‘Tell me more about the Mozambican guy, Joao Pelembe,’ she said to Njinga, talking just for the sake of trying to get her mind off the ticking clock and the slow-throbbing terror. ‘You already told me a lot about Hrothgar and Sigurd, but not so much about this dude.’
Njinga let out a long, slow whistle from between her teeth, shaking her head.
‘Joao Pelembe … now there’s a fine piece of work,’ she muttered. ‘You know anything about the Mozambican Civil War?’
Chloe shook her head.
‘I guess they don’t teach much about it in history class huh,’ Njinga said, ‘which don’t surprise me too much. Anyway, it ended a couple years before you were born. During the war Joao was a commander of one of the most notorious RENAMO units. There’s this beastwalker called Ayanda Dlamini, a real asshole who’s been getting filthy rich on the backs of all sorts of human wars for centuries. He’s an arms dealer. So our boy Joao set up a deal with Ayanda to buy some guns an’ RPGs, but it actually turned out to be an ambush; Joao tried to kill Ayanda so he could take the weapons without having to pay for ‘em. Ayanda shifted forms an’ defended himself in his hippopotamus form, killing a number of Joao’s soldiers as well as Joao himself before fleeing … well, the idiot thought he had killed Joao.’
‘But instead, Joao became one of you.’
‘Yep. An’ after he underwent the transformation from human to beastwalker,’ Njinga continued ‘the crazy sonofabitch began to believe he was a living god. Before his transformation he was already a brutal an’ vicious war criminal, an’ after he became a Cape buffalo he ramped up his evil to even greater levels than before. It wasn’t too hard for the Huntsmen to find him, coz he didn’t make no effort to disguise his newfound abilities. Instead, he revelled in ‘em openly, as he an’ his squad terrorised rural villagers, who came to think a’ him as a demon sent from the depths of hell itself. The “Demon Buffalo with Eyes a’ Flame”, is what they called him … it’s got a better ring to it in Swahili, a’ course. The Huntsmen found him quickly enough, an’ realised what a valuable asset a psychotic warlord could be for the Alliance, so instead of exterminating him, they recruited him.’
‘Jesus. He sounds like he’s, like … literally evil incarnate.’
‘He sure as hell ain’t far from it.’
Both of them stood without speaking for a few minutes, their innards vibrating from the boom of the club bass, their eyes following the anarchic passage of the dazzling lasers as they sheared meteor-like trails through the darkness. After a while, though, Njinga pulled up the right-hand sleeve of her robe.
‘I hope you’re ready, kid. It’s almost time. I’ll see you in there … good luck.’
She turned from the bar and melted into the rolling ocean of bodies, swallowed up by the seething turmoil of bacchanal madness in seconds, and Chloe was left alone with the dull roar of the music in her skull and the icy sickness of anxiety, swirling and lacerating her innards like jagged shards of swallowed glass, in her belly.
***
With one last nervous glance over her shoulder, Adriana, moving with painstaking caution, pried open the top of the toilet tank, praying that Roxana, who was asleep in the room, would not wake up. She had managed to keep the secret of the watch and the key from the girl for the past few weeks, but now the night of the mission had finally arrived, and the appointed time was drawing nearer.
With trembling hands she set the porcelain cistern cover down on the toilet mat so that it would not make a noise against the ceramic tiles, and she reached inside and retrieved the watch, which told her that there was half an hour to go.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered to herself as dread crept with icy insect legs all along her skin. ‘It’s almost time. It’s almost—’
Adriana? Are you in there?’
Roxana’s voice blazed like an accusatory jolt of electricity through Adriana’s body.
‘Um, y-, yes Roxana,’ she stammered. ‘Just a minute, I’m uh, on the toilet.’
‘Okay. I need the bathroom too when you’re done.’
‘All right, I won’t be long.’
Adriana tiptoed over to the door and pressed her ear against it. She listened intently and heard Roxana plop down on the mattress again with a muffled thud, so she hurried back to the toilet and carefully replaced the cistern cover. She kept the watch and key out now; there would be no time to come in here again and repeat this procedure.
She felt a terrible sense of guilt about not trusting the girl with this secret, but the janitor had been extremely specific about keeping smuggled items a complete secret from everyone, even Roxana, her only friend in this awful place. Now, however, the moment of truth was about to arrive, and there would be no way to sneak out without Roxana noticing. Of course, if Roxana saw her using the key to escape the room, she would want to come with as well. And there would be all of the questions she would have to deal with from the girl, as well as the worst issue, in her opinion: that of shattered trust. While Adriana had not been forced to have sex with a client yet, Roxana’s virginity had been taken by that evil, decrepit Chinese geriatric who even Hrothgar seemed to fear. Indeed, it seemed as if he had made Roxana his personal concubine; thrice more his bodyguard had come to their room and hauled Roxana off, screaming and weeping, to do whatever unspeakable things that wrinkled pervert forced her to do.
All three times the fourteen-year-old had come back from these encounters catatonic, pale as a corpse, and covered in bruises and bloodied cuts, taking tiny, limping steps on trembling legs. Every one of these excursions
