Feeling returned to her legs, but suddenly she could not breathe. Her throat felt closed, blocked somehow.
Instantly, she located the blockage, opened a place beneath it?a hole in her throat through which to breathe. And she got his throat between her teeth.
Utterly desperate, he jammed his fingers into the newly-made breathing hole.
At another time with other prey, she might have collapsed at the sudden, raw agony. But now the image of her dead son was before her, and her daughter nearly dead in the same way. What if he had merely closed their throats as he had just closed hers? She might never have known for sure. He might have gotten away with it.
She ripped his throat out.
He was dying when she gave way to her own pain. He was too far gone to hurt her any more. He died with soft bubbling noises and much bleeding as she lay across him reviving herself, mending herself. She was hungry. Great God, she was hungry. The smell of blood filled her nostrils as she restored her normal breathing ability, and the smell and the flesh beneath her tormented her.
She got up quickly and loped down the narrow stairs, down the main stairs. There, she hesitated. She wanted food before she changed again. She was sick with hunger now. She would be mad with it if she had to change to order food.
Luisa came into the house, saw her, and stopped. The old woman was not afraid of her. There was none of that teasing fear smell to make her change swiftly before she lost her head.
“Is he dead?” the old woman asked.
Anyanwu lowered her cat head in what she hoped would be taken for a nod.
“Good riddance,” Luisa said. “Are you hungry?”
Two more quick nods.
“Go into the dining room. I’ll bring food.” She went through the house and out toward the kitchen. She was a good, steady, sensible friend. She did more than sewing for her keep. Anyanwu would have kept her if she had done nothing at all. But she was so old. Over seventy. Soon some frailty that Anyanwu could not make a medicine for would take her life and another friend would be gone. People were temporary. So temporary.
Disobeying orders, Iye and Helen came in through the front door and saw Anyanwu, still bloody from her kill, and not yet gone to the dining room. If not for the presence of the child, Anyanwu would have roared her anger and discomfort at Iye. She did not like having her children see her at such a time. She loped away down the hall to the dining room.
Iye stayed where she was, but allowed Helen to follow Anyanwu. Anyanwu, struggling with fear smell, blood smell, hunger, and anger, did not notice the child until they were both in the dining room. There, wearily, Anyanwu lay down on a rug before the cold fireplace. Fearlessly, the child came to sit on the rug beside her.
Anyanwu looked up, knowing that her face was smeared with blood and wishing she had cleaned herself before she came downstairs. Cleaned herself and left her daughter in the care of someone more reliable.
Helen stroked her, fingered her spots, caressed her as though she were a large house cat. Like most children born on the plantation, she had seen Anyanwu change her shape many times. She was as accepting of the leopard now as she had been of the black dog and the white man named Warrick who had to put in an occasional appearance for the sake of the neighbors. Somehow, under the child’s hands, Anyanwu began to relax. After a while, she began to purr.
“Agu,” the little girl said softly. This was one of the few words of Anyanwu’s language Helen knew. It meant simply, “leopard.” “Agu,” she repeated. “Be this way for Doro. He wouldn’t dare hurt us while you’re this way.”
CHAPTER 13
Doro returned a month after Joseph Toler’s grisly corpse had been buried in the weed patch that had once been a slaves’ graveyard, and Stephen Ifeyinwa Mgbada had been buried in ground that had once been set aside for the master and his family. Joseph would be very lonely in his slave plot. No one else had been buried as a slave since Anyanwu bought the plantation.
Doro arrived knowing through his special senses that both Joseph and Stephen were dead. He arrived with replacements?two boy children no older than Helen. He arrived unannounced and walked through the front door as though he owned the house.
Anyanwu, unaware of his presence, was in the library writing out a list of supplies needed for the plantation. So much was purchased now instead of homemade. Soap, ordinary cloth, candles?even some medicines purchased ready-made could be trusted, though sometimes not for the purposes their makers intended. And of course, new tools were needed. Two mules had died and three others were old and would soon need replacing. Field hands needed shoes, hats … It was cheaper to have people working in the fields bringing in large harvests than it was to have them making things that could be bought cheaply elsewhere. That was especially important here, where there were no slaves, where people were paid for their work and supplied with decent housing and good food. It cost more to keep people decently. If Anyanwu had not been a good manager, she would have had to return to the sea much more often for the wearisome task of finding and robbing sunken vessels, then carrying away gold and precious stones?usually within her own body.
She was adding a long column of figures when Doro entered with the two little boys. She turned at the sound of his footsteps and saw a pale, lean, angular man with lank, black hair and two fingers missing from the hand he used to lower himself into the armchair near her desk.
“It’s me,” he said wearily. “Order us a meal, would you? We haven’t had a decent one for some time.”
How courteous of him to ask her to give the order, she thought bitterly. Just then, one of her daughters came to the door, stopped, and looked at Doro with alarm. Anyanwu was in her youthful female shape, after all. But Edward Warrick was known to have a handsome, educated black mistress.
“We’ll be having supper early,” Anyanwu told the girl. “Have Rita get whatever she can ready as quickly as possible.”
The girl vanished obediently, playing her role as a maid, not knowing the white stranger was only Doro.
Anyanwu stared at Doro’s latest body, wanting to scream at him, order him out of her house. It was because of him that her son was dead. He had let the snake loose among her children. And what had he brought with him this time? Young snakes? God, she longed to be rid of him!
