“I’m her mother,” Savannah said, not backing down. “Give her to me before this goes sideways and you get hurt.”
Phil’s sharp bark of laughter caused Lashey to stir. She snuggled in closer to him, burying her face into the crook of his neck as she hugged him tightly. “If you don’t get the hell out of my way, I’m gonna pop you a new navel right next to the old one!”
Phil was closer now. Savannah could see the sweat pouring off the detective’s face. One eye rolled wild in the socket; the other stared dead ahead. Tremors ratcheted up and down Phil’s spine; his legs moved at slightly different paces. It was like there were two men trapped in one skin, and they could not agree on what they should do.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. Let me take Lashey before you get hurt.” Savannah could see where this was going; knew where it would end.
The detective shoved the pistol at Savannah’s face. They were within ten feet of one another now. If he pulled the trigger, Phil would not miss. “Not this time. I gotta do this. Can’t let you stop me.”
“Remember what I told you at the restaurant,” Savannah lowered her hands. “You do not want to find out which of us is faster today.”
Tears glistened on Phil’s cheeks. His left eye rolled up into his skull. “I need this. Get out of my way. Please.”
“Why couldn’t you come to your senses a few days ago?”
“They got you,” Phil whispered. “I can feel it. They got you.”
Lashey turned toward Savannah. “Mama? Can we go home?”
“Not yet, baby.” Savannah’s heart ached. “Mama needs your help one more time.”
Phil took another step. “Last chance.”
Savannah did not budge. “Put down the gun, Phil.”
Phil shook his head.
Savannah offered her hand. “Pulling that trigger will be the last thing you ever do. Put it down, Phil.”
Phil roared.
Lashey screamed.
Fire erupted in the cavern.
Phil fell onto his haunches screaming. Blood spewed from a hole in the middle of his chest.
Savannah holstered her revolver, then stared at the wreckage of a man trying, too late, to do the right thing.
“Damn, Phil. I’m so sorry. You picked a crappy time to grow some balls.”
Phil’s jaw quivered as he worked to form the words he needed to say. “She’s your daughter. You know what happens if you take her back down there?”
“Yep.” Savannah knelt, then pried Phil’s arm from around Lashey. Lashey wept as her mother scooped her up.
“I tried to help.” Phil stared off down the tunnel. “I did.”
“Yeah, you helped those girls walk right out of your jail. You helped those dope-head bastards try to march me out of town. You helped hell come to the SWATS.”
Phil sobbed. “No slack, even now?”
Savannah shook her head, then took aim with her pistol. “Especially not now.”
Thunder rolled through the cavern.
Phil’s head flopped back, convulsed once, then the Chief Detective was no more.
Lashey pressed her face close to Savannah’s neck. “I’m scared.”
Savannah hugged her daughter tightly. “Me, too.”
She walked past the dead detective, then made her way through the makeshift cells.
Lashey shivered. “Will you take me home, Mama?”
Savannah kissed her little girl on the cheek; tasted her tears. “I can’t.”
***
Lashey’s thin arms wrapped around Savannah’s neck.
Savannah tried to ignore the carved spikes sticking out of Lashey. Their grotesque, pulsing glow throbbed in time with her tiny heart. Lashey’s breath against Savannah’s cheek was feathery, hot and much too fast.
Savannah did not need directions to the cathedral – she could feel it tugging at her guts; guiding her as certain as a compass pointing north. The tunnel from the cell wound down, a loose loop at the top, tightening as Savannah descended. Side paths led away from the spiral, stretching off into the darkness. Savannah passed them, ignoring the voices that echoed from deep within them. Voices raised in songs of praise, in hymns of repentance, in shuddering wails of unspeakable agony or ecstasy. They were the voices of men and women transformed; men and women who had found their god at last and had devoted themselves to a worship that consumed them utterly.
Savannah envied them.
Lashey shifted in her grip. She let out a weak gasp. “Mama, please don’t do this. Let’s go home.”
She had never wanted to do anything more than take her little girl home. But seeing those jagged spikes – the Izintwala, embedded in her frail body – confirmed her suspicions. There was a storm coming, and running from it would not save her from the downpour. The only way out of this was through it.
Savannah stepped out of the descending spiral at last and into a wide and long cavern. The ceiling arched high overhead. Columns of quartz ran down the center of the chamber, forming a wide aisle. Light throbbed within them, waxing and waning in time with the spikes embedded in Lashey’s flesh. At the end of the aisle, a shimmering stone formation hunkered on a natural dais that looked like a lump of melted wax. It called to Savannah.
She imagined turning tail and running with her daughter, but the thought was burnt out of her mind as fast as it could form. The new head honcho had plans for Savannah and her daughter; it was not letting go of them now that they were at the heart of its power.
As she walked among the crystals, Savannah could see shapes within them. They stretched thirty feet to the cavern’s ceiling, long and slender and rolling in slow gyrations. The creatures inside the columns blurred and shifted, slithering out of her thoughts before she could make sense of them.
“So old,” Lashey whispered. “Seems like they been here forever. Waitin’ on me.”
Savannah stroked her daughter’s hair. She could feel the one they called Uncle Ned, the new master, the new head honcho, the new H.N.I.C. – Head Ned In Charge – in her head; a growing presence. But the mayor was down there at the bottom of her mind as well, like the memory of an old wound. She pushed the mayor away, out of her thoughts, then walked to the stone dais.
The rock formation was smooth and warm, radiating a moist heat that Savannah felt from a yard away. She paused in front of the altar. She felt the new HNIC growing in her mind. It was close now, near enough for Savannah to hear its wings rustling, its ancient jaws creaking open as it reached between worlds.
This was it. Once she put her little girl on that stone there would be no turning back. Everything would change.
“Put muh-me-ee down,” Lashey said, her voice strong.
The words were like a fish hook in Savannah’s guts. It was her little girl’s voice, but as she pulled Lashey away from her chest and laid her down in a shallow depression within the stone, there was nothing of Lashey in her face.
The spikes in Lashey’s flesh throbbed with a black light. Savannah smoothed the wrinkles from the little girl’s brow with the palm of her hand. Lashey’s eyes faded, the brown washing out to foggy white.
“Mama,” Lashey whispered, her voice thin and high, pushing past the alien presence forcing its way into her frail flesh. “It hurts.”
The new HNIC was coming. Savannah could hear its labored breathing in the silence of the cavern. It was pushing its way from wherever it called home, forcing its way through the ether and into Lashey. With every passing moment, Lashey became more substantial, more impressive. She did not get any bigger, but seemed to take up more space, growing in potency as the dark god infested her flesh.
“It’ll be all right, baby.” Savannah said. She hoped that was true.
She kissed her daughter on the forehead then waited for her new master to tell her what came next.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Rashad did not have time to watch where he was going, but trusted in his gifts to get him down to the cavern’s heart-stone. He knelt, then blew acro
ss his fingertips until a spark of golden light flared to life. With a gentle puff of breath, he sent it floating in front of him. “Show me the way,” he whispered.
The ghost-light carved through the black belly of Plummer’s Crack, lighting the path ahead of him. Rashad tried to ignore the spirits crowding around him, their indignant voices questioning his right to be on sacred land. Their rage splashed over him with every step he took, a spectral burden that added its weight to the pack of other worries he was trying to ignore. The conjured girls and their followers had defiled this place. Rashad wanted to fix that, but he did not have time to explain that to the angered spirits.
Savannah had laid the plan out for everyone. She would go in first to get the bad guys’ attention on her. Then everyone else would do their part and clean up the messes the conjured girls had made. But Rashad knew now that their enemies knew that plan. He feared they would be stopped, and braced himself for the fight he knew was coming.
The cave seemed to go on forever. Winding tunnels branched off in all directions, and at every intersection, the ghost-light dithered back and forth for long seconds before deciding on the correct path. Rashad chewed his lip at every delay, certain something had gone wrong and his wife and child were in terrible danger. He moved at a breakneck pace until the tunnel opened up and the walkway became a thin sliver of stone running alongside a deep chasm that plunged far beyond the illumination shed by his ghost-light.
One careful step after another, Rashad worked his way out onto the ledge. He leaned back against the cavern wall, pressing his palms flat against the limestone. Rashad moved his feet two inches at a time, sliding one, then the other. He did not dare look down or see how far he had left to go. “Come on,” he whispered. “Savannah’s waiting on you.”
“Not anymore.” The voice was a purring laugh worming its way through Rashad’s thoughts. “You were too slow. They’re ours now.”
Rashad’s ghost-light wobbled in the air. The path under Rashad’s feet swarmed with shadows. He raised his eyes to the end of the ledge and saw a monster floating there, its whip-like tongue thrashing the air.
“Get yo’ ass out my way, girl.” Rashad inched another step along the ledge. “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
But the conjured girl did not move. Her eyes blazed with an unholy light. “There’s nothing for you here. Turn around. Go home. Find the child you have left to you. Mourn your fallen.”
The taunting words hit home; became a throbbing ache in Rashad’s heart. He took another step.
The girl’s deformed hands pinched together in front of her. “Don’t make me kill you. You’ve already suffered so much.”
Rashad took another sidling step. “If you’re still there when I get to that side, I’m gonna kill you for talking to me like that.”
Laughter echoed from a hundred voices. “You’re a fighter. But why fight for a woman who gave up on herself?”
Another short little step. Beads of sweat dripped from Rashad’s nose and chin, shimmering gold in the ghost-light before falling out of sight. “Savannah ain’t never gave up on nothin’.”
“You know that’s not true,” the conjured girl whispered. “She’s been trying to give up for years. We just gave her the excuse she needed to finally let go.”
Another step. Rashad could see the girl’s gaping face clearly now. “Might as well be out, girl. I don’t want to hurt you no more than already has been done, but I ain’t stoppin’.”
The girl slid forward, hovering over the edge of the ledge. Her black hair crackled in the air, snapping like a screen door caught in a thunderstorm. “I see your thoughts, Rashad. No one did this to me. I did this for my father. To prove my love.”
Rashad took a longer step. His knees knocked from the stress of creeping along, and his back ached like someone had beaten him with a switch. “No daddy wants his little girl hurt. No daddy worth a damn, anyway.”
The girl’s tongue drifted past Rashad’s face, curling in the air, taunting. “Is that what you think?”
Rashad was close to the girl now. They were almost face to face, standing right at the end of the ledge. “It’s what I know.”
The girl moved so fast Rashad did not have a chance to react. The mutant hand looped around Rashad’s throat then hauled him off his feet, dragging him deeper into the cavern. “You know nothing. Sacrifice is love. Pain is proof.”
The grip around his throat pinched off Rashad’s air. He hooked his fingers around the conjured girl’s hand, but all he managed to do was scratch up his own throat.
“Let go.” The girl licked a long, syrupy line up the side of Rashad’s face. “Your wife knows the truth of what I say. She has offered up her own daughter to prove her loyalty to my father.”
His lips formed a refusal of the conjured girl’s claim, but Rashad could not find the air to make his denial heard.
The girl lifted Rashad, raising him into the air until his toes could just scrape the limestone beneath them. “In the darkness, your woman switched sides. She saw the futility of your fight. She saw how stupid it was to suffer for the losers and misfits and degenerate idiots of this world.”
Rashad could feel his hands going numb, but still he pulled at the girl’s hand, struggling for air.
“She gave your little girl to us, Rashad.” The conjured girl’s face was inches from him. Her beautiful brown eyes burrowed into his thoughts. “I feel your doubt. You can see it; I know you can. Because what your woman did was right. Her loyalty will be rewarded, but your rebellion will bring only sorrow.”
The girl squeezed. Rashad felt the last of his strength being crushed. Much more, and his throat would give way and it would be over.
But Rashad could feel something else. Spirits, old and new, gathering in the darkness around the edges of the ghost-light. They did not like Rashad’s trespass, but they liked the conjured girl even less.
“There’s no help for you here,” the girl’s gaping throat poured foul breath over Rashad; a stench akin to a burning pile of rotting innards.
Rashad hooked his fingers in the air then focused on making the signs. It was hard, but it was what he was born for. He felt his hand slip into a cold, dark space, and the way was open. It was not much, but it was enough.
The spirits of enslaved Africans, who died mining the cave’s crystals for their greedy masters, came screaming through the hole, erupting into the world like a jet of steam from an overheated tea kettle. Their cries were as bone-rattling as winter thunder. Rashad’s wordless command guided them, pouring their rage down the conjured girl’s flopping gullet; filling the monster with centuries of raw anger. Ancient fingers pried Rashad loose from the conjured girl’s grip.
The monster shook and seized in the air as the spirits raged inside her.
Rashad doubted the spirits could kill the monster, but they could distract her. He ran down the tunnel, racing after the ghost-light.
As he ran, Rashad found himself haunted by the conjured girl’s words. Had Savannah turned? He tried to imagine a world without his wife or daughter in it. That was not a place he wanted to be. He wandered after the ghost-light, no longer running, but walking, thinking. Thinking about Savannah with a joint in her hand, smoking herself away. Savannah lording her authority over the poor and the weak and the stupid, revolver in one hand, lash in the other. He imagined her smoking away her life, serving a master who never made her think, who never asked Savannah to stand up and make a hard choice; Savannah, giving into the darkness that had haunted her since her mother’s death; her rage free to run.
Rashad’s heart broke, because he could see Savannah there, giving up because the fight was not one she felt was worth winning. The Root Woman was, after all, still a woman. A woman forced into a role that had never really fit her the way it should have. Savannah had tried hard, struggled to be the kind of guardian who could keep Atlanta safe. But, in the end, maybe it was too much to ask, because even the best shepherd cannot save a sheep determined to throw itse
lf down the wolf’s throat.
Tears flowed down Rashad’s face as he walked. He loved Savannah so much, but what was love if all it brought was pain? The conjured girl, who tore off her own face in the name of love, was perhaps not as different from Rashad as he had first thought.
The heart-stone came into view – an enormous, gnarled mound of stalagmites that had grown together over the millennia to form a strange, ribbed dome. Blood was sloshed over it – a thick stain that ran from its crown down its sides and into a crusted moat around its base. Rashad’s heart lurched in his throat at the scope of the sacrifice; at the profane statement it made. Rashad closed his eyes and saw it happen.
The girl standing atop the dome while adherents danced naked and ecstatic around the heart-stone. The girl with her deformed hands and beautiful face, crying out with a love so powerful it tormented her with the need to prove itself. Hooking her spatulate thumb over her lower jaw and pulling, pulling, pulling with a strength born of the need to sacrifice. The girl sang even as her jaw came loose and her skin ripped down from the corners of her mouth. She sang even as the bloody rents ran down her throat and her jaw lay flopping on her chest. Two conjured girls dumped a vat of steaming blood over the girl, baptizing her; transforming her.
The echo of that sacrifice still rang in the chamber; that final moment when the girl tore her flesh free of her body and let it fall atop the dome as blood gushed out of her. That love had done awesome, terrible things. Even as she died, the girl was born anew, remade in the form of something darker, greater than herself.
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