The Izintwala landed on the arm of the sofa near Savannah’s arm. Its proximity curdled Savannah’s stomach. She wanted to slap it away then bolt from her seat, but the thought of touching it froze her stiff.
“And you think that’s the best way to pursue this?” The mayor settled next to Savannah on the couch. “Or are you taking this all a bit personally?”
Mayor Green seized Savannah’s injured arm before she could react.
“Don’t,” Savannah started, but the mayor’s black-eyed stare silenced her objection.
Skeletal fingers probed the edges of Savannah’s wound. The mayor’s index finger tugged at the stitches Rashad had sewn in the night before, then slipped under them. Savannah could feel her boss inside her arm, a cold violation that made her dig her fingernails into the sofa’s arm. One by one, the stitches popped free until the last one was out and the mayor’s finger left Savannah’s flesh.
Mayor Green twisted Savannah’s arm roughly between his hands, one cold grip winding left, the other to the right. Savannah grunted at the sudden blast of pain. Blood spurted from her now open wound, staining the couch’s embroidery. When the pain subsided, Savannah could feel her nerve-damaged fingers again. The Root Woman flexed her hand, but the mayor did not release his grip.
“Despite the protections your position affords you, Savannah, you are still just a mortal.” The mayor looked into Savannah’s eyes. He squeezed his hands tighter around her arm.
“So are the people doing this,” she said. “The people who’ve threatened me and mine.”
“I’m not so sure,” the mayor said. “Whatever is behind this has real power. It knows things.”
“Knowing won’t stop me from shooting it.”
The mayor sighed, then wrested Savannah’s arm up, hard. He levered Savannah off the couch, then twisted her arm until her face was pressed into the deep pile of the carpet. “Could you kill me, Savannah?”
Savannah’s lungs worked like bellows, pumping air in and out in panicked gasps. Her heart pounded against her ribs, and sparks of light streaked across her vision. It felt like someone had torn her shoulder out of the socket, then filled the empty space with broken glass.
“No. I don’t think I could kill you.”
The mayor helped Savannah back to her feet. He reached out then smoothed the wrinkles from the front of Savannah’s shirt. “Then what makes you think you can kill whoever’s behind this?”
“You trying to scare me off this thing?”
“On the contrary. I’m trying to keep you focused on this thing… but you need to understand that if you sound the horns of war, I may not be able to protect you from what answers the call.”
“I don’t remember asking you for protection.”
“What about your family? Do you want protection for them?”
Savannah clenched her fists. “My family has no part in this.”
“Everyone connected to you has some role in this. Your actions will determine how those roles will be played.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“We shall see. I’ve advised you as best I could.” The mayor put an arm around Savannah’s shoulder then turned her back toward the entryway. “Leave the Izintwala here, where I can keep an eye on it. You can leave the body here, as well. Just put it on the drive, the dogs will see to it.”
“He deserves better than that,” Savannah stopped at the door. “In the end, he tried to do what was right. I’m not going to feed him to your overgrown lapdogs.”
“Maybe you’ve learned more than I thought,” the mayor said. “Leave him on the drive, I’ll see to it that he gets the burial you think he deserves.”
The mayor led Savannah to the front door then watched as she walked to her SUV. She moved the body from the SUV’s loadspace to the asphalt.
“There is good and right still in the world,” the mayor said. “But you have many enemies, Root Woman. Some, in places you may not even suspect.”
“I’m pretty good at telling who my enemies are.” Savannah climbed up into the SUV. She leaned her head through the open window. “Pretty much everyone who knows how to sling a spell falls into that category.”
“Think about what I said. Before it’s too late.”
The door to the Briarcliff closed.
Savannah felt a shiver of fear race up her spine. She wondered what the mayor meant – enemies in places she might not suspect? She feared she would not figure it out until it was far too late to do her any good.
***
Savannah thumbed through Ray-Ray’s seemingly endless list of contacts as she drove back to the SWATS. So many of the names she saw were familiar; she did not know where to begin. She dug back through memories of the drinks she had shared with the Chief Detective before their relationship had soured. She tried to remember all the mundane crimes she had heard Phil whine about: drunk driving accidents, where there was more smeared on the side of the road than they could scrape into a body bag; men who got high then beat their wives and children; fools and their gun duels over the honor of skanky girlfriends or punk ass boyfriends. Life in the SWATS.
But this list of names showed Savannah something else. Molly had woven a strangling web through the SWATS, snaring men, women and children in equal parts. She let her subconscious mull over the list of names as she drove, tying it together with what little she had bothered to hear when Phil was talking. The Trump Farm bubbled up through Savannah’s memories; a place Phil had complained about for years.
“Some days,” Phil had whined over a foaming mug of beer, “I want to go out to the Trump’s with an AK-47 and put all those hippies out of my misery.”
To hear Phil talk, the place was infested with white junkies who gathered around Paul Trump like he was the messiah. Paul’s name was in Ray-Ray’s phone. Savannah figured she could go in, bust a few skulls, get what she needed from Paul and be gone. Maybe even get back in Phil’s good graces.
“Let’s have us a chat, Paul,” Savannah said as she slammed her foot down on the SUV’s accelerator.
Savannah guided the SUV along the old roads that led to the farms, which had all been converted into condominium complexes, high-end shopping centers and art galleries – gentrification at its finest.
She could not shake the feeling that something was coming for her and for her family. The conjured girl’s threats were more frightening than Savannah wanted to admit, especially after her sit down with the mayor. Savannah wanted to get this over with, and if she had to slap around a few privileged white junkies to wrap things up, she felt pretty good about that.
Despite what the mayor had said, Savannah knew all too well that the scumbags who sucked blood from the SWATS responded to violence with great respect. Paul Trump’s farm, turned hippy compound, was as good a place to start proving that as any.
The rutted road that led up to the front of the farmhouse was lined with rusting trucks and peeling cars mounted on cinder blocks. A gang of men and women sat on the sagging front porch. A couple of them perked up as Savannah drove closer and they ran into the house. The others stood, forming a loose barrier in front of the door.
Savannah stopped the SUV in front of the porch then hopped out with her revolver in hand.
A girl in her late teens, with hair the color of a dirty carrot, stabbed a bony finger at her.
“This is private property, miss.”
“Screw you, miss,” Savannah said. She sauntered past the girl and almost made it to the front door before a bad idea bloomed in a young man’s thick skull.
The junkie put his hand on Savannah’s shoulder then pulled. “Hey, sista,” he said in a mock Black man’s voice.
Savannah did not waste any words. She spun into the man’s pull then slammed the revolver’s grip up under the addict’s chin. Three of the young man’s teeth flew out of his mouth.
She followed up with a front kick that sent the stunned junkie flying off the porch.
The girl glared at Savannah, an animal hunger flickeri
ng in her eyes. Savannah gave her a little shove, and the girl fell flat on her back next to her bleeding boyfriend. The rest of the junkies watched the whole scene with dull eyes, as if their poisoned brains could not make sense of what they were seeing.
The door was closed, but Savannah could still smell the chemical stink of an active meth lab. She kicked the door open.
“Hey, y’all. Where’s Paul?”
Survival instincts and meth jitters sent a pack of meth-heads darting from the squalid living room toward Savannah. Four children sat in the corner, clustered around a portable Nintendo contraption. One of them looked up at Savannah, snot running out of his nose and crusting on his lip, then went back to his game.
A biker with the biggest belly Savannah had ever seen on a meth addict struggled to get up from the floor, but his riding chaps had come unbuckled and were tangling up his legs.
“Hey, big guy.” Savannah tapped the revolver’s barrel on top of the biker’s graying head. “Where’s Paul?”
“I don’t know no damned Paul.” The fat man slapped at the revolver.
Savannah slammed a knee into the biker’s face, smashing his nose flat and splattering red in every direction. The biker collapsed onto his back, choking on his own blood. Savannah nudged him with the revolver to get his attention. “I don’t like it when people touch my shit. Now, where’s Paul?”
“I don’t know,” the big bellied biker cried. “I swear, I don’t know no Paul.”
“The cook.” Savannah kicked the biker’s crusty glass pipe and it rolled under the couch. “The guy who brings the meth?”
“Ain’t no guy. Maggie brings it down to us.”
“Where the hell is she?”
Tension built in Savannah’s shoulders. This place was everything that was wrong with the SWATS. Desperate, hungry people looking for some way to ease the pain of their pathetic lives, some quick fix to push back the darkness that threatened to snuff them out. When the darkness ate them hollow, they would graduate from meth to baleful prayers, sacrificing their shriveled souls to any god who might offer them hope. When hope ran dry, they would settle for hate. If they had to suffer, then screw it, everyone else would suffer, too.
“Leave him alone,” a rail-thin woman begged from the doorway into the kitchen. She hugged the wall so only a crescent-moon sliver of her face and one bony hand were showing. “My man ain’t never hurt nobody.”
Savannah stomped across the room then tangled her fingers in a handful of the woman’s scraggly black hair. She yanked the woman out of the kitchen and into the living room, ignoring her screeching protests. “This one yours, fat boy?”
“I don’t know where Maggie is, ma’am. Somewhere upstairs, maybe?”
Savannah tilted the revolver so its muzzle was pointed at the woman’s pockmarked cheek. “Why don’t you get your pants on straight and fetch her down here for me, big guy?”
The woman cried tears that stained her cheeks blotchy red. “Don’t shoot me, ma’am. Not in front of my kids.”
Two of the Nintendo players waved at the woman, then went back to their game.
“Something tells me you aren’t much of a mama to those boys.”
“Screw you, nigger!” she shot back.
The fat man got his chaps on then scuttled past Savannah.
“Hurry back,” Savannah hollered after him. “My trigger finger’s getting twitchy.”
The woman stiffened in Savannah’s grip. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please, ma’am, I’m sorry about calling you the N-word; I’m just tryin’ to get right, okay? I don’t want no trouble.”
“I don’t want the blood of your brood on my hands today, so here’s what your racist, inbred ass is going to do…” Savannah whispered into the woman’s ear. “Take all those kids and march them the hell out of here before things get messy. Do not say a word. Don’t yell or make a scene. Just take the kids and get the hell out.”
Savannah pressed the revolver’s barrel tight against the woman’s face. “Nod, if you understand me.”
The woman nodded. Savannah eased her fingers out of the woman’s wiry hair then gave her a little shove.
“Screw you, nigger,” the woman shouted as she ran for the door. “My man’ll kill you for touchin’ me!”
The children chased after their mother. She stood in front of the fly-specked screen door, motioning for her brats to get a move on. One boy kept the portable video game clutched to his chest, like it was the most valuable treasure in his crappy little world.
They were almost to the door when everything went to hell.
“Hey,” someone said.
Savannah turned away from the children and back toward the kitchen door. An aged man stood in the doorway, a pistol in each hand. “You lookin’ for somethin’?”
“Maggie.”
“Oh. That’s bad luck, girlie.”
“Yeah?” Savannah pointed her revolver toward the man. “Let’s just settle down before somebody ends up with a hole where it doesn’t belong.”
“Nah.” The old man’s arms popped up.
Savannah dove for cover behind the filthy couch.
A pistol roared. Savannah felt the bullet zip over her head. Still standing in the front door, the woman who so freely called Savannah a “nigger” fell hard. a chunk of her head was missing from the outside corner of her skull.
A second shot whined past Savannah’s head.
The Root Woman flattened herself against the bug-infested carpet. The children were still in the house, tangled up with each other and the woman’s corpse, pushing at one another in their panic.
More shots tore through the air. One of the children screamed as a bullet cleaved his hand in two. Savannah watched another shot shatter the Nintendo into a million plastic splinters. The boy holding it fell, his eyes staring at nothing.
Savannah popped up around the end of the couch then fired two rounds into the kitchen.
The man’s left arm dropped, then flopped lifelessly at his side. Blood and bile leaked from a gaping hole in the man’s belly.
The injured man screeched as he hopped around the kitchen, firing the pistol he held in his uninjured hand.
The children screamed, flailing around in their panic, splashing blood all over the place. Savannah could not tell who was hurt and who was covered in someone else’s gore.
Savannah charged the kitchen, her revolver raised before her.
The old man threw his empty pistol.
Savannah batted it out of the air. She closed on the man, then drove an elbow up into his solar plexus.
The man fell to his knees, gasping for breath and crying. Blood ran out of his mutilated arm then pooled around his knees. “I didn’t want to, girlie. You gotta believe me.”
Savannah grabbed the man by the front of his filthy shirt then hauled him back to his feet. “Who dealt with Ray-Ray?”
Tears ran from the man’s jaundiced eyes. “I don’t know no Ray-Ray. Maggie fixes me up. I didn’t want no hassle for her while she was cookin’ up a new batch for us.”
Savannah tossed the man aside.
He screamed as he fell onto his shredded arm.
Past the kitchen, Savannah could see a little utility room on one side and a stairwell on the other. She headed for the stairs.
She paused to slam more rounds into the revolver. “Maggie? If you’re up there, we need to talk. Nobody else needs to get hurt.”
Savannah crept up the stairs, revolver out in front of her. She had no idea what was waiting for her upstairs. It might be a bunch of junkies pissing their pants while they hid. It might be an army of methed-up psychos with machetes and machine guns. There was only one way to find out.
She moved slow and low, her back pressed tightly to the wall. If anyone popped up at the top of the stairs and started blazing away, Savannah wanted to give them as small a target as possible. Maybe she would get lucky, for once, and not catch a bullet.
No one tried to shoot her. She reached the top of the stairs
then found herself on a slim landing lined with four open doorways. The air was thick with a chemical haze, whether from someone cooking meth or a bunch of someones smoking it. Savannah kept low as she darted toward the first door.
The floor was lined with filthy, naked mattresses. Filthy, naked bodies writhed against one another atop the mattresses. Pale-blue lighter flames hovered under glowing glass pipes. Savannah really hoped Maggie was not in there, because she wanted no part of picking those freaks apart to find her.
She ducked past the first doorway then peeked into the second room. It was filled with an assortment of pressure cookers, propane burners, and glassware. The windows were open and big box fans spewed vapor from the tops of bubbling flasks out into the air.
Looking through the maze of equipment, she could see that Paul or Maggie or someone had torn a hole in the wall between this room and the next one to turn two bedrooms into one big meth lab. What Savannah did not see was anyone doing the cooking. She left the lab then headed to the last door.
Savannah hugged the wall next to the door then called through it. “Maggie, you in there?”
“Yeah,” she heard a young woman’s voice answer. “Next batch ain’t ready yet.”
There was a bubbling noise coming from inside the room. Savannah stole a quick glance inside. Someone had blacked out the windows, and the only light came from a red LED in the far corner. The bubbling noise started again, accompanied by a faint groan.
A Haunting in the SWATS (The Savannah Swan Files Book 1) Page 16