Page 52 of Leviathan

"What was her name?" I demanded.

"It wants to know her name," the woman translated.

"Sounded like lettuce," said the hyena alien. "Stupid name."

The word in their language for the leafy green plant he was talking about sounded like Angelica.

"Evangelia?" I asked.

"This one is ours," the hyena pointed at the woman. "Her kind is a delicacy. We ate the other two before we realized how much her meat would sell for. Do you have more to sell? We'll buy all of them."

They were trying to buy humans from me to sell as meat, not knowing what I was.

"Fuckers," I spat out, knowing they couldn't understand me. "Is there any way we can get these guys arrested? I don't want to leave them running around."

"Just tell us what the price is," the hyena alien demanded before turning back to the woman. "If you keep translating for us so we can get more of your kind, we won't eat you, we promise."

Several of the other hyenas let out a chuckle.

"You won't eat her regardless," the messed-up Vaurelcar snarled.

"It has other humans it can sell you, but wants to see your ship first," the woman said to the hyenas. "It wants to go on board and look at what you have to trade."

"Why would you say that?" I asked her.

I absolutely did not want to go on their ship.

"They might have navigational data or records or something to explain where they got the other humans from," she said in English. "Plus, we can't kill them here, where people can find them. We should do it on their ship."

Woah she was bloodthirsty.

"You want to kill them?" I asked.

"They eat people," she replied, as if that were the obvious answer to my question.

"What is it saying?" the hyena demanded.

"It says the humans it has are fresh and very valuable; it wants to make sure you can pay for them," the woman said in their language.

"I'd rather turn them over to the authorities," I said. "Killing them will just kill the trail to their superiors."

“I understand your intentions,” Lyrien said on the private com. “But they won’t be imprisoned or stopped unless their activities are public enough to cause an outrage.”

"They won't serve time," she said in English. "You won't have to do anything. Eun can do it. There won't be anything or anyone to stop them if we don't get rid of them."

"Eun is not a normal Vaurelcar name," Lyrien added in, noting the other male’s name. “Not at least any one that I’ve ever heard before.”

"You will come too," the hyena said. "To translate."

"As long as your kind won't ever bother me again," the woman said.

"Agreed," the hyenas all chuckled again, and they headed back down the alley, the woman and Eun following after.

I clunked along beside them.

"Are you sure about this?" Lyrien asked on our private channel. “The likelihood of this ending in a fight is high.”

"I’m not sure about the fighting part," I said. "But I’m not going to leave the first human I’ve seen in a situation like this."