That evening, when all respectable folk were tucked safely into their beds, I found myself astride a horse, and a rather lazy one at that, in the middle of a dark savannah.
“Why is it always at night?” I sighed resignedly as I kicked at Nelly to wake her. The nag was literally sleepwalking and didn’t so much as twitch when I nudged her on her flank with my walking stick. The small, clear bottles of chloroform sloshed in the saddlebag and a mosquito—how those insects loved me—buzzed teasingly around my head.
Kam, walking ahead through waist-high grass, said nothing. He had returned to his taciturn behavior, studiously paying attention to everything but me. Or perhaps he was so absorbed with all the shadows, sounds, and movements in the great expanse of grass that engulfed us that he didn’t hear me. Nyambura, on the other hand, glanced up at me and smiled, not so much with sympathy but with an eager delight at the adventure.
I glanced back the way we’d come, but the lights of the camp were no longer visible; there was only a band of darkness. I could tell the horizon only because the stars were coating the surface above it, leaving the domain below in the clutch of shadows.
In the expanse of noisy silence, my walking stick seemed woefully inadequate as a protection. I wondered what else lived out here apart from lions and zebras.
I wondered if cinnamon would be effective against these unknown beasts.
“We must leave the horse here,” Kam said while pointing to a solitary thorn tree.
I slipped off and gave instructions while Kam collected the saddlebag. “Now, Nelly, stay here and wait for me.”
I needn’t have bothered. She was already deeply asleep, her soft snores lost in the scratching of grass in the breeze. I left her untied in case something crept out of that green expanse, in the hope she might wake up long enough to outrun it.
I took a sniff. Dry earth, warm grass, horse, zebra, thick musk of lion.
“They’re near,” I whispered, regretting leaving my bow at home. My rationale at the time had seemed perfectly sound: with little light, I was as likely to hit Ooma as another attacking carnivore. Now, I would’ve traded my walking stick and sachet of cinnamon for a quiver of arrows.
Kam, armed only with a long knife and a canvas bag, both tucked into his belt, gestured to me to follow, and we walked. Well, Kam flowed rather than walked through the grass, his passage hardly noticeable. I on the other hand sounded like a herd of demented zebra and I was confident that every lion within a hundred miles knew exactly where I was and how much I weighed. Especially the hungry lions: they definitely knew.
The ground sloped up slightly toward a small stand of thorn trees, their branches creating a canopy silhouetted against the starry sky. A large head rose up from the grass, then another.
Kam dropped into a crouch, an action that he made gracefully. I was somewhat hindered by my skirt and was considerably less graceful in my efforts. Nyambura smiled at my struggles as she effortlessly squatted beside me. I didn’t see the point in hiding. The lions already knew we were there, especially me, of that I was certain.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, assuming there was one as I peered through the grass, only to see more grass, which was infinitely better than seeing more lions.
“Tell me which one she is,” Kam said, his voice no louder than the rustling grass. “Nyambura will distract her while I drop this bag over her head.” He flipped up the rough cloth sack looped through his belt. “You’ll pour the liquid onto the bag and she will sleep.”
“Perhaps I should be more specific,” I said. “What’s the plan that actually has a chance of success?”
He stared at me.
I gaped back, my stomach clenching. I really should’ve asked earlier. “That’s your plan? You’ll sit on the lion and I’ll just stroll up to her and pour chloroform on her head?”
He shrugged nonchalantly, as if this were something they did every day out on the savannah, while Nyambura nodded her head, her smile filling half her face.
“Not stroll,” Nyambura corrected me. “Run.”
“Do you have a better plan?” Kam asked.
“No, but I was hoping you would.” I rubbed a hand over the clubbed fist of my walking stick. I could visualize so many possible ways for this to go so very, very wrong. With that in mind, turning around and going home seemed like a perfectly suitable plan.
“Assuming this works,” I said with a heavy dose of skepticism, “and we’re not all viciously mauled, then what? How are you going to drag a nine-foot-long, sleeping lion to your village?”
Nyambura giggled. “When we sleep, we are human.”
“I see,” I said flatly.
It seemed they had everything covered, except for the fact that this couldn’t possibly work without someone being mortally injured. I narrowed my eyes and refocused them. Nyambura’s energy field shone brightly, shifting in and out of a definitely inhuman form. Kam’s markings glowed fiercely against his skin, twirling and twisting, but into what I couldn’t tell. Insects transformed into bits of colored light.
“And when you get her to the village, what will stop her from running away?” I asked.
“A cage,” Kam said in an uncompromising tone.
“Very well,” I continued, since a man who would put his niece in a cage to save her was clearly not a man with whom to trifle. “Then what…?”
Something coughed off to one side. I closed my eyes against the glare of energy and inhaled the heavy musk of a large feline crouching nearby.
“Please tell me that’s your sister,” I whispered.
“I don’t know, that’s why you’re here,” Nyambura replied cheerfully. “She disguises herself so well and I haven’t spent a lot of time with her as a lion.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to sound understanding and sympathetic instead of sarcastic and irritated. I peeked in the direction of the cough but saw only the energy of a normal lion.
“I’m not sure if this is good or bad news, but it’s not Ooma,” I informed my companions.
Kam frowned. “Bad news. Definitely bad. Don’t make any sudden moves.”
I snorted. “I wasn’t planning on making any moves at all.”
Around the trees, more large forms rose up from the ground and some of them stalked toward us just as a fork of lightning speared the ground and illuminated the scene for me. More lions.
“None of those are your sister,” I said, just then remembering that lions do their hunting at night, which was most inconvenient for us.
“Oh, she hasn’t arrived yet,” Nyambura said, unconcerned by the news.
“You don’t say?” I retorted, now not bothering to sound sympathetic, but sadly my unbridled sarcasm was lost on the others who were unperturbed by the pride of lions approaching us.
To further disturb me, my legs were cramping from squatting so long. My companions weren’t at all concerned about that either, and I wondered if I would be able to move even if I wanted to.
One of the lions roared, and that was quite a lot of sound up close, I assure you. I was momentarily stunned and so I didn’t pay much attention to Kam’s statement until he repeated it.
“Horses. It’s the hunt.”
I twisted back toward camp. Silhouetted against the sky were several horses with riders. They had topped a slope in the distance. Something large was running ahead of them, its energy even larger and shifting.
“That’s her,” I announced. “How convenient.”
Nyambura clapped her hands with delight. “My sister!”
A gunshot thundered and the lions surrounding us jumped back. I pursed my lips. “If she gets hit, she’ll turn into a girl, won’t she?”
Nyambura gasped at my words and wailed as if it hadn’t crossed her mind that her sister could ever be touched by a bullet. Kam nodded once, his eyes hard. Another lightning bolt slashed across the sky, seemingly aimed at the hunters.
“That would open up quite an undesirable and inconvenient investigation,” I mused. “Not to mention killin
g your sister. Or worse, allowing them to capture her alive.”
The ramifications would roll all the way back to Europe, I reflected, possibly exposing the paranormal community and undoing all the devious work of the Society. That could simply not be allowed to happen.
Another gunshot echoed across the land, and our lions scattered, running past the stand of trees and down the other side of the slope.
“Good thing they’re lousy shots,” I said, patting Nyambura’s hand and feeling smug until I reminded myself that the lousy shots were coming in our direction, guns blazing.
Ooma the lion was no more than a shadowy streak cutting through the grass. The horses were rather reluctantly galloping after her, the riders shouting and cursing and emptying the savannah of all wildlife for miles around with their noise.
“I suggest we remove ourselves from the line of fire,” I said, my voice calm. After all, imminent threat of death was no reason at all to lose one’s composure.
“What about Ooma?” Nyambura asked in a resigned tone as she watched her sister race toward the trees.
“If she makes it past here, she will hide by the river bushes,” Kam said as he pulled at her hand. Crouching low, we hurried away from the rapidly approaching hunters and toward the grunts and coughs of the lions.
“Goodness, what a pickle,” I muttered, wondering which was less painful: death by gunshot or by lion’s jaw. I suppose that would depend on where the shot landed. Our prospects seemed bleak, fatal, and most likely painful either way.
Past the thorn trees, the land dipped into a narrow gorge. The slope was thick with small trees and bushes, smells of flowers, and sounds of insects and beasts of various sizes. A river rushed past below us. It sounded and smelled as if the lions were everywhere around us. Of course, that wasn’t possible, but try telling yourself that when you’re scurrying through dark forest at night with lions and poorly aimed gunshots coming at you from all directions.
“Oh, lookie, Miss Knight,” Nyambura cooed. “Aren’t they lovely?” She pointed at two lionesses eyeing us. They looked hungry.
“Yes, very lovely, if you’re longing for death by mauling,” I said, tugging my skirt out of the clutch of a thorny bush and shuddering as I heard the fabric tear. I leaned my hand against a tree to balance myself before pushing off to follow Kam.
The lions retreated into the shadows, and I wondered when they would leap onto our unprotected backs. Perhaps I should’ve been more concerned about the bullets flying, for there was an explosion. A fraction of time after that bang, a bullet tore a chunk of wood off the tree trunk against which I’d just been supporting myself.
“Maybe we should let them know we’re here,” I suggested as Kam assisted me down the steep but well-worn animal trail cutting through the bushy slope.
“We won’t have this chance again,” Kam said. “The lions will most definitely move farther from camp after tonight.”
I frowned at him, for while I admire a man who puts his mission ahead of his life, I couldn’t envision a successful outcome to this venture, what with guns blazing on one side and lions roaring on the other. Well, truth be told, the lions weren’t exactly roaring. In fact, they were rather on the quiet side of the roaring spectrum.
They usually were, right before they attacked.
Nyambura was thinking along the same lines, for she said, “The lions, they are very, very quiet,” and her face pinched in a delicate frown at the lack of giant feline noises as she gazed around for the beasts.
“And the horses can’t come down here,” Kam continued his monologue. “So the men, they will have to walk like us.”
“And they’ll still be firing their guns, unlike us,” I reminded him. I then made the monumental mistake of letting go of Kam’s arm while clambering over a cluster of large stones, my walking stick firmly gripped in one hand.
My beautifully polished boots, now dusty, hit the smooth, hard surface at an inconvenient angle. Before I could shout, “Good gracious, don’t shoot,” I twisted on a heel which was fortunately a low and practical heel; otherwise I’d have surely snapped an ankle. As I twisted, I flapped my arms to no avail as flying was not in my repertoire of powers. I tumbled through the air until my backside hit the smooth surface of the steep trail. My journey continued as I rapidly slid backwards through thorny branches to an unseen fate that smelled an awfully lot like the inside of a lion’s mouth.
Just as I started to dig my practical boot heels and my walking stick into the worn, smooth ground, the path took a sharp turn. I unfortunately did not. I dropped a few feet and somehow managed to land headfirst on the scrubby ground of a small clearing.
I dared not move as I lay there on my back, staring up at a few branches and the stars above. By the feel of it, I had cracked my head and anything could fall out if I turned it too fast. So I remained in a semi-swoon (I wasn’t the fainting sort), the stars fuzzy points shining through blurry branches. I could smell the sharp metal of blood, the dry dust, some sweet night flower, and large felines.
Well, you can’t lie here all night, I told myself. And those lions will only get hungrier.
Carefully, I moved my legs. Fortunately, they seemed to function despite the pain, and this boded well. If at least my legs worked, I needn’t worry too much about the rest. For surely my legs would carry the rest of me, protesting and in pain, to some place where I could seek medical assistance or at least a cushioned horizontal surface on which to suffer comfortably.
I was further reassured by all of this high-level thinking, for it meant that my brain was still firmly lodged inside my skull, regardless of the crack that I felt surely was there. To top off the list of good news, I couldn’t hear any more gunshots, which meant the hunters had decided against blindly shooting into the bush. That, or I had smacked my head so hard as to burst my eardrums and thus wouldn’t have to listen to Mrs. Steward’s rants and raves.
As my limbs all seemed to be in functioning order, I started to push myself up and heard a low, hoarse cough right behind me, which of course could only mean one thing: my ears still worked.
It also suggested that there was a lion crouching in the thicket at my back.
Just as I was pondering my chances of standing up and climbing a nearby tree before the lion pounced, I saw another stroll out of the shadows and into my little clearing. Her mouth was partially open, revealing an impressive array of strong, sharp teeth and a tongue damp with saliva. The beast was probably salivating at the prospects of an easy meal.
Maybe randomly fired guns weren’t so terrible after all.
I began wondering how long I could hold off the lions with my walking stick and a bag of cinnamon. I had come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t last too long, although I would put up an admirable effort, when something came crashing through the brush.
For a hopeful second, I thought it was Kam, bravely (but foolishly) coming to rescue me. Instead, another lion leaped out and loped toward me, no doubt eager for a little bite. The other lions growled and backed away, which was rather strange. Shouldn’t they all be eagerly leaping at me together in hungry unity? I narrowed my eyes and the new lion’s energy field twirled brighter than the others, shifting between human and feline form.
“I really, truly hope you’re Nyambura,” I said. The lion roared softly, which did little to convince me I was anything more than dinner. I raised my walking stick.
“Miss Knight,” the lion shouted.
Well, that can’t be right, I thought. It sounds an awfully lot like a man, not a girl-lion.
Kam jumped out of the bush as the were-lion skidded to a halt in front of me and my walking stick, which I was quite prepared to use even if the large cat was really just a young girl. The two other lions slunk away.
“The chloroform, Miss Knight, quickly,” Kam said, holding out the saddlebag.
Overhead, a loud crack was followed by a sheet of lightning; the tree cover was thick enough that all I could detect were a few splotches of brilliant whit
e that subsided into darkness. The air tingled with ozone.
I looked warily at Nyambura the lion, but she was busy swatting at a large moth with an even larger paw. Gunshots echoed through the narrow strip of forest and the girl’s large, tawny brown head swiveled around, her furry ears twitching.
I reached one hand to Kam, my stick still firmly clenched in the other as if it would be any use against a large, moth-chasing lion. Well, it just might be. More surprising things have happened.
I rummaged through the leather bag and extracted the two glass bottles full of a clear liquid that sloshed against the sides as if seeking a way out and into our lungs.
And that led me to a concern I hadn’t previously raised.
“How,” I asked, “do we dispense this without knocking ourselves out in the process?”
Behind us, branches snapped and men’s voices rose in excitement and fear while something bigger barreled through the brush and the dark toward us.
“Very carefully,” Kam said solemnly as he climbed a tree to a low, thick branch. There he sat with the large cloth sack he’d extracted from his belt. “Keep the bottles until I’m ready and stand there.” He gestured to a place under the branch.
“Why?” I demanded with a sinking feeling.
“Bait.”
If I hadn’t been a Society investigator for as long as I’d been, I might have been put out by the implication that I was no better than a slab of meat to lure a paranormal carnivore into a trap. Fortunately or not, I was accustomed to such antics, having posed as bait numerous times in my active, not to mention hazardous, career.
“Do you really believe she’ll be thinking about food at a time like this?” I asked as I moved into position, wedging the bottles into a pocket.
Kam smiled grimly. “Pretend you are hitting Nyambura.”
“I think I’d rather be the bacon,” I retorted but dutifully raised my stick over the lion’s head. She lay down at my feet, rolled on her back, slapping paws that were as big as my face, perhaps catching invisible moths.
“Little one,” Kam said softly, “cry out.”
Nyambura began meowing pitifully, so much so that I felt guilty for even pretending to hurt her. That guilt melted under the heat of a hideous roar that brought to mind images of long, sharp claws shredding the night or my back into tattered ribbons.
“She comes,” Kam said, quite unnecessarily.
I sunk into a crouch, the way Prof. Runal had taught me, my walking stick gripped in both hands, my feet ready to kick, jump, do anything to survive. Even in the shadows, my tightly clenched knuckles reflected the bits of starlight, as did the whites in Kam’s eyes.
Nyambura rolled onto her stomach and coughed in answer to a second shriek that sliced up the air into chunks of fear. The hunters’ noisy approach faded into the background as a second lion pounced into the small clearing.
This one’s energy flickered rapidly between human and lion, but the lion part glowed more vibrantly. And the sound from its mouth was all lion, fierce and raw and unforgiving.
“Kam, I don’t mean to rush you at all,” I said, backing away from the approaching lion, “but any time would be just fine with me. Assuming of course you don’t knock us out as well.”
Now that would be a pickle indeed.
Ooma’s amber eyes narrowed to glittering slits; her ears lay flat on her large, golden head; and her lips peeled back in a horrible toothy grimace as she spat and hissed at me.
“Really, I didn’t hit your sister,” I said as I backed up to the rough trunk of the tree.
I didn’t dare look up into the night hovering close above, but I could smell Kam, a rich combination of wood smoke, dry earth, and wild places. I didn’t dare inhale further, for if I breathed in the heavy musk of the approaching lion too deeply, I might be trapped by the strength of it and be unable to move when Kam implemented his plan. If he did.
Ooma’s tail flicked rapidly once, twice, as she crouched, her eyes fixed on me. I could no longer hear the hunters or the other lions, only the low hissing, spitting of Kam’s niece as she prepared to launch her sizable body at me.
“Open a bottle and don’t breathe,” Kam whispered above me.
“Don’t worry, I’m not breathing,” I replied as I popped a cork, the sound as out of place as I felt.
Despite my lack of breathing, I still caught a whiff of a pungent sweetness that enveloped me. As I didn’t have a third hand to plug my nose and I most certainly wasn’t dropping my stick, I determinedly repressed my lungs’ natural impulse as the lion leaped.
I couldn’t suppress the involuntary squeak that escaped me—a detail I wouldn’t be including in my report to Prof. Runal—and then a gasp as a large shadow fell down onto Ooma, throwing her off balance and away from me, a most fortunate turn of events. I hardly dared to blink as Kam threw the large sack over the lion’s head.
“Now! Pour it now,” Kam grunted as he held onto the lion which was yowling and twisting and shaking her head to rid herself of the bag and the large man clinging onto her with all his muscular might.
Shouts bounced around the forest. The hunters must’ve heard the commotion. I was certain the whole savannah had by then. Gripping the bottle, I darted forward and splashed the sweet, clear liquid onto the bag, trying my best to avoid Kam’s face while doing so. A large paw with dagger claws swept at me and I jumped back and forth, dodging and splashing until the bottle was empty.
The lion was still awake but considerably less energetic. Encouraged, I popped the cork off the second bottle and poured the entire contents in one attempt. I tossed the bottles into the bush and staggered backwards, dizzy from holding my breath and avoiding disembowelment.
Kam finished tying the sack around his niece’s hairy neck and rolled off her back. The lion rolled the other way, her breathing heavy, her limbs twitchy and weak as her form quivered, convulsed and shrunk into the shape of a girl.
“It worked,” I breathed out. “Kam, get up. Kam?”
He pushed up on his elbows and eyed me groggily. “I forgot I’m a human,” he muttered before collapsing, face in the dirt.
“Brilliant,” I muttered. “The man gets himself knocked out by a little chloroform.”
I had little time to wonder what he meant by his last comment, for just then someone shouted up the slope from us, “It came from over here.”
Before I could say boo or bah, a man stumbled into the clearing. His eyes widened at the sight of a lion standing in front of me. Raising his rifle, he aimed it square at Nyambura. Without thinking the situation through, I jumped up and waved my arms.
“What…?” the man shouted, swinging his rifle toward me.
“Oh dear,” I said.
As if my hand waving had a power beyond mere exercise, the man collapsed and Mr. Timmons of all people stood behind him, his rifle gripped like a club.
“Oh dear,” I repeated with more intense emotion. How should I feel about the scenario, apart from grateful and worried? What was he doing here? That he was up to no good I was certain, but he had yet again assisted me just when I needed it.
“Are you all right?” he asked, but his gaze was fixed on Nyambura and the sleeping Ooma. I narrowed my eyes and his energy came into view. A tentacle of it was reaching out toward the lion sisters.
“Keep away from them, Mr. Timmons,” I said, hefting my walking stick before me, mentally flicking through the itinerary of tools hidden within. Which one would be best? If I had time, I could pull out the slingshot, knock him out and use the cord of rope rolled up in another compartment to tie him up.
Oh, the delicious possibilities…
His dark gaze lifted to my determined one. He smiled. “Fear not, Mrs. Knight. I joined the hunt to protect them.”
He wasn’t lying, but there was some tinge of untruth in there, enough to concern me greatly. Rather than argue, I said, “Thank you. Consider your mission accomplished. Perhaps you could distract the others and send them upriver, away from us and the
other lions?”
He hesitated, his eyes flicking between the sisters and me. Whatever his true purpose, it was clear it involved the girls.
“Please, Mr. Timmons, we don’t have an abundance of time,” I said, watching his energy sway back and forth, as if uncertain where to go.
“As you wish.” With one last piercing look at the twins, he slipped away into the shadows.
Deciding I would dwell on Mr. Timmons’ true motivations later, I called out, “Nyambura?”
“Yes, Miss Knight,” she said as she materialized behind her drugged sister.
“Hurry,” I whispered, “and help me move these two. Try not to breathe too deeply, dear. Actually, it would be best not to breathe at all.”
We dragged Ooma into the bush, her head still stuck in the bag. I contemplated removing it and wondered about the health impacts of leaving it on. I then wondered at the health impacts of an infuriated, half-drugged lion with a grudge.
The sack stayed on.
Lugging Kam into hiding was another business altogether. For a man to faint, even if due to chloroform vapor, was entirely unacceptable, not to mention inconvenient; it left me with the awkward task of tugging a tall, heavy body through the dark brush.
“If those lions return,” I vowed under my breath while almost wrenching his arm out of its socket, “don’t imagine for one moment that I will stay by your chloroform-stinking side.”
“What, Miss Knight?” Nyambura huffed while pulling at the other arm.
“His feet are sticking out,” I said.
Sure enough, Kam’s big, shoeless feet jutted out of the bush, signaling our location to all and sundry. And to further bother me, a tree blocked our progress backwards. Irritated, I signaled to Nyambura to stop pulling just as I dropped my side of her uncle. His head smacked against a tree root in a most satisfactory manner.
I wiped damp strands of hair off my forehead; it wasn’t particularly warm as the temperature had dropped quite abruptly with the setting of the sun, but the exertions and the humidity among the trees near the river colluded to leave me overly heated and offensively moist.
“Stay here,” I hissed as I stepped over Ooma’s comatose and reassuringly human body.
The noise of the hunters was so close I could just make out words. Flickers of light from a couple of torches they had lit winked at me through the brush. If I breathed in deeply, which I didn’t dare do, I would surely be able to smell the burning wood and the men’s body odor.
So much for Mr. Timmons leading them away, I thought uncharitably.
I knelt by Kam’s feet and gingerly grasped one calf and pushed and wiggled until his knee bent. I maneuvered the leg into the bush but as soon as I shifted to the next leg, the first slid back out.
“How bloody inconsiderate,” I told the unconscious man. “You were the one who said not to breathe, and what did you do?”
Kam remained mute, but a hunter shouted through the trees, “I think I see something.”
“Guns at the ready, men,” another ordered.
I wondered what story I could possibly tell the hunters to explain how I ended up in this small grove of trees in the middle of the grasslands with two drugged-up bodies, a shape-shifting girl and a pride of lions.
Any story I could imagine seemed improbable and likely to land me in more trouble than is acceptable for an Englishwoman, even in a place so far removed from the gossip of London as Nairobi was.
So I did what any socially-attuned, gossip-adverse, paranormal investigator would do: I forcefully stuffed both of Kam’s legs back so far his knees nearly smacked into his chin; then I squeezed myself back into the bush, the bottom of his feet pressing against my spine; I pulled a few branches in front to screen us all; and prayed the hunters didn’t have dogs or a tracker with them.
And all of that in the nick of time, for a couple of hunters barreled into the small clearing, huffing, puffing, sweating and swearing, guns swinging, and torches swaying precariously close to dry, flammable leaves.
“Miss Knight,” Nyambura whispered behind me, her warm cheek pressed close to my ear. “I can turn back and scare them away.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” I said sharply but quietly. “It’s a most brave offer to make, but scaring stupid men who are armed is a very dangerous business, especially for a lion.”
So we sat there with the cloying scent of chloroform, musk of lion and decaying leaves covering us as much as the darkness and bushes did. Kam began to snore, his legs shifting behind me.
“This way,” a voice shouted in the darkness. I recognized Mr. Timmons’ deep voice. Finally, he was doing something.
Only when the hunters had wandered off in the direction of the voice, their noise diluted by the night, did I dare ease out of the bushes and into the stillness.
Chapter 27