It was the only thing. He screamed.

“If you don’t shut up, I’ll give you a good reason to scream, pretty boy, and I’ll like it.”

Agbe found the strength to stop his screams. He wouldn’t give the bastard an excuse to rape him. But he couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop the way his heart ached. He stared at the tree stem, wondering if he could just slam his head into the tree and end the pain. But what good would that do? The groper would still have his mother’s ring. It was sacrilege, profanation of the worst kind, for a man as vile as that to own the testament of his mother and Ehimen’s love. Agbe forced the tears to stop. He had to be stronger.

“What of the earrings?” The third man asked.

Rough fingers pinched his ear and then released it. “Worthless glass, let him keep it. Besides, it adds to his looks, it’ll increase his purchase price.”

“And the wallet? It’s almost empty.”

“It’s made of good leather, we can sell it.”

Agbe cleared his throat and forced himself to look at the groper. “Please,” he said, “give me back my mother’s ring and let me go. I’ll give you anything you want.”

The sniper laughed. “And what if we want a million naira?”

“I’ll find a way to make sure you get it.” He could sell his mamin’s bijou studs when he was clear of them, for his mother’s ring and his freedom, he would sell the last thing of his grandmother’s he had. “I swear. You’ll get it.”

All three of them laughed now.

“What if it’s not money I want, pretty boy?”

Agbe’s bottom lip quivered, he sucked it into his mouth to keep it still, but he’s action made the groper’s eyes gleam. The groper stroked his cock through his jeans.

“Anything. For my mother’s ring and my freedom, anything.”

The groper smiled. “I’m not talking about forcing you.”

Agbe wanted to throw up just thinking about it, but he didn’t. He could do this. He’d wanted to be a LovePeddler right? He’d wanted to trade in sex. Sex was all he had, the only commodity he could trade. He could do this, for mama’s ring and his freedom, he could do anything.

“No force, I’ll be willing,” he managed a weak smile, “I’ll be the best Bleep you’ve ever had, if you promise to let me go.”

“Prove it, and you’ll have a deal,” the groper smirked.

Agbe did. He put everything he’d ever learnt into it, sixteen years’ worth of tricks learnt in a brothel, all to buy his freedom and his mother’s ring. In the end, he hoped it was enough.

“Wow,” the groper’s eyes were closed, “you’re good.”

“Very good,” the sniper agreed, breathing heavily, his words drawing as if he was close to sleep.

“Put on your clothes,” the groper said.

Agbe smiled. He rushed to his feet and donned his clothes hurriedly, thanking Madam Celia and all her brothel for the gift they’d given. He may be unmarked, but perhaps he wasn’t useless. He’d bought his freedom. He felt dirty all over, but he’d bought his freedom.

A hard object cracked into the side of his head. The last thing Agbe heard before he lost consciousness was the sound of male voices laughing.

When he came through, the first thing he saw was the ground blurring in and out of his vision. His belly bumped into a hard surface, and he felt dizzy, all the blood in his body rushing to his head. It didn’t take him long to realize he was being carried.

He lurched himself off and then rolled over to his hands and knees, preparing to run. Hands grabbed onto his arm before he could escape.

He glared at the groper. “You promised,” he cried out bitterly, “you said you’d let me go!”

Chapter Eighteen

Agbe knew he had to stop thinking about Titi, but he couldn’t. He remembered that little girl giggle which had drawn him in the first time they spoke. She’d seemed so innocent then, she was older, but he’d always felt like it was his job to take care of her. A job he had failed spectacularly at. It didn’t make sense to him though, he just couldn’t understand why people kept dying around him.

Once they’d settled into the mansion he bought, Agbe had never gone out at night. Driving in the back of the police vehicle, it was his first time seeing Lagos after dark. The city had a life to it, strewn into the bustling streets, simmering beneath the constant roaring of generators, the spotty lighting between houses and shacks, the cries of hawkers and chattering of passersby. There was so much life around him, but inside, all Agbe felt was death.

The car went on along its steady route, driving through the busy streets, all while Agbe stared emptily ahead. He’d catch the policemen looking back at him every time he flicked his gaze ahead. He couldn’t quite decide if it was awe or fear he saw in their gazes. Couldn’t they look away because they knew he was marked, or was it because of the way he looked. He didn’t know, and he didn’t particularly care.

Contrary to what you may believe, you are marked. The marked genes are in your DNA.

Agbe scoffed. Marked. Where had the mark been when his mother was dying, when he needed powers to save her? Where had the mark been when he needed to warn Ehimen? Where had the mark gone when he tried so hard to fight for his home? Where was the mark when Titi’s life slipped away? He wanted to scream, but he felt too hollowed out to summon the energy it would take to make sound.

So, he just remained silent, watching the teeming Lagos life stream by him.

The car made a sudden lurch, sending Agbe jumping in his chair. They were no longer driving on tarred road, they veered off those roads, into a mud path that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. Agbe knew the Benin Community was like this too, built in the middle of nowhere, out of the way of unmarked life. So, he wasn’t bothered as the police vehicle drove him deeper into a dark forest. There were no streetlights here, which meant the only lighting was from the car’s headlights. Agbe didn’t mind the darkness though, it seemed to match the state of his heart.

They kept driving for a while into the forest, long after the mud path disappeared, and it was clear they just drove through unpaved land. They wove between a number of palm trees that had bunches of orange-red banga seeds hanging from the base of their fronds. His mother had made the best banga and catfish soup. He remembered once eating with his mum and Ehimen in his mum’s room, they ate starch from the same plate, and dipped their morsels into the same soup bowl. Like a family. In the end he’d had a mock fight with Ehimen over who got the last piece of fish. Ehimen had beaten him, but they’d shared the fish anyway.

Agbe’s heart hurt.

The doctor said he was marked, that his blood showed he had powers, but what was the point of being marked if you couldn’t protect the people you cared about?

The car came to a stop at the center of a cleared piece of land. Agbe gazed out the window. He could see two men standing outside. One of them carried a rifle, the other did not. They both looked like thugs, Agbe tried to think of a more generous way to think of them, but he couldn’t. They were mean-looking, both with beards around their faces, they didn’t smile. One was dark skinned the other was light. Neither of them wore a police uniform, so they weren’t unmarked police, but they could be law enforcement from the Lagos Community. They wore T-shirts over loose fitted jeans. Agbe stared at them and frowned. They didn’t look like people from a Community. They looked like the agberos in the unmarked movies he’d watched.

The policemen came out of the car. The one who’d been driving opened Agbe’s door.

“Come out,” he ordered.

Agbe glanced between the policemen and the thugs. He shook his head, “I don’t understand. We’re going to the Community, right? Why do I need to come out?” He couldn’t quite put his finger on its cause, but he felt an inkling of fear. Something wasn’t right.

The policeman sucked air through his teeth and then reached into the car. He grabbed Agbe’s arm and pulled him out of the car. The force of it sent Agbe sprawling on the ground once the man let him go. He pushed himself to his feet and dusted off the coarse sand and rock fragments on his palm, all the while staring at the men.

The policeman closed the door and leaned back against it. He held his rifle in his hand, with the muzzle pointed at Agbe. Agbe gulped, the other policeman was also holding his gun the same way, aiming at Agbe’s chest. The last man carrying a rifle was doing the exact same thing. Their fingers hovered over the triggers, one slight tug and they would shoot.

Agbe didn’t understand what was going on. Weren’t they taking him to the Community? They looked more like they were preparing to kill him than to take him anywhere. His eyes darted from one muzzle to the next, until he decided it was safest to look at the one man that didn’t have a gun. Would they shoot him? He wondered, his arms shook a little. It wasn’t like he had that much to live for anyway, who would care if he died? It dawned on him that there was no one left alive who cared about him. They could kill him and throw his body in a ditch and no one would be affected. The thought almost made Agbe scream.

Finally, the one man who wasn’t holding a rifle cleared his throat. He approached Agbe calmly, sizing him up, from the top of his head to his toes, and then he walked around him, as if Agbe was an acquisition he was inspecting before purchase. He had a twisted grin on his face when he got back in front of Agbe.

“This one na human being abi na mami wata?” He pinched Agbe’s chin cruelly between his fingers and Agbe tried to jerk his head away, but the man’s vicious grip only got tighter. He forced Agbe’s head to one side, and then to the other. “Mm. This one way fine like this, them go pay double for am.”

Agbe’s eyes widened. No, he shook his head, no, he couldn’t have heard that. He tried to push the man’s hold away, but before he could touch him, the man’s fist drove into his belly. Agbe yelled, bending over with a hand over his throbbing stomach. A punch landed on his face as he was bent, and that punch floored him. The man knelt on the ground beside Agbe. Agbe tried to crawl away but the man held him fast. The man was bigger and stronger than Agbe, he didn’t stand a chance of breaking free.

“We’re going to sell you for a lot of money, pretty boy.” He darted a long pink tongue out of his mouth and swiped it over his bottom lip. Then he ran his free hand down Agbe’s chest, stopping to cup his penis in a pincher hold.

Agbe screamed. “Stop,” he begged, “please.” He couldn’t believe this was happening to him.

The man’s hold grew firmer and grinding, and the man made an appreciative hum in the back of his throat. Then finally, he released Agbe and stood.

He swiped his fingers sideways in front of his neck in a ‘cut it’ gesture, saying, “he’s not a commune or a Varmint. He would have reacted by now if he was.”

The rifles lowered and a sniper climbed down from a tree in the perimeter of the cleared land. Agbe realized it had been a test, the beating, the groping, the humiliation. All a test. He closed his eyes against the spring of tears and pushed himself more than he ever had before. These men were obviously slavers. If he didn’t fight back, they would make him a slave. He had to protect himself, he had to fight. If he was marked, he had to reach into his mark. He’d killed before, he could do it again. Emotions fueled commune magic, and he had so much of them, sorrow, pain, fear, anger, worry, every single commune emotion. He tried to push them out, to reach the magic in them, but no matter how hard he tried, how desperately he wished for it, nothing happened.

He was as unmarked as he’d always been, regardless of what the doctor said. Unmarked and defenseless. Unless he could pay them, he still had over half a million naira in the bank tied to the wallet his grandmother had given him, maybe he could pay them…but there was nothing to stop them from taking his money and selling him anyway.

Hands reached for him and flipped him around. They shackled his wrists together with iron manacles and pulled him up to his feet. The man who’d groped him came forward with a coil of rope. The hands arounds his arms held him fast while the man tied a rope around his neck. Agbe tried to fight, he bucked, swayed from left to right, lurched forward, but his every attempt met with blows and restraints.

Lordfave98:
Thanks for the Update obehiD2

Thank you for calling me out specifically! It's nice to get some attention since obehiD usually gets all the appreciation lol

The bear swiped its paws at Ehimen’s hairy abdomen, going again for the lower right side. Blood came gushing out of his wounds. The bear reached for Ehimen, grabbed him, and lifted him clear off the ground, bringing the wound on the side of his stomach, towards the bear’s hungry mouth. Ehimen twitched. He flared his numbing, and felt a sense of relief when the pain in his body suddenly went away.

The bear was still bearing him hungrily towards its mouth.

Ehimen was still trying to formulate a plan of attack, when the bear suddenly released him. He dropped to the ground with a thud, but he was flaring numbing, so he didn’t feel a thing. Sprawled out on the floor, he watched as Aisosa somersaulted over the bear’s head. She was one of the wielders in their horde who was double jointed, which meant she could wield as easily from her feet as she could from her hands. She held a whip in each hand and had whips coming out from the soles of her shoes. She flicked her ankles and the whips on her soles hardened, as she landed on her feet. She pushed off the ground with the hardened whips, flicking her ankles so that the whips softened again. She twirled in the air, and the whips from her feet twisted together, then she performed a series of ankle flicks that released notches from her whips and hardened the whip, making it look more like a spear with spikes, than a whip. She lanced the bear in the chest with her spiked-spear whip, and then swung the whips in her hands forward towards the ground. She hardened those whips once they touched the ground, and used them as a support to push the rest of her body up, sending the spiked-spear whip from her feet, up through the bear’s body, splitting its head in two. The bear dropped to the ground and transformed back into a teenaged boy who looked to be about eighteen.

Wilders were always young.

Aisosa pushed off the whips in her hands, somersaulting to a graceful landing back on her feet. She flicked her right whip, releasing notches at the edge of the whip that looked like four angled L clamps with a pointy tip. She snapped that whip forward and ripped into one of the wilder’s in human form. The clamp reached into the wilder’s neck and ripped out its throat. The wilder dropped and Aisosa cut through the rest just as easily. She had four whips, he had none.

Ehimen scratched at his chest.

He crawled towards the dagger Aisosa had handed to him, and felt a wave of dizziness. He was growing feint. He flared alertness to push away the feeling of the blood loss, then he jumped to his feet, grabbed the dagger and threw it into the heart of a human wilder who was racing towards Mischief.

He tore the dagger out of the young girl’s heart and grabbed onto one of his seventh litter sister’s. “Get those children to mother!” He pushed her in the direction of the pond, where Mischief and her littermate were standing, alone, unable to protect themselves.

“Yes, brother.”

He stabbed his dagger into the neck of a silver lion that tried to follow her. He pulled the dagger out and threw it into the chest of a dog, also chasing after her. The sister he’d sent was a branded female wielder, the wilders followed her like metal to a magnet. Aisosa appeared by his side. With her four whips, she made quick work of the wilders and then vanished. She was standing by their mother, the next time he saw her.

There were only four wilders left. Ehimen threw his dagger unerringly into the back of one’s head, while the eighth litter finished up the rest. The last wilder was in bird form. One of the girls in the eighth litter plucked the bird off her shoulder, with her whip, and launched it into the air. Given how far the bird went, she had to be flaring strength. The other girl in that litter rose into the air, after the bird, coiled her whip around it, and with a flick of her wrist, broke its neck. The bird had transformed back into a boy by the time its body hit the ground.

He couldn’t be more than twelve, Mischief’s age.

The girl who’d broken his neck cried out when she saw his human body. “I didn’t know!” she said.

Iye walked over to her, she pulled the girl into her arms. The eighth litter was their youngest branded litter, they were just sixteen. The boy wasn’t her first kill, but he was her youngest.

“They are wilders,” Iye said, “wilders aren’t human anymore.”

They all knew it, but it was hard to stare at the silver body of a boy that young and not wonder what they could have done differently to somehow save his life. But their mother was right, wilders weren’t human…not anymore.

The pain slammed into Ehimen all at once. He dropped to his knees, and then the upper part of his body fell to the ground. He must have used up all of his numbing. He was in so much pain he wasn’t sure if he could survive. He’d never gone to battle without Enforcer before. The itching returned with a vengeance.

Someone forced the cold lip of a metal bottle into his mouth. A salty-sweet liquid was poured in, and then the bottle went away. Ehimen blinked as the liquid evbaire made its way to his wielder-gut. It was healing, he could tell from the taste. He flared the evbaire and closed his eyes while it worked. It only took a few seconds before the pain and lightheadedness were gone.

His mother sat on the ground beside him.

‘You didn’t have to waste the healing on me, I would have healed naturally.’

She didn’t respond to him in their bond or out loud, she just stared at him.

Ehimen pushed himself up. ‘You know, if you’d just given me my whip, we wouldn’t have had to waste healing evbaire, especially when it’s so rare.’

She sighed. “You’re hairing.”

He couldn’t help chuckling at that. “So, you noticed.”

She just shook her head and rose to her feet. So graceful, their mother.

‘I’m disappointed in you,’ she spoke through their bond and then turned her back on him and walked away.

His jaw clenched. He bit back an angry retort. It was her fault he was hairing, if he had his whip, his body wouldn’t feel the need to produce so much whiphair. He scratched irately at the offending hair on his chest.

Paul cleared his throat. Ehimen’s gaze lifted at the same time as his mother’s and the rest of his horde’s. Ehimen had forgotten about Paul. The man didn’t appear to have been harmed though. Wilders would not go after a non-wielder.

Paul stood amidst a sea of wilder corpses, but appeared unfazed by them, his frowning face showed that something else occupied his thoughts.

“What is it?” Iye asked.

“We found them.”

Ehimen jumped to his feet. “Where?”

“Blood was drawn at a hospital in Lagos. It was for a simple marked blood test, done by an unmarked doctor. Our system flagged it as containing Ehizokhae genes.”

Iye’s face lit with hope. Ehimen’s chest swelled. Could the God-born still be alive? “Which one?” he demanded.

“The doctor did a simple marked test and destroyed the blood. The doctor didn’t try to compare it against anything in the system. We’d need a new blood sample to run extensive tests. All we know is that the blood belongs to a marked Ehizokhae male. The doctor submitted a request for transportation of the marked person to the Lagos Community, so we should start our search there.”

Male, which meant it wasn’t the God-born. Was it Ovie Omoruyi then? Or perhaps Omonoba Ejehmen?

“Once the rest get back, we’ll head for Lagos,” Iye decided, “till then, let’s clean up this mess.”

Chapter Seventeen

Ehimen scratched absentmindedly at the tufts of hair on his chest. He felt like a bear, a big, irritable, bear. He had more hair on his body now than he had on his head. Ehimen couldn’t remember the last time he’d haired. It’d been two decades at least. He continued to scratch at the hair, staring wistfully at the eighth litter, who’d released the notches in their whips, and were now using those whips to shear the weeds growing beside the muddy pond.

He muttered a curse to himself, longing for Enforcer, which only made his itching worse.

“Brother Ehimen,” a voice whispered.

“What?” He snapped.

Mischief slunk back, eyes wide. She was holding a pink-frosting cupcake in her hand. She pulled it behind her back and darted a terrified glance towards their mother.

Ehimen looked at the woman as well. Her gaze on him was sad, slightly disappointed, nothing new there. “Come here,” she beckoned to Mischief. Mischief’s lips tightened, she hung her head low and walked over to their mother.

Ehimen felt a slight tug in his chest, his conscience berating him for snapping at Mischief, and revealing her ploy to Iye. They were supposed to be in service to Duraya, cleaning this little patch of abandoned earth to purify the elements, and by so doing garner favor with Nature. During such services, no one was meant to speak, and they certainly were not supposed to eat, or offer up cupcakes to their older siblings. A part of him wanted to speak with Iye on Mischief’s behalf, but these days, speaking to his mother only made his mood worsen.

A month, she’d made him go a whole month without his whip. Just thinking about Enforcer exacerbated the itching. Every time he itched he knew it was a sign that even more hair was growing. It had been two days since he’d been able to shave, and in that time, hair had grown to completely cover his face and body. It made wearing clothes extremely unpleasant, but the alternative was simply unthinkable.

Aisosa and her littermate walked in front of him, picking up discarded trash. Verdants from the seventh and eight litters followed in their wake, using their magic to return the grass to luscious green. Every once in a while, they’d plant a decorous flower to add color to the sea of green. Everyone’s lips moved, but they didn’t breathe out their words, just gestured them, that way only the elements could hear. Ehimen had once enjoyed praying like this. Now he didn’t feel like there was much to pray for. He was losing his mind, he needed Enforcer back.

He turned to glare at his mother, only to find her staring worriedly at him. If she was so darn worried, she should give him back his whip! Slight furrows formed on her forehead. She shook her head and turned back to picking up trash with her babies, the last litter.

Aisosa’s gaze locked with his as she walked by. She spared him a glance long enough to quirk an eyebrow up in his direction before looking ahead, never once stopping in her silent prayers.

They were in a forest somewhere in Uromi. The fourth litter quintise had erected a temporary cloaking spell over their campsite before they’d left with the other three litters, following a lead that would hopefully point them in the direction of the descendants of the Enikaro who’d managed to flee the Community. They still didn’t even know which descendants of the Enikaro it was. If it was just a single person, or a family. If it was a leader in the clan of rulers, or just an Omonoba.

Ehimen shoved one of the boys in the eighth litter out of his way. He heard a thud, sounds that the boy had fallen, but he didn’t care enough to stop and check on him. This wasn’t like him. His sanity broke through the irrationality of the hairing, long enough for him to turn back. His brother was glaring at his back. Ehimen’s jaw clenched, he took a threatening step towards his brother. The boy pushed himself off the floor and ran away.

Ehimen ignored him and turned back around, walking towards the brown pond. It felt so strange to see water that dirty. In the Community, the water was always pure. It annoyed him that the unmarked world had so little regard for the elements. Communes from the second and eighth litter walked along the surface of the water, sweeping their whips through the dirty pond. They had verdant grown cleaning fronds attached to notches from their whips. One of the communes flicked his wrist, bringing the tail of his whip soaring out of the water. He flicked his wrist and the whip hardened into glass. The commune plucked the dirty fronds from the whip, placed them into a bag he carried around his shoulder, and attached fresh green fronds back to the notches on his whip. Then he flicked the whip and it softened. He continued his sweeping.

Ehimen stared longingly at the whip and his chest itched.

He stared down into the body of water, it was dirty, but not too dirty for him to see the reflection of his face through the surface. What would Isoken say if she could see him like this? Thinking of Isoken just made the itching worse. He thought of her and he wanted to kill, he thought of Agbe, and he raged for vengeance. But vengeance required his whip, and he still didn’t have Enforcer. The itching rose to astronomical proportions. He needed to shave. The only parts of his face he could see in the water’s reflection, were his eyes, his lips and his ears. Every other patch of skin was covered with long, curly, black hair. He was grateful Isoken had never seen him like this, at his worst.

Soft footsteps sounded behind him, drawing to a stop at his side. Ehimen’s gaze flicked sideways long enough to steal a glance at the InCoSeM rep, Paul. He nodded a greeting and the man nodded back. He was somber, reflective, not speaking a prayer to Duraya as the rest of Ehimen’s horde did, but also not disrespecting their religion by speaking. Actually, Paul often joined in their service, picking up trash, when he could.

Ehimen was grateful for the man’s continued presence. All the leads they’d had to follow up on now came from InCoSeM. They’d turned out to be dead ends, but so had his horde’s. This last lead looked promising though. InCoSeM found a cellphone registered to the Enikaro, which had suddenly come online this morning. The cellphone pinged in a village on the outskirts of Uromi, which was why they were here now. If Ehimen had his whip, he would have led the four litters who’d gone to investigate. He scratched at his chest.

Ehimen felt a slight scrape against his leg. He shook the limb to break the contact with whatever twig had scraped him, but the scraping didn’t stop. Instead, it turned into poking, and the poking, into stabbing. Ehimen glanced down at the ground and found a silver snake partially hidden by the grass.

Ehimen instinctively reached for Enforcer, but his holster was empty. More hair grew and he itched. Pissed, he bent, grabbed the snake a few inches away from its head and used the strength evbaire in his wielder-gut. He crushed the snake’s neck.

The teeth pulled out from his leg, but not all the way.

Ehimen reached to jerk the rest of the teeth off, when he saw the snake convulse. It flapped against the ground a few times and then finally transformed into a naked girl. Ehimen’s eyes bulged. Her skin was a shimmering silver, like the precious metal. If her body wasn’t moving, he’d think she was a statue. She expelled a final breath and died, with her teeth still biting into Ehimen’s flesh. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He jerked his leg away from her mouth.

“Wilders!” Ehimen growled, breaking the tranquility of their service, “a wilder just came through the cloak.”

Several whips brandished at once. The whistle of those whips, being released from glass form, ripping through the air, it was like a dirge to Ehimen.

A young voice screamed.

“There’s a pack of them!”

Ehimen whirled. They were everywhere, at least sixty wilders, each one with partially silver skin. Some had shifted into their Varmint forms, jackals, lions, dogs, birds, gorillas, bears, all running, like a stampede, behind teenaged half-silver werejackals in human form. The werejackals’ fangs and claws were out, their irises shimmering the gold of their mark. They raced into the campsite, crazed, drawn to the branded women more than the children and men, but a few still went after the children.

Ehimen flared his speed.

‘I need my whip, Iye,’ he spoke into their bond.

‘No,’ her soft-spoken denial jarred Ehimen.

A buff werejackal came at him in human form. The buff’s limbs were silver but the rest of his body was brown. He swung at Ehimen’s head. Ehimen dodged out of the way and flared his strength while he returned the blow to the buff’s head. The buff staggered back a step and then lurched at Ehimen. The buff was a werejackal, which made him stronger by virtue of his mark, and he also probably had strength to flare too. He slammed a fist into Ehimen’s side and while Ehimen doubled over, the buff grabbed his arm and bit into it.

Ehimen pounded his fist into the buff’s head, but the buff never stopped biting.

Something cool and hard came into his hand. He wrapped his fingers around it, hoping against all odds that Iye had relented, and was finally returning his whip.

“Gift from Iye,” Aisoso whispered into his ear. She’d already disappeared from his side before he heard the last word.

It wasn’t a whip, just a dagger. Ehimen stabbed the dagger into the buff’s belly. Unsurprisingly, even in its pain, the buff refused to stop tearing at Ehimen’s flesh, and licking his blood. Ehimen sliced the buff’s neck with the dagger. The buff fell.

Just as the werejackal was falling to the ground, dead, a giant, silver, bear, rammed into Ehimen’s back. The force of his impact with the ground, knocked the dagger out of his hand. The bear flipped Ehimen around and reached down with its front paws to swipe at the lower right side of his abdomen, right above his wielder-gut. The bear was strong, strong enough to pin Ehimen to the ground. Ehimen blazed the rest of the strength in his wielder-gut and put all of it into a swing at the arm holding him down. He was able to knock the bear’s hand off. Ehimen flared his speed to get away, but the bear recovered faster. It probably had alertness. It stomped into Ehimen’s stomach.

Ehimen groaned in pain.

Agbe scoffed. “I’m not marked.” He threw his head back and stared at the doctor. He was shaking, laughing, and crying at the same time. “I’m not marked. I wished I was, I used to pray for it every day, but I’m not. You think if I was marked Titi would be here, you think she’d be dying now, that I’d let anything like that happen to her?” The laughter died and all he had left was the tears. “I’m not marked.”

The doctor gazed down consolingly at him. “That may be the case, but I’m still required by law to test your blood. Any MRA sickness is classified MR, Marked Related, and everyone involved in an MR case has to be tested. It’s the law.”

Agbe stared down at the ground.

“How about this? You go and see your sister, no one will bother you while you’re with her. After, we’ll come for the test. If you really are unmarked, like you say you are, then you’re free to go, but if you’re not we have to call the police.”

After, meaning after she was dead. Agbe forced himself to stop crying. He pushed himself off the floor and stared at the doctor. “Thank you, sir,” he said, then he somehow urged his legs into moving. He walked out of the doctor’s office in the same trancelike state that he’d walked into it. They led him back to Titi’s room.

Agbe stopped at the door. She’d always been small, skinny, several inches shorter than he was, it was why he’d been able to carry her around so easily. Now she looked tiny in the bed. There was a needle sticking out of her hand, connected to an IV. Her eyes were still swollen, but they moved a little. She was awake.

“Ivie,” her voice was a bare whisper. She rose her right arm but was only able to lift it slightly off the bed.

He walked into the room. Was it just him, or did the room already smell like death? She had rashes on her neck now, dots of red spots, as if her skin had been peeled off in those areas.

Agbe sat on the bed beside her. He took the hand she’d tried to lift, in his, and held it. Her black, swollen, eyelids twitched.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She wheezed, as if she was struggling to breathe and Agbe held her hand tighter and moved closer. Warm, wet, streaks snaked down his face, and a drop fell onto the white bedsheet, dampening it.

He shook his head. “It’s okay, shh, it’s okay.”

“For…” her swollen eyelids twitched again. She gasped, pulling her mouth open enough that Agbe could see the white sores in them. His lips trembled. He held his bottom lip between his teeth to keep it from shaking. “Forgive me, Ivie, please.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he sniffed.

Her fingers jerked, as if she was trying to squeeze his hand. Her chest rose slowly and fell, rose slowly and fell, it was easier to stare at her chest than her battered face. “Forgive me,” she wheezed.

He nodded. “I forgive you.”

Her head moved a little, a tiny nod.

“He’ll pay for this,” Agbe swore through his tears, “he won’t get away with what he did to you. He’ll pay for it.”

“No…” her words were coming much slower and sounding quieter, “no revenge…Ivie.” She swallowed and Agbe watched as the veins in her neck bulged. “No…more…thinking…about…me.” She wheezed. “Be…ha…ppy.” Her chest rose and fell, rose up slower and fell, and then there was nothing. No more rising, no more falling, no more wheezing breaths, no more sound. It was quiet.

Agbe wept.

He couldn’t even say that he’d liked her, but he couldn’t stop crying. The tears just kept falling. He was all she’d had. He should have taken better care of her. He’d spent so much time feeling trapped by her, he’d never thought about why she’d done what she had. Why had she lived like that? Why had she fallen so easily into drugs? She’d grown up with the ancestry bitch, what had her life been like? If he’d taken better care of her, this would not have happened, she wouldn’t have ended up here.

People came to take her body away. They wore gloves and covered their noses and Agbe fought them. He wasn’t ready to let her go yet, he wasn’t ready. Before he knew it there were hands holding him down. A needle pierced into his skin, he watched the blood flow from his vein, splashing into the clear vial, filling it, and then the vial being removed from the needle. They took the needle out and left Agbe alone in an empty room. He didn’t even know what Titi had smelled like. All he remembered of her smell now was the smell of death. Why hadn’t he cared enough to learn her favorite fragrance?

Eventually the tears stopped falling and Agbe felt numb inside.

The door opened. Agbe watched listlessly as the doctor walked in. He wasn’t wearing gloves or covering his nose with a mask. He adjusted his glasses and stared directly at Agbe.

“You tested negative for HIV and AIDS. You weren’t infected.”

Agbe just kept looking at the man, watching his lips move. He heard the words the doctor said, but he couldn’t get himself to feel much, he felt dead inside. How many people were going to die around him? When would all the death stop?

“Contrary to what you may believe, you are marked. The marked genes are in your DNA.”

Agbe blinked. So, he’d tested as marked. He didn’t feel anything, no joy, no fear, no sorrow, nothing.

“We’ve called the police, they’ll be here to pick you up and take you to the Lagos Community soon.” Because all marked people were required by law to live in a Marked Community. And apparently his blood was marked.

Agbe watched the doctor.

The doctor cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said, before walking out of the room and closing the door behind him.

Back to the Community. The Lagos Community this time, not Benin. What did it matter where he went? Lagos was better than Benin, he still had people in Benin, family. He didn’t want any more family, didn’t want to have to feel the pain of losing anyone else he cared about.

Two men in black uniforms came into his room. They carried their rifles close to their chest and stared apprehensively at him. They told him to get up, and he stood. They told him to move, and he walked. They led him out of the hospital, and he followed. They told him to get into the backseat of their black, rundown, police pickup truck, and he climbed in.

“What is your name?” One asked him.

He stared out into the night, pressing his head against the cool glass window as they drove down dark, unlit, streets. “Agberukeke.” Riffraff.

Ivie Ehizokhae was gone.

Chapter Sixteen

The doctor leaned forward in his seat. He eyed Agbe, carefully scrutinizing Agbe’s face, while he wiped at the lenses of his glasses. Agbe tried not to fidget. There was something unnerving about the direct way the doctor looked at him. What did he want?

“What’s wrong with my sister?” Agbe asked finally, breaking the silence.

The doctor placed the glasses back onto his face and then relaxed into his chair. He kept watching Agbe through his movements, locking eyes with Agbe, his black pupils staring intently into Agbe’s. Just when Agbe thought the man wasn’t going to say anything, the doctor reached into his desk and pulled out a file. Then he put his hand back into that drawer and pulled out a small, handheld device, with a screen at the top.

Agbe’s eyes widened when he saw it. Devices like that were common in the infirmaries in the Community. But as far as he knew, the unmarked world was still far, far, behind that kind of technology. They were still on flip phones for crying out loud. He tried to cover up his initial stun when he realized that the doctor’s gaze was still locked on his face. Agbe forced his gaze away from the device as if uninterested and then darted his gaze back when he realized someone who’d never seen such a blood testing device would be awed at the sight of it.

“I can see you know what this is,” the doctor said.

Agbe shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t.”

“Mm-hmm,” the doctor didn’t sound convinced. “Well then, I’ll tell you what it is. Every once in a while, the Marked Communities take pity on the unmarked world,” the doctor said wryly, “and they send us devices to help with healthcare. You do know what a Marked Community is, don’t you?”

Agbe bit into his bottom lip. Where was this going? Why wouldn’t the doctor just tell him that Titi was going to be fine? Why were they talking about the Community when Titi was still unconscious? “Yes,” he said, “I’ve watched films about the Marked, I know what a Marked Community is.”

“Films,” the doctor scoffed, “right.”

Agbe forced himself not to react to the doctor’s disbelieving tone. If the man didn’t have anything useful to tell him, then he wanted to go back to Titi’s bedside.

“Well then, this is a blood-testing device, one of many. This one is specifically used for testing if a patient has HIV or AIDS. It gives the result back in a matter of seconds.”

Agbe’s mind spun. What? He blinked hard trying to understand what the doctor was saying. “I’m not sure I understand you sir.”

The doctor cleared his throat. He tilted his head downwards, opened up the file in front of him, and peered into it. “According to the nurses, your sister was raped about two days ago?”

Agbe nodded, unable to speak.

“She has tested positive for MRA AIDS.”

Agbe shook his head. “I don’t know what that means. I mean…” why wasn’t his brain working properly? “I mean, I know what AIDS is, I’ve heard about it, but it’s not possible, she can’t have AIDS, we don’t get AIDS in the…” he broke off before he could finish that statement. He’d been about to say, ‘we don’t get AIDS in the Community’, he was so stupid. All he could do was hope that the doctor hadn’t caught his slip.

The doctor’s steady gaze lifted from the file back to studying Agbe’s face. “MRA stands for Marked Rapidly Advancing. It’s a tag on sicknesses that we only see with people who are Marked. Your sister probably contacted this AIDS when she was raped, and it’s advanced this quickly because of her background. Marked people, especially those who’ve lived a long time in a Marked Community, and who’ve been healed repeatedly by healing witches, are extremely susceptible to certain unmarked diseases. Whenever they contact them, it spreads at an astronomical rate.”

Agbe jumped to his feet. “Then I have to get her back to the Community.” There was no point playing coy, the doctor obviously knew that she was Marked. “I have to get her to a healing witch.”

The doctor sighed. “I’m sorry son, but it’s already too late. Maybe if we’d caught the illness yesterday, but now she doesn’t have that much longer to live. Unless you can teleport, by the time you get her to the closest Community, she’ll already be dead.”

Agbe collapsed. He just couldn’t bear his own weight any longer. His legs gave out underneath him and he dropped to his knees. There was already so much pain in his heart that the pain of the hard contact with the ground barely registered on him. He sat back on his heels and dropped his head into his hands. ‘Unless you can teleport…’ but he couldn’t, he was useless, again, unmarked, and because of his lack of a mark someone else he cared about was going to die.

Agbe wasn’t sure how long he stayed in that position kneeling, staring helplessly into the marble floor.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” the doctor called out.

Agbe was too distraught to pay them much attention. He just wanted to turn back the hands of time, go back to before he’d been born, before he’d been made useless. No wonder the ancestry bitch had left him for dead, she’d known what he’d be. She’d known that his mother would die in his arms because he didn’t have the power to protect or heal her. She’d known that his father would get blown to pieces because he didn’t have the power to warn him. She’d known that Titi would die because he couldn’t defend her. He’d been standing in the hotel room while Titi was raped. He should have been able to fight back against the man in blue, he should have been able to keep his home. What point was there in him being alive if he couldn’t keep the people he cared about from dying around him?

Agbe was so sick and tired of death. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m sorry to disturb you doctor, but I thought you’d like to know that the patient is awake,” a voice said from behind him, “she’s asking for her brother.” There was a lengthy pause. “She doesn’t look like she has much longer.”

“Thank you, nurse.”

The door closed with a slight click.

Agbe heard the sounds of a chair scraping along the ground. Heard footsteps approaching him. Saw the gleam of an extremely well-polished pair of black shoes.

“I need to take your blood, son, I need to test you to see if you’ve contacted the disease too. It won’t be too late to get you back to the Community for treatment.”

Agbe shook his head. “I don’t have it.” He’d bathed her, wiped off her blood, but it hadn’t gotten into his system, he didn’t think so. Honestly, he didn’t care anymore. What did he have left now? His uncle, somewhere in Benin, cousins. More people for him to get close to and then watch suffer and die due to his weakness. Maybe it would be best if he had the disease, he didn’t care anymore.

“Whether you have it or not, I’m law bound to check your blood. Not just for the disease, but also to see if you’re marked.”

Agbe acquiesced to her demands. He rose from the floor and went into the bathroom. Everything he did, he did mechanically. He filled the tub and tried not to think too much, but he couldn’t get the image of Titi’s battered body out of his mind. He had to do something. He had to make that son of a bitch pay. He walked back into the room when the bathtub was full and gently took off her clothes. She cried out in pain while he lifted her up to remove the shirt. He stopped and then she begged him not to. Agbe felt like his heart was shredding, but he couldn’t cry, not while she could see. He took of her skirt, stopping when he saw the dried up blood and cum between her legs.

“Please, Ivie,” she begged.

Agbe couldn’t move. He felt like hitting something, anything, he needed to release the pain, the rage, how could something like this happen to someone he cared about? Why?

“Ivie,” the gasping voice broke his heart.

He picked her up, trying not to move his arms around too much so he touched as little of her bruised body as possible. He paused outside the bathtub. “If we wash away the evidence, we’ll never be able to prosecute him, Titi.”

Her swollen eyes flickered a little, Agbe imagined he saw a flash of white between her left eyelids, but it didn’t last long. “Wake up Ivie,” she breathed in shakily, “this is the unmarked world,” she gasped, “and he’s the Commissioner of Police, while we’re nothing.” She inhaled and exhaled a few times before forging ahead. “We’ll never be able to prosecute him anyway. Help me get clean, please.” Once she was done speaking her head rolled to the side.

Agbe placed her into the water. He spent the next few minutes cleaning her with the softest wash towel he could find. He soothed her when she cried out in pain, and tried to console her when she wept. She kept shaking and muttering to herself and Agbe did his best to help her. When he was done, he lifted her up and carried her out of the tub and into the bed. He stared at the water before removing the stopper to drain the tub. It was reddened with her blood.

It was a long time before she was able to sleep. Agbe thought about getting pain pills, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. What if she woke up while he was gone, and she needed something? He decided he’d go in the morning, after her body had a bit more time to heal. Agbe sat on her bed, by her side, watching her sleep. He leaned his head back against the wall.

He was shaking. Agbe blinked drowsily. It took him a while to get his bearings and remember where he was. How could he have fallen asleep? The shaking continued. Agbe looked down and found Titi huddled into herself, shivering. The pillow was soaked in her sweat. He extended the back of his hand towards her forehead and before he even touched the skin, he felt the heat wafting out of her. She was burning up.

“Titi,” Agbe tried to wake her, “Titi!”

But she kept rolling, kept shivering, and kept sweating. Agbe didn’t know what to do. Could she have gotten an infection from one of her injuries? Agbe pulled his shirt off and put her into it, then he ran to the door, strapped on his sandals and ran back to her shivering mass on the bed. He picked her up, carried her out of their room and raced down the stairs.

It was the early hours of the morning. Agbe hailed a taxi, got himself and Titi into the backseat, and then asked the driver to take them to the nearest hospital. Throughout their journey, Titi didn’t wake up. She kept twisting and turning in his arms. Her shivering never stopped. Agbe ran out of the car when they reached the hospital, carrying Titi in his arms.

“Help me!” he screamed, “I need a doctor. Help me!” He looked widely around the empty waiting room, searching for sign of another human life. A side door flung open. A woman dressed in white, with a white cap, saw him and then drew back into the room. Moments later she came running out pushing a black gurney.

“What happened to her?” the woman asked.

Agbe rushed through the explanation, breathless, terrified, he’d never seen anyone sick before. People didn’t get this sick in the Community, they had verdant witches with healing herbs and healing witches for more serious ailments. His mother had been a healing witch, she’d healed all his cuts, his headaches, his colds. He gasped for air after he was done explaining what little he knew of Titi’s assault. He hadn’t even been able to ask her about it.

The woman introduced herself as a nurse, but Agbe was too distraught to catch her name. She asked him to wait in the lobby. He wanted to go with them, he didn’t want to leave Titi alone, but he obeyed the nurse and stayed outside. The door closed behind them and all Agbe could do was stand out there and wait, all the while wondering how they’d gotten here.

The faces blurred together as Agbe paced around the waiting room. They were giving him updates but none of the updates made sense. Titi was getting medication to reduce her pain. Titi’s injuries were being treated. Someone came to him and said that Titi needed to see a doctor but before she could see the doctor he had to pay. Two hundred thousand naira. Agbe absentmindedly reached into his pocket, pulled out his mamin’s wallet, and cut his hand on the inside. Bills kept filling up his wallet until the two hundred thousand in cash was paid. Titi would be taken care of, he was told, he could leave. Agbe shook his head. They were insane if they thought he was leaving without Titi.

Time passed in a flash. They kept updating him. Titi wasn’t recovering. Titi was getting worse. They’d called the doctor. The doctor was running tests. Didn’t he want to go home and rest? He needed to eat. He should take care of himself. Where were his parents? How was he related to Titi? They were still running tests. Agbe felt exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t leave, he needed to know that Titi was fine.

Finally, they took pity on him and said that he could stay with Titi. Tears of gratitude welled up in Agbe’s eyes. He thanked them profusely and followed behind while they led him to Titi’s room. They made a cot for him to sleep in by her bed and Agbe sat in it, unable to sleep. He kept watching Titi, hoping for signs of consciousness. Whatever they’d given her stopped her fever and sweats, but it didn’t wake her up.

The next day a doctor came to see him. The doctor was male, in his mid-forties. He had glasses on, wore a white lab coat over black slacks and a white shirt, and had a telescope hanging around the back of his neck. He told Agbe that Titi’s test results were back and asked Agbe to accompany him to his office.

Agbe walked into the doctor’s office. He glanced distractedly around the room, absentmindedly taking in the wooden desk with the picture frames on it, the walls were painted green, a blue calendar hung from the wall to the right. Emotionlessly, he looked over the calendar and found that he was unable to look away. It was the twenty-third of June. His birthday had passed without him even noticing it. Agbe slumped into the seat the doctor offered, thinking about how his mama and Ehimen had planned a surprise party for his seventeenth birthday. He would have been celebrating with them yesterday if they’d still been alive.

Chapter Fifteen

Agbe dunked his head into the water. He waited till his head was fully immersed before he screamed. His eyes burned, water rushed into his throat, but he just kept screaming, until the pain inside of him eased. He pulled his head out of the water, and stared at his reflection in the mirror. Drops of water glided down his face, trailing over the sharp edges of his defined cheekbones like teardrops. He blinked and water dropped from his curly lashes. He shook his head and the water suspended in his lowcut hair splashed over the white rim of the wash hand basin, over his grey t-shirt, down his back.

He blinked. Why did he keep doing this to himself? Agbe looked at himself in the mirror, staring at his red eyes and quivering lips.

“You love her far more than she’ll ever love you. She’ll come back of her own free will. The moment you tell her it was me who kicked you out, she’ll be back here, begging us to take her in.”

Just because the man in blue said it, didn’t make it true. But if she hadn’t gone back to him, then where was she? Where could she have gone? She had friends, maybe she’d gone to them. Then why hadn’t she told him before leaving? He was worried sick about her, and he had no way of getting in touch with her, no way of making sure she was safe.

Why did he care? He shouldn’t care, she’d just left without even talking to him. There was paper and pen on the desk in the hotel room, she could have left him a note.

Agbe struck the mirror with the side of his fist. He was sick and tired of worrying about Titi. Bleep! His heart kept pounding, he couldn’t sit still, couldn’t think of anything else. His stomach churned and he’d thrown up the akara and akamu he’d ordered for breakfast. He stormed out of the bathroom and began pacing around the bedroom.

He tried sitting and then remembered how he’d found Titi with the policemen handling her. Should he hire a taxi and go back to the house for her? Why had she left? Did she have a special relationship with the man in blue that Agbe didn’t know about? He wandered back towards the window, leaning forward until his forehead thumped against the glass. He began knocking his head lightly against the window while he stared out. There were not many cars parked in the hotel lot. Every time a new car pulled close Agbe would hold his breath and pray that it was Titi coming out, but it was never her. How long had it been already?

The room didn’t have a clock. No TV, no microwave, no fridge, no clock, just a bed and a desk. But it had still been dark outside when he’d woken up and the sun was close to setting now so that meant at least twelve hours, yet she still wasn’t back. He’d told himself that if she wasn’t back by midday then he’d leave without her, but he hadn’t been able to follow through on that plan of action. What if she was in trouble and he just left? It wasn’t like before when he would have left her with a house in her name and enough money to afford anything else she needed. Now she had nothing.

He’d given her twenty million naira, she should still have a lot of it. He didn’t have to stay, not after she’d left without telling him. But what if she was in danger? What if she went back to confront the man in blue? What if she needed him? Agbe perched against the desk and pulled the silver chain out from underneath his shirt. He stared at the bijou ring dangling from the end, and lifted it up so it was closer to his face.

“What would you do mama? Dad? She’s a royal pain in the ass, I mean, a world class bitch, but she’s family.” He stared at the shimmering surface of the clear bijou stone and ran his forefinger down the rim of the silver bijou metal. “She tried to rob me. Then she killed for me. I hate her most of the time, but I feel suffocated thinking that she could be in danger. What do I do mama? What would you do?” He knew what his mother would do. His mother had found a baby abandoned in the most dangerous place in the Community, saved his life, and raised him as her son. He could not abandon Titi, even after everything she’d done to him, he couldn’t leave until he knew she was safe.

Agbe expunged the breath from his throat, pushing it out so forcefully his exhale sounded like a blare through the silent room. He stuffed the ring back underneath his white singlet, then placed a hand over the outline of the ring on his shirt, to push it further into his chest, closer to his heart. He missed them so much, his mama, Ehimen, he missed his family.

He crawled back into the unmade bed and tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep. He just stared up, counting the ceiling boards.

It was fully dark, inside and out, when Agbe heard the door open. He thought for sure his mind was playing tricks on him because he didn’t remember Titi having a key to the room. Then again, he hadn’t checked to see if the key was in the drawer where he’d left it. Agbe sprung up from the bed and turned on the desk lamp.

His eyes bulged at the sight of her. He shot forward, in time to catch her when she released her hold from the doorknob and collapsed. He lifted her up and carried her to her bed. Then he went back to the doorway, checked to see that the hallway was empty, and then pulled the key out of the lock. He closed the door and locked it behind him.

“What happened?” Agbe was in shock. Her eyes were black and swollen shut, her lips were puffed and torn, and she had marks on her cheeks. Her neck was black with welts like she’d been strangled and, with her no longer holding it together, her shirt fell open, revealing bruises on her breasts and down her stomach. She was in a skirt now, but she hadn’t left the hotel in a skirt. This was one of her skirts though, which meant she’d gone back to their house. “Who did this to you?” Agbe’s voice shook.

She made a strangling sound and then there were tears on her face.

“Shh,” Agbe knelt by her bed. He didn’t touch her, afraid that he might hurt her. “It’s okay. We’ll go to the police.”

She shook her head, but it was a really slight motion, as if that little sway was the best she could do. “He’s the commissioner of police, we can’t touch him.” Her voice sounded hoarse, and breathy, so low he’d just barely heard her.

Agbe sat back on his heels. He swallowed. He wanted to say that she was wrong, that they could get justice, but he knew it wasn’t true. The unmarked world was so corrupt, they had no chance. But Agbe could get his own justice, he had the money, he could buy a gun and kill the motherfucker. He had to do something, he couldn’t just let something like this happen to Titi. He wanted to scream.

“Help me clean up, please. I feel so dirty.”

Agbe nodded. Her eyes still looked closed, so he wasn’t sure if she could see him. How had she gotten back? Did the man in blue know that they weren’t staying in the hotel he’d asked them to? Agbe had so many questions. Why had she left in the first place? He wanted to scream at her, why did she go back there? But she wasn’t in any frame of mind to hear anything he wanted to say.

“Let’s go to the hospital at least.”

“No,” she tried to reach for his arm but then she gasped and her breathing turned hoarse. She was in pain.

“Don’t move, it’s okay.”

“No hospital. Ivie. I’m. Too embarrassed. Just help me. Get clean. Please.” It was starting to hurt her to speak, he could hear it in the tone of her voice and the way she gasped in between words.

“Search him, make sure he’s not carrying any weapons.”

‘More like make sure he doesn’t have any bijous.’ Agbe knew, but he said nothing, just stood still while hands reached out to him and groped at his body. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to take it, endure. His breath caught in his throat when hands patted over his mother’s ring, hanging from a rope beneath his chest, but then the hands moved down without stopping and he could breathe again. They pulled out his cellphone and wallet.

“Just this sir,” one of the policemen held up the cellphone. The policeman stared at it oddly, as if he couldn’t figure out what it was, “and this,” he held up the black wallet the God-born had gifted Agbe.

“We’ll have to confiscate the phone,” the man in blue said.

“This one na phone? Which kind phone be this?” The policeman was in awe, but the man in blue knew exactly what it was. He knew its value. Apparently a million naira was too much to pass up. Agbe was being robbed. They coated it in legal terms, pretended as if they had a right to foreclose on his house, when really all it was was theft. And he had no way to stop it.

“How much is in the wallet?” The man in blue asked.

“Five hundred naira, sir.”

“He can keep it,” the man in blue replied. Agbe got his wallet back.

“Do you still want to pack up your things, son?” The man in blue asked.

Agbe’s head shot up. A burst of hope came alive in him like a tendril of warmth crawling through his veins. “Yes, please sir.”

The man in blue nodded. “I’m willing to help you out small, for a price. Agree to leave your sister here with us, and you can go and pack whatever you want. If you have any precious items, or anything like that, we’ll take half and leave you with half.”

Half of his family jewels was better than nothing. He would still feel like a failure but not a complete failure, he would have something to give to his cousins at least. But something about the man’s phrasing struck him as odd. “What do you mean leave my sister with you? You mean while I go and pack?”

The man in blue shook his head.

Agbe’s chest clenched. They wanted him to leave Titi to them, forever. “She’s just an innocent girl, what do you want with her?”

The man in blue didn’t even have the conscience to look ashamed. He just sat there, stealing from Agbe, asking Agbe to save himself and leave Titi with them, all the while he sat there nonplussed, as if what he was doing was right. How could anyone this evil exist? Agbe struggled to process it.

“Do you want to pack your things or not?” the man in blue asked.

“Bleep you! You’re crazy if you think I’m going to leave my sister with you, you pervy old creep!”

A hand clamped onto Agbe’s arms, holding them fast behind him, while a policeman walked in front of him. The policeman lifted up his rifle, then started lowering it, the butt of the gun first, poised to strike hard against Agbe’s head.

Then the man in blue laughed. “Leave him alone,” he ordered. The policeman lowered his gun and the one holding his arms let him go so roughly that Agbe fell to the floor and bruised his hip. When he got up, the man in blue was standing in front of him.

He looked just as somber as he had during their entire conversation. “You love her far more than she’ll ever love you,” he said to him, “she’ll come back of her own free will. The moment you tell her it was me who kicked you out, she’ll be back here, begging us to take her in.” Then he stepped out of the way and jerked his head to the side. “Take them to the hotel.”

Agbe didn’t know how to react to the man in blue’s words. He was James brother, maybe he thought that Titi would come back for James. Which meant he didn’t know that James was dead. Did he know that James had come to their house before him? Agbe didn’t have time to ponder on his thoughts. He slapped away the hand that reached for Titi. “I’ll carry her myself,” as if he could forget that they’d been groping her when he walked in.

The policeman just shrugged and returned his hands to his rifle.

Titi was still passed out, but she was breathing. She had streaks of dried up mucus underneath her nose. Agbe put one arm underneath her knees and the other under her back. He’d picked her up so many times like this, carried her to bed, taken care of her. All the while she’d been telling their secrets to James, planning with him to take everything that Agbe had. Agbe wondered if Titi knew about this part of James plan, getting his brother involved, using the Nigerian police to force them out of their house. At the end she’d chosen him over James, she’d killed James for him. She’d lied, from the very beginning, everything she’d ever said to him had been a lie, but she’d killed to protect him. She looked so innocent when she was asleep. Even with her mascara running down her face, and half off the fake eyebrows hanging off her eyelids, she still looked innocent.

Agbe walked out of the house he’d bought with his mamin’s bracelet, carrying Titi in his arms. The policemen led him to a pickup truck and held the doors open for him to get in. They were left alone in the backseat. Agbe cradled Titi in his arms, resting his forehead against hers. He could have gotten half of his mamin’s jewels if he’d left Titi with them. He hadn’t even considered it. The car jerked as they rode over the black metal gates. Agbe looked to the side, staring at his garden, at the sea of green leaves and the white cala lilies rising up from them like lighthouses in the middle of a deep, vast, ocean. They drove out of the compound and the outer wall cut off Agbe’s view.

He wanted to cry, to weep at his own ineptness, but he was sick and tired of crying. He was tired of the pain, tired of how much everything hurt. He should never have gone with Titi, he should have gone his own way once she’d shown her insanity, swallowing up his uncle’s address. Even with everything that had happened, Agbe knew he would make the same choice. He couldn’t have let Titi enter into the unmarked world alone and without a kobo to her name. It would have been cruel, and mama hadn’t raised him to be that heartless.

Agbe closed his eyes against the passing scenery, the sight of mansions and hefty gates. It had been a long time since he prayed but he had nothing else now. All he had was his blood, he was a descendant of the Enikaro, and the faith in Duraya taught that the elements listened to descendants of the Enikaro, whether they were elemental witches or not. This he could do, marked or unmarked, and so he did.

“I am Ivie Ehizokhae, so named by my grandmother, Ehizokhae one, the God-born, daughter of Duraya, Nature’s own, Uhonmon the first, Omoye.” Agbe mouthed the words, whispering them too low for the policemen to hear, but not too low for the elements, he hoped. “I am of you, born of Edo soil, and I beg you, you who are of me who are of you, if you so hear me, seal off my grandmother’s jewels. Let no one not of Ehizokhae blood ever be able to claim them. I ask this humbly of you, you who are of me who are of you. Please hear me.” There was no response to his plea. Elements were very territorial, they liked to stay on their own soil, Agbe didn’t know if it was a longshot hoping that even an iota of Edo elements had followed him, but in the case that they had, he hoped they would hear his prayer. The window of the pickup was rolled down, so he felt the wind against his face, slapping him, reminding him that he was still alive, even if he didn’t know for how long.

He kept his eyes closed, even when the pickup’s siren began to blare. There was so much noise, hawkers on the street, bus drivers screaming their route, car horns beeping, and underneath it all was the continuous ‘wee-waw’ of the police siren. The truck lurched upwards and downwards underneath him and the poorly cushioned metal poked into his butt, through the car seat. Agbe had no idea where they were taking them. He wouldn’t be surprised if they drove them to a ditch somewhere and shot them.

When the car finally came to a stop, it was in front of a hotel. Agbe was stunned, they’d actually brought them to a hotel. It was a cheap hotel, but it was a hotel nonetheless, not a ditch, not a police station, a hotel. That actually frightened Agbe more. He carried Titi out of the truck, took her into the lobby and then sat on a couch while the policemen arranged for their room. He just stared at the bustle of the lobby, the solicitous smiles of the people at the front desk, the yellow light bulbs, the picture of the unmarked president and state governor hanging on the wall. How many years had he spent staring at pictures of his grandmother without ever knowing who she was to him? The policemen returned. They led him to a room on the second floor and then left with assurances that they would be back the next day with his stuff. Not that Agbe believed them.

He waited till he was sure they’d left, then he went back down to the lobby, ducked out the side door, and hailed the first taxi he could find parked outside the hotel. There was no way he was going to stay like a sitting duck, waiting for the man in blue to come finish him off at his own leisure.

He still had his wallet, the one that his mamin gave him, and he’d only spent a hundred thousand from that secret money. He still had nine hundred left, more than enough to get him and Titi back to Benin, away from the reach of the Lagos State Police Commissioner.

The sun had already started to set when Agbe carried Titi into the back of the taxi. He asked the driver to take them as far away as he could and sat in the back of the taxi for two hours, watching behind him to make sure they weren’t being followed. They weren’t. The man in blue had thought he’d only left them with five hundred naira, of course he expected them to stay put. Agbe didn’t relax until he’d gotten himself and Titi into a non-descript room, in a hotel right out the outskirts of Lagos City. First thing in the morning they were getting on a bus and getting out of Lagos State.

“Ivie?”

Agbe swiveled. He’d been staring out the window, watching the cars and making sure a black police truck didn’t suddenly appear. The hotel he’d found was decent. Two clean beds, twin size, a bathroom with a shower and tub, toilet, a desk in the room, small closet. It was for a night, it would have to do.

Agbe walked back to the bed he’d laid Titi out on. He sat beside her. “Hey.”

She blinked. Then frowning, she ripped off the fake eyelashes, and swiped the back of her hand over her eyes. “Where are we?” she asked, blinking.

Agbe told her all of it. There was no point hiding any detail and so he didn’t bother. She cried for a long time after that, silent whimpers that tore at his heart and made him feel guilty when it was really all her fault. How could she have told James about what they had? How could she have trusted that man so easily? Agbe didn’t understand it, but he was tired of hating her. It hurt too much, so he snuggled into bed with her and stroked her back, trying to calm her. Tomorrow they’d be in Benin, he promised her, they’d be out of the Police Commissioner’s reach. She didn’t have to worry, he still had enough money to get them to Benin and put them in a nice hotel, Benin was cheaper than Lagos. Nothing he said consoled her, so after a while he just stopped speaking and held her while she fell apart.

He fell asleep minutes after she did.

When he woke up the next morning, he was alone in the room. Titi was gone.

Chapter Fourteen

Agbe was running down the stairs before he even had a chance to come up with a plan of action. He was midway down the staircase when he realized what most likely drew the police. The gunshots. It had to have been that, James firing bullets all over their house. One of their neighbors had probably been frightened and called the police. That made sense.

Agbe descended the stairs more calmly now. The first thing he noted when he got to the first floor was that the front door had been burst in. Two policemen in black uniforms with rifles in their hands, stood just outside the door. They didn’t turn around when Agbe went down, which probably meant they hadn’t heard him. Good.

He kept going, opening the side door to the living room, slowly. He walked in and found at least ten policemen standing around the living room. There were three hurdled around the main sofa, the one Titi normally slept on whenever she passed out.

“See the way the breasts soft and firm.”

“See yansh, skin smooth like say na omomo.” The sound of flesh striking softly against flesh sounded and then male voices rose in joined laughter.

Agbe pushed between policemen, too enraged to think through his actions, and burst into the living room. “What is the meaning of this?” He yelled.

Titi lay passed out on the sofa, vulnerable, while male hands fondled her. “Leave my sister alone! Get your filthy hands off her!”

They laughed at him, but they took their hands off and transferred their holds to the rifles hanging from straps around their necks. Agbe kept walking until he was standing in front of Titi, blocking her from their gaze. His gaze dropped to the lines of white powder on the center table. What if this time she wasn’t breathing? A cold terror seized Agbe, gripping his heart and making it hard for him to breathe. He covered his fear by glaring at the policemen.

They stared right back at him. Gaping mouths revealed a boundary of browning teeth around an island of white-pink tongues, and wide eyes showed off yellow-stained eyeballs with traces of red veins pulsing out. Agbe loathed how the unmarked gaped at him. He tried to increase the potency of his glare to compensate for their rude staring. He was generous with his wrathful look, transferring it from the policeman standing closest to him, to the one who leaned against the single-seat couch, and then the one that stood closest to the Community smuggled widescreen TV. His fuming glare continued its irate perusal, drifting past the TV, to the policeman with broad shoulders, wearing a white shirt that poked out from beneath his black uniform, then to the much shorter one standing beside him, to the man in blue seated on the chair, then to the…

Agbe’s eyes darted back. There was a man in blue seated on his living room chair. This one didn’t wear black like the other policemen, didn’t stand at attention carrying a terrifying rifle, he just leaned into the chair, making himself at home, his left hand flung over the back of the chair and his right hand tapping against his potbelly.

There was something familiar about this man. He wore a light blue uniform, with black shoulder pads and had medals hanging above the breast pocket of the shirt. Agbe had never seen the man before, but he felt a vague sense of resemblance staring at the sand brown skin of the man’s face.

Agbe cleared his throat. “Can I help you?” He directed his question at the man who was seated, guessing that he was the one in charge.

The man cleared his throat. “We are here to enforce a foreclosure.” His voice was deep and low. It boomed a little when he spoke, echoing off the walls. Agbe had never encountered anyone who looked quite so severe. Agbe could tell this man was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He had that no-nonsense kind of countenance.

Agbe gulped. “I…” he cleared his throat and tried again, “I don’t understand sir.”

The man turned slightly to his left and Agbe watched the rolls of fat on his neck as he moved. The man jerked his head at the short policeman beside him, and that one made a hand-to-the-head, feet-stomping, gesture Agbe assumed was meant to be a salute, then he took his right hand from the rifle he’d been holding and reached into his shirt. He pulled out a sheet of paper and then marched, more like stomped, towards Agbe. He handed Agbe the sheet.

Agbe wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever it was, he could already tell that he didn’t like it. He took the paper from the man, unfolded it, and read over the black typed words. The more he read, the worse the twisting feeling in his stomach became. According to the paper, the person they’d bought the house from had put the property up for collateral in getting a loan and then proceeded to default on the loan. As a result, the bank was seizing the asset.

He gaped at the sheet, darted a terrified gaze at the man in blue, who continued to lounge completely relaxed in the chair, and looked back at the sheet. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. His head hurt, it hurt so bad he rose his fingers to his temples and gently massaged them.

“I paid for this house in full,” Agbe said, “I have the deed.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this young man, but you were cheated.”

Agbe shook his head. “I have the documents. Legally signed and witnessed and everything. Let me go and get them.” He took a step to the side, towards the side door, but was forced to stop when a rifle was extended in front of him, blocking his way. He looked desperately at the man in blue.

“How do we know you’re not going to get a weapon? Young man like yourself, how can you afford a house like this? You have to be a criminal.”

That was absurd! “Send policemen with me, they’ll make sure I don’t get any weapons.”

“Hmm,” the man in blue leaned his head to the side and stared at Agbe, sizing him up. He rubbed his right thumb and forefinger against the beards under his chin. Then he shook his head. “No. It’s too dangerous, I won’t risk the lives of my men. You have to leave the house now, we’ll search you and then escort you out.”

Agbe frowned. That didn’t make any sense! He stared at the man in blue, at the forbidding expression on his face. He seemed serious enough, a man who meant business, why wouldn’t he let Agbe bring the evidence that could show the house was his? Agbe looked around the room, at the men and the rifles in their hands. They were past their gaping, now they just looked mean and far too serious for Agbe’s comfort. He hated how close their hands were to the triggers. Seriously, what was up with this day? First James, now these men. As soon as Agbe thought of James, it was as if a light went off in his head. He looked back at the man in blue, his sand brown skin, skin the same complexion as James.

‘James knows people, his brother is the Lagos State Police Commissioner.’

No wonder he’d looked so familiar, he was James’ brother, he had to be. Had he planned this with James? First James would secure the bijous and then they would come in here with this bogus claim to kick him out of his own house. Agbe wondered if the man in blue knew James was dead. James’ body…it hadn’t been in the foyer when Agbe ran down the stairs. The foyer had been empty. What the Bleep happened to James’ body? Had this man seen it, did he carry it out? Were they about to kill Agbe and Titi?

Agbe took a step back, eyes wide and heart hammering. What was he going to do? He didn’t want to die. Why was it that he’d been eager to go with James pulling the trigger but not now, not like this? James had been different, and he’d been pissed at Titi at the time. Maybe in a way he’d hoped his death would haunt Titi. But this, being gunned down in the living room Agbe had spent the last month avoiding, with Titi passed out, at the mercy of these men, he just couldn’t go like this.

“I understand sir, you’re just trying to do your job,” he said, forcing his eyes to stay on the man in blue. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep them from shaking. “If you need me and my sister to leave now, we’ll leave. Just let me pack up a few of my things first, please.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you do that son,” the man in blue said, even-tempered. “I understand that this is all coming as a shock to you, you paid for a house, and lived in it, thinking you owned it. It’s 419, what was done to you, very fraudulent. So, we’ll put you up in a hotel for a month while you try to fight this in court. In the meantime, we’ll pack up your belongings for you and send them along to the hotel, tomorrow.”

“This isn’t right, and you know it. All I’m asking is to go upstairs and pack up my things. If you’re here lawfully, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be okay with me doing that?” Agbe tried to appeal to the man in blue.

A ring of metal jabbed painfully into his right side. Agbe pulled away from it, rubbing at the sore skin. The policeman kept the muzzle against his skin, close enough that Agbe would know it was there, but not so close that it poked into his flesh a second time.

“You should be thanking our oga, instead of running your mouth. Haba, he’s treating you like his son, telling you that he will put you in a hotel sef. If you no want go hotel, make we throw you for inside cell na.”

It was about the bijous, probably about this property too. The man in blue was James brother and James knew they were alone in the unmarked world, thanks to Titi, he knew they’d just come out from the Community. He knew they had no one, no protection, nothing, and he’d made a plan with his brother to take advantage of that. Agbe wasn’t certain what emotions to feel. He wanted to cry from the unfairness of it, wanted to yell at the top of his lungs, raging out insults and curses. He wanted to kill them, every single corrupt one of them, he wanted to end their lives.

He remembered the InCoSeM rep, the commune Paul. Remembered the fear that had been in the man’s eyes when he looked at him, ‘What are you?’ and his mamin, his mamin had said he was special, something even she couldn’t see. He’d killed the other InCoSeM rep with commune magic, Agbe knew it, he knew he’d done that. He had to be a commune, he had to have magic, it was in him somewhere. All he had to do was find it and unleash it on these people. He could kill them all.

Communes needed emotions to start their magic. Agbe tried to draw on his, he had so much pain, the pain from losing his family, the pain from being betrayed and backstabbed over and over again by Titi, the anguish of being treated so unfairly by James and now his brother. Agbe had so much pain and all he wanted to do was let it out. Kill. Destroy. He could do it, he knew he could. And he tried, he reached for his pain, reminding himself of all the ways he’d been wronged. Heck, he’d been wronged from the moment he was born, he’d been left in a forest to die. He hurt so much his chest felt like it was ripping to shreds.

But nothing happened, there was no red in his eyes, no one fell to the ground dead, nothing. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t force magic out when he didn’t have any. Wishful thinking didn’t make him marked, if it could, he would have been marked a long time ago.

Agbe’s head dropped in failure. They wanted his bijous, they weren’t going to let him pack up. All he could do was hope that they didn’t mean to get rid of him and Titi in the process. “Thank you, sir, for your generous offer,” Agbe forced himself to say, “we’ll wait in the hotel for our things.” Tears filled his eyes and his heart ached. He couldn’t remember when exactly his life had turned into this. He was useless, he couldn’t even safeguard his family’s jewels. Completely useless.

Titi moved over to James, cradled his body in her arms and rocked it, crying. Her eyes were still red, all red, no iris, no pupil, just a red sclera.

It took him a while before he found his voice. “You’re a commune,” he stated unnecessarily. She was a commune still in her mark, in the mark she’d gone into to save him from James. She’d killed James for him. Agbe knew this, knew that he should be processing this, knew that he should feel some gratitude, but all he felt was an even deeper sense of betrayal. She’d lied to him pretty much from the start of their relationship.

“Don’t look at me like that, I read the paper before I swallowed it, I have your uncle’s address memorized.” She’d said.

“And that’s supposed to be comforting?” He’d asked.

“I’m an omem,” she’d said, “I couldn’t forget it, even if I wanted to.”

And he’d believed her. An omem, a sage with photographic memory, one who could glance at a sheet of paper and remember every detail of it on her deathbed. But she wasn’t a sage, wasn’t an omem. She was a warlock, a pain commune who could end a life with a single glance. A commune not an omem.

“I’m leaving.” Agbe’s shaking had finally stopped. He pulled himself to his feet.

Her red eyes snapped up to him. She was still in her mark. Normally, communes frightened him, he would have been terrified to have a commune who’d just killed staring at him with crimson red eyes. But he knew she wouldn’t hurt him. She would drive him to the point of delirium, but apparently, she couldn’t let him die.

“I just killed the man I love to protect you, and you’re leaving me?”

Agbe turned his back on her. “I’ll leave the rest of mamin’s bracelet with you. Eighty million naira, should be enough to show my gratitude.”

“I want you, not your money!” She yelled after him. “Don’t do this to me Ivie, don’t leave me alone. Please, I love you. Don’t leave me. I’m scared.”

Lies, Agbe reminded himself, Titi was nothing but a liar. She spouted pretty lies but that’s all she had to offer. A part of him wanted to stay with her even knowing that she’d been lying to him from the start, knowing that she’d enlisted her boyfriend to rob him at gunpoint. That part of him was satisfied that in the end she’d killed James for him. He’d gotten so used to settling for scraps of Titi’s affection that what she’d just done seemed like a feast. She had to love him, if not why would she kill for him? Agbe couldn’t believe how hard it was to convince himself that he didn’t need Titi’s brand of love. He’d been with her for under four weeks and she already had him this twisted inside. Hating her, loving her, wishing her dead, wanting to keep her safe, he needed normal. He needed normal so bad his chest hurt from the longing.

So, he kept walking, one foot in front of the other, climbing up the stairs, ignoring her whimpers, her cries for him not to leave her. The messed-up thing was, if he’d thought she was still an omem, if he could talk himself into believing that she would eventually take him to his uncle, he probably would have turned back around and comforted her. But he couldn’t delude himself anymore, she was a commune, commune’s couldn’t glance at a piece of paper and remember the address. She didn’t have it memorized. She didn’t know where his family was, which meant she was of absolutely no use to him.

As soon as Agbe walked into his room, he headed for the walk-in closet. He’d never unpacked the bag he’d started packing when they’d fought two days ago. The bag was still there, with the sack of bijous buried at the bottom. All he had to do was finish up the packing. Agbe pulled out the drawer with his earphones and picked up the small black wireless ones with the plastic bits that crawled over the back of his ears. He tapped on the earphones and let the familiar notes of the Marked band drift into his ears. He’d spent about two million naira on the touchscreen phone in his pocket. It was the cheapest kind that the Community sold, it would cost two hundred comnai, but the prize rose exponentially because it was smuggled out of the Community and sold in the unmarked world. The unmarked world was so far behind, they didn’t even have flip cellphones commonly available. Agbe longed for the Community for the world that he knew.

‘If I had just one more year to live,
I’d be in you,
24/7,’ clap,
‘365,
Knocking on your door,
We’ll be up all night.’

The lyrics swirled around in Agbe’s head, reminding him of the concert he’d been to with his friends, how Prisca had grinded against him while he grinded into Larry. The feel of the ground shuddering against the sole of his feet, the screaming, everyone belting out notes, trying and failing, to harmonize with the rock band. Their lead singer had been a stag werejackal, with silver eyes and short curly black hair dyed blonde. Tears filled Agbe’s eyes. The concert hadn’t ended till 4 am the next morning and the three of them had to sneak back into Madam Celia’s without his mum finding out they’d stayed out all night. They’d snuck past all the doors, creeping on tiptoes past the rooms of whores who were still working, until finally they reached theirs. Then they’d walked in, congratulating themselves, only to turn on the light and find his mama sitting on his bed, waiting for them.

Agbe was so absorbed by thoughts of the past, it took him much longer than it should have, to hear the loud thuds coming from outside his gate. He frowned. It was a banging sound, like someone was repeatedly battering into metal. The shriek of metal grinding against stone followed that banging.

Agbe tore the earphones out of his ears and flung them on his bed, as he raced towards the balcony connected to his room. He twisted the key in the hole, jerked down on the doorhandle and pulled the door open. Then he ran barefooted out to the stone balcony that looked out at the front of the compound. There were seven black police pickups outside of his gate, and six policemen in front, jabbing into his gates with a battering ram.

Agbe’s heart pounded. He gripped the stone railing for dear life. His gate was wobbling badly. Another jab and Agbe’s eyes widened. The gate tore free of its hinges and came crashing loudly into the cement pavement of his compound. The policemen ran back into the back of their pickups and five of those cars drove right into his compound, unannounced and uninvited. They drove over the fallen metal gates, flattening the loops of barbed wire under their tires. Agbe’s wide eyes darted around for possible help. There were only two other compounds close by. People came up on balconies like he did, but they glanced at the police vehicles and went back into their houses.

Agbe ducked when he saw the policemen climbing out of their cars. He raced back into his room and closed the door behind him. Then he sunk to the ground, leaning heavily on the door, and stared in a daze ahead. The police had broken into his house. What could they want? His heart continued to thump madly in his chest.

He tried to think of a plan. There’d been two cars left parked outside his gate, he couldn’t just make a run for it if even if he wanted to. Maybe he could hide up here and pray they’d leave? No, he shook his head, he wasn’t a criminal, he hadn’t done anything wrong. This was his house, bought lawfully and he had the deed to prove it. They were the ones who were wrong, barging into his house without a warrant. What right did they have? In the Community no guard would have dared break into any house without just cause. Maybe it was a misunderstanding?

Agbe decided his only recourse was to confront them. It wasn’t like there was anything else he could do, he couldn’t hide forever, and they’d blocked all the exits to the house, so he couldn’t run away. If only Titi had turned out to be an anger commune instead of a pain one, she could have teleported them out of here. Titi! Agbe sprang to his feet and darted out of his room. He ran to hers, hoping that she would be in her room. He burst through the door and found the room empty, the bed made, just the way he’d left it. Titi was downstairs.

Chapter Thirteen

Agbe was walking back from his morning ride when he saw the black Corvette parked between the Jeep and the Benz. He gritted his teeth. Two more days, Titi just had to hold out for two more days, and she couldn’t even do that. She’d promised him that she wouldn’t let her friends come around anymore, of course she couldn’t keep the promise. Sometimes Agbe hated her so much, he almost wished she’d just OD on the pills she couldn’t stop herself from taking. The black Corvette meant that it was James in the house.

He struggled with controlling his temper as he made his way towards the front door. He kicked a pebble that was in his way, and then turned around and slammed the side of his fist into the wall. James! Of all the creeps she’d brought around, why did it have to be James returning, the only one who knew about his bijous. He stopped walking and stared longingly at the looming black metal gates. He could just go into the house, grab his bijous and leave. Why did he stay? Why couldn’t he leave Titi to her own devices? Why did his heart feel like it was ripping to pieces whenever she cried? Why did he keep going to take care of her when she passed out? Why was he doing this to himself?

He couldn’t come up with an answer and that was what hurt the most. He couldn’t leave, even though staying was hell. There were only two days left, why couldn’t Titi hold up her own end of the deal for two fucking days?

Agbe stomped angrily into the house. He slammed the front door behind him, and marched determinedly through the foyer, past the open door to the living room.

“Ivie, come join us.” The faux British accent only goaded at Agbe’s temper. It made him want to run over to that man and rip his head off his shoulders. He just couldn’t understand why Titi would do this to him. After everything he’d done for her, why couldn’t she care about him just a little, and keep her friends away like he’d asked?

“Ivie!” Titi screamed, “come! James wants to talk to us! He has an amazing offer for the bijous!”

“Bleep you!” Agbe screamed back at her. He was done. This was the last straw. He was going to go up the stairs, pack up his stuff and leave. He’d find his uncle and his cousins another way.

He kept walking.

He’d just gotten to the foot of the stairs when he heard that sickening attempt at a British accent again. “Now is that any way to talk to your older sister? If you were my little brother, I would slap that dirty mouth of yours clean.”

Agbe had a number of choice words he wished to say to that creep, but he refrained from speaking. Go up, pack up, leave. It was his plan and finally, he was sticking to it. Titi could go and Bleep herself as far as he was concerned. He’d had enough. She just had to keep her friends away for five days, and she couldn’t even do that.

The sound of the gunshot took Agbe by surprise. He froze when he heard it, he stopped on the third step in the staircase, and couldn’t bring himself to move forward. It was like his mother’s death was happening all over again. He lived it all, heard the boom of the bullet being released from its chamber, felt his mother’s wrist slipping out from his hold. Mama. He blinked, back in that room, staring at her corpse, the bloodstain on her chest. Mama.

“I’m not Titi, boy, don’t ignore me when I’m talking to you.”

“Baby, what’s going on? Why do you have a gun?”

Agbe was still in the past, still stuck in that room in Madam Celia’s, watching his mother die.

“Ivie?” Warm arms wrapped around his waist, forcing him to move, to turn away from his dying mother. “Ivie, are you okay?” A lean dark face met his gaze. She looked odd in Madam Celia’s, she didn’t belong. She had too much make-up on her face, Madam Celia would never allow any of her whores to be dressed like this. “Ivie, you’re scaring me.” He blinked and the paralysis from the gunshot faded away. He could see Titi clearly, could see the psychopath standing in front of them, holding a silver pistol with the nozzle pointed at the ground.

“Put the gun away, babe, you’re scaring him,” Titi scolded.

The man’s eyes narrowed on Agbe. “He needs to understand how things are going to be from now on. I won’t let him disrespect you.”

Agbe’s eyes were trained on the pistol. He watched it tapping against navy blue jeans, saw the sand brown fingers wrapped tightly around the pistol’s black grip, watched the forefinger that stroked teasingly along the surface of the black trigger.

Titi giggled. She rubbed her hand consolingly down Agbe’s upper arms. “Put the gun away, Ivie won’t be any trouble, will you?”

Agbe forced his eyes away from the gun. He looked at Titi. Her eyes gleamed, she was smiling wide, looking happier than Agbe had ever seen her. He didn’t know what to think. “What’s going on here?”

“Your sister has kindly invited me to stay with her. I’m moving in.”

The reply came from James, but it was Titi that Agbe looked at. He watched her face, watched as her upturned lips flattened when her gleaming eyes turned away from James, falling on him instead. She glanced at the ground guiltily and then she looked back at him. “We need someone to take care of us Ivie, someone to look out for us, make sure our wealth is protected. James knows people, his brother is the Lagos State Police Commissioner. We’re safe with him.”

Agbe wondered if this had been her plan all along. He felt like the biggest fool on the planet. Of course, she wasn’t willing to let him go. Of course, she’d lied to him. Of course, she would do anything to keep his mamin’s bijous for herself. Of course. How could he still be surprised by the depths of her insincerity?

He just shook his head and stepped out of her grasp. He took one last long look at her, at the smiling eyes that begged him to trust her. At the way she appeared hurt when he denied her touch. How could a person that showed her emotions so plainly be so duplicitous?

“I’m doing this for your own good, Ivie,” she pouted, “because I love you. You don’t understand what the world is, I’m just trying to keep us safe.”

An eerie calm fell over him. He flicked his gaze away from Titi’s lying face, uninterested. James smiled at him. Agbe supposed the look was meant to be reassuring. “I won’t hurt you Ivie, I know you’re just coming out from the Community, you don’t understand the unmarked world. I’m going to teach you how to navigate it, how to rule it. I’ll take care of you, I swear.”

Agbe snorted. He stared flatly into James’ cunning eyes. “The only way you’re going to get my grandmother’s jewels is over my dead body.”

James’ jaw clenched. The hold on the pistol’s grip tightened. “Don’t tempt me boy.”

Titi gasped. “Ivie, you don’t mean that. You’re not selfish, I know you’re not, you can share your wealth with us, you have more than enough for the three of us to live well. Why are you trying to keep it all for yourself?”

Agbe didn’t even look at her. “Stop talking to me, crazy bitch, I should have known you’d be just as heartless as your sister.”

The gun went off again and this time Titi screamed. Agbe glanced at the bullet hole in the ceiling, and watched as James lowered the gun till it was pointed at him.

“If you don’t start showing some gratitude, the next bullet will be in your head. We don’t need you boy, keeping you alive is a mercy.”

The truth of those words ripped Agbe’s calmness to shreds. The bijous were there, in a sack, anyone could take them, they didn’t need him. His lower lip trembled. He just couldn’t understand how Titi could do this to him. What had he done to deserve this? He wanted to scream at the unfairness of the situation, but he couldn’t. The fact of the matter was, from this moment on, they would practically own him. They would take his bijous and he’d be lucky if they ever let him leave. Agbe knew he couldn’t live like that.

“Do it then,” he stared James in the eye, “because there’s no fucking way I’m going to be your slave.”

The look of warm affability faded from James face. He steadied the gun on Agbe and the finger on the trigger pulled back slowly. Agbe’s heart pounded, sweat pooled on his upper lip and trickled down his back. His lips trembled and his eyes, opened wide, teared up, but he clamped his teeth shut, swallowing down the urge to beg for his life.

“No!” Titi yelled. “No, it’s not supposed to happen like this! James stop!”

James flicked his eyes in Titi’s direction. “Don’t worry darling, we’ll do better without him.” Then the gaze darted back towards Agbe. “This is how I wanted it anyway.” James’ finger pushed back on the trigger.

“No!”

The gunshot rang out.

It took Agbe a while to process that he was still alive and that it was James who fell. Agbe blinked, stunned. His heart was still racing, pounding so hard he heard the beat in his ears. Once he saw James crash into the ground, he started shaking. He couldn’t stop himself. This was the second time that a muzzle had been pointed at him and he’d narrowly escaped death. Blood mingled with a white frothy substance and dripped from James’ nose and mouth. Agbe wished he could take the credit for James death, but he knew he couldn’t. Titi’s red eyes wept. Agbe was still shaking, he tried to steady himself, but the shaking wouldn’t stop. He’d thought for sure he was dead.

He collapsed into the steps and held his hands down on his lap.

They released each other’s hands, and Agbe nodded and began climbing the stairs. He didn’t look back, just took it one step at a time up the spiral staircase, till he’d gotten to the second floor. He heard the slight footsteps behind him, but he refused to turn around. Instead, he gritted his teeth and kept going until he was safely within the walls of his room.

He’d just closed the door when it opened back up behind him.

“Isn’t he great?” Titi’s wistful voice was the last straw.

He picked up the glass cup on the side table in his room, whirled around, and threw it at her.

Her reddened eyes widened. She dodged out of the way. “Are you insane?”

“I was going to ask you that! Since when did my family heirlooms become yours to trade away? Did I tell you that I wanted to sell them off?” He yelled so loud that his throat hurt.

“I was just trying to help you out. What good are bijous in the unmarked world? The money is better. We need the money.”

Agbe shook his head. “The bijous are my family heirlooms. The God-born gave them to me to give to my cousins. And we don’t need anything. There’s not going to be a ‘we’ in five days.”

She teared up. “Five days. Five days!” She yelled back at him. “You’re counting down? Well let me tell you, I can decide not to give you that address in five days and there’s nothing you can do about it! ‘We’ will be stuck together whether you like it or not!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, you crazy bitch, give me the address or don’t, whatever you choose, in five days, me and you are done!”

“Then why wait five days? Just leave now!”

“Fine!” Agbe threw his hands in the air. “Fine.” He shook his head. “I can’t live like this anymore anyway. Watching you get high out of your mind every day. Cleaning up your vomit. Putting you to bed. I didn’t sign up for this crap. You wanted to get settled in the unmarked world, you’re settled. I’m done.” He turned his back on her and headed straight for his walk-in closet. It felt as if a weight had been lifted. He’d been carrying her for three weeks and he’d felt every second of that time. Worrying about her, feeling sorry for her, feeling responsible, well he’d had enough. He grabbed a suitcase, opened it up, and started throwing clothes into it. He would get on a bus back to Edo state, to Benin city, the same way they’d left, then he’d stay in a hotel until he could find a place for himself. He started putting together the plan he’d already been making. Hire a private investigator to find his uncle Ejehmen and the rest of his family. He’d have to use more of the bijou beads, but it would just be for himself and he didn’t need a mansion, just a small hotel room, then a one-bedroom apartment until he could find his family. He wasn’t going to throw away money that didn’t belong to him. Not anymore. It felt so unbelievably good to have a plan of action, a way forward. He felt as if he’d been stuck since he left the Community with Titi, now he was finally setting himself free.

He should have done this a long time ago.

“You’re really going to leave me, just like that?” her voice shook. She was crying, he could tell, and he didn’t care, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to turn around and see the tears streaming down her face. He wasn’t sure exactly how she did it, but she always found a way to make him inconvenience himself for her benefit. He was sick and tired of it.

“I’m sorry, Ivie, I didn’t mean what I said. Of course, I’ll give you the address, in five days, like I promised. I’m sorry.”

No, Agbe’s chest tightened, he wanted to beg her not to do this to him again. Even not knowing where in Benin he was going, it felt better to be free and on his own.

“Do you even care about me Ivie? Just a little? If you did you wouldn’t just leave me like this.” He heard her approach, but he couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move away, he just stood there, paralyzed, while she wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his neck. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’ll change, I’ll do whatever you want. You may not care about me, but I love you Ivie, it’ll kill me to see you go. Please.”

“I don’t like your friends.”

“They won’t come here anymore.”

“I can’t stand seeing you passed out from drugs. It scares the shit out of me, and it’s beneath you.”

“You won’t ever have to see me like that again, I promise.”

“Fine,” Agbe turned around and hugged her back, “it’s okay, stop crying.”

“You’ll stay?”

“For five more days, like we agreed, then I’m going to my uncle and his family.”

She pulled away and stared up at him, her eyes still wet from crying. He could see the tear streaks on her face, they’d messed up her make up. “Why don’t you love me as much as you love them? You’ve never even met them, but you want to leave me for them. Why?”

Agbe frowned at her. How could she understand the emptiness he felt inside? He used to have a life. He used to have a mama who loved him more than life itself. He used to have friends he played and bleeped with. He’d had Ehimen. And right when he’d been about to have it all, a family, mother, father, him, living together in harmony, it had all gone away. Now he had no one who loved him, no one to love. He needed to fill the emptiness, to have a purpose again, a purpose greater than supplying her with money whenever she needed it and taking care of her when she couldn’t take care of herself.

In the end, he didn’t answer her question.

She pulled away and Agbe didn’t try to stop her. He just stood in the walk-in closet and watched her leave. Then he stripped, went into his bathroom, filled up the bathtub and soaked in a lavender bubble bath. Tears fell freely from his eyes as he drank in the lavender fragrance. It had been the smell of his mother’s favorite bath oil. Mama. Feeling hollow inside, he leaned his head back against the porcelain rim of the bathtub and closed his eyes. In his mind he saw himself seated on the ground while his mother and father sat on the sofa behind him. They were watching a wielder movie and teasing Ehimen because he couldn’t stop pointing out the flaws in the wielders’ fighting techniques. Then mamin, seated on the sofa to their right, said the movie was excellent and Ehimen stopped speaking because no one overruled the God-born. Ovie Omoruyi and Uncle Ejehmen would chuckle then, and his cousins, lying on the floor around him, would laugh. They were all one big family in his dreams, together and happy, and alive.

Later that evening, after Titi’s friends were gone, Agbe went downstairs to make himself dinner. He found her passed out on the living room sofa. His gaze swept over the streaks of cocaine on the center table, the pills scattered around them, the smattering of weed leaves, and the bong tipped over on the floor by the foot of her chair. He checked to make sure she was breathing, then he picked her up and took her to bed.

Chapter Twelve

Agbe hated her. He was sure of it. He hated her. He hated the weave she wore now, hated the expensive clothes, hated the excessive jewelries, hated, hated, hated. And he especially hated the way she pretended to care about him. He pushed the ring even deeper into his chest. He could feel the sharp cut of the bijou stone tearing at his flesh.

Titi’s eyes were slightly reddened, and she swayed a little on her feet. Agbe only had to glance at her to know that she was on something stronger than weed. LSDs, coke, maybe something else. He turned around and started walking away.

“Wait, Ivie, what’s wrong?”

He’d gotten to the foot of the stairs when he felt her restraining hand on his shoulder. He gritted his teeth and kept looking ahead, at the marble steps, the dove sculpture on the first landing.

“This is your little brother?” A distinctive deep voice called out from behind him. Agbe had never heard anyone make so much of an effort to mimic a British accent, and fail that spectacularly.

He turned around. The man was in his mid-twenties, finely dressed, expensive wristwatch, fitted designer jeans, frosty white shirt. His hair was dreadlocked, it actually looked cool. He was attractive, Agbe grudgingly accepted, attractive in that square jaw, rigid cheek bones, way. He had light, sandy brown skin. Agbe could see this man driving around in the Corvette that was parked outside.

“Yes,” Titi stared up at him, and nodded. She smiled, gazing adoringly at him the way she’d looked at Agbe when he’d agreed to stay with her. Titi was obviously very into this man. Agbe found himself scowling at the stranger. “This is Ivie, my younger brother. Ivie, this is James.”

The man’s teeth were white. He smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Ivie.”

Agbe didn’t say anything.

James turned back to look at the woman who’d been feeling Agbe up before Titi came in, and jerked his head to the side. She made a quick retreat, back into the living room, and shut the door behind her. Agbe frowned at the handsome stranger. He’d never seen any of Titi’s friends react that obediently to anyone.

Titi’s eyes sparkled. She bit into her bottom lip, still gazing adoringly at James. She took a step back, swayed on her feet, and would have fallen if Agbe didn’t immediately reach out a hand to steady her. She clutched at his arms and laughed. She hiccupped as she was laughing, then she gasped, put her hand over her mouth and then giggled. It had been a long time since Agbe had heard that little girl giggle.

“So, Ivie, your sister tells me that you both just lost your parents?” James asked.

Agbe nodded. It was their cover story. Their parents had just died leaving them with a small fortune, which they’d spent on this house. The house had cost one of his mamin’s wrist bracelets. He hadn’t wanted to use her jewels but that was the only way they could afford it. He’d cashed in two more beads from a second bracelet, so that Titi could have spending money. Ten million naira, that was the bank rate for one of the God-born’s bijou beads. Ten million naira, and his grandmother had been wearing two bracelets on each wrist with longer strings on her neck and around her hair. A fortune. But Agbe wasn’t going to spend any more than those two wrist bracelets. The rest would go to his female cousins as the God-born wanted.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Agbe just nodded. Titi had wrapped her arm around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder. He realized he’d done the same, wrapped his arm around her waist. He told himself he was only doing it to keep her steady since she was clearly high, but apparently not too high to gawk at James.

“It’s been over a year now, James, but thank you,” Titi said.

He smiled and winked at her and she chuckled. James swiped his tongue over his bottom lip and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll just get to it then,” he turned his gaze on Agbe, “your sister tells me that you inherited some bijous?” He quirked an eyebrow.

Agbe clenched his jaw so hard that he felt the strain all the way to his temples. Was she insane? It was a struggle not to react, not to turn his attention on Titi and just yell at her. “We’ve sold all the bijous we inherited. It went into buying this house.” Agbe tried to keep his voice calm, emotionless. He didn’t clench his fists, didn’t glare at Titi, didn’t pull away from her, he just looked straight into James face and even managed a close-lipped smiled. He was going to kill Titi.

The man’s smile broadened. His eyes gleamed wolfishly. “That’s not what Titi said. She said you have a whole sack of them.”

Agbe couldn’t help it this time, he pulled away from Titi and glared at her. She swayed on her feet and then grabbed onto the wooden stair railing for support. Then she had the gall to tilt her head to the side and smile at Agbe. “James is going to help us sell them at a great rate, isn’t that perfect? We won’t have to keep going to the bank and selling the bijou beads off one at a time.”

Agbe dug his fingernails into his palm. They were too short to really cause any pain, but he was so angry, he had to do something. It was either clench his fists or punch a wall. His blood boiled. Why would Titi do this to him? Hadn’t he done enough for her? He hadn’t wanted to sell any of the God-born’s beads, it had felt wrong, but she’d begged him, reminded him that she didn’t have any money and so he’d sold them. He’d given her twenty million naira, bought a hundred million naira mansion with her name on the deed and that still wasn’t enough for her? Now she was telling strangers, strangers, that they had a fortune in bijous. Was she insane? Didn’t she understand that they had the kind of money people would easily kill for?

James clasped his shoulder and squeezed. “Relax Ivie, you can trust me, Titi knows that I won’t do anything to hurt her. Right?” he darted a look at Titi who immediately began nodding like a puppet whose strings he pulled. Then he turned back to Agbe and squeezed his shoulder again. Agbe was really starting to hate this guy. “Look, the black-market rate for bijou is thirty percent higher than the bank rate. If you give me the bijous to sell for you, I’ll give you what you would have gotten from the bank, plus twenty percent of the profit. I keep the rest.” He bent low so that his face was on the same level as Agbe’s and he kept smiling, trying to appear open and honest. It didn’t matter how hard he tried, because Agbe just didn’t trust him. But Titi had tied his hands, she was obviously too infatuated with this guy to think like a human being with a brain in her head, so it was his fucking job to protect them both. Nothing new there.

Agbe forced a furrow onto his forehead as if he was thinking deeply. Then he nodded, slowly, to make it appear as if he liked what he was thinking. And then, for the final act, he smiled. “That actually sounds like a great idea, but just give me about a week to think it over.” ‘More like give me a week to get the heck out of here,’ Agbe thought, but he just kept smiling and trying to return the earnest look that James gave him.

James smiled. “That sounds like a plan.” He released his hold on Agbe’s shoulder and stretched out his hand. Maintaining eye contact, and smiling, while he shook that hand was one of the hardest things Agbe had ever had to do. He wanted to be anywhere else. He didn’t want the responsibility of safeguarding his family’s heirlooms.

The garden in front of the house was one of Agbe’s favorite things about it. He loved looking at the white calla lilies, and the river of green leaves surrounding each flower. He stretched out his hands and ran his fingers down the blades of the pink Cordyline petals. Then he plucked a red ixora flower from the shrub and sucked at its stem. The juice wasn’t as sweet as it was when grown by the verdant witches in the Community.

“Oga, I dey greet you oh!” Sunday stretched out his hairy arm and then bent a little at the waist. His off-white shirt looked more cream than white and he swam in his black trousers. Agbe almost lauded his stitched together belt for being capable of holding his trousers up. The bottom of his trousers were folded, exposing much more of his leg than Agbe wanted to see. “Eh ehn, oga, you want make I come pick the jerricans tomorrow? I dey go fill up for madam, if you want make I carry your own join.” Sunday was driver and gateman to one of Titi’s friends. Whenever they came to visit, he was always left sitting in the driver’s seat of the blue Audi for hours. He’d tried inviting the man in once and Titi had thrown a fit. Later she’d said it wasn’t what the unmarked did, and that if he acted too ‘strange’ they would get caught. Agbe was starting to wonder if getting caught and having to go back to the Community wasn’t better than this.

Five more days, he just had to wait five more days.

Agbe smiled at Sunday. “Yes, that would be nice, thank you.”

The man grinned, and nodded, chuckling. Sunday always chuckled or laughed when Agbe spoke. Titi’s friends said it was because he spoke with a funny accent, like oyinbo, but they could never place the accent because it didn’t sound like any foreign one they’d heard. “Okay sah, I go come pick am early tomorrow morning.”

Agbe nodded and then continued walking. He was seventeen, pretty much, and Sunday was in his thirties, but he always called him ‘oga’ and ‘sah’, it felt weird to be honest, but there really wasn’t anything about Agbe’s new life that didn’t feel weird. Agbe was just about to walk into the house, when something black caught his eye. He walked back to the parked cars and found a sleek black Corvette parked in front of the blue Audi, between the Jeep and Mercedes Benz Titi insisted on having, even though she’d barely driven the Benz. Agbe bent to a squat beside the hood and ran his hand over the smooth surface. Wow. He didn’t know how to drive, there really hadn’t been any motivation for him to learn in the Community, but he’d always enjoyed looking at cars, and this one was a looker. He’d never seen this car before, which meant Titi had made another new friend. Great.

Agbe made his way back to the door. On one hand, he knew that Titi’s friends had been helpful, they were the only reason that him and Titi had been able to settle down so quickly. They’d gotten them out of the hotel they’d lived in for the first few days in Lagos, into this mansion, they’d hooked them up with the connects for the new identities, but Agbe still didn’t like them. He couldn’t help it, especially when they’d turned Titi into someone he didn’t even recognize anymore. He exhaled, had he really known Titi before though? She was the ancestry bitch’s sister, her behavior shouldn’t come as a surprise to him.

Soaked in the yellow lights from the dangling bulbs hanging off the plaster roof in the entrance, Agbe climbed the three steps up to the front door and twisted the doorknob. He opened the door, stepped into the stone foyer, and quietly closed the door behind him. He heard the blast of music coming from the living room, and relaxed slightly. Now he just had to make it past the foyer and up the stairs without being seen, then he could go into his room and lock the door until Titi’s friends left.

Agbe had just about made it halfway across the foyer, when the living room door swung open. The smell of cigarette fumes mixed with weed, drafted out from the living room, and crept unbidden up Agbe’s nostrils. He coughed in response and cursed himself right after.

One of Titi’s friends stood at the now open door, she stared at him and smiled wide. “How far, little brother? Come and join us now.” Her gaze crawled sickeningly over his body. He hated the way Titi’s friends looked at him, as if they were starving and he was their last meal. This one was twenty-one, one of the younger women in the group. She wore a tight sleeveless white leather dress that showed a lot of cleavage, and ran down to just below her ass. She wasn’t bad looking, there was just something about the hungry way she looked him over which he found completely repulsive. Agbe didn’t understand why the unmarked reacted this way to him. It wasn’t just Titi’s friends. Everyone he’d seen since he left the Community had gaped at him, sizing him up, staring at him as if they’d never seen anyone that looked like him before. Yes, he’d attracted attention in the Community, but it was a sly attention, some people looking back to check him out a second time, not the way the unmarked just stopped dead in their tracks and gaped at him. It was really unsettling.

“Ivie, is that you? Come, I want you to meet somebody.” Titi’s voice was barely audible over the blaring music.

“Maybe later,” Agbe replied. There was no way he was walking into that room. The smoke in there was so thick he could see the white fumes in the doorway.

“Come now,” Titi again, “please.”

“Later.” Agbe walked past the woman in the doorway. Arms wrapped around his back and sharp heavily manicured fingernails stroked down his chest. The hold stopped him and the smell of her sweet perfume fought with the nauseating smell of the smoke fumes.

“Come little brother,” she whispered into his ear, “come and play with us, we won’t bite,” warm lips enveloped his earlobe and teeth nibbled gently against his skin, “unless you want us to.”

Agbe felt sick. He hated the smell of the fumes. The cigarettes he didn’t mind, but the weed was cheap, it was worse than the gutter weed he’d smoked in the Community. Every time he whiffed it, it just reminded him of his friends, of Prisca taking a drag and blowing the fumes into his mouth. Mama hadn’t been the spanking type, she just grounded when she was annoyed, and she’d grounded him over smoking bad weed. Smelling the fumes just brought back all the memories and it didn’t matter that it had been weeks since she’d died in his arms, every time he remembered, his chest ached, as if he was living it all over again.

“Ooh, what’s this?” The crooning voice tickled at his ear while its owner’s wandering finger circled the ring beneath his shirt.

He grabbed at her hands and pulled them away. Then he stepped out of her hold and glared at her. How dare she trace his mother’s ring? She wasn’t fit to touch it. Agbe placed his hand over his mother’s engagement ring, the outline digging into his palm, and pressed it into his chest. Mama, his heart cried out for her.

“What’s going on here?” Titi’s words were slightly slurred. She eyed her friend and then shoved her away with her shoulder. “Are you okay Ivie?”

Chapter Eleven

It was good to feel the wind on his face, like endless splashes of freedom. It made him feel as if he could fly, like he could soar up to the skies where nothing would ever bother him again. He dug his knees into the horse’s flank, urging it to move even faster, run, fly, flee. Spurred on, the horse thrust forward in the air, like an arrow flying free from the bow. It lunged and the sense of freedom deepened.

Agbe wished that it could last forever.

He wished that he could stay on his horse, riding through the back acre of the land he’d bought, and never have to return to his new reality. He really struggled to believe that it had only been three weeks ago when he’d left the Community.

Darkness loomed, and with it, came the bright yellow lights from the globe lamp posts around the compound. Agbe took a turn around the mansion, saw the brightly waxed blue Audi still parked in front of the house, and decided to keep on riding. How long would they stay? He didn’t know and he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with Titi’s friends.

Five more days.

He’d promised her a month and he only had five more days to serve. There were times he wondered why he still put up with her. The sweet, giggling, ancestry girl he’d left the Community with had disappeared almost as soon as they’d gotten to Lagos. A part of him wondered if that girl had ever existed, or if she’d just conned him into believing she had.

Just as he was contemplating the state of his life, the yellow lights went off. “NEPA,” he heard the irritated hiss, and answered that with an annoyed hiss of his own. It wasn’t yet dark enough that he couldn’t see, so he kept riding and deluded himself into believing that NEPA taking the light wouldn’t affect his ride.

The unmarked world was a strange place. It had taken less than an hour to realize that the unmarked world had power outages. Agbe struggled to fully grasp this. The Community didn’t use magic to make electricity and they’d never had power outages, so why couldn’t the unmarked world do the same? The sound of generators roaring to life had become so commonplace that Agbe just accepted it as normal. No wonder the unmarked air smelled so polluted when they were forced to release so many toxic fumes running their generators. Nothing in the unmarked world felt the same. The air smelled different, it was dirty and thick, and one of the hardest adjustments had been learning how to breathe it in without gagging. And it was always so noisy in the unmarked world, generators, there were always generators on.

Then there were the people. Growing up in a brothel district had pretty much put Agbe in the lowest class of a highly classed society. He’d grown up poor by Community standards, but compared to the standard of living he saw in the unmarked world, his feelings of childhood poverty had practically been royal bliss. There was real poverty here, poverty to the point of having beggars on the street. Agbe had never seen a beggar before stepping foot in the unmarked world. But the beggars weren’t the worst of it, as far as Agbe was concerned, that was the corruption. Policemen on the street stopping cars unless they gave them money. Bribery was so rampant he’d just had to flash some cash and he’d gotten Ivie and himself legitimate unmarked identification. It was so unreal. Money moved this world. It wasn’t as if money hadn’t ruled the Community, but no amount of money in the Community could help a person evade justice…unless they had Enikaro blood. He sighed, perhaps the Community had been corrupt too, maybe there was no avoiding corruption, but the unmarked world felt so much worse off. Maybe it all came down to homesickness.

Agbe missed the Community. He missed the smell of it, the feel of the clean air, the texture of the pure clay soil underneath his feet. He missed his life, waking up everyday knowing what his place in the world was. Now he was rich, richer even than he’d imagined when he’d seen the sack of bijous mamin gave him, yet, even with all those riches, he felt lost.

“Ivie!” Agbe ignored her. “Ivie!!!” This time there was a chorus of female voices screaming out his name. “Ivie, the gen!” He tipped forward, leaning more into his horse. “IVIE EHIZOKHAE!”

Agbe sighed, abruptly jerking the reigns back. “I’m coming,” he yelled, not even trying to hide the resentment in his voice. Ehizokhae. Why wouldn’t she just tell him where his uncle was so he could go and be with family? He was tired of being nothing more than a walking ATM. He rode the horse back into the stable at a trot and then dismounted, leading it past the stalls for Titi’s horses. The first was smaller, a pony because Titi missed the pony she’d had in the Community. But then she decided ponies didn’t ride fast enough and she wanted a racehorse. Of course, she’d decided the racehorse was too fast, so she needed one with a calmer disposition. Agbe led his horse into its stall, sweeping hay out of his way with his feet. He stroked the horse’s mane to calm it, smiling when it turned to face him, and large brown eyes stared questioningly at him.

“Five more days, Peace, and I’ll take you to my real family.”

The horse whinnied as if it understood what Agbe said, and then ducked its head. Agbe took off its girdle and saddle and then put out some hay for it to eat. He’d always wanted to own his own horse. In the Community he hadn’t been able to afford one, but now he could. It was actually surprising how much he’d taken to the horse. All Titi’s horses had been bought new, for her, but this horse came with the mansion. He wanted to rub it down, but he knew Titi wasn’t that patient.

Titi’s never ridden racehorse neighed threateningly at him as he walked by its stall. He rolled his eyes, “I don’t know why you’re angry with me, I’m not the one who bought you only to keep you locked in.” The horse reared up on its hindlegs as if it had taken offense with what Agbe said. He just ignored it and walked out.

The generator house was a fifteen square feet cement building, with nothing but the huge generator in it and the mostly empty diesel-jerricans. Agbe checked to make sure that the generator had enough diesel in it to run then he turned it on. Their generator was insulated, covered with a white metal sheet that suppressed most of the noise the engine made. He walked over to the wall and pushed up on the metal lever, switching the power source from NEPA to generator. The single yellow light bulb on the roof of the generator house came on, signaling a successful change over. Agbe walked out of the open doorway, past the two-story, two thousand square-feet gateman’s house which was currently empty. He walked by the large black metal gates with the loops of barbed wires seated at the top.

Chapter Eight

Ehimen walked around the marble swimming pool watching the strokes of the girl’s arm, the way the agile arms sliced through the surface, how the drops of water glided over her dark skin. She nodded a greeting at him and for the life of him, Ehimen couldn’t figure out why. She stopped swimming and righted herself, she was in the deep end, her feet couldn’t possibly be touching the floor, but somehow she stood straight, with her head above water. He should know how she was able to stand afloat in water, his mind shouldn’t be this boggled.

Her lips moved. The lips were wet, shimmering with water, and more of that water trailed down her face as she spoke. Ehimen couldn’t hear her. She frowned at him, then her eyebrows lifted, and her gaze turned pitying. The corners of her lips tipped down slightly and then her lips moved again. She shook her head and dove back into the water, like a mermaid.

His pretty mermaid. She hadn’t known how to swim. Who could believe that? Twenty-six years old and she hadn’t known how to swim. He’d taught her. He’d taken her to one of those beautiful streams the elemental witches maintained in the Community and he’d taught her. He remembered the way she would look back at him in the water, face wet, hair covered, and just stare, as if in a daze. “Why me, Ehimen? Why? You could have anyone, why me?” And every time she said it, he’d be asking himself the same thing. What did this gorgeous, warm, generous, woman see in him?

And now she was gone. Ehimen couldn’t even live in the delusion that he’d been in right after he’d found Madam Celia’s burnt to ashes. He couldn’t tell himself that they’d somehow escaped. He couldn’t convince himself that they’d jumped out of the building right before it burnt down. Not after he’d searched for them, not when he knew they’d been in there when the fire started, and no one had seen them leave. Their cellphones had last been active in that building and then the phone signals had died right when the crimson inferno consumed the building. They were gone. Isoken, his beautiful mermaid, and Agbe, both gone.

A sharp jab in his side tore him out of his thoughts. He blinked a few times, seeing the pool for what it was, and the girl swimming in it. It was his sister, not Isoken, but his sister. He turned to the side.

Mischief stared up at him, her cat eyes wide and teary. She stretched out her hand, offering up a piece of square cloth. He hadn’t even realized he’d been crying. He took the handkerchief from her and wiped at his eyes. He tried to make a joke, to ease the pain he saw mirrored on her face, but he couldn’t speak through the lump in his throat.

“I’m sorry brother,” she said, “I was looking forward to meeting sister Isoken and Agbe.”

Ehimen swallowed down the tears. He placed his hand on Mischief’s short hair and rubbed. She borrowed into him, wrapped her arms around his belly and rested her head on his side. She shook silently against him and moments later his shirt was wet with her tears. She hadn’t met them, none of his family had, except Omon, and Omon had only met them when he’d whipped Agbe. None of his horde had met Isoken and Agbe as members of his family. Isoken and Agbe had been commoners, outside ancestral grounds, while his family, his horde, was ancestry, noble. He wished they’d met, but he’d thought they had time, that the introductions could come later.

Ehimen became aware of the eyes trained on him. His sister had continued her laps in the pool, but every now and then she lifted her head to give him another one of her sad looks. The last two litters sat on the ledge of the smaller heated pool, swinging their legs in the water. They turned away hurriedly when he caught their gazes. The fourth litter were on patrol. When his eyes locked with theirs, Omon and Odion hastily dropped their gaze to the ground.

Ehimen sighed. He rubbed Mischief’s back until she stopped crying, then he pulled her away from him. “Thank you,” he kissed her on her forehead. She just looked up at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears and then nodded.

He cleared his throat, tried to speak and then tried three more times after before he was able to get his vocal cords to work properly. “It’s late, Omon, take the children to bed.”

“Yes brother,” Omon’s gaze was aimed in Ehimen’s direction but fell a little awkwardly to the left of his face. Then Omon clapped his hands together and darted his gaze to the heated pool with the younger ones gathered around it. “You heard brother Ehimen, it’s bedtime, come on little sprouts.”

“I can stay with you,” Mischief offered, “I’m not feeling sleepy.”

Ehimen shook his head.

She nodded. Ehimen watched as she solemnly pulled away. She turned back to stare at him a few times and each time he was watching her, waiting to give the nod she needed to see to prompt her forward, until finally she trailed behind Omon, and walked into the house, through the heavy oak doors.

Ehimen wasn’t ready to go inside. He could clearly see through the large glass window, that the InCoSeM reps had gathered around the dining table. He wasn’t yet in enough control of his emotions to be around any of them. It was irrational, he knew, it wasn’t their fault that Ovie Omoruyi had ordered his horde to escort them. Still, if he wasn’t here, escorting the five InCoSeM reps, he would be back in the Community searching for the commune who’d started that crimson inferno, the one who’d taken his family from him. Instead, he was forced to be here, babysitting InCoSeM reps who were more than capable of teleporting themselves wherever they wanted to go but insisted on ‘seeing Nigeria’ first.

Ehimen tried to think clearly, to give them their due and all that. And so, he conceded that they had allowed his horde to delay their departure and help in Ehimen’s search for Agbe and Isoken, but they hadn’t been willing to just wait a few days so that Ehimen could find and kill the person responsible for that fire. He was a soldier though, the assignment came first, and so he was stuck with the InCoSeM reps. Didn’t mean he liked it, and it sure as hell didn’t mean he was going to be joking around with the InCoSeM reps the way the third litter did. One of the InCoSeM reps chose that moment to look up.

Their gazes locked. It was an American looking at him, a white one, Paul, he believed. He was one of two communes in the party of InCoSeM reps. There was one other American with them, a black woman. There was also a Scottish woman, a French man and a Brazilian man. Ehimen was sure they’d been chosen to show off the diversity of InCoSeM. InCoSeM was after all the International Coalition for the Security of the Marked. They liked to stress how every other marked Community in the world had fallen under InCoSeM’s banner and the Benin Community was the last holdout. As far as Ehimen was concerned, InCoSeM was a large bureaucratic hole, desperate to pull every marked person in. They were nothing but rules and standards, while the Enikaro was power and tradition. But Ovie Omoruyi’s order was to protect these InCoSeM reps and that was exactly what he was going to do. Even though his heart and soul screamed to be back in the Benin Community, searching for Isoken and Agbe’s killer. Ehimen looked away.

He held his hands behind his back and walked around the compound. Every few feet he came across a lamppost. The light the lamppost streamed today was violet, but tomorrow it might be a different color. The Enikaro had a thing for lights, they changed the colors in the streetlights across their vast holdings all around the country, to match the color of the lights on ancestral grounds. He walked past two of his siblings, seated on the carpet grass, cords of glowing material covering every inch of their body. They were celestial witches, charging the witches’ talismans with the power from the glowing banana moon and the hundreds of twinkling stars.

“Revered!”

Hearing Eghe’s voice was like been doused in an ice bath. I pulled tightly on my horse’s reins, shifting around in the saddle to locate him. It turned out I didn’t have to work too hard. He tore out from behind a thick wall of bushes, his arms and legs scoured and lacerated, his appearance just as unkempt as mine. He rode in, in a cavalry pose, leaning forward with his spear gripped in his right hand, the sharp point thrust ahead, while his other hand, controlled the reins.

“Eghe!” I sighed in relief. “I feared the Oro mami watas had swallowed you up and turned you into a lion.”

His horse pulled up beside mine. He flashed a grin at me. “I would only let that happen if turning into a lion was the only way to protect you, revered.”

I smiled at him, and he smiled back. He was like a breath of fresh air, easy, uncomplicated, and completely trustworthy. After the time I’d spent with Debisi, it was nice to have someone with me whose loyalty I did not question. I turned back to face Debisi and caught a glimpse of his pain just before he buried it. I remembered then what he’d said about me and Eghe, about how it had hurt him to know that I was taking Eghe with me to a den of iniquity. I sighed.

“It’s just a few kilometers ahead,” Debisi said, looking straight ahead. Then he dug his heel in and his horse went faster.

I followed after him, careful this time to make sure I didn’t lose track of Eghe. Eghe did the same, he was not letting me out of his sight again. I wondered if he was curious about where we were going, or curious about where I’d been. He didn’t ask though, it wasn’t his place, he was my tumbler. Our roles were defined. After we got married, what would Debisi’s role be? After we got married? I shook the thought away, we were still a long way from that. But I couldn’t help but puzzle over Debisi’s latest revelation. He wanted me to rule in Bono. Me.

I thought more on it as we drew closer to the mud clearing. Did I want to rule in Bono? The answer was no. I didn’t even have to think too long on it. Isan, my nation, was more than enough for me. Besides, I did not understand the Bono. I did not understand their tenet of verdure that prized albinism over dark skin. I did not understand the tenet that forbade intimacy between those of the same sexes. I did not understand it, and I had no desire to learn. It was funny, in all Debisi’s planning, he’d just assumed that I would want to rule his kingdom. That is, if he was being honest, if he wasn’t just saying what he thought I wanted to hear.

While we waited in the mud clearing for the Nuri guard, I found my gaze trailing to Debisi. If only I could read minds, I’d know once and for all what the truth of all of this was. In my entire life, I’d never once had any reason to doubt my instincts as I did now. I wanted desperately for that feeling of surety to return.

I heard the rustling of leaves and my gaze snapped to the trees.

“Where is your contact coming from?” I asked Debisi.

Debisi’s gaze followed mine. “Not from up there.”

Bumps rose on my skin and I felt an icy dread of foreboding crawl down my spine. I extended my right hand slowly towards Eghe. “I am unarmed,” I said evenly to him, without taking my gaze away from the trees and the slightly shaking branches. Cold leather pressed against my palm. I wrapped my hand around the hilt of the dagger and pulled it closer. Then I reached for the ends of my dress and tore a long slit through it, in the front and back.

“Show yourself!” I ordered.

There was no response, just the trembling branches.

“There’s no one there, Tan.” Debisi’s fearful voice sounded more like he was saying what he wished was true, and not necessarily what he believed.

I swerved sharply to the side, left hand extended out, and reached through the muck for a palm sized stone. I threw it into the trees, and moments later I heard a groan of pain. Without hesitation, I tightened my hold on the reins, forced my horse around, and dug my foot into its side. It galloped, heading right for the edge of the clearing. One minute I was racing back into the forest, the next something hard collided against my stomach and I was tumbling in the air.

I fell hard on my back and had the wind knocked out of me.

I blinked a few times before the double images floating above me converged into one. It took a while for the ringing in my ear to go down. I tried to push myself up and stumbled on the first try. I made it to my feet on the second. There was a sharp pain in my stomach, from whatever it was that had been used to knock me off my horse. I looked around and found my horse lying dead in a pool of its blood, with a long gash in its neck. I kept looking and saw that I’d been surrounded. I counted fifteen men. All with Nuri bag masks over their heads. They wore green khakis and had painted their chest a matching green, the color of the leaves they’d hidden behind. They hadn’t painted all of their skin though, they’d left the part of their chest with their aha exposed, to show their stratum. It also showed the light brown of Nuri coloring. These were Nuri men.

They encircled me. Another group had encircled Eghe and Debisi.

“Who is your leader?” Debisi asked.

There was no response. He switched over to Nuri then. I could not speak Nuri. I held the last Nulin nation in such contempt that I had refused to learn the language. It had seemed like a worthy statement to make at the time. Where was Tiwo when you needed a Nuri interpreter? Eghe couldn’t speak the language either. Only Debisi, and I had no idea what Debisi was saying. I knew some Nuri words, like their greetings, a few words just the basics really, but Debisi spoke too fast for me to pick any up.

“We need to fight!” Eghe growled in Bono.

Debisi shook his head. “That is not wise, let me try negotiating.” He returned to Nuri.

***Double post removed by author***