St. Clair Ch. 02: Witch

TJ gave her a wry smile and held up the keys."I was so looking forward to just being dry for a while and curling up..."

Tammi leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss, cutting her off. "So am I, this shouldn't take more than half an hour. You can towel me off when I get home." She gave a wicked grin with her promise.

About thirty minutes after Tammi left, the house phone rang jarringly.

"TJ? This is Ray, Swede forgot to leave his logbook at the department. We can't seem to get a hold of him. "

"Cell phones went to hell after that last power outage. Not too surprising."

"He didn't leave his handheld in the charger bank either, but he isn't responding on it at all."

"He's probably got it turned off while he's 'catching up' with Angie - their schedules have been really out of whack since this search started. They've been apart so long she was eyeing the gear shift in the Beast when I gave her a lift."

Ray laughed."Yeah, she said something along those lines."

"I guess you could call the main office at the Ponderosa, maybe that teen-age desk girl can run down and pound on his door. I'm pretty sure she's got a crush on him. She'd love a chance to catch him undressed, even with Angie."

"You know she's my niece. I'd hate to have to shoot Swede."

"She'd have to use a crowbar to separate Angie from him anyway."

"Probably. Tomorrow you may need to talk to Jenny. I'll have Don make a 'courtesy visit' on his way in at home or the salon."

TJ was just sitting down when the phone rang again. It took her a second to even figure out who it was.

"TJ? TJ? What... Swede... truck..." While she could barely hear Tammi, the stress in her voice was obvious.

And then she was gone as her cell phone signal dropped off.

The tone of Tammi's voice caught TJ off guard. Three tries to call her back failed.

After a few seconds, TJ headed for the door, grabbing the keys to Tammi's car as she went.

Something in Tammi's voice seemed to scream in TJ's head as she kept hitting redial on her phone.

***

The little brown car clawed its way up the mud-caked access road toward the Bramble. TJ wasn't sure where Tammi would be, but she'd almost certainly have the headlights of the truck on. It'd be visible in the dark.

TJ wasn't sure if she was on the 50^th or 51^st redial when her phone finally connected with Tammi.

"Tammi?"

"Where are you?"

"Trying to find you. I'm about six miles up the access road."

"I'm back down at the main station. Been trying to call but I couldn't get through."

"Damn. I'll get turned around. I couldn't make out what you were saying and had a bad feeling."

"Swede's big old crew-cab truck was barreling up the access road. Looked like it was headed up to the beaver dam. But now that I think of it, it didn't look like Swede was driving. Somebody a lot smaller."

TJ felt something fall into place.

TJ paused. "How much water is backed up by that dam?"

"Almost 60 acres right now since DNR decided to let it be, the leveler is doing a great job keeping the dam stable even with all that pressure."

"Tammi, I need you to call Ray on the radio. Tell him to get everyone the hell off the site by the Holloway place. Now."

"Why?"

"Ketamine. Cody and Crowder both had huge amounts of Ketamine in their systems. It's what killed Crowder. But we never found any."

"Ketamine?"

"It's a veterinary tranquilizer Tammi."

Tammi went silent for a second. "No. Tina, there's no way."

"We found meth, cocaine and weed at Crowder's places, but no Ketamine. Shannon said Elvis used to hang out with Cody all the time. He must have seen... something. He wasn't freaking out at Jenny, it was Angie."

"But it was supposed to be voodoo stuff."

"Elvis wouldn't know the difference. He can barely read. They said the graves were marked with faces. I'll bet they're supposed to be skulls. Like Angie's tattoos."

"Why would she do that?"

"I'll be sure to ask. Right now I need to get to that dam. I don't know if Swede's still alive, but Angie knows the graves have been found on the bank downstream from the dam. If she manages to get that dam to go, it'll wash the sites away, bodies and all. And probably kill a dozen people."

Tammi sounded almost mechanical when she responded. "I'll call Ray. Try not to shoot Angie..." At that moment, the call dropped.

Her headlights flickered and dimly lit the underbrush in yellowed flashes as TJ maneuvered the car up the slimy track. Up ahead she could see brilliant beams of light bobbing up and down rhythmically, in a weird, almost static pattern.

Swede's truck, but what the hell was going on?

The car lost traction for just a second, then shuddered as the ruts deepened, leaving the car high centered and stranded.

TJ calmly but quickly tried reverse with no luck.

Shit.

She pushed the door open and slid out of the car, scrambling up steep slope through the rain, slipping in rushing streams of rainwater as she forced her way toward the headlights, just as they stopped moving and froze.

Tammi's plea rang in her mind. "Try not to shoot Angie."

With what? Her gun was sitting in the floorboard of the Ranger with her wet uniform.

She was blinded momentarily by the headlights and off-road lights of Swede's truck - she quickly dropped and crabbed sideways out of the blazing white.

She stood up, looking around, quartering the area. A scene out of some kind of twisted version of Dante.

An odd groaning, the sound of something vast, ancient and in agony, creaked monstrously through the rain, pervading everything.

Swede's unmoving, heavily muscled nude form was stretched supine over the hood of his truck, wrists wrapped and pinned to the wheel well with a cargo strap. She guessed his ankles were pinned the same way. He wasn't moving at all.

Something slid around the front of the truck, a slender form silhouetted coming off the huge dam.

Angie sauntering lazily toward her, a stark lean shadow, backlit by the searing beams of light.

"Angie. You don't need to do this."

"Oh, I know. I don't need to do this. I want to."

As Angie edged out, TJ could see her come into focus.

Barefoot, not a stitch of clothing. A long handled ball-headed club dangling from one hand, a glassy black stone knife gripped in the other.

The club spun slowly, almost elegantly around her hand, as if it was alive, as if it had a mind of its own.

Her normally cheerful face was overpainted with a stylized skull. The color of dark congealed blood.

"Looks Aztec to me Angie. I saw some of it when I was doing research."

"When you were researching Jenny. Yeah, I know, Swede talks too much when he drinks."

"So you think these sacrifices will do... something?"

"No. I just love the feeling. It's such an amazing rush." She shivered with pleasure. "Better than cocaine. Feeling their life in your hands, feeling their warm blood running over you. The taste." She refocused on TJ. "There are so many useless people. Nobody misses them."

The groaning sound grew louder.

"You just kill people for the rush?"

"Yes. Except for the mime. He really was an asshole."

"And Swede and those deputies and technicians you're trying to drown?"

"Just the wrong place, wrong time for Swede. I like him, he's so nice to me. But God, he's so strong, it will be really special. As for the rest: Omelets. Eggs. That's life. But you told someone to warn them, didn't you?"

TJ shifted to keep Angie from closing the gap. That club looked nasty, and Angie obviously knew exactly how to use it. The three foot reach of the club was a huge advantage.

"They're probably already on their way here now."

"Oh, I know they are. I took Swede's radio when we left the station. And they'll find out you were wrong. They'll find Swede and you murdered by Jenny, who cracked her head at some point and washed down the river when the dam gave. She's in the back of the truck, I stopped to pick her up on the way out of town."

TJ crouched, moving back to stay out of her reach. "That's pretty iffy. You think Shannon will fall for that?"

"I'll be the only one around to tell the story. It's only about six miles to my place on the trails and down a couple back roads. I can make it in a little over an hour. They haven't sent anyone to look for me. By the time they think to check, they'll find poor little me watching late night TV. And if I think they don't really buy my story, I'll have plenty of time to get out of here while they try to put together some kind of evidence. Won't be the first time I've had to pull up stakes. Even L.A. gets too small when you've 'harvested' enough people. But I know it will take them hours to get here with the roads flooded like they are. Nobody really knows anything."

"Elvis does, doesn't he?"

Angie giggled like a teenage girl with a naughty secret. "He saw me kill Cody. Even saw me eat his heart. Sat there in the corner of that rotting barn near the Holloway place, crying the whole time."

TJ felt a wave of cold needles crawl up her back.

Angie giggled again. "I let him get away on purpose. Nobody would ever believe him. I wink at him whenever I see him in town."

TJ could sense trees at her back. She couldn't outrun Angie in the woods. Maybe with her running blade she'd have a chance; probably not even then, she'd seen Angie run.

She began to move toward Angie's left, circling toward the dam.

Angie made no effort stop her, just languidly following TJ until she reached the edge of the dam.

It was obvious why Angie had let her go this way. To one side of the spit of land that led to the dam was a thirty foot drop onto rocks, on the other was just water. The middle of the dam, where the truck had pulled the leveler pipe out, was torn wide open and water was rushing through, tearing more and more branches and tree trunks from the groaning structure.

"Nowhere to go TJ. I'll make it quick." Her voice was soft, almost gentle.

TJ began to edge out onto the dam.

She made six steps on the springy, unstable footing.

The wet muddy branches under her feet gave slightly, then shattered and fell away dropping her straight down.

She was up to her waist in interlaced and broken branches almost instantly.

Angie snorted a short laugh and shook her head slowly giving a sardonic grin, with one eyebrow arched. "Well that sucks." She spun the club in a whistling loop. It moved hypnotically, a living extension of her arm."

Angie caught TJ watching the club. "Like it? Bought it and the knife from a real artisan in Mexico. It's a perfect replica of an Aztec war club. I practice using it all the time."

The club blurred as she snapped it through a two inch thick branch.

A shuddering series of cracking sounds from deep inside the dam made the hair on the back of TJ's neck stand up.

Shit.

"Angie, come on, think. Do you really want to do this?"

"Been doing this since I was eighteen. Gets better every time. Better than drugs, better than sex. Keeps the headaches away."

TJ leaned back as far as she could, trying to force Angie to get closer, get her inside the range of a lunge.

A tiny chance, but if she could get Angie's ankle, she might have a chance at bringing her down. Maybe dump her off the dam.

"Nice. I'm impressed. Must be all that combat time. No panic at all. God, I'd love to take your heart. Fearless. Seriously TJ, you're awesome. I don't think we have time though." She shrugged. "I'm going to have to break your arms, then cave your skull in."

TJ knew that wasn't a threat.

Just a terrifyingly casual explanation.

TJ could see Angie gauging her reach as she stepped closer.

It wasn't going to work. Angie had already figured her plan out.

An odd metallic sound like sheet metal popping, over the sound of the truck engine.

Angie stepped back cautiously and whirled, stepping slowly, disbelievingly as a bedraggled, soaked Tammi stepped out, blonde curls finally defeated by the rain, her hair plastered down and darkened. Make-up ruined, clothes soaked.

She'd never been more beautiful.

Quietly. "Angie."

"Go away Tammi, you're going to ruin everything."

Tammi held the brick-like black radio up. "I already have."

Angie shook her head in denial.

TJ started to quietly try to free herself from the tangle, slowly pulling herself up.

"Just go away Tammi. Walk away."

"I can't do that. You know how much I love you, but she's mine, Angie."

Angie glanced back over her shoulder at TJ.

"Sorry you have to see this Tammi."

She spun and sprinted toward TJ, warclub whirring toward TJ with nightmarish speed.

An odd sound. The dull sound of an apple dropped on a wooden floor.

Something black but shining rattled crazily down the dam, plunking into the water.

The radio.

Angie's sudden, powerful sprint turned awkward, uncoordinated, then she slid to her knees, looking back at Tammi, incredulous. The knife fell into the branches of the dam as her hand jerked, clumsy, uncoordinated, to the side of her head.

She blinked twice, eyes going blank.

The club dropped from nerveless fingers and she tumbled, boneless, into the water.

Tammi was at TJ's side instantly, pulling frantically.

"Tammi, we can..."

"NO! We can't. Look!"

She pointed out toward the water. Dark shapes were moving toward shore in the dim, reflected light...

"The beaver are trying to get to shore. They can sense the dam is going to give."

TJ pulled with renewed effort. They could feel the dam shifting and the groaning was punctuated by an increasing chorus of cracking and snapping branches.

The dam shifted again, and Tammi, straining to pull TJ out by her arms, suddenly lurched back, with TJ in her arms, tripping and staggering as TJ tried to get her legs under her.

Tammi fell back on the dirt with TJ on top of her just as the dam gave a final shudder and gave way. It was rather less dramatic than TJ had expected; a brief thunder of water and shattering wood, then a continuous, but quieter roar as the catchwater began to drain.

TJ rolled off of Tammi.

"A radio."

"It's what I had, Tina. I left my gun and stuff at the house."

"You know, you took my gun when you left; it was on the floorboard of the Ranger."

"Oh. I thought that was just your wet uniform. Don't you have your back-up?"

"Glove compartment, it was rubbing my leg raw with all the rain. I kind of thought we'd run into each other on the access road and I'd get one then. Where is the Ranger, anyway?"

"Back down the road. Some damn fool stuck a car on the access road and I couldn't get around it."

TJ gave an almost soundless laugh. "I wonder who would do that." She paused "It's gonna be a long night."

"Already is."

"Yeah, but my peg is probably about 10 miles downriver by now. So you'll have get the car pulled free by yourself."

"Swede and Jenny are out cold, I popped the cargo straps on Swede, but he just fell off the truck. I'll carry Jenny, but Swede's big ass can just wait here; I'm not carrying him anywhere."

"No shit."

Tammi struggled to sit up and looked out over the river. Her lip trembled. "We'll have to drag Angie's body out of there. I can see her hung up in some tree roots."

TJ pushed herself to sitting and followed Tammi's gaze. Angie was hanging like some kind of strange art project. Limp dark hair hid Angie's face, and the arm caught in the broken, upturned tree was bent in places where arms don't usually bend. As TJ stared, she saw some movement. It seemed impossible, but Angie's fingers were twitching spasmodically.

"I think she's alive."

"I can't leave her there. I can't." She squeezed her eyes shut and TJ was sure it wasn't all rain sliding down her face.

Silently, TJ wished it was just nervous response from a dying body. But she'd seen enough people die to know the difference.

"She's dangerous Tammi. Really dangerous. We'll have to be damn careful."

Tammi smiled wanly. "I knew you'd help me. And I'm not afraid of her. Especially with you helping. "

"That makes one of us. But her arm is pretty badly broken and her club and knife are long gone." TJ felt herself chuckle a little. "And she probably has a concussion from the radio."

"I hope they don't make me pay for that." She studied Angie for a moment. "What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know. It didn't seem personal, she just seemed to think it was perfectly okay, just something she did."

Loud, wet, coughing, gagging sounds erupted from the other side of the truck. A moment later, Swede staggered around the truck, leaning heavily on it, dragging one leg behind him while wiping his mouth on the back of his arm. He held a rock the size of TJ's head in his hand.

Glowering, angry and dazed. "Somebody want to tell me what the fuck is going on?"

***

It took ten minutes to explain what had happened, and maybe it was the Ketamine, but Swede barely even questioned it.

Retrieving Angie was both easier and harder than it looked. Easier because she stayed unconscious, harder because one of the broken branches had punched through her left calf.

Swede wasn't much help with anything, his knee was swollen up to the size of a football and he couldn't put weight on it. And Jenny simply stayed unconscious.

Even though TJ wasn't quite as useless as she expected to be, it was two hours before they arrived in town in Swede's crew cab. Angie's unbroken arm was handcuffed to a tie down in back. Tammi had even wrapped her in a blanket.

Shannon met them at the main road with two ambulances and every deputy on duty.

After TJ went over the details he shook his head.

"The graves are probably gone. We got Tony's body out, but I have no idea who the other two were. We just couldn't get them dug up. I doubt we'll be able to use the body for any kind of evidence, defense would tear up chain of custody and site security in any kind of trial."

TJ shrugged tiredly, watching an EMT check out a finally semi-conscious Jenny. Swede was already loaded. "We have the three counts of attempted murder, plus whatever you can get away with on using the dam to flood the site."

He nodded. "A female serial killer. Everything I've ever read says they're so rare most experts don't even think they really exist."

"This one does. She's dangerous as they get. We got lucky up there."

"Don will ride escort with her. I told him not to take chances; if she does anything wrong, just pump rounds into until she stops breathing."

TJ rubbed her stump. Damn thing was sore as hell. "He's probably the best choice."

"My Ranger and Tammi's car are up on the access road. You mind if I take the Beast to get us home?"

"Use it, come in and do paperwork in the morning. Then take the rest of the day to get everything."

***

Tammi walked up to the car.

"Your turn."

TJ and Jenny got out, leaving almost everything with Tammi - Jenny's purse, belts, cell phones, change.

The 'experts' had finally figured it out. Or at least thought they had.

Angie had cancer. Not breast cancer, not liver cancer. Brain cancer. And it would kill her. But it was far worse than that. The tumor had grown in a way that it made her a monster first.

When they treated her for her injuries, she complained of her increasing migraines, and during a routine exam, they turned up the evil dark spider of the tumor. It suppressed her empathy and her impulse control without at all reducing her mind at all. The stories her mother had told her about the Aztecs become more and more real, more real in some ways, than the world around her.

She'd said that there were others - that she'd killed other people. She refused to talk about them though, preferring to keep that for her private amusement.