The Starling Saviour

Chapter 16

A week had gone by since Laurel had been attacked by the snakes. And there was no sign of the Culebra Gang anywhere in Starling City.

'I still can't believe I... Survived,' Laurel reflected as we sat down for a chat in our usual spot at the café.

'That makes two of us,' I agreed with her after I took a sip from my iced tea.

'I decided to do some research on the venom from the snakes the gang were using,' Laurel interjected. 'I was attacked by Asp Vipers, and their venom is almost always deadly. Also, the symptoms I had didn't match up- you said that I passed out and that my body turned pale, but when someone is bitten by these snakes, their skin is supposed to yellow around the bite, there should have been some swelling-'

'Wait a second, are you sure you've got the right species?' I interrupted Laurel before she got too carried away.

'I'm sure,' Laurel confirmed by taking an image of the Asp Viper from some sort of book. 'It's the right colour, it has the same zigzagged markings and it's about the same length, 50 centimetres.'

Looking closer at the image, I realised she was spot on. The snake pictured looked exactly like the ones we encountered, it's familiarity transporting me back to that dreadful moment where the snakes had attacked Laurel. How... Precise they had been. Persistent. Almost as if they had intentionally wanted to hurt Laurel due to some grudge they had...

'Are you alright?' Laurel asked, snapping me out of my trance.

'I'm fine,' I nodded at once, shaking my uncertain feelings off.

'You don't seem it,' Laurel picked up, reading me like a book. 'What's the matter?'

'I just... It's only an idea I had about the attack... It's nothing,' I hedged my way through the conversation.

No one was going to believe that snakes were behaving like I thought they had, or maybe even that they were being... controlled. It was too fantastical, too unbelievable.

'Did you think the gang had magical powers or something?' Laurel commented sarcastically.

Maybe they did, I felt like saying. I knew that couldn't be the case, but something was wrong with the attack. It wasn't right.

---

'Since the Culebra Gang have been very... Inactive this past week, we've decided to move on to another case,' Lance announced, confusion on his face.

Everyone was confused about the gang. They had directly told us that they ruled the Glades, and Bellini himself had said that he could 'squeeze the life' out of the city and 'pounce' at any given moment. Part of me wished they were still out in the open, so we could stop them before they could plot anything else. But they were cunning, wanting everyone to worry they were up to something or think that they were going to leave the city alone.

I believed neither. I knew they were going to strike at the next moment they could.

'Don't you think we should stick with this case?' I asked Lance at the end of the small meeting.

'What's the point?' Lance asked rhetorically. 'We have no more evidence to suggest they're still attacking the city, as far as I'm concerned we scared them off.'

'No, they're stronger than that,' I disagreed with Lance. 'I saw what they did to Laurel. I saw the mass of people who were there defending Bellini and their gang. They certainly put me on edge, and I have been through a lot worse. If we stop searching for them now, they could tear this city apart as quick as-'