It was easier than she thought. Murder. Simple really. Effortless. Like the man she had just killed. She didn’t know him nor did she care to. He begged for mercy before he died. And, of course, she was merciful. Magnanimous. Benevolent. Magnificent. A few words spoken softly, almost like the song of a nightingale that brought great sweeping destruction in its melody. Harmonics that offered pain and death instead of dulcet invitations to comfort or sleep. The evil fell freely from her lips and would later be rumored as to be her favorite method of death. By this point, she had created variations of the original. Some would cause the victim to fall apart, literally, with limbs cascading to the floor. Others would include twisting and mangling, rending and crushing. Brutal and gleeful. They became known as the Solstice Variants of the Nkrumah-Shanmugasunduram Effect. But the original was the one she preferred. Easy, quick, bloodless. Well, not that bloodless.
As she rounded the corner and came upon the man she did not know, he cowered feebly in her presence. Obviously, he knew he was about to die. When she uttered the words “Karmino Sin Testa!” that separated his head from his body, the low moan that left his lips drifted on the air filling the small space with a cruel and piteous song. His mouth formed a perfect “o” and his eyes fluttered as if in dismay at his own lifeless body. The head cracked on the carpet with a sickening bounce and rolled into a corner under an ornate Beaux Art console. It came to rest, thankfully, with the fluttering eyes facing away from his headless body now disgorging streamers of blood across the room. Solstice stepped back from her malice, mindful of her new shoes; two-toned T-Bars in white and cordovan. She had just picked them up at Saks Fifth Avenue last week and smirked at the thought of fashion having no place in battle, but a stylish warrior she would be.
She remembered as a little girl sitting at her mother’s side in between her sisters, Babycakes and Tula, in the small, hot wood frame church hearing the triumph and conquest of the Israelites booming from Reverend Truman’s pulpit. His voice filled the room with heat and bluster. She thought of herself as a great soldier, sword in hand ready to kill every Hittite she could find. She chuckled at the memory of her makeshift weapon; a tree branch stripped of leaves prancing through the woods behind her cabin looking for King Agag. The thin switch whistled as she swept it broadly from side to side, hacking at the poison ivy, decapitating her foes. Her favorite bible verse meandered through her head. It was First Samuel verse three:
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
“Spare them not,” she murmured eyeing the dead body coldly. The fingers of its outstretched right arm still twitching and tapping and strumming the carpet rhythmically as if counting the items on a yet undone list of things to do before death came knocking in expensive shoes.
“Whadya say ma’chere?”
She turned to see Brasileiro. Tall, but not as tall as Delpha and slightly infirmed. He walked with a limp. Pretty in the face with long eyelashes and wispy thin lips. Fair beyond belief, too white to be black. But at least both her parents were Negro. This bastard was some exotic mix of Cherokee, Creole and something else. “I bet he can see in the dark too,” Solstice thought to herself remembering hearing Mama and Aunt Dollie talking about an old aunt of theirs who was part Indian and could see the blackest man coming down the darkest road on a moonless night at fifty paces.
She hated it when he called her “ma’chere” but because it made Delpha somewhat jealous she tolerated it. Brasil, as he liked to be called, paraded around as if he was some suave Negro from Nor’leans. Truth be told, he was just another high-yella geechee running from the sticks of Virginia into the arms of magic in New York City. He grew up fatherless on rotting porches, tending chickens and eating polk salad plucked from the earth. But she didn’t hold his humble beginnings against him; hers too were dirt poor. She couldn’t even begrudge him for his pretense now. How could she? Not with her running around killing people in her flamboyantly hideous Elsa Schiaparelli lobster-printed dress. Salvador Dalí personally created the fabric for the designer and Solstice had accompanied it with agate gemstones about her wrist and throat. She didn’t like Brasil because he openly fawned over her and practically gushed compliments whenever she was around, tacking on ma’chere as if it were supposed to bring her to orgasm every time she heard it. He was just too damned available. Men should never be that easy.
Lingus approached with the head of what looked like a cross between an old woman and a cat and tossed it alongside the other head under the console. They had finished purging yet another safe house of Vivica’s loyalists. Normally, Solstice would have dispatched Brasil or Lingus for this task. Especially Lingus. He loved it so. He stood by shifting—almost bouncing—from one foot to another, dressed in an aubergine, the word he used to describe the awful purple color of his doubled breasted suit, looking greatly like a hungry animal ready to kill.
“Whadaya want me t’der wit ‘em?” he said motioning his chin with a feral chuckle at the bodiless heads. “The res'is upstairs. Back bedrum.” His eyes flicked upward. This group was exceedingly vocal and defiant of Solstice’s rule. In the near six months since she had killed Vivica and usurped her throne, she had been bringing to heel any and everyone that defied her.
“Burn this place down. Let’s go. I have a party to throw,” she said coldly. She turned to walk away and found her eyes resting on the crumpled heads by the baseboard. She squinted at the receding and mottled hairline of the man she had just killed. Instantly, fire engulfed the head quickly spreading to the cat-looking woman’s head beside it. The fire brooded there with such intensity that soon the man’s skull exploded. Solstice turned nonchalantly and walked straight towards the door whispering under her breath as Lingus brought down the rafters “Spare them not.”
OMG... I CANNOT WAIT TO READ THE REST OF THIS BOOK. WHEN IS THE RELEASE DATE SET FOR?
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