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already knows the answer; I just have to let it find its voice. He s intelligent. Driven. The crime scenes
are messages in a language only he speaks, full of symbols he thinks are deeply relevant.
What s the point to that? A message that can t be understood?
I open my eyes, annoyed, the spell broken. He wants to be understood but on his own terms, in his
own world. I ve seen this before; the killer believes that if he can just make us view the universe the
way he does, we ll agree with him. In his eyes, he s completely justified we re the ones who aren t
sane.
And he thinks he can do that with cryptic messages?
Our language shapes how we think. The position of a verb relative to a noun, the way we use
pronouns or assign gender to some words and not to others. He may be the only one who speaks his
language, but understand it and you understand how he thinks. The problem is that he s clearly
immersed himself in a subculture I have virtually no access to.
The Four Color Club contact didn t work out?
Sure, if I want to spend all my time asleep and it s all secondary information, anyway. I need to dig
through this stuff on my own, do hands-on research where I can physically connect with the material.
Sounds very old-fashioned.
Well, I d settle for a cross-universe high-speed broadband portal with full archival access to every
comic book database in existence, but nobody s offered me one.
Sorry. Cross-universe magic tends to be highly specific, very dangerous, and extremely limited. Not
exactly what you need.
I sigh. No. I guess I ll have to settle for whatever information I can collect on this side. Tell me about
the African Queen.
She s an actual queen, and she s from Africa.
Great, thanks for filling me in.
I thought I should start with the essentials. Her name is Catharine Shaka, and she s Zulu royalty in
fact, some would argue her bloodline places her on the throne itself. Politics in her country tend to be
bloodthirsty, a mix of warring thrope tribes and shamanistic intrigues. She herself was the victim of an
assassination attempt at an early age, which led to her being raised in secret by a powerful witch
doctor.
Which doctor?
He gives me a look. Anyway, the shaman taught her how to be a powerful warrior and gave her the
sky-shield, a magical artifact that lets her fly and protects anyone using it from all harm. She s one of
the best archers in the world, and a master of the thrope martial art isilwane ukulwa.
If she s African royalty, what s she doing here?
Living in exile. The current faction in power is not exactly friendly to her family or her politics
which is why she keeps her true identity a secret.
What are her politics?
She s a revolutionary. She d like to raise an army, overthrow the ruling military junta, and establish a
democracy.
And how does the NSA feel about that?
Ambivalent. The White House would like to see a democracy in place, but they re not willing to
commit significant military or political resources.
Maybe she s decided to gather a few of her own.
A possibility, he admits. Though my sources haven t heard anything about preparations for a
military action.
The Brigade s weapons might be all the preparation she needs.
I think about it as we drive into the darkening twilight. A one-woman coup a single warrior taking on
an entire country. Is it possible? Not in my world, but here it just might be. Even if the idea is crazy,
that doesn t eliminate Shaka as a suspect.
In fact, it makes her a more viable one.
The place Shaka is using as her retreat is called the Serengeti Safari Reserve. It s a game park for
thropes, where they can experience the firsthand thrill of pulling down an antelope, gazelle, or zebra,
either solo or as part of a group. Cassius tells me it s popular as a corporate team-building exercise.
There s a double-gated entryway through a high razor-wire-topped chain link fence. Once we re in,
there are no signs warning us to stay inside the vehicle or not to roll down our windows; we re the
predators here. I let in some of the night air, and to my surprise it smells dry, dusty, and much warmer
than I expected for Oregon at this time of year.
Magic, Cassius tells me. They use animism to convince the entire area and everything in it plants,
earth, insects, air that they re on another continent. Adds to the realism.
Must be expensive.
Charlie s voice from the backseat makes me jump a little. He s so still at times it s easy to forget he s
even there. The people who come here don t care much about money. They re after something else.
True, Cassius says. They want to experience life as it used to be or at least how they think it used
to be. The thrill of the hunt.
Commercialized and romanticized, Charlie growls. I tried it once. Didn t do much for me. I
sometimes forget that the life force that animates Charlie is that of a seven-ton carnivore that last
walked the Earth sixty-five million years ago; when I do, he does something to remind me.
Commercialized is right, I mutter as we get to the parking lot. It looks more like Disneyland in high
season than a nature park there are hundreds of vehicles here and a steady stream of people coming
and going, mostly groups of young men but some families and couples, too. We park, get out, and join
the lineup. Everything s lit by torches gas or propane, though something s been added to make it
smell like wood smoke and the atmosphere s both quieter and more charged than I expected. It takes
me a second to recognize the feeling it s like lining up for a haunted-house ride on Halloween, that
same combination of nervous excitement and morbid celebration, candy coating over a heart of
darkness. Grinning in the face of death, and realizing he s grinning right back.
Even with Cassius and Charlie beside me, I don t feel at ease here. I don t even eat meat well, the
occasional piece of sushi and this place more or less worships the practice of killing and eating
animals. Not that I have a moral leg to stand on, of course; thropes are carnivores, pure and simple, and
I can no more condemn them for that than I can pires for drinking blood. As long as it s not my own.
But I still feel like a cashew in a room full of squirrels, and hope I remembered to apply enough fake
wolf pheromone this morning. I have visions of being taken down by an overenthusiastic family from
Des Moines who didn t read the brochure. Look, Martha! They got free-range humans here!
I expect Cassius to flash his NSA credentials and bypass the line, but that doesn t happen I guess he
wants to keep as low a profile as possible. Instead, he pays for a deluxe package for all three of us, and
specifies the guide he wants.
I m sorry, sir, the woman at the wicket says. Cath s booked solid right now, she won t be available
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