by Lori Devoti
Then I crept forward, hoping my quiet had confused Nick, led him to believe I was too injured in the fall to follow-that it was just Harmony he had to battle now.
They stood in the back, twenty feet from a door that led to the alley. Nick had her by the arm, was trying to drag her toward it. Harmony picked up a jar filled with clear liquid and threw it at him with the intent and speed of a major league pitcher.
Nick twisted, his arm extended, his fingers curved and stiff, and slapped the jar off its trajectory, into a wall. The jar smashed, liquid splattered, and the room filled with the stench of turpentine. Harmony seemed undeterred, grabbed for something else-a stone pestle, but I froze. Nick’s speed and grace, the power with which he swung, even the shape of his hand-it wasn’t human.
He jerked Harmony, spun her into his body, so her back was against his chest. She flailed the pestle behind her trying to strike him, but he grabbed her wrist, shoved her hand to her side. He whispered something in her ear, then wrapped his fingers around the pestle, crushed it to dust in his fist.
My daughter’s eyes rounded, and I could feel her panic like a spear to the chest. She’d got it now-that Nick wasn’t normal, not just a crazed boy. But she couldn’t know what I knew, that he was a son of the Amazons and somehow he was calling on the powers of the givnomai he’d stolen-the speed and grace of a tiger, the strength of a horse…at least one more yet to appear, maybe more. Who knew when he’d decided to start depositing his gifts on my doorstep-how many girls he might have killed before?
His fingers that had just crushed stone to sand trailed down her upraised arm in a gesture so clearly predatory and sexual, every fiber of my soul contracted. Rage soared through me.
I sucked in a breath, but held it-frustrated. Harmony was squeezed against him, her body between his and mine. I couldn’t touch him with the wind building in my lungs, not without catching Harmony in the gale too.
His fingers tangled in her hair; he pressed his lips to a spot on her neck, right behind her ear. Then he murmured something else, something that made my daughter’s body stiffen, her eyes harden. Her hands formed claws, not literally, but they might as well have been the talons they mimicked. She reached behind her, blindly raked her bubble-gum-pink nails over his cheek-leaving four bloody welts in her wake.
He shrieked, shoved her away, sent her reeling into a bookshelf. Papers, metal cans filled with paint, chunks of uncarved marble and stone smashed to the ground around her. She lay on the ground, heaving for breath, scrambling for a new weapon. I moved forward, instinct urging me to her side, but as I did, a creak overhead drew my attention. A huge chunk of granite, once destined to be carved into art, teetered on the shelf above her head. As I watched, it tumbled down, straight for my daughter’s head.
I let out the breath I’d been holding, batted my hands, and prayed I’d hit my target.
The stone, falling one instant, was smashed backward the next. The force I’d created drove it into the wall, into the plaster, through lath, until it barely jutted out like a foothold on a climbing wall.
Nick and Harmony both turned-stared at me. With the same speed he’d shown earlier, Nick was back at her side, his fingers around her wrist, dragging her through the rubble that littered the floor.
I launched myself at him, landed on his back in a move driven by nothing except sheer outrage and passion. My arm wrapped around his neck and I squeezed, wished for the strength to pop his head off and send it rolling across the floor. Wanted to stand over his body and kick it until it stopped moving, until not even a reflexive death twitch was left. Rage-hot, cold all-encompassing-dropped over me until I didn’t know my own name, didn’t even know why I needed to kill this boy, just that I did.
I was an Amazon, and I was going to make him pay.
I felt him shift in my arms, heard his clothing tear as his body grew. Suddenly he slipped from my hold, my fingers running over fur. Then he stood facing me…not Nick, the skinny boy, but Tiger prowling, snarling, warning me to get away from his prey.
Harmony gasped. I didn’t look down at her, just gestured behind me, telling her to get out. For the first time in her life she obeyed me without argument.
Tiger roared as she ran, leapt toward me…and Harmony. A wall of air released from my lungs forced him back, sent him sliding across the floor. He clawed at linoleum, his claws gouging, a growl rumbling from his chest.
He stood, paced left, then right, watching me, deciding his next attack. I didn’t care. I reveled in his indecision, knew that every minute he wasted, Harmony was getting farther away. As long as she was safe, I could take my time deciding how to kill him, die in the process if need be. All that mattered was that my daughter had left.
“Mom?”
I froze, didn’t look, but didn’t have to. I knew the voice, knew the title, and knew by the tiger’s intent stare that Harmony was standing behind me.
“Get out,” I ordered, slashing my hand and releasing more wind to send a bookshelf smashing to the ground, forcing Tiger to jump backward out of its way.
“Makis. He gave me something.” She shoved something cold and smooth into my hand. I glanced down, just long enough to see a double-faced totem, male on one side, female on the other. Both carrying a child and spear. At the feet of each sat a bird and a chisel. Amazons and their sons, both hearth-keepers, warriors, priestesses, and artisans. The imagery wasn’t lost on me, but it offered nothing either. I tossed the stone to the side.
“Get home or call Bubbe and Mother, anything. Just get out of here. Now.” I felt like I was screaming, but couldn’t be, my teeth were clenched too tightly.
Harmony stepped around me, bent to retrieve the totem. A tentacle, long and coral in color, wrapped around her, jerked her across the floor. I glanced up, to where Tiger had been. He was gone and in his place was the third givnomai, not one used by many, Octopus.
The creature pulled her closer until she was almost engulfed in his body. She went limp, her arms and legs falling loosely toward the floor.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I grabbed a palette knife from the mess on the floor, and raced toward the monster, plunged the dull blade into what I guessed was his head, or neck. The creature heaved, dropping my daughter. I pulled back, ready to sink the weapon in again, but it slapped me to the side, sent me spinning and sliding like I’d sent Tiger a few minutes earlier.
My side rammed into a file cabinet and I scrambled back to my feet, searched frantically in my mind for a spell or weapon that would force the thing to release my daughter. As my crazed gaze danced back to Octopus, I saw something…the notebook Nick had carried. Octopus held it too, one tentacle caressing it. Getting strength from it, I guessed.
I leapt again, this time aiming not for the center of the beast, but the far tip of one tentacle-for the notebook that I guessed held three dead Amazons’ givnomais. Givnomais that Nick was somehow leeching of power. My foot on the corner of the notebook, I jabbed the knife into coral flesh and shoved backward with my foot. The tentacle rose, reaching for me, and the notebook went flying. I dropped and rolled, evading Octopus’s reach, then belly-crawled toward the notebook that had slid beneath a shelf. Behind me I heard a thump. I glanced over my shoulder, saw my daughter sprawled on the floor, pale and lifeless. Octopus was gone, but Nick, naked and bleeding, was rising to his feet.
I jerked the notebook free, held it to my chest, and stared at the bleeding boy.
“Give it to me,” he said.
“Don’t,” a voice beside me spoke. Makis. He was slumped in his wheelchair, but the tires spun, moving him forward.
I didn’t care what either of them wanted, only that Harmony was all right. As if reading my mind, Nick looped his arm around her waist, pulled her up beside him. “She’s alive. I wouldn’t kill her. Not like this. I never intended to hurt her anyway. Not until you showed up, attacked me.”
He frowned, his eyes pulling down like a confused little boy. “Why are you fighting me? I thought you understood
.”
Harmony stirred, or was it just her body swaying, an illusion of life?
Still, my grip on the notebook loosened; the tightness in my chest lessened. “Understood what?”
With Harmony so close, within his grasp, I couldn’t move too fast, wasn’t even sure what to do with the notebook now that I had it. If I destroyed the pages, set them on fire, or shredded them into the wind, what would happen to the girls’ spirits? Would they always be trapped between two worlds?
“What I was doing. Why it was right.” Something flashed in his hand and he held a knife-short-bladed and sharp, not at all like the dull tool I’d plunged into the octopus’s neck. “The Amazons threw me out like trash-killed your son with no more thought than they’d give to stomping on a roach. Even him-” He jerked his head toward Makis. “Look what they did to him. But he was weak, wanted to go back to them, after everything. Thousands of years of disrespect, pain, death, and he wants to blend with them. Can you believe that?” His lip curled. “But you, you did what no other Amazon had. You walked away. That’s why I thought you’d understand. Why I’ve watched you for so long, tried to please you.” He shook his head. The knife glimmered. “I brought you gifts. Then I tried to warn the others off-to get them to leave you alone. I even offered you their queen, but you turned her down. I tried again. I knew Pisto would please you. She fought against us, was everything we’re trying to stop. Why aren’t you happy?
“Is it because I didn’t join you at the shop? I couldn’t. I saw Dana, knew she wouldn’t understand. But I didn’t leave you-was there in my dog form. I wasn’t rejecting you. Can’t you see that?” He lifted his arm, caused Harmony’s weight to sway.
Makis wheeled forward, not far, just an inch. He wiggled a finger, pointing to the ground where the totem he’d given Harmony lay.
I placed my hand over it, slid it closer. Trapped inside my closed fingers, the figure began to throb like a tiny beating heart. I clenched it tighter, tried to keep the surprise from showing on my face.
“Harmony,” Makis said low, but Nick still heard.
“I said she’s okay. I don’t want to hurt her. I love her-like Dana. Dana’s happy now, right?” He looked at me. I couldn’t reply. “That’s the problem with the sons. They weren’t selective. They took any Amazon they could.”
I swallowed the saliva that seemed to have pooled in my mouth, the nausea his words created.
Makis gestured again; this time he leaned forward. Hidden in his chair, behind his back, was a throwing knife. I shook my head. Harmony was too close.
Makis shifted his gaze to the notebook, then Nick. My fingers slid in between pages and cover, brushed over something warm and alive-skin. I shuddered, then forced my fingers back to the spot, recognized the power pulsing there-a givnomai, Pisto’s. Feeling as if I might retch, I jerked the book open, yanked the pages free of the binding, and tossed them in the air.
Nick dropped Harmony to the floor and lurched forward, grabbing at the pages as they floated downward. I whirled my hands overhead, creating a tiny cyclone to keep the pages out of his reach, then raced to my daughter. She had a pulse, but her lips were blue. I pressed my ear to her heart, began blowing into her mouth.
“The totem,” Makis urged.
I ran my finger over the figure, not sure what I was supposed to do with it, how it could help Harmony. Then I stopped thinking, just put my trust in Artemis and believed. I shoved the tiny figure into my daughter’s hand, kept my fingers wrapped around hers, prayed and breathed into her mouth. Breathed for her, in and out.
The pulse I’d felt in the figure began to grow until I could feel it creeping up my arm, through my shoulder, into my chest, until my heart matched the rhythm inside it. I wanted to drop the thing, get away from it, but knew if I was feeling this, Harmony was too, if my heart was beating with it, so was hers. On cue, she opened her eyes. They were round, alive, and more aware than I’d ever seen them.
There would be no hiding her heritage from her anymore. No hiding anything from her anymore. It was time I let her grow up and make decisions for herself-at least some. I jerked her to my chest, whispered a prayer of thanks into her hair.
Nick jumped, grabbed at another notebook page.
Makis threw the knife he’d had tucked behind his back, but Nick had already begun to shift. The knife missed, hit a file cabinet, and clattered to the ground. The blur of air that was Nick transformed into a horse, then just as quickly moved again back to the boy. He picked up the knife he’d held before shifting. Threw it. It sliced into Makis’s shoulder, pinned him to his chair.
The old man flinched, tried to jerk the blade free. Nick stalked forward, to the sink tucked in the corner. Death in his eyes, he twisted on the spigot, began to chant and move his fingers. The water began to morph, until it changed into a hangman’s noose. The water-and-magic-formed rope dropped to the floor, slithered across the vinyl tiles like a cobra-headed toward Makis’s chair.
Harmony pushed me away and shoved the totem into my hand. I didn’t pause to question the move. I lurched to Makis’s chair seconds before the noose would have reached him, yanked the knife from his shoulder, and without stopping to aim, threw the blade.
It struck, plunged into the center of Nick’s chest. He crumpled to his knees, shock and betrayal on his face.
It isn’t pretty watching someone die, and despite my lust for Nick’s blood earlier, he was no different. Harmony crept to him, through the puddle of water that had been his last weapon, and pulled his head onto her lap. I wanted to tell her to stop, not to touch him, but she hadn’t lived with his evil as long as I had, had known a different side of him.
And even he deserved some company in death. Or that was what I tried to tell myself when the Amazon in me roared, demanded I jerk her away, curse him as he took his last breath.
He’d threatened my child, killed others. I didn’t know what he’d endured to get to this place, but right now I didn’t care…doubted I ever would, at least not enough to forgive him.
I waited to make sure he was truly dead, not a threat, then I stalked to the front of the store. I needed a minute alone to calm the monster inside me, to convince my still-raging adrenaline that he was dead, Harmony was safe, and the entire nightmare was over-or just about.
There were still a lot of loose ends to tie up, Zery to free, Peter to kick out of my shop and life, and a grandmother to…I clenched my jaw. I didn’t know what I was going to do with Bubbe or Mother, or…any of it. Not right now.
But I didn’t have to think about it, not for a while. Makis’s wheelchair whirred behind me. He had a paint-and-blood-soaked rag held against his shoulder. The sight reminded me of my own wounds, my bloody palms and shoulder. Lost in the fight, I’d forgotten them. I picked at my shirt where it clung to my shoulder, winced when the thickened blood released its hold, pulled at the wound. I put that aside and turned instead to my palms, prodded a bit to see if glass lay hidden beneath the blood.
“I’ll dispose of the body,” Makis interrupted my self-exam.
I must have looked surprised. He rapped on the wheelchair. “Don’t be deceived. I make do, and there’s a…group to help.”
“The sons,” I inserted, wiping a sliver of glass I’d dug free with my fingernail onto my jeans.
His face turned solemn. “Peter told you?”
I quit worrying about my wounds. They didn’t matter.
Instead, I stepped closer to the front window and peered through a slit of clean glass not covered by the mural. “It’s dark. Harmony and I need to go home.” The words sounded idiotic even to me. I turned back, embarrassed by my answer. “The police need to be called. They need to know Zery wasn’t the killer.”
He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “She’s my granddaughter.”
I frowned, surprised. “Zery?”
“Harmony.”
I swayed, hit one of the plants. Water dripped onto my shoulder-the good one.
“I want her to know.”<
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I slowed the swinging plant, tried to slow my spinning brain. Grandfather. Of course he was. My life wasn’t complicated enough.
“Where’s her father?” I had to ask, had to get all the skeletons dug up, so I’d know what I needed to worry about burying.
“Dead.”
“Dead,” I repeated. Seemed I had a record going.
“He was our first casualty.” A shadow hovered behind Makis’s eyes.
“Casualty? That sounds like some kind of war’s going on.”
He pulled the rag away from his wound, glanced down at the bloody tissue. “It is. This isn’t our first skirmish with the others.”
Skirmish? This nightmare I’d been caught in-three dead, four if I counted Nick, Harmony almost taken-it was a hell of a lot more than a skirmish to me. I didn’t comment on that but questioned the last word instead. “Others? I thought Nick…I didn’t get the feeling he was part of a group.” In fact, he’d screamed loner to me. If anything about this made sense, it was that. Nick seemed like every alienated boy I had seen on TV who for some twisted reason turned to violence to make him feel whole.
“He didn’t get his ideas on his own. And his talent”-a hollowness seeped into Makis’s eyes-“so varied and strong. We had no idea.”
Meaning what? There were others like him out there? Sons of Amazons with skills I’d never dreamed existed-with a thirst for revenge? That I could never relax? That life would never feel safe or secure again?
Harmony wandering toward us, her arms wrapped around her body, her eyes dazed, saved me from asking…from learning something I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.
“He’s dead,” she said. “You killed him.”
It wasn’t a judgment, just a statement. Like she needed to say it to understand it, to believe it.
I held out a hand to her, let my fingers trail down her arm. I wanted to hold her, to tell her it had all been a bad dream, but it hadn’t and I was done lying to her. “There are a few things we need to talk about,” I said.