Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (best e book reader TXT) 📕

“Do you have to take pictures of that?” Winnie said with disgust, covering her nose with her wrist. Mercy staggered in with a gasp, quickly turning away as there were maggots in the leg of one elephant—the sagging dead carcasses tuskless.

“Of course she does,” Dennis replied, shooting her an impatient look. “We must document everything.”

“This one’s fresh,” Sefu called out.

Luis ran up as did Joram. Joram watched as Sefu dabbed the still bleeding jaw of the elephant with a cloth. Flies buzzed over the heap, settling on their heads and whipping about their ears. Juma hurried up with Audry, urging her to take a picture of this. She did, shaking. It was abhorrent. Though she had seen this plenty of times before, it still made her furious.

“How recent, do you think?” Juma asked him.

Sefu nodded gravely. “Hours. They could be nearby.”

“Then there would still be tracks,” Hezzy said. He called to the dogs, whistling. With them, he gave orders. Juma joined him, both of them armed and rushed into the bush.

Audry took more photographs until she had a sufficient collection for evidence.

After several minutes, the walkie-talkie at Dennis’s hip cracked on. It spoke in the local dialect, so Audry did not know what was being said. However, everyone perked up then one jerked on Audry’s arm to go with them quickly, pointing to her gun for her to get it ready. They also pointed at Mercy and Winnie, saying something.

The two women hung back, glaring daggers at Audry.

Hurrying through the underbrush, Dennis urging Audry to keep alert and prepared to shoot if she had to, they came to the edge of a clearing. They would have rushed in, but Juma—whom they saw hiding behind a bush—signaled for them to be quiet and keep down. Beyond the low bushes and trees, Audry spotted a group of five individuals near a large military-like truck—the kind with a dark green tarp covering. Most were locals, well-armed and standing over a wounded lion who was still panting, but lying on the ground. The four local men were talking in a dialect she did not recognize. The fifth was an Asian man. But her eyes tracked down to the lion. This was the lion she had been hearing, she was sure of it. She could see it panting for breath, bloody in the back leg and even bloodier from a head wound. But it was not dead.

She took aim with her trank gun.

Yet as she did, she saw the most peculiar thing. A hyena trotted up to the group, went around them without so much as a panicked reaction or even a curious look the way the dogs usually did. The poachers smiled at the hyena, even petting it.

Juma swore under his breath.

“Take the shot,” Dennis whispered to her.

“Which one?” Audry hissed back.

He smiled. “We trust your instinct.”

She took aim again—for the lion. But then something in her shifted her attention. She shot the hyena.

It yelped, staggered a few steps then collapsed. Audry shot the lion next—just to keep it still. It was impossible to rescue a predator who might lash out.

 Her entire group rushed out of the bushes, rifles on their targets, shouting at the five in the center. She did not know the words, but she knew they were telling them to put down their weapons.

One man didn’t. They shot him in the shoulder. He dropped his gun.

The rest hastily laid down their weapons, though one looked inclined to start up their jeep to drive off. Hezzy made sure that they couldn’t, shooting up their tires. Each wheel sank with the successive bangs.

As the others rounded up their five captives, securing them for retrieval, Audry rushed over to the lion, never mind the hyena. She dropped her pack and dug out her rescue equipment. She had to at least try to save the lion, if she could.

As she staunched the bleeding from the lion’s head, she then examined his thigh wound. It wasn’t that deep. The blow to the head really was what had slowed him down. Luckily, it did not look fatal.

“How is the lion?” Juma asked, crouching next to her while she bandaged the lion’s leg.

She sighed, shaking her head. “I won’t know until we can get it back to some place safe.”

“You may have to leave it to die,” Juma replied, sorry about it.

But she did not want to do that. She rescued animals. That was what she did.

“We have a cage,” Dennis said to her. “No worries. We came prepared. We can load the lion onto the bus.”

Nodding to him, Audry grinned with relief.

“What about the hyena?” Dennis asked. “You shot it first.”

Nodding, Audry got up to go look at it, wondering why she felt the need to shoot it at all. At the same time, the others were tying up the five poachers, shouting at them. Hezzy was doing most of the shouting, actually. The dogs growled along with him, posturing with teeth and hackles like they wished to tear those poachers all into kibble. Yet when she walked over to the hyena, she noticed something odd about it. One paw was a dark human hand.

She pulled back, speechlessly pointing at it.

Juma rushed over with Dennis. “Amazimu.”

“A rimu,” Sefu exclaimed, his eyes wide on it. He then turned on the poachers, shouting at them. Some shuddered, others just glared at him with savage disdain for his existence.

Yet the Asian man glowered more directly at Audry as she turned to Sefu and said, “What is that? What’s a rimu?”

“An amazimu,” Juma explained with a nod. “A shapeshifting ogre. They are known to look like men but have a hyena or jackal head on the back of their own heads.”

“What?” Audry pulled away. She watched the men tie up the shape-shifting ogre on the ground who was now shifting more, struggling to regain consciousness. The hyena shifted into various confusions of man and animal—starting with a black man, then a white man, then an Asian, though he still had spots and fur in parts. In the end, in a daze, he ended up with one pale arm, the other black, with a mostly Asian face—though with mixed animal-like hair.

“You stay with the lion,” Juma said, nudging her back to it. Then with a nod to Dennis, they both hauled the groggy and confused shape-shifting being into the bushes where just a couple seconds later, Audry heard a loud gunshot.

She jolted with a lurch.

“Why is an amazimu helping out poachers?” Sefu grumbled.

 Hezzy shouted at the poachers something awful—probably that very question.

But Audry was shaking more. If Rick were there like that poor confused hyena man, they would most definitely have shot him. She touched the bullet around her neck, trembling.

“They’re cannibals, Audry,” Luis reminded her, reading the effect of this off her face.

She tried to nod.

Juma and Dennis marched back, this time to face the five poachers, though Audry noticed Winnie and Mercy now there. The two women stared at the scene, Audry back with the lion to bandage its head and bind its mouth, while the others were handling the captives. Joram was rifling through their captives’ pockets, finding at least two IDs of which they found one Kenyan native ID, the other Chinese. Nobody else had one.

“Who are they?” Juma asked Joram

Joram tossed over the two ID’s.

When Juma caught them, he shared with Dennis. Dennis read his out loud. “He’s Chinese. His name is Liang Heizi.”

“What kind of name is that?” Hezzy said.

“I means black wolf,” Luis translated.

They stared at him. The Chinese man leaned back as they turned their eyes on him.

“Are you also an amazimu?” one of them said.

 Trembling, the man shook his head. “Wŏ tíng bù dòng a!”

Luis came in near and said, “Liar. You understand.”

“If you wish to live,” Juma said with the darkest gaze in his eyes, “You will give us directions to your headquarters. We know you are not alone doing this.”

Pale, the Chinese man gazed up at him, peeking to Audry. “You have no idea what you are up against. We are small fry.”

Chuckling darkly, Juma shook his head. His eyes tracked over the group. “No, it is you who do not know what you are up against.” He cocked his rifle, aiming it at him.

The Chinese man made an ugly face. It just seemed to get uglier—as it also got hairier. The man jumped out of his clothes and bonds, leaping at Juma. The same time, two others in the group shifted shape into jackals—startling the remaining two who sat there with wide horrified eyes—and all these were the ones with IDs.

A loud crack split the air. The half-man, not entirely black wolf, collapsed with a gaping wound in his side. Hezzy then shot one of the were-jackals next. But the third leapt after Audry. She already had her pistol, and fired. It collapsed into unconsciousness before he could reach her.

The remaining poachers screamed in surrender, hands up in the air. Audry could guess well what they were saying. They did not know those men were monsters. They were already wetting themselves over it.

Juma walked up to the one still-alive were-jackal. He shot it twice in the head.

Audry stared at it, dead on the ground. Yes, it had tried to kill her. But she could not help but feel sorry for it. They were like Rick. Undoubtedly that amazimu was just born that way. It did not know any better.

“They are cannibals,” Luis reminded her once more, watching with one eye as Hezzy prodded and tied up the remaining poachers. “Remember that. Stop feeling sorry for them.”

She wiped her eyes, realizing now that she had been crying.

“Don’t think your wolf has not eaten anybody,” Juma said.

Rising, Audry squared her shoulders. “He hasn’t.”

His friends averted their eyes, pity in them. They thought she was delusional.

“Her wolf?” Mercy walked up them, bringing water. They had seen it all, but they too must have believed in the existence of amazimu.

Juma shook his head. “We will tell you the story later. Right now, we need to take our prisoners back to the bus. Get the cage for the lion to take so we can take it back to safety. And let’s photograph all the evidence.”

Audry nodded, sniffling. These creatures were not the Deacons. These were human-eating, animal-poaching ogres. She had to stop confusing things. Rick himself had said not all werewolves were friendly.

She went about photographing everything, including if not especially the wolf and jackals who seemed to keep the form they had died in. However, they looked grayer, as of their skin was merely a covering. She also took several pictures of the lion and what violence had been done to it. She finished binding its mouth before Dennis and Joram heaved it into the cage. The dogs ran after them, barking excitedly.

Mercy and Winnie watched her while trying to make themselves helpful. Darth continued to stay with Audry, barking into the bushes. She got the feeling that the dog was trying to protect her from worse things than those she had just seen—and she did not want to look in case a worse monster showed up.

Chapter Nine

The trip toward the compound where Dennis and his team had colleagues was a grim one. Before