SSK, the Lady of the Hunt, is a seventy-year-old whip-wielder leading the five Gladiators for the underground rebellion against Anansi; she sewed the crown of fingers onto Kendall.
Description
Bald, Black, with very long fuchsia dreadlocks, a bodybuilder’s build, slashed leathers, many jewels; she looks younger than seventy. Former boxer, wrestler and sex worker; she worked for the Genesis Foundation (later proposing to infiltrate it: “that’s where what we’re looking for is”) and “on the other side, further down”. Her strange-metal monofilament whip glows like electricity and splits a table or a car: future, not magic, says the one who sees dimensions. She has embroidered since childhood.
Allegiance
With the Gladiators and Burka Ruka (a burly Haitian of two syllables) she backs a new daughter of Anansi, the one who joined machine to body, in revolt against the longest-ruling one. Her superior, Doña Ilva, performs the rite turning the old iron heart into gold; SSK obeys without fully understanding it. Told a divinity was about to enter this world: “It is not about to enter: it already has.”
History
- Appears in a moonlit clearing.
- In the caverns, has one finger (index, middle, ring) cut from each of three bound captives, sucks each wound “for their good and everyone’s”, and sews the three to Kendall’s forehead under his lifted scalp, pointing down, leaving him zombified.
- Nose broken, she negotiates calmly from a bed: the maimed “are now part of her”; she speaks of a community of transformation underground and of the Drow, daughters of light condemned to darkness, and guides the group to the Gothic church, one of the underground’s two mouths.
- In a Latino fight bar (Samoan barman with shotgun), asked why she sewed the fingers: “Because I felt like it.” Reaching for the whip, she is shot in the arm, lashes the shooter (“let go or I’ll let go of your soul”), and is shot near the groin. Patched up, she leaves in their van; the madam: “sons of bitches, never again”.
- When they go down to kill her own people, they trick her into sleeping in the car, whip in the trunk.
Relationships
- Chantal: vague mutual recognition; perhaps past foes.
- Rachel Betta: the cult’s technological daughter.