“There aren’t any heroes here.” Savannah laid her hands on Carter’s shoulders. “You want to help? Watch your sister and keep your father safe.”
“I don’t need anyone to keep me safe.” Rashad’s eyes grew dark, and his shadow swelled into the air around him. “My mama was the Night Howler. I inherited all of her strength. You have no idea what I can do.”
“Rashad.” Savannah’s voice was a low rumble. “You swore an oath to never touch what your mother left you.”
“That was before my wife brought darkness to my doorstep. I will do whatever it takes to keep my family safe.”
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be. You know the Law.” Savannah tried to rein in her temper. “Would you throw everything away, just so you don’t have to run?”
“It’s not about running. This is our place. Our life. We’re bound together. Don’t ask me to leave you to die.”
“I’ll stop them. If I know you three are safe, I can concentrate on what I need to do. I’ll burn down this whole damned city to stop them. But I need to know you’re safe.”
“What happens if they kill you?” Lashey’s question was muffled by the hood hanging over her face. “What happens to us if you die?”
“Lashey, don’t.” Rashad hauled his daughter up into his arms and held her close. “Take off the hood, baby.”
“They want so much,” the little girl’s voice filled the room. She held the hood tight to her head with both hands, shrugging away from her father. “You’re just a snack for them, mama; a bag of chips and a juice box.”
“They won’t kill me,” Savannah said, but the words sounded thin even to her ears. “I’ll find who’s behind this mess and end them before they get the chance.”
“Let us help!” Lashey’s voice was joined by dozens of others; whispering, crying, screaming. They came from every corner of the house, rattling the floor with their insistence. “You know not what you face.”
“That’s enough!” Savannah slid the revolver into its holster. “I have to talk to someone. Please, don’t be here when I get back.”
“I’ll keep them safe.” Rashad said, Lashey in one arm, the other wrapped around Carter.
Savannah could see the lightning deep within his eyes. “Just run.” She stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. She had to end this, soon; before Rashad’s stubbornness got everyone she held dear killed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Phil and his team carried the mangled mess of flesh and iron away from the spring while doing their best not to look at it. The beautiful face did not speak, but when anyone made eye contact with it, it smiled broadly, brightly. More than once, an officer stumbled or lost his grip as a result of that smile, making everyone grumble and struggle to keep from dumping the girl onto the ground. The weight was a tremendous burden, as if it wanted to be dropped.
“Stop looking at the damned thing,” Phil growled. He opened the tailgate of one of the police service trucks then slapped the bed. “Put it in here.”
“I am not an it,” the mangled lump of pierced flesh said, its voice cold and sweet as a glass of iced tea. “I am a she.”
Phil did not respond. He had learned that much from dealing with the Root Woman and her messes. Sometimes it was best to ignore the supernatural and keep your head down. Not that such wisdom had kept him from talking to the other girl.
“Take her back to the station and lock her in one of the cells. Alone.”
The deputies watched her with veiled eyes. One of them decided to speak up and voice the concern they all shared. “Why we gotta keep cleaning this shit up?”
“We do what needs to be done to keep the peace.” Phil shrugged. “We’re just holding this for the Root Woman. Twenty-four hours; no more.”
One of the men huffed at that. Phil stared at the gathered officers.
“You don’t believe me? Well, screw you, too!” He spat on the grass. “Things are changing around here. Don’t you doubt it. Now, go do something useful!”
The cops drifted back to their vehicles.
It took twenty minutes before his team managed to untangle the snarl of squad cars and get on the road.
“Bunch of dumbasses,” he muttered as he returned to his car. He could still see Savannah’s revolver pointed at his throat; he still felt the bowel-loosening fear that came from witnessing the calm deadness in the Root Woman’s eyes. The whole half-hour drive back to the station that fear never left him. He took a lap around the block to try to shake it, giving his officers time to find a cell for that poor mess of a girl. He did not know if he could go on seeing her skewered on that piece of iron like a chunk of bait on the world’s biggest fishing hook.
By the time he clomped up the short flight of steps to the station’s front door, Phil felt better. Not great, but better. He would keep these molly-heads and monsters on lockdown for one more day, then tell the Root Woman to come clear them out. They would not be his problem for much longer.
One of the cops, a young detective named Kelly, nodded to Phil as he came through the front doors. There were blood stains all over the front of her uniform, and her arms and hands were streaked red.
“What the hell now?” Phil looked around for more casualties, but there was only one splotch of blood on the floor and no one else standing around covered in crimson.
“Markovitch slipped. Dropped the girl. We’ve got her over in ‘number six’, for now. I just need to get cleaned up. Shift’s over.”
“Go ahead.” Phil dropped his hat on the rack next to the door then hiked his pants up a few inches over his plump belly. “See you tomorrow.”
“Sure.” Kelly disappeared into the women’s locker-room.
Phil’s office was small and cramped, made even smaller by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves he installed on two walls a few years before. Phil shut the door behind him then ran his hand along the spines of his treasured possessions. They were not hardbound first editions or rare texts from far-off lands. They were just paperbacks from Walmart and a few cellophane-sheathed hardbacks he had scrounged from library sales. He had started the collection as a teen, then kept on adding to it as often as he was able. These were not his favorites – those he kept on the walls of his garage at home – but they were special nonetheless. Books about being a cop; books about big-city crimes; novelizations of the exploits of serial killers; anything about crime, criminals, or cops he could lay his hands on; especially if the cops involved were of African descent.
Phil wished his life was more like those books. The SWATS did not get many criminals outside of the molly-heads and crack-heads, who committed petty robberies and theft, and the occasional speeder. Mostly, though, his little piece of Atlanta was infested with evil magic and monsters that he was powerless to stop. Phil hated the Root Woman; not because of what Savannah did or was, but because of what the position said about him. Savannah did things Phil could not. Savannah had the ear of the mayor. Phil had a bunch of idiot cops who respected him even less than he did them. This was not what Phil signed up for when he got promoted to Chief Detective. When they told him he’d be over the SWATS, he thought he’d be over the SWAT team and maybe even all of Special Ops, NOT the goddamned Southwest side of Atlanta. S.W.A.T.S. – South West Atlanta Too Strong, my ass, he thought.
The front door banged closed. All of his officers were gone. He was alone with the things in the cells.
Phil went down the hall leading to the cells, telling himself to make sure his officers had not screwed up and left one of the cells unlocked. But as he walked down the short hall, he knew there was another reason. He wanted to talk to… her.
She stood with her face pressed to the far wall – silent; unmoving. She did not touch the floor, but dangled six inches above it as if a great hand held her aloft by the top of her head. She did not turn to face Phil, but she did speak.
“Hello, Detective.”
Phil tried to speak, but fear paralyzed his tongue. He stared at the girl’s ba
ck, at the space above the red, ragged stumps of her legs. Her braids floated above her head like seaweed waving in the tide. She was fascinating and dreadful.
“She’s coming, Detective.” Her voice was soft, but it held Phil’s attention as if she had screamed straight into his ear. “She’s coming. She’ll kill me and my sister. She’ll torture the boys, and she’ll kill them because they don’t have the information she seeks.”
As horrible as Savannah’s temper could be – and Phil had seen it get downright terrifying – at least she was human. She made sense. These girls, on the other hand, were something else. They made Phil doubt everything he knew about the world. ““Why are you here? Why now?”
“The Root Woman and Mayor Green aren’t the only power in the SWATS. Another one has set designs in motion.” She chuckled and sobbed and clasped her hand and stump to the sides of her head as if her skull was trying to shake itself apart. “The winds of change are blowing, Detective.”
She raised her hand to the barred window at the back of the cell. A fierce wind blew against the glass. It spat a red mist onto the window, then thicker droplets, until the sky was blocked by a red smear. “The loyal will bend before the wind, but others will be stripped bare by the maelstrom of tooth and claw.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Choose.” She chuckled again. “Before it is too late.”
“I don’t even know what I’m choosing.” Phil felt as if he was swimming in deep water, struggling to stay afloat as the undertow sucked at his legs.
“Side with the Root Woman, and you will see horrors that will follow you to the end of your days. You will see everything you hold dear torn asunder and the pieces left to rot where they fall. You may win this battle, but you will lose the war, and everything else, by doing so.”
“Or?”
“Open the cell doors for my sister and me. Go back to your office. Read your books.” She turned to face Phil. The raw meat of her face sickened him. “When we need you, we will come for you, Detective. You will be rewarded for what you do this day.”
Phil walked away from the cells. He had no doubt the girl spoke the truth about changes coming. They were already taking root in the people of the SWATS; even in Phil himself. A week ago, he would have never dared to speak against the Root Woman. But he did not think he could throw in his lot with these monsters either. He was not sure which side was going to win this fight.
But he knew he could not let Savannah kill these girls. Whatever else they were, they were still just girls; victims of something Phil did not understand. He would not let the Root Woman come into his station and shoot them dead. He also did not think he could stop Savannah from doing just that if the girls stayed here. Their pleas wormed their way into his thoughts, and Phil could not let that be on his conscience.
He walked to his office then unhooked the key ring from the wall inside. He came back to the cells, opened the first girl’s door, then shoved it open. “Just the two of you?”
“And the boys,” she said. “Please.”
Phil nodded and opened the second girl’s door, then walked back down the hall to set the molly-heads loose. He shoved their door open.
“I suggest you two get the hell out of here and be far away before the Root Woman comes looking.”
“No need,” the girl said, squeezing past Phil, who jumped away from her as if her skin was made of fire. Her sister followed her into the cell, whipping across the floor like a snake with a broken back; the iron bar through her flesh wiggling in the air above her.
The molly-heads cowered against the back wall of the cell as the first girl slammed the door shut behind her.
“Detective,” the older molly-head said with a voice cracking from raw terror. “Get us outta here. You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout these girls.”
“Shhh,” the first girl pressed her finger to her lips. “You should leave, Detective.”
Phil sagged against the wall, his arms and legs limp and weak. He wanted to run, but he could not bring himself to look away from the mess he had made. He thought he was being brave, he thought he was standing up for what was right.
The spiked girl whirled into one of the young men, her flailing arms latching onto his leg. She yanked him off his feet, then mounted his chest in a flurry of flailing limbs and torn flesh.
He screamed.
Phil could see his arms and legs flailing as he tried to dislodge the thing. There was a wet, crunching sound. He saw the iron spike skewer and thrust and the crunching sound came again and again and again.
Streams of blood ran across the cell’s sloped floor, disappearing down a drain in its center. The boy’s screams sank to a weepy bubbling, and his limbs ceased their thrashing. The spiked girl flicked off the mess she made of the boy. Countless holes had turned him into a spongy ruin.
Phil vomited onto the hallway’s floor.
“Here we are,” the spiked girl crooned. She used the iron spear to tear a long wound in the boy’s thigh. Her delicate fingers pulled aside his stained jeans then pried open his torn flesh. She gripped his femur and pulled, thrashing his damaged body to and fro. Tendons and muscles tore and snapped away from the bone as she worked it out of its hollow. The girl turned the bone lengthwise in her hand then rammed it into her own body, pushing it into her side. There was a thick, swallowing sound and her breath leaked out in a long, satisfied sigh.
“So much better,” she whispered as she dug into the boy’s other leg.
“Get her off’a him,” the other young man screamed. “Detective, she’s killin’ him. Get her off ‘im.”
The first girl laughed and beat at her head with the stump of her wrist. She rose higher into the air. Static electricity arced through her hair like a crown of lightning.
The unhurt boy threw himself at her, his face contorted into a desperate snarl. He jumped then closed his hands around her throat. The girl remained still as a statue. He squeezed until the veins in her neck bulged, but the girl just smiled at him.
She took hold of his index finger with her good hand then jerked it sideways. Bones crunched, and tendons gave way with wet pops. She jerked the finger to the other side, snapping it loose from his hand. The boy fell away from her, screeching as blood flowed from the gaping socket where his index finger had once been.
The girl pressed the finger to the top edge of her stump, holding it still as her wound stirred and absorbed the bloody root of the severed digit. The finger squirmed like a worm, struggling to come to terms with its new home as part of the girl’s strange flesh.
“Look,” she howled, her voice a chorus of spectral screams. “Look upon the works you have made possible and rejoice. For the time of change is at hand.”
Phil sank to the floor, legs splayed out in front of him, hands loose in his lap. He wanted to look away, but his eyes would not obey. He watched as the girls tore the boys apart, reducing them to scraps of flesh and bones in less time than it would have taken to fillet a catfish. Blood ran down the drain in the center of the cell, and Phil swore he could hear something down there gulping it up like Kool-Aid.
The cell door clanged open. Phil jumped up as the first girl floated from the cell. The raw, red stump of her wrist was gone, replaced by a blossom of fingers and toes plucked from the dead men and grafted to her flesh. They stretched toward the detective, opening and closing like the tendrils of an anemone.
“What the hell are you?” Phil could not remember why he had let them go; he could not understand what he had been thinking. Worse, he knew his actions had thrown his lot in with theirs. He was tied to them now; bound by their darkness; walking the There Road. “What have you done?”
The bloody digits closed gently around Phil’s face, touching him tenderly. The floating girl smiled down at him, her face beaded with blood, her hair floating in the air above her. “We were called, Detective.”
Her voice thrummed throughout the station, reminding Phil of a flight of locusts on the horizon.
&nbs
p; “Who would call you? Who would want this?”
“Oh, Detective.” The girl crossed her legs then drifted down until she was almost at Phil’s eye level. Her digits closed around his cheeks, and she pressed them against his lips, staining them red with blood. “We were called by the people you serve. They wanted us here. We’ve come to set them free.”
Phil tried to shake his head loose from her grip, but there was no strength left in him. All he could do was moan and pray to be released.
“We must go for now. Our sister is coming and needs our help.” She rose into the air, dragging Phil up onto his feet by his face. “But we will return. And we will see this through. Together.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The SUV slid to a screeching stop in front of the station.
Savannah hopped out of the vehicle, then sauntered toward the police station. She just had to get the girls to talk. She would squeeze them and the molly-heads until someone told her what was going on and how she could stop it.
The Root Woman came through the door of the station with her revolver held high. “Where are my prisoners?”
Savannah could see Phil sitting in his office, feet up on his desk, staring at the ceiling. She did not wait for the Chief Detective to come out and meet her, but stormed through the bullpen and wrenched the office door open.
A Haunting in the SWATS (The Savannah Swan Files Book 1) Page 11
