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Caleb said in a hollow voice. “When did they come here?” He gave Jacob another sharp look. “Are you sure? Sulfur? Brimstone?”

    “I could hardly mistake it.” He watched as his father collapsed against a cupboard. Caleb had gone gray under the rich sienna tones of his skin. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he continued to mutter under his breath. Jacob picked up the fallen chair, then took his father's arm. “For God's sake, sit before you fall down, and tell me what in all living hell is going on.”

    “Thakathi,” Caleb said. One word. A word powerful enough to strike horror, and even if they wouldn't admit it, stark fear in the heart of every Eshu. Though none had encountered the evil ones in five hundred years, the terror still lingered.

    Suddenly it was as though there were no air left in his lungs. Jacob struggled to breathe, but he had to ask questions. “Here? What are they doing here?

    Caleb shook his head, despair evident in his demeanor. “I don't know. I can hardly credit it. There's been no contact with them since they took our powers away and made it possible for us to be enslaved and sent here,” Caleb said. “If I had to guess, I'd say they somehow found out that our forefathers and -mothers got our powers back—that we are free. I can't believe Obaluaye didn't warn us.”

    “From everything I've heard, Obaluaye does what he wants. He wouldn't warn us unless it was to his benefit to do so.” Jacob shrugged. According to Eshu lore, the capricious nature of the god who commanded their kind was a constant thorn in their sides. A thorn that they had absolutely no control over, so there was really no point in fretting over it. His breathing eased as he saw that his father was regaining his composure. The initial paralyzing fear had passed as they worked through the mystery of the encounter and worked out strategies to resolve it.

    Caleb stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How did they find out? We've been free for almost a hundred years. Why now?” His eyes narrowed as he studied his son. “Did you encounter any of them when you were in Sierra Leone?”

    “Trust me, Papa, if I'd ever run across anything like this before, I would've hightailed it back here to tell you about it. I've never wanted to kill so badly in my life. I was terrified,” he admitted without shame. He freely acknowledged that he was probably too proud, but fear was a normal reaction to a meeting with pure evil.

    “They're being surprisingly subtle,” Caleb said in a considering tone.

    Jacob frowned. There'd been nothing subtle about those men, but his father seldom misspoke. “What do you mean?”

    “From what I understand, Thakathi wouldn't normally bother with trying to track us down. They can't smell us the way we can smell them. To them, we look distinctively human, unless we Become, of course. Back in the old country, they wouldn't have hesitated to wipe out an entire village or town.”

    “Yes, but we're not particularly susceptible to smallpox. Besides, from what I've heard from the old stories, we had a nasty habit of wiping out whole villages too,” Jacob said, feeling that it was only fair to acknowledge his people's complicity in the war that had resulted in the enslavement and deaths of countless souls.

    Caleb gave a fatalistic shrug. “That we did, boy. But unlike them, we could be selective in our slaughter, and we had orders to do so. Unfortunately they have other diseases that we're more likely to succumb to.”

    Jacob didn't pursue that line of discussion. He and his father had argued the point many times, and he knew he sometimes lacked the pragmatism necessary to be Eshu, or at least to rest easy in that role, but now was not the time to deal with that particular issue. “So why do you think they're being subtle?” It was an interesting word used to describe people who were the scourge of mankind because of their ability to wipe out entire communities with horrific disease and