Who Decides…

It was a painful choice, made quickly. I would go to Ngozi first and hope that Marcus was wrong. I could not know how many were sent, or how much of a head start they had, so I pushed my unnatural body to extraordinary limits.

I approached Ngozi’s house from the open field to the back of her house. It was still and quiet. I stopped a few meters from her back door and sensed no other presence beyond her steady heartbeat. I could feel her eyes on me, studying in the dark.

“I’ve been expecting you.” She said flatly, from where she was sitting to the left of the door. She never talked much about our connection, or how she was affected by it, but I have always suspected that she could sense my presence and perhaps much more.

“I need you to come with me. To stay with me for a while…you know I respect your independence, but this is unavoidable at the moment.”

She allowed my unexpected request to breath a moment.

“I know it must be bad…I still want an explanation when there is time though.” She said before disappearing into the house before returning with a small bag.

“Hold onto your bag.” I said picking her up. She looked up to me and smiled before closing her eyes for the frenetic journey back to the estate.

As I stopped on the fringe of the estate, I could smell blood in the air. I sensed eyes following us. Beyond the night sounds of crickets and toads, it was eerily quiet. Ngozi's forehead was slick with sweat that also dotted her upper lip. She gripped my hand tightly as we avoided the clear path to my front porch.

Marcus never sent anyone for Ngozi I thought, that would be too obvious…this was about teaching a different lesson. Still, there was no sign of his hunting party. There was something ahead that looked like a pile of mannequin parts covered in red tobacco sauce. I stopped abruptly and turned Ngozi away from the small heap of broken flesh before us. It appeared to be two, perhaps three, young children that were fed on and left as a macabre marker.

There was something else. I was suddenly aware of shallow breathing and near silent sobbing. It was coming from someone with a heartbeat. We made our way to the back of the house where my new friend, my latest victim, knelt cradling his wife, covered in her blood…