6°34'37.1"N 6°05'36.9"W

  Sassandra-Marahoué, Ivory Coast

  18.05.2024 - 16.15 UTC +00.00

  The car’s engine revved as it pulled up to us faster. Thinking about Marin made my stomach heavier, and I thought about whether it was worth risking it all to take my rage out at random soldiers. Their hearts drew closer, begging to be killed.

  Instead, I remained hidden and let the vehicle pass. I decided to use the seconds they would be within earshot to listen to anything useful.

  I heard them arguing, chatting, teasing each other to pass the time. Like schoolchildren. And loud transmission over their radio kept repeating, alerting them, and possibly others, to an important message. It looped again and again, and although I had a hard time telling the French words apart, I managed to make sense.

  Go Koueti, more, heading to Koueti. Over.

  A call for reinforcements? To Kouétinfla, for sure, the town our coordinates led to as well. This could not have been random.

  I peeked through the foliage as they finally passed through. I only managed to get a glimpse of them, and I saw the rear carriage was wide open, with a group of men sitting in it. Their equipment was military grade, and rifles were hanging on their backs.

  And then they were gone.

  They had not seen us. I retreated back to my Bloodsensing; I had to be sure they were not coming back, so I kept listening with the only useful sense left. Once I could not hear them anymore, I exhaled.

  “We are good,” I said to Rox, not whispering anymore. She whistled to the rest.

  My Bloodsensing Curse gave the all clear when hiding. If a heart could beat, it could not hide from me. Except for mine, that beat I could not hear.

  We emerged from the sides of the street. Rox and I walked to Akissi, who was pulling Guarin out of the bushes, tangled badly in their tendrils. Kouadio was gazing into the distance.

  Akissi said something in her own dialect that Rox did not translate. Then, she repeated in broken French, to make sure I heard it: “At least she has one useful Curse.”

  Kouadio did not react, nor did Guarin. Rox shot an annoyed glance at her but said nothing. And then Kouadio said something.

  “He says to move faster and talk less,” Rox said.

  ? ? ?

  Not more than half an hour had passed when I sensed the change. Any Cursed would have. It was as if I had stepped through fabric, soft and woolly, and somehow transparent.

  I turned to the sun, on its route to the west. Its rays of blistering sunshine felt diffracted, but ever so slightly, by a membrane that was supposed to remain unseen. A veil that aimed to reshape and bend.

  The feeling caressed my skin, hiding an unknown will of its own.

  I stopped walking.

  “We have entered someone’s domain,” I said.

  Our entire company halted. I looked back at our vanguard: Kouadio’s eyes remained still, while Rox translated for him. Akissi stiffened her mouth in disgust and shook her arms almost in an instinctive twitch. As if a domain was something she could ever do anything about. No, with all her muscles and anger, she was as powerless as the next non-Cursed.

  Even I could do a little bit more than just sense it.

  At the front, Guarin sighed. “Well, we cannot be surprised. Kouétinfla is quite nearby. Whether allies or enemies, someone is expecting us. Do you think they can sense who and where we are?”

  “Every domain is different,” I said, “but I would wager it is a matter of time before they sense us.”

  Rox said something to Kouadio in their own dialect, possibly explaining the situation. I stepped to the front to talk with Guarin. I whispered, knowing that this was not a topic to bring up to everyone.

  “We cannot be sitting ducks,” I said, “did the Kanem say anything about domains?”

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  “No. They only said that they would be waiting for us.”

  “And the Cursed with them. Do they command a domain?”

  Guarin struggled to answer. I saw him frown, about to utter something. Instead, he chose to shrug his shoulders.

  “Okay then…”

  A scream so guttural and deep, like a wounded animal being torn apart, interrupted us. I turned back. Rox had raised her gun, and Akissi had drawn her machete ready to strike, both of them jumping back.

  “Oh fuck,” Guarin said.

  Kouadio fell to his knees, his eyes betraying a shocking realization. The tendons in his forearms made his arms flail.

  A pink lump on the ground, his tongue, twitched.

  While his eyes begged for an explanation, blood gurgled up his throat and dripped from his lips. No one dared make a step, as he fell to his knees, and faced us all one by one, unable to make a sound.

  Was it a screaming hex? Maybe he was attacked by a hex that caused him to yell at us, perhaps warn us, or even cry out our names, and his tongue was ripped out as a consequence. Perhaps a trap or a direct attack from whoever had the Cursed domain.

  Or maybe it was something location-based and seeking the contents of the pouches, meaning Rox was right to guess Kouadio carried the correct pouch.

  It did not matter what happened.

  If the Cursed that owned the domain had not already realized where we were, he would soon. We had to move fast.

  Akissi started slowly walking to the shaking body of Kouadio, heading to the two pouches. I whistled at her. She turned angry at me, and I gestured No! at her.

  Her eyes widened as Guarin whispered, “Shit”. We were all thinking the same thing: what if she touched him or his pouches, and the same thing happened to her?

  “What do we do?” Rox asked with her pistol out, aiming at the wilderness, trying to spot any movement.

  Kouadio kept spitting blood on the ground as his heart desperately pumped blood, trying to keep him breathing, still unaware of his impending doom.

  “We cannot gamble this,” I said.

  I knew what I had to do. Every passing second that Kouadio bled out meant a second closer to executing plan B. I was ready for that, but I was not sure about the rest.

  “Demi, if you have any ace up your sleeve, this is the time,” Guarin said. He was right. I was convinced that was the right moment.

  “Akissi, you are now close to him,” I said while Rox translated to her, “on my signal, you will have to stab his heart and kill him at once. Brace yourself. Some hexes could trigger on contact. A clean kill is your safest chance.”

  Once Rox delivered the message, I turned to her.

  “Rox, be on the lookout. Aim that gun at anything that moves – maybe we are not alone,” I said, and she nodded. “Guarin, look at the ground. Two steps away from you, you will find it. A small spider, waiting for you. You have to catch it and bring it here alive. Take as few steps as possible.”

  Guarin took a brief second to process the peculiar request. I gestured for him to go, to snap him out of it.

  He looked around until he spotted it. I could not see it from where I was standing, but I was sure. Guarin followed my directions: one and two steps, calculated and uncertain at the same time. We all knew whoever controlled this domain could have more hexes in their arsenal, and every move could be a potential trigger. It was like walking in the dark.

  He leaned forward and picked up the critter from the leaves of a bushy plant.

  Rox looked left and right, holding her gun so tight I could see her knuckles whitening. She said something and then said it in French: “What are we doing?”

  I did not answer.

  Guarin let the tiny spider climb on the back of his right hand and then retraced his steps back to me. He did not speak, but his eyes were asking the same confused question.

  Micaria chrysis. One of the ant spiders. Guarin’s hand trembled as he extended it and showed me the spider. Its back shone with purple iridescent light. It did not attempt to run away; it simply sat there on his hand, waiting to be brought to me.

  I raised my palm in front of Guarin. The spider jumped and landed on my upward-facing palm. I sensed its longing for my command and started speaking in Dida, with a deep and slow voice. The spider tittered and crawled, circling my hand and spiraling from my arm and through my back, each light step closer to its destination.

  I crouched and continued my chant, now letting its steps guide my rhythm. I couldn’t feel it – but then it reappeared, spinning a web and floating right in front of my eyes. Miniscule and dark, its longing for my command even stronger.

  My eyes teared up, and my focus intensified by my Curse. I gave the signal to Akissi. She lunged and quickly pierced Kouadio’s chest with her machete. Kouadio took his last breath through the gaping hole in his chest, shook, and then lay still.

  “Jump,” I said, in Dida.

  The spider flung across the scene, spinning her web from my head during its long jump. It landed on Kouadio’s forehead, only momentarily visible, before crawling inside his mouth.

  Akissi jumped away and swore in disgust, as more spawned. Micaria chrysis. More and more.

  The small spiders spawned and crawled from Kouadio’s open chest wound, spinning their web around his joints and arms. The webs tightened around his body, and the spiders re-entered and exited the wound as many times as necessary to complete their work. The first spider we could not see, but I knew it was digging deep into its brain.

  That was enough.

  “Spark,” I commanded.

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