"Jesus Christ it's hot."

"I heard you the first time Chuck," he was right though, it was hot, the hottest summer in the Democratic Republic of Congo on record. Well, as far as anyone knew; the tribals weren't exactly good on keeping records, just legends. But that was fine, that was what they were looking for: legends.

The men were being driven in a jeep, painted khaki, something they had since coming in from the Savannah. They had been following this vague trail all the way from Egypt, but the closer they got to the equator, the stronger the trail was getting. There were two of them, not including their Azande guide that they had picked up and their driver who had a gun. The gun would have been unsettling save for two reasons: the first being that war never really ended in this country, and it was better to have one and not need it, than need it and not have one. The second reason was simple: they had both seen far more frightening things than a man with a gun.

He was a young man, but not one some upstart general would call a whipper-snapper. Approaching his forties and it was showing just a little bit in the grey of his blond hair that was sticking to the back of his neck. The man next to him, Chuck, was younger than he was, dark hair, dark eyes, one of those faces; the kind of guy who could commit a murder, and would fit the witness description of forty percent of Americans.

He wiped his brow for the fifteenth time, if his jacket wasn't black, the stains would have been showing. Worry for his wardrobe was interrupted by the passing of a sign. A human skull was posted on the same pike above a tree that had carved in it a warning. The driver was kind enough to translate, "go back, trespassers will be killed."

"God I hope this lead is worth this," Chuck said, unscrewing the cap from his warm water bottle and taking a single drink from it. It felt like they had been driving for hours through this jungle, and the farther they went, the thicker it got. Finally, the driver stopped.

"You have to go the rest of the way on foot," he said. Their guide jumped from the back of the jeep to the ground. The two of them were a little less adventurous, opening their doors and stepping out. Their nice shiny shoes would never be the same.

"It's this way," said their guide in heavily accented English. He waited for them to follow after shutting their doors.

"It's gotta be in the damn jungle doesn't it?" Chuck said, stepping in something and grimacing, wiping the bottom of his shoe on an upraised tree root.

"They like the heat remember?" their guide looked back at them, moving better through the trees without shoes than they were, each time assuring them that it was in the direction he was leading them.

He was maybe eight or ten; they insisted that they use a young boy. The Azande tribe they hired him from said he would be safer that way. They had not meant either of them. The two men weren't feeling entirely safe anymore. The man with the gun was still in the jeep several yards back, and getting further away with each step.

"Think this will pan out?" asked Chuck, gingerly stepping over the rotting corpse of a tree. He looked at the receding figure of their guide as he jogged through the trees, only to reappear again to make sure they hadn't fallen, or worse, "slow down Niumba-ha-! Whatever," the boy was easy to spot at least; he had red shorts, and a striped white shirt.

"I think this has a better chance than the last time," he said, remembering the last wild goose chase they had gone on in Peru. They should have known that it was a farce once the trail led into the mountains. Cold and dry. A dead end if ever there was one.

"Here, here!" called their guide, and they stepped out of the jungle and into quite an amazing site. It was farmland, all dead, and huts, all in ruin, except one, the largest one. It was well maintained, and the little garden-sized farm next to it was lush with crops that were not yet ripe. A pleasant, savory smell was coming from the hut, and a bit of smoke could be see wafting away from the dried leaves that covered it. The Azande boy jogged up to it, saying something in his native tongue into the hut and stood by the door, looking in, then back, but not going further.

The two men eventually caught up, looking at the hut. It looked like your typical tribal hut, but it was larger than the others they passed, the sides had decorated mats circling all around, painted a dark color with bright red symbols painted on them; symbols constructed of small dashes.

They exchanged looks, before stepping up. The Azande boy hopped inside, vanishing into the darkness. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust. The inside was dark, the 'windows' of the hut only let a little light in through mesh-like grass weavings. A very small fire was the first discernible amount of color, and also the source of the smell.

Beyond the fire sat the reason they came here, cutting a small piece of meat from the roasting beast, whose small, red tusked skull lay nearby, and passing it through thick lips. Sharp teeth bit down causing blood to come from the pink flesh before the lips closed. Dark eyes looked up at them with the same passiveness as a lion observes a passing herd of zebra when it's not hungry.

There was no doubt that this was what they had come for.

Their guide spoke to the tribal, who looked over at the boy, the whites of the eyes a stark sudden flash, before returning to look at the men, whose skin was so pale they were lighter in color than the palm of her hand.

Yes, her, that much was obvious. She wore practically nothing, certainly not on her torso. A ring of necklaces that spiraled up her neck rather than rested on her shoulders, and one that lay on her chest made of small skulls, like birds, rodents and snakes. That was all that she had for a top. Chuck gave one look to his companion, before he began to aimlessly wander around the large circular room, which caught the attention of their host, her eyes following him with the slow movement of her head. The only movement as her body had gone completely still.

"Thank you for letting us into your home," said the other, distracting her from his companion. Her eyes flashed to the Azande boy again as the young man began to translate. She didn't look away from him until he was done, moving her gaze back to the man as he continued, "my name's Agent Cameron Richards, I'm with the FBI, from America. My companion is Agent Charles Nelson, and our guide is called Niumbahawiri," again the woman's eyes flashed to the boy as he translated, and she seemed to lose interest, slicing off another piece of meat, pinching it between her filed nails and eating it.

Richard's eyes moved along her for a moment. She had those same kinds of scars that a lot of the tribals seemed fond of. On her abdomen was something like a flower, or a sun, or a star. Something that had spiraling rays revolving around her naval. It was the most decorative of the lot of them. The others were simple and symmetrical; vertical cuts along her collarbone, ridges under her eyes, rows of dots down her shoulders . The only asymmetrical ones were two parallel, diagonal lines that encompassed her left eye.

She didn't respond, in fact she didn't look up at the two of them, and ignored Chuck as he walked behind her, admiring some bit of decoration by one of the windows. Some more skulls set on a stack of books, these of larger animals, predators. He could read titles like The Heart of Darkness and The Most Dangerous Game from between the sharp teeth. He was obvious that she perceived that he was no threat to her.

"It took quite a while to find you. Lovely village, where are all the others?"

The woman did not look at Niumbahawiri as he translated, but cut a piece of meat from her meal and extended it in offering to him. The boy reached for it, not hesitating as she began to speak. The dialect was very similar, as they had been told it was, but it included some clicking similar to the khoisan languages spoken in the south.

After Niumbahawiri put the meat to his mouth and tore a piece off he looked to Richards, "she says, they are all killed."

The agents both looked at the young woman, piecing things together bit by bit but didn't say anything for now.

"What killed them?"

The boy translated and the young woman kept ignoring them for the most part, continuing her meal. She did speak though, after tearing some meat from her newly cut piece, speaking over it, and then took another bite, and Richards looked over at their guide again.

"She says that they all died in the jungle," he said, also returning to his piece of meat.

"Yes but what killed them?"

Niumbahawiri translated again, and the woman's eyes flashed up to the man, then back to her meat. She said just a few simple words, "she doesn't know."

Richards held in a sigh and moved forward, bending down so that he was eye level with her, one knee of his nice pants in the dirt. Her eyes flashed up to him, looking directly into his as he smiled sympathetically. She looked back down to her hands that worked the strips of meat, so rare it still bled on her fingers. It made Richards lose any appetite he had worked up on the way here.

"That makes you the last then," he said, sounding sorry but she didn't look at him, "we saw the symbols on your hut, where did they come from?"

After a moment of silence, their host said just a few words again, "she says, 'in the jungle,'" Richards reached into his jacket and pulled out a small manila envelope, he pinched the metal clips to allow the flap to open and took out a handful of pictures, "can you tell me if any of these look familiar?" he flipped through them, grabbing the first five pictures and laying them down next to her. They were simple pictures, mostly of jungle, but with things that didn't belong: slash marks on stone, burned holes through wood, glowing green liquid on the leaves of some ferns, a large crater of scorched trees and ash in the middle of a jungle.

She glanced over at them while she chewed, tilting her head in an eerily familiar fashion that caused chills to go up the agent's spine. Never had he felt that they were so close. Looking at this woman was like looking at one of them.

Some of her tresses fell over her shoulder, but after regarding them for a moment, she sat back upright and took another bite of meat, looking over at Niumbahawiri. Richards also glanced at the boy, wondering if maybe some things were getting lost in translation. Their guide looked at him in turn, fingers wet from the meat.

"What is this?" Chuck suddenly spoke up and gathered the attention of all in the hut. He had nearly completed a full circle of the area. It had been easy to do, there were no rooms, just the large round space that served a simple purpose. He was indicating to a large skull with thick white bones, but more impressively five sets of ivory tusks.

Niumbahawiri had not translated what Chuck said at first, until the woman looked over at him waiting for it. The boy quickly translated, sounding anxious and the woman answered again, a single word, "it's a hippopotamus skull."

"Did you kill it?"

"She did."

Richards knew that his companion was playing nice to rid himself of suspicion. What Chuck lacked in individuality he made up for in a very specific skill, one imperative to their line of work. Richards helped by selecting a few more pictures, "very impressive, you're a skilled hunter," strange, too. Every tribe he had ever passed through thought little more of their women than as property. Never in a million years, mostly because that much time had passed for some of those tribes he was sure, would they have allowed a woman to hold a weapon, let alone hunt. But perhaps her skill was driven by necessity, and the lack of anyone to stop her.

"Could you tell me if any of these bring something to mind?" he asked, setting the other pictures on top of the first ones. She glanced at them again, but seemed even less interested in them than the first ones. Richards could hear his teeth pressing together as he took steady breaths and looked at the four pictures he had laid down. These did, indeed, seem less impressive to those who did not know what to look for. Rational minds would excuse the distorted parts of the images as poor picture-taking, or simply smudged film during the developing process.

This was getting nowhere quickly; he was going to have to take the risk, "what about these?" he laid down the last pictures. She gave them the same apathetic glance, but this time did a double take with interest, her tresses smacking against her shoulders. Richard's eyes lit up. She kept chewing after a second, wiping her fingers on the skin of her ribs before reaching over and moving the pictures around. The agent almost didn't dare to breathe. Then, she just looked away and cut off another small piece of meat.

Richards felt like he had been blue-balled. His fists clenched. Chuck walked over and pulled gently on Richards' shoulder, leaning him up and back to his feet, "calm down, don't lose your head. She's toying with us, just like that tribe in the Amazon," he spoke quietly, even though she couldn't understand them, "they didn't want to tell us anything either, remember?"

"She definitely knows something," Richards said on the same level, his voice more even than he felt. He messed with one of his cuffs, straightening it out as it stuck uncomfortably against his skin. The young woman looked over at the pictures again, dark eyes scanning them over, moving another picture over and freezing for a moment, lifting a picture. She looked it over.

"This is the closest we've gotten in years. We'll just have to keep working on her, soften her up. Maybe we can give her things, bribe her, pay her off. She'll show us what she knows."

"What is this?" came a heavily accented and unfamiliar voice. Both agents looked over at the woman, holding the picture so that it faced them; a dark picture, blurry, with an even darker, nearly black silhouette that her pointed nail was against. She still had food in her mouth, chewing slowly, but her eyes were intense, looking at the two agents.

"You speak English?" Richards asked, hoping that it was well-placed mimicry instead.

"And read," she said, leaning back into an upright position still holding the picture, "O W L F. That doesn't spell FBI," she tossed the picture with the others; pictures of small figures perched in trees, standing on the corners of tall buildings, of one greenish blur fighting a blackish blur, all only slightly better in quality than pictures of sasquatch or the Loch Ness monster.

Richards was silent for a moment, turning and facing her. He was caught unawares, and was stumbling with how to proceed, but she didn't give him a chance, "I am Diwizama. I am the last of the Kure Iradandaanya, which makes me chief of my tribe, and while you are in my lands, you will show me the proper respect."

Her voice was tense, but even, she sat straight, head held high and erect, looking at them with narrowed eyes, and brow raised, "I want nothing of yours. Nothing you can offer me will 'soften me up,' not with you coming in here expecting me to be ignorant and insulting me."

Niumbahawiri stepped away to the wall, now useless. He remained quiet and his head was down. He put his hands behind his back between him and the dried mud, and simply waited.

"You come to me and show me these things," she said, flicking her hand over the pictures, "why?"

Richards swallowed once and stepped forward again kneeling in the dirt once more to be eye-level once again, but his eyes were hard now, "we're looking for something."

The young woman gave him a hard glare back, "you'll find nothing here," she said, "this is Africa, nothing but heat and blood."

"Well what we're looking for is very fond of both those things," Richards could feel the sweat rolling down his brown to his cheek. It itched to be wiped away, but he didn't take his eyes off of their hostess.

"Most men do," she said with finality and looked back to her fire. Her muscles suddenly tensed when Richard's skin touched hers, grabbing her wrist, keeping her from taking her knife in her hand. Her dark eyes flashed in warning, and the instinct that he had grabbed a tiger by the tail kicked in. He didn't let go.

"We're not asking for much, Diwizama," he hissed, garnering a gnashing of white teeth from the young woman, "just take us to the place, wherever it is that they land, or landed. Where it was they were, where you found the symbols, that's all."

"You could have asked me for anything else, anywhere else, where the hunting is good, where the gorillas like to nest, where the diamond mine my ancestors dug was. All those things I could show you and you would not have to make many threats. But what you're looking for doesn't exist," she twisted her wrist between his fingers, feeling the pull of her skin against his, "you are hunting ghosts."

Richards' knuckles turned white. Before he could open his mouth, he felt a sudden sharp pain and jerked back, cursing loudly. He held his wrist, looking at the dark red running from the serrated crescent wound on the side of his hand. Hazel eyes flashed beneath a furrowed brow to look at the woman, the hard line between her lips the same color as the growing spot beneath the agent's fingertips. Richards then remembered what the Azande had warned him about: these people were ritualistic cannibals.

"Get out," she hissed, slowly rising, the lion now on the prowl, knife in hand, "you are no longer welcome here. Trespassers will be killed."

Chuck helped Richards to his feet and they began to make a retreat out of the hut, the cold voice behind them pricking their necks, "best get healed. Infection is a slower and more painful killer than any predator in the Congo," Chuck glanced back for just a split second, enough to see her throw a handful of the photographs into her fire.

The two stopped half-way through the village, Niumbahawiri having followed after them with a moment's hesitation, and easily had passed them up to take them back out of the jungle. Chuck looked at the wound on Richards' hand and made a discouraging noise, "really tried to take a chunk out of you didn't she?" he tried to joke, but the worry in his voice was apparent. He took a kerchief out of his pocket and began tying it around his companion's palm.

"That bitch," growled the older man, slowly beginning to feel the pain keenly as his heartbeat slowed back to normal, "all that for nothing!"

"Don't worry about it," said the younger man, tying the knot and jerking a grunt from his partner. Something in his voice made Richards' silence heavy, "come on, we really should get that looked at quickly."

The two men turned to their waiting guide, striding out briskly to keep up with the boy, leaving the skeletons of the village behind them.