The Dancer & The Magician (Hisoka Romance)

Chapter 19: Shots Fired

Ging pants and stares at me like a hungry wolf. "Look at how powerful you are. How sexy—"

I grab him by the neck and raise him against the tree's spine. "I'm not here for your entertainment." I press into his trachea with my thumb as he gulps for air. His uninjured hand reaches for mine to loosen my grip.

"What we had before is over. Who I'm with and what I'm doing are none of your concern," I say.

Ging smiles like he knows something I don't. What's he got up his sleeve?

I squeeze tighter. "Do not come near me again or I'll break your fucking legs. Forget about me and focus on Gon. Hopefully he'll get more out of you than I did." I let go and watch him drop to the ground before turning to walk away.

"You're looking for Mattheo, right?"

Shit. I stop dead in my tracks and turn my head to look at him out the corner of my eye. "You waited til now to ask me that?"

Ging laughs and gets up, brushing dirt and twigs off his clothes. "Like I said, I wanted to visit an old friend. Now that we're all caught up, we can get down to business."

*

We use the book to transfer to the ridge of Ardaca, a rain forest where the poachers' safehouse is according to Ging. There's a fair amount of walking since we didn't want to land close enough for anyone to see or hear us. It's a swampy sweatbox of a region with flying roaches and mosquitos as big as my face. A hawk with wings the span of Ging and I combined swoops down and buries its claws into one of the insects with a crunch.

The ground is mainly mud and tree roots. It's so muggy it's hard to breathe. I'm only wearing a tank top, shorts, and hiking boots but still sweltering. The heat during the daytime must be unbearable. Meanwhile Ging walks with relative ease in whatever breathable fabric he's in.

I have this feeling we're being followed. Little things like twigs breaking around us, the feeling of human eyes on my back, footsteps other than my own trapsing the forest. Yet every time I look around the perimeter I can't find anything. Occasionally I'll see a wisp of pink cross my peripheral vision, but when a fuchsia bird with feathers like rope passes by, I assume that's what I've been seeing. Why would a bird be following us though?

"If you knew where the poachers' hideout was, why didn't you shut them down sooner?" I ask Ging as we climb up a hill.

He bends back the grass so we can go through. "I only found out today from one of my contacts who recently was initiated into the poaching ring. As you can imagine they're a hard club to get into and even harder to track down. They call themselves The Harvesters."

I laugh lightly. "You have contacts aka spies now?"

He reaches back to give me a hand. "I always have. It's good to have eyes and ears out when I'm not around."

I think about Hisoka and I dancing at the club, our kiss, our...session after dinner and wonder how much Ging saw. It's creepy to think he was watching me. That was never his kink before. What was he hoping to see? "And you just happened to have them out for me?"

Ging gives me a sly smile. "Don't flatter yourself. My world keeps turning whether you're in it or not."

Once we reach the top of the hill we look across the land to pinpoint where the safehouse is. There's a stream of smoke coming from the northeast along with a few dim lights I see on and off between the swaying banana leaves. We head down and start coming up with a plan. I notice the mosquitoes hover around the ground beneath their comrade as it's being eaten by the hawk... as its blood drips, their mouths drape along the dirt and sop up the blood. They must be attracted to the scent of blood.