In the face of that, Rashad felt the strength run out of him. Was that kind of madness something you could fight against? Was that what Savannah had seen and decided it was better to give in than to rise against it?
“Yes,” the girl hissed in Rashad’s thoughts. She wobbled in from the darkness, her skin burst open from the rage of the spirits Rashad had dumped into her. One of the girl’s hands was gone, mutant thumb and forefinger reduced to naked stumps of splintered bone and dangling yellow tendons. “That is what real love does. It sacrifices. It hurts. It consumes.”
Rashad backed away from the monster girl then moved toward the heart-stone. He could not get away from the words in his head, though; the thought that this girl had a point, as demented as it might be. He and Savannah had lived for years with the pain of a love that threatened to destroy them both. Together, they had fought through it, scraped and hammered and bucked until they were both so tired that Rashad did not know how they found it in themselves to go on.
“Let go.” The girl’s voice was quiet, almost normal. “Give in to what is coming, and you will know what it means to be free at last.”
Rashad shoved his hand into his work bag. He wrapped his fingers around the old Coke bottle. He could feel his mother’s rage trembling in it, and the cold water that was her connection to the SWATS.
“Love don’t make you free,” he said, smiling at the girl. “It ain’t about givin’ until it hurts or bleedin’ to prove it. Love goes both ways, and the hurt and the pain and the miracle of it all do, too.”
Rashad lifted the bottle out of his bag. “Love ain’t about tearin’ skin off your bones to show you care. It’s about bein’ willin’ to lay it all down; not because the one you love wants it, but because it needs to be done.”
“We’ll break you all!” The conjured girl’s voice boiled. “I will show you how to love your new master.”
“Child,” Rashad said, raising the Coke bottle up to his eye, “There ain’t shit you can teach me about love I ain’t already learnt.”
Rashad could feel the power in the bottle. He spun, rearing his arm back to throw it against the heart-stone; trusting that his love for this land and for his dead mother would be more than enough to chase off the haunted taint the monster girl had spilled onto it.
A band of unyielding pain hooked around Rashad’s arm before he could complete the throw. His fingers spasmed open, and the bottle slipped from his grasp. He heard it land hard on the limestone cavern floor. Pain took hold of him, robbing him of his thoughts.
The conjured girl’s good hand was looped around Rashad’s wrist, grinding the bones together and holding him close. “If I can’t teach you about love,” she whispered in Rashad’s thoughts, “then I’ll teach you about pain.”
The girl squeezed her finger and thumb together. Rashad’s wrist bones popped and cracked. Zigzag lightning bolts of pain raced through his nerves, lighting his brain up like a fireworks display.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Lashey no longer cried out. Her clouded eyes stayed locked on Savannah as her lips trembled and tears rolled down the sides of her face and into her tangled locks. Savannah watched as her baby lay there, suffering, and she knew that she had done this to her. There were monsters in the mix, but in the end it was her own hand that had delivered Lashey to the darkness. She had a plan, she knew that, but it seemed so long ago and far away that she could not put its pieces together. Worst of all, was the fact that she could feel her girl’s pain, but it no longer bothered her. Whatever part of her was meant to care was burnt out by the onrushing presence of the new HNIC. As it pushed its way through the darkness and into this world, it was doing something to Savannah’s soul.
Swearing an oath of allegiance to the mayor had not been like this. Savannah had walked the long road up to the Briarcliff with her mother’s shredded body cradled in her arms. She had come into the shadowed house as an empty shell. Swearing the words, taking the oath to protect the people of Atlanta from the same evil that had taken her mother had felt right and just. She had been filled with a zealous strength and righteous sense of purpose that left her ready to take on anyone who got in her way. The mayor had scooped out a little space in Savannah’s soul and filled it with a shard of himself; a portion of his being and power.
But swearing to the new head honcho left Savannah wrung out and used up. Strong as hell, pretty sure she could take on the whole city in a fair fight, but weary all the way down to her bones. There was no greater purpose here; no sense of relief in finding the spot where you belong. What was going to happen would happen, no matter what she did, so there was not much sense getting all riled up about it.
Savannah knew there had been some other plan, some scheme to raise a ruckus so her people could do their part, then she would spring her own little ambush on the new HNIC, but with her daughter on the slab and her brain being squashed by the intrusive, burning mind, Savannah just could not see the point in all that business. She was too worn out for any of it.
The air above the ancient altar shimmered with a hazy purple light. There was a sucking; a sudden drop in pressure as the invading god scratched a tiny little pinprick through the wall of reality. There was a triple-darkness there – a complete lack of light that tugged at Savannah’s guts. This was the real deal; oblivion staring at her through a crack in the world. “In the end,” it whispered. “You all come to me.”
The raccoons and mole rats answered the call. They swarmed into the cave like a living tornado, whirling between the serpent-filled quartz columns. The vermin circled the altar, filling the air with their screeches.
Lashey’s hand groped blindly for Savannah. She took the girl’s tiny fingers in her own. Lashey’s eyes snapped back to brown. “Mama,” she whispered. “I can’t hold it back; not for much longer. It’s so strong!”
Savannah wanted to squeeze Lashey’s little hand, but she could not muster the energy to comfort her. She did not know how she could have believed this frail little girl could stand against the darkness. What kind of a mother was she to put her in harm’s way? “You let it come on, then, baby. This ain’t your fight.”
Lashey looked at her mother, eyes probing her, trying to make sense of her words. “Mama, we fight the bad things. That’s what we do.”
“Let it go, baby girl. The world has rolled on. No sense trying to haul it back.” Savannah tried to shake her hand loose from her daughter’s grip, but Lashey was not letting go. Lashey’s thin fingers clung around her hand, and Savannah had to peel them off, one by one. “You listen to mama now, Lashey. You let it come on!”
It killed some part of her to take away Lashey’s hope, but Savannah could not see her way to any other choice. Better to let her go quietly; to slip off for the final sleep, than to have her keep fighting and getting torn up in a battle she could never win.
Lashey turned her head away from Savannah and folded her hands over her stomach.
Savannah’s hand strayed to her backpack, her fingers feeling for what she had taken from Rashad’s house. It was still there, but she did not see much point in messing with it now.
Fervent, mad singing joined with the raccoons’ screams and the mole rats’ screeches – a cacophony that echoed through the cavern. The adherents came into the chamber, making the pilgrimage to see the birth of their god, belly-crawling across the cold stone floor to pay homage to the nightmare they had begged to be their king.
Savannah was filled with a mixture of disgust and grief. She watched them creep forward on their bellies, and she saw the sad and pathetic reality of their lives. Worse, she saw the truth of her own.
The SWATS was full of the broken and weak, the weary and hopeless. But it had not always been that way. Not so many generations back, the people of the SWATS were pioneers, activists, inventors and explorers – the kind of brave men and women who spawned legends. They were former enslaved Africans who had mined the hills and tamed the forests to make lives for their masters and later, for themselves.
They had confined the darkness to the caves and valleys through sheer grit, ingenuity and hardheadedness. But time had moved on, and the world outside the SWATS left those brave men and women behind.
The best and the brightest the area had to offer left to chase their fortunes up North. Those who stayed behind lost hope. Depression ate away at their sense of self and stripped them of their drive to find something better. The world had fed the people shit for so long they had started to like the taste.
Savannah watched them abase themselves and knew she had been wrong to hate these people. She had hounded them for the only hope they had – that something greater than themselves would come and lift them up out of the ruins. They had been wrong to worship at the wicked altars and wrong to make contracts with evil, but the gods of light had not exactly been fair to them.
She felt useless and stupid; sick that she could only see the truth now, at the end, when it was too late to take it all back and do it right.
Overhead, the tear in the world widened into a quivering, fire-dripping chasm. A voice poured through the hole, adding its wordless cries to the operatic wailing of its worshipers. The sound had weight, a power that drove Savannah to her knees. Tears ran from her eyes, and she felt as if the whole world had fallen on her shoulders.
It was so much more than she had imagined. How could she have ever thought to stand against this nightmare? Even this tiny piece of it, this ephemeral wisp of its true magnitude, was an overpowering totem to darkness. It was not a monster, but an absolute. A fact that the universe was, and always would be, ruled by those who took without pity or remorse. The world belonged to those who consumed it. The universe favored the bold and the brutal.
Lashey’s voice cut through the din, burying itself in Savannah’s ear. “I can’t hang on no more, Mama. Will you hold my hand?”
Her words stirred a part of Savannah she thought was cold and dead. She tried to reach out to Lashey, but her muscles would not listen. Her hand jiggled on the end of her wrist, but her arm hung useless and weak at her side like someone had cut the nerves at the shoulder.
“Leave h-her-er!” the voice thundered. Savannah felt something pop in her eye. Tears squirted down her cheek. She tasted blood on her lips and a spark of rage flared deep in the center of her chest.
Savannah did not want to be like those poor bastards crawling across the ground, with their lips pressed to the limestone and their throats raw from screaming their strange prayers. It was easier to be the one who followed orders; simpler to obey.
But it was not who Savannah wanted to be. It was not what any woman deserved to be.
Years of kowtowing to the mayor had given way to this new god – one who wanted to not just tell her what to do, but force her to do it. And that was just too much for Savannah to accept.
The clean, pure fire of rebellion helped Savannah remember her plan. It was time to do what she had come to do.
She felt the most hateful thoughts erupt in her skull. She saw the most depraved visions of the SWATS under the new head honcho’s thumb run wild, clouding her mind with fantasies that repelled and fascinated her. She could see, with the power of the new god within her, how to make it all real, how to keep people where they needed to be and out of mischief.
She could see what it would be like to be king, like women once were allowed to be in Africa, before the coming of the white man and his patriarchal madness.
She would be a king without a family; a king who served at the pleasure of something foul and dark… a king who had forsworn everything to gain nothing.
And Savannah did not think she could live like that.
She shoved her hand into her backpack. She felt the dark god close around her muscles, trying to stop her, but she was ready for it. She pushed back, bending the power she had been given to her own ends.
Savannah pulled out the hoodie she had taken from Rashad’s house and yanked it over Lashey’s head. It was the old black hoodie once worn by Savannah’s father when he would kill on behalf of the Night Howler. It was the hoodie that had started Lashey down the path that ended here. It settled on the little girl’s head with a quiet sucking, as if pulled into place by her need. Shadows covered Lashey’s face.
There was a thrum in the air, like a chord being struck on a guitar string made from the Creator’s hair. Savannah’s ears popped. The power flowing through the rip in the atmosphere was no longer coming under its own steam, it was yanked, screeching, into the world before it was ready.
Lashey’s body stiffened. Her eyes snapped open, staring sightless up through the shadows of the hood. “Come to me,” she whispered. “Come on, and let’s see what you got, you nasty old monster.”
There was a roar in Savannah’s head, a sound like a tidal wave crashing over a tornado.
The dark god screamed and thrashed and fought. This was what it wanted – to come to the SWATS. The beast had wanted to use Lashey, to possess her as its host while it acclimated to the new reality.
But Lashey was not going to give it that chance.
Without the hood, she was an open conduit – a great big hose for spirits to pour through. With the hood, she was the master. She called the shots, and the spirits came when and how she wanted them.
A massive wing burst through the burning hole slashing across the cavern. It smashed through stalactites and sent them plummeting into the huddled knots of adherents. The stone spears pulverized bodies, pinning the faithful to the floor. Their blood ran across the limestone, collecting in pools into which the greedy vermin hurled themselves.
A second wing tore its way into the world, crashing into the ceiling and sending even more stalactites plunging through its followers. Its head followed the wing, a nightmare of a gnarled mole rat’s face dripping with pink slime that burned sizzling holes in the limestone floor where it fell. Quivering tentacles drooped from below its nose, hanging, like a curtain of flesh, before the fanged gash of its mouth.
Its single, bulging eye emerged from its forehead like a ripening boil. The lids opened, and tears poured out, steaming in the cool cave air. The three pupils in its center pulsed and dilated as they fixed Savannah with a hateful stare.
It was like standing before an avalanche. Savannah’s mouth went dry at the crushing enormity of her enemy. Each pupil was bigger than her head. Its wings were too wide to fit into the cavern without bending. Its body creaked through the opening, undulating in a hundred different directions. Black holes opened in its body, and raccoon heads sniffed the air from within them.
Savannah was not sure if any of the others had finished their work, but she did not have time to wait for a sign. The vermin god was coming, and whether that was its plan or not, it would be ready to start kicking some ass real soon.
Lashey had surprised it; weakened it by hauling it into this world before it was quite ready, and Savannah had to take advantage of the moment before it passed.
Savannah drew her revolver. She whipped it up, not giving the new master time to figure out what she was up to. Savannah could feel the monster’s confusion; the swirling mass of hate and rage that it called a mind. She aimed the revolver at the bulging eye.
It screamed at her, a sound that pierced her head like an iron rod fired from a cannon.
Savannah pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession.
Twin lances of green fire exploded from the muzzle of the gun.
A scalding cascade of vitreous fluid erupted from two of the massive creature’s pupils, splashing down around Savannah.
The monster threw its head back, spraying saliva into the air. Its screeching took on a hideous pitch – the sound of death; the howl of a mortally wounded beast.
But the monster did not fall.
Its head swiveled back to Savannah. The big, blazing eye was whole, untouched.
Savannah realized her error, too late. It was not screaming.
It was laughing.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The big Bentley roared over the back roads of
the SWATS, blasting over bumps and kicking up gravel from its rear tires. The driver watched the road with unblinking eyes, his hands relaxed at ten and two, like he was taking a leisurely Sunday morning drive and not driving like a bat out of hell down a rutted road that was little more than a trail. He swerved to the left to avoid a squirrel, then snapped the big car back to the right as smooth as could be.
Odinga did not worry about his driver’s ability to keep the vehicle on the road. The driver drove as he always had, flawlessly. The old druid prayed his old prayers, whispering the words. He did not want to die today. He wanted to go back to what he had been doing before all this madness had dropped on him. He wanted to worship his gods in peace, lead his flock through the rituals of the faithful, bang on his rivals and make a shitload of money. It had been a good life.
He could not bring himself to believe it was over.
Odinga sighed then leaned back in the comfortable custom seat he had made for the Bentley. It fit him perfectly, though he had to change it a year after he bought it when his ass grew too fat. He latched onto the thought of surviving long enough to need to replace that seat again; on all the rich rewards he had earned for his good works. His gods would surely be pleased by his actions today.
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