“Fine.”
When the detective did not move to help her, Savannah sighed then bent her aching back to load the half-conscious men into the back of the cruiser. They were covered with blood and bruises, but Savannah did not think their injuries were life threatening.
She felt sick to her stomach, thinking how close she had come to shooting her son. Maybe Phil was right; maybe she had gone too far. But she could not allow herself to think like that. Doubt slowed her down; made her weak and uncertain. When facing the madness that seethed just beneath the surface of the SWATS, second thoughts were not a luxury Savannah could afford.
The Root Woman slid into the cruiser’s passenger seat then slammed the door. She closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead as they reversed down the driveway toward the road. After a few seconds, she lifted the wand then pointed it at the house. She pressed the button and began to sing: “This place is on fi-yaaaa... this place is on fi-yaa-aa-aa…”
Phil snorted. “Alicia Keys, you are not.”
Savannah stared at the detective and, straight-faced, sang again: “He ain’t no different from you and she ain’t no different from me so we got to live our dreams…like the people on TV…”
Phil rolled his eyes.
A pillar of flame lifted the old place off its foundation. A shockwave roared down the driveway, kicking gravel and dust into the car’s windshield and shoving the vehicle hard to one side, rocking it up onto two wheels. It banged back down; the shock absorbers screamed in protest.
Through the dust, Savannah could see the ruins of the hotel, jagged splinters thrust up from the earth, shattered stones in pools of fire. Ragged fissures in the earth radiated out from the blast site, spewing flames into the night sky. Black shadows flitted through the rising smoke. Deeper pockets of darkness swarmed toward the stars. The shadows caught fire then fell back, their power burnt away, their connection to this world lost as whatever dark arts that bound them to the hotel were destroyed.
“They were monsters, Phil.” Savannah pointed at the burning shadows. “You know I’m right.”
“You have your law,” the detective said spinning the car away from the carnage, “and I have mine. Where’s your SUV?”
Savannah gave directions to where she had left her Ford Flex. There was something different about the Chief Detective; more than this new streak of rebellion up his spine. More than the typical cop arrogance and hatred for all things black; even if the cop was black, too. Phil had changed, but Savannah could not put her finger on exactly in what way, how, or why.
“I’ll hold them for twenty-four hours, Van. After that, I have to cut ‘em loose.” Phil stopped the car next to Savannah’s SUV.
“You’ll hold them until hell freezes over if that’s what I want.” Savannah threw the door of the cruiser open then slid out. “You need to remember who pulls the strings around here. You keep this crap up, I’m going to make a phone call, and you, me and Mayor Green can have a sit down.”
“One day,” Phil snarled then threw the cruiser into reverse. Savannah just managed to jump away from the still-open door as the detective swung the car in a tight half circle. The cruiser’s engine revved, then the door slammed shut. Savannah watched the patrol car blast off down the winding road, and its lights were out of sight long before the whine of its engine had died away. She did not know what had gotten into Phil, but she would beat it out of him if need be.
She drove the SUV home, grumbling right along with the powerful engine. She was dead tired and felt like she had been run over then dragged down three miles of bad road. All she wanted was a smoke and her bed. She eased the SUV up the driveway, licking her lips in anticipation of the joint awaiting her.
Savannah’s house was a big place; imposing. Natural stone walls rose to a steep roof clad in layers of overlapping clay tiles. The windows were all dark, but the porch light was on, and a black-skinned angel, with strong arms and thick shoulders, sat in its pale glow, rocking in the old chair Savannah’s father had made for her dead mother.
The Root Woman climbed the steps to her porch – slowly and with great care, trying to keep from charging at Rashad where he sat. Her vision blurred, and she wanted to snatch her husband into her arms, crush her breasts against his stone hard chest, and kiss him until her heart beat its last. She loved him, she hated him, and she was in no mood to deal with him after the day she had.
“Go on back down to your place, Rashad. Been a bad day.”
Rashad did not move. He just watched her climb the steps, his hazel eyes fierce, his full lips slightly parted. “No.”
“Rashad…” Savannah’s fists clenched. “Not tonight.”
“What have you done, Van?” Rashad stood up. “What followed you home this time?”
“Rashad, I—”
The slap rocked Savannah’s head hard to the left. She caught herself against the porch railing with her good hand.
She turned back to Rashad, squared her shoulders and licked the blood from her split lip.
His hand came back the other way. “What have you done to my babies?”
Savannah snared Rashad’s swinging hand out of the air then spun her husband toward the house. She wrapped her arms around Rashad’s neck and squeezed. Rashad’s legs immediately gave out. Savannah held him up, hanging him with her arms. “This is how you treat women, now? Touch me again, and I’ll snatch the life right out of you, understand?”
Rashad nodded.
Savannah shoved him toward the door.
He stumbled into the screen door, his face pressing tightly against the wire mesh. He spun around to face Savannah, glaring at her, eyes burning bright with rage.
Savannah breathed deeply, forcing air past her bruised ribs, willing her thundering heart to slow.
“This isn’t us, Rashad,” Savannah said. “This is what your daddy did to your mama. We aren’t them.”
“Something’s wrong, Savannah. Real wrong.” He opened the door then held it for her. “We need to talk.”
Savannah went inside, careful not to touch Rashad. No point in risking another touch and stirring up the bad blood between them. After all these years, they still could not harness their passion and keep it from turning dark and hateful.
Carter was waiting in the family room, naked except for a pair of jeans he had hacked off at the knees. His chest and shoulders were scored with deep scratches and angry bruises from his ordeal at the Tuxedo Hotel. He hunched over his little sister where she lay quiet on the couch. Carter glared at his mother. “Happy now?”
“What happened?” Savannah stepped past Rashad then knelt before her daughter. She took Lashey’s cold hands between her palms, rubbing them together to try to warm the girl’s freezing fingers.
Lashey stared up at the ceiling, eyes wide, clear… and blind.
“Who did this?”
Rashad walked around the back of the couch then put his hand on Carter’s shoulder. He winced. Rashad moved his hand, only to land on yet another scabbing slash. Carter reached up to hold his father’s hand.
“Why don’t you tell us, Van?” Rashad asked.
“It isn’t me,” Savannah said. “Carter and I finished that mess tonight. When did this happen?”
“Hours ago. Near sundown.”
“Before or after?”
Savannah’s thoughts went back to the vermin; the swarm falling around her; the big man’s eye boring into her skull. She remembered the thing tasting her; drinking her blood through the monstrous raccoons and mole rats it controlled. It had seen her, but more than that, it knew her.
“After what?” Rashad gnawed his lower lip as he watched Savannah study their daughter.
“Sundown.”
“Sure. I guess.”
Savannah tried not to think of the change in the man she had killed; the strange presence she sensed in the hotel. Had it come for Lashey? Her gifts made her strong, but vulnerable – a vessel waiting to be filled. It all made a terrible, sickening sense.
She he
ld tightly to her daughter, hoping she could hide her trembling fingers by hanging on to Lashey. She drew another deep breath, aware of Carter’s rage and disappointment; of the storm of emotions brewing in Rashad’s heart; of the weight of her family on her shoulders.
Savannah leaned forward, examining Lashey’s right eye. One pupil, wide and black and empty as a moonless autumn night. So far, so good.
“Come on, baby.” The Root Woman rubbed her little girl’s hands. “Please come back to me.”
She stared at Lashey’s left eye. Her breath rushed out of her, relief leaving her weak and ragged.
“She’ll be all right,” she said, though she was not sure that was true. Something had happened here, even if it was not related to what she had been involved in for the last few days. But there was just one pupil in her baby’s eyes, which meant that thing had not burrowed into her daughter’s special little head and taken root. “She’s going to be fine.”
“You believe that?” Rashad’s voice cracked like a whip, cutting through Savannah’s relief, causing her doubt to seep out like blood weeping from a wound. “Do you really believe that?”
Carter leaned over then scooped Lashey off the couch, pulling her hand from Savannah’s grip. Savannah watched her children vanish from the room into the shadows of the kitchen, onward to their rooms on the other side of the house. The rooms they never slept in, because Savannah did not trust herself to be so close to their caged darkness.
“I do,” Savannah said, standing and turning from the couch. She walked over to the small television then picked up a joint and lighter that lay atop it. She lit the joint, took one slow pull to steel her nerves, then turned back to her husband. “Everyone is going to be fine, Rashad. We put an end to whatever it is they were doing out there. Ask Carter if you don’t believe me.”
“Carter won’t talk about what happened. He turned up at the guesthouse naked and bloody; wouldn’t say a word to me.” Rashad let out an exasperated sigh. “He could have been killed, Van. It looks like he almost was.”
Savannah held her tongue. Rashad did not need to know how close Savannah had come to killing the boy. Some secrets were better left untold.
“And this problem with Lashey—” a lone tear tumbled down Rashad’s cheek. He swept it away with his hand.
“What happened?” Savannah was relieved that what she had been fighting had not possessed her daughter, but something had hurt her. She had to figure out what, so she could fix it.
“She was working, then she fell. There was a noise that wasn’t a noise, like a television with the sound all the way down. And the shadows in her hood… they were blacker than any shadow I’ve ever seen; a sort of… triple darkness.”
“Where is it now?”
Rashad did not say a word; he just turned then walked out the front door.
Savannah followed him down the driveway that led to the guesthouse.
Rashad moved like a ghost, his black duster hiding his long legs. His jet-black hair caught the moonlight in its waves.
He stopped, then half-turned to Savannah. His eyes were wet with tears that he refused to let fall. His voice was calm and steady when he spoke. “Things could have been different, couldn’t they?”
“I think so,” Savannah replied. “I hope so.” She cleared her throat. She loved Rashad. She also hated him more than anything in the world. Conflicting emotions warred within her; locked in place by the curse his mother had loosed on them the day Savannah killed her. “I loved you so much, Rashad.”
He nodded, then lowered his gaze.
Her mother, the Root Woman then, screamed as the Night Howler bled her dry – the claws lacerating; digging deep enough to strike bone. Savannah had fought her way across the freezing waters of the creek, struggling to reach the only woman she had ever admired; the only woman whose approval ever meant a damn to her. But she rarely received her mother’s approval. In fact, it was her mother’s disappointment in her that Savannah saw in her mother’s eyes the night of her death; that robbed her mother of her strength and stole her will to fight. She had let her mama down again.
Rashad led the rest of the way to the guesthouse, slowing, so he had to step with care to avoid running into her. Savannah knew he wanted to touch her; to feel her hair flowing across his fingers; to feel the soft curve of her back under his palms. She also knew his fingers yearned to squeeze around her throat until her eyes bulged from their sockets and her tongue jutted black and dead from between purple lips.
“Wait here,” Rashad said, disappearing into the little house.
Savannah wondered if he dreamed of poisoning her; of watching her beg for death while one of his potions melted her guts like candle wax? Did he wonder what it would feel like to slit her belly open and bury his hands in her womb? Did he miss her?
He came back with Lashey’s hoodie; the one she wore during the attack. Rashad pushed it toward Savannah. She took it with dread.
The hoodie was as heavy as a sheet of wrought iron. The inside of the hood was filled with blackness, as if liquid shadow had been poured, to near overflowing, into it. Savannah could almost hear its laughter.
She stormed back to the house, grinding the gravel beneath her boots.
Rashad called her name. Savannah ignored him. She rushed into Lashey’s room.
The Root Woman stood over her daughter’s still body, holding the hoodie in her outstretched arms.
“Let her go!” she shouted, slamming the hoodie to the hardwood floor. It landed with a muted clang. Savannah raised her foot then brought her heel down upon the shadows in the hood.
Her heel struck the hoodie then bounced off. She fell to one side, sliding down Lashey’s dresser to the floor.
She reached for the hoodie, but Rashad beat her to it. He lifted the dark cloth to his chest then held it close.
“You recognize this?”
Savannah nodded.
“Let my baby go,” Rashad whispered, shoving his fingers into the shadows in the hood. “You can’t have her.”
A white light streaked down Rashad’s sinewy arms into the hood with a whip crack. The hoodie flew from his fingers, then slid across the floor.
Rashad collapsed onto one knee, his breath coming in short gasps.
Lashey blinked then sat up, yawning.
“Did I do good, mama?” She grinned reaching for Savannah, her arms wide.
“You did great, baby.” Savannah hauled herself up then pulled Lashey up into her arms. “But you scared us a little.”
Lashey wriggled in Savannah’s arms, making herself comfortable. “It was scary,” she said. “But just a little bit.”
“It’s gone, now.” Savannah kissed the top of Lashey’s head.
“We’ll see,” Lashey whispered, stroking the back of her mother’s hand. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Savannah sat in the big chair in the family room, smoking a spliff as she stared out the picture window overlooking the short road down to Rashad’s house. She was so worn out the act of lifting the joint to her mouth was almost not worth the effort… almost.
“You should take a shower,” Rashad said, still nearby, instead of down in the guesthouse where he belonged. “Let me look at you; see how many stitches you’ll need this time.”
“In a minute.” Savannah did not look at her husband. The fury of battle was gone, leaving behind a raw ache that felt like her muscles had been torn off, flipped over, and then stitched on upside down. Her stomach was a clenched fist, growling for something more nourishing than weed.
Rashad reached for the joint.
“You hate weed.” Savannah took another puff, not daring to look at her husband. She was too close; within easy reach.
“Suffer not a witch?”
Savannah handed Rashad the joint. He slipped it between his lips then inhaled deeply.
“Lashey wants us all to move up here,” Rashad said. “With you.”
“No,” Savannah replied. �
�There’s room for them down there with you. It’s safer.”
“It’s not.” Rashad looked out the window at the guesthouse. “That… darkness got to Lashey under my roof, Savannah. How much more dangerous does it have to get before you let us live with you?”
“You want to die? Is that it? You’re a witch, Rashad. I’m a witch hunter.”
“You’re the Root Woman. You don’t hunt witches; you hunt the evil of the There Road.”
“I am the avenging sword of the Here,” Savannah said. “I kill all that strays from it.”
Rashad lunged off the couch toward her.
“Then, do it!”
Rashad crouched over Savannah, shoving his face so close to hers, she could feel his breath on her lips. “You’re the bad bitch; the executioner; is that right? Then let’s stop pretending and get it over with.”
Rashad took Savannah’s hand in both of his then lifted it between them. Her fingers dangled, nerveless and useless from the knife wound in her arm.
Savannah tensed. Her instincts screamed for her to lash out. Her upbringing, combined with the spell the Night Howler – Rashad’s mother – had laid upon her heart, had turned Savannah’s soul into a whirling miasma of love and hate for her husband.
A Haunting in the SWATS (The Savannah Swan Files Book 1) Page 9