by Lori Devoti
The Amazons had killed their infant sons before, and now after we had discovered the Amazon sons had gathered together, that they had powers and one had already used those powers against us . . . it made sense some might want to return to the old ways, especially if the male child was second generation, the son of a son.
“And Harmony, what about her? Yes, she’s a girl . . . but if she doesn’t agree with the council, doesn’t want to play the role they lay out for her, if she stays with me . . . how long before they want her eliminated too?” Mel stepped closer and forced me to look at her. “What about that? Have you thought of all that? Do you know what you will do when they point at my child or Dana’s or someone else’s you know, maybe love?”
Despite the sick feeling her words were creating in my gut, I had to try and convince her what she was saying wasn’t true. “I don’t know what you are talking about. The baby I’m looking for is a girl and we don’t want to kill her, we want to . . . ” I paused. I didn’t know what the council had planned for the child because no one had told me . . . because without knowing, I’d raced ahead and done my damnedest to do their bidding.
Mel leaned forward, her face grim. “It’s a he, Zery. A son of a son and a high council member. The rest of the council doesn’t want to save him, they want to kill him. I know. I’ve talked to his mother. I’ve seen the child.”
And like that, my world crashed around me. I don’t know how I knew she was speaking the truth . . . No, that wasn’t right, I knew because it was Mel, because despite all of our fallouts I trusted her.
I took a step back. Thea . . . the knife . . . the slit in my thumb . . . the blade had been sharp enough to cut it. I’d missed it, somehow, but it made sense. Thea had known this council’s plan and hadn’t told me. She’d been using me to find the child so she could do as the council asked . . . so she could kill him.
I wasn’t a queen; I was a tool.
The realization was like a physical blow, and I couldn’t stand next to Mel now, couldn’t look at her.
A piece of me was dying and the only thing I could do was run.
I left Bern at Mel’s. I needed to be alone and I didn’t know what waited for her back at camp. I didn’t know what waited for either of us, but this felt like my fight.
After being forced to see the truth, I’d walked from the room in a fog. I knew from the outside I’d appeared to be under control. I always appeared under control, but inside, my knees were buckling and my heart was thrashing around inside my chest.
I’d walked through those damn babies without looking down. If I’d thought they were watching me when I entered, when I’d left, the feeling had been one hundred times worse. They weren’t just watching, they were judging.
And I came up lacking, severely lacking.
The Jeep’s engine roared as I barreled down the highway. I zipped past two semis and a car full of teenagers before thinking to glance down at the speedometer—eighty-five. I tapped on the brake.
Amazons didn’t speed. Speeding invited troopers to stop you, which led to questions. We avoided questions.
When the vehicle was back under sixty-five, I shoved my back against the seat and tried to think.
But I couldn’t—or I was thinking too much. Images from my life as queen and my life as Mel’s friend swirled through my head. Images of Bern and Lao: Thea asking Bern to give up her givnomai, Lao telling the girls to put down the bowl.
All of them part of the tribe.
None of them completely seeing things the same way.
When did that happen? When did we stop all agreeing?
Then I thought of Bubbe. Before my birth, she had fought the high council, gone against the old ways and stopped Amazons from killing and maiming their sons. After that we had simply deserted them, left them for humans to find and adopt.
But since then the high council had grown, not in size but power. They had fought every change since all the harder until there had been no change, no independent thought at all.
My job as queen had always been to follow blindly, like a sheep.
I slammed my fist into the steering wheel.
Like a sheep.
Damn the wolverine son for seeing that when I couldn’t.
Angry with myself and my tribe, I pulled off at a rest stop just past the Illinois border. I parked in the area for semis. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with mothers and toddlers or old people walking their dogs. Truckers tended to mind their own business; I liked that.
Actually, there was only one semi in the lot. I parked as far away from it as I could and got out to do my business and walk a bit.
My mind was a swirl. Thea had talked with someone from the council. I believed that. What I didn’t know for sure was if she knew that someone wanted the child killed. I suspected she did—suspected she’d taken the child to the woods to do the job herself.
But the council . . . they were still out there. Mel had said the council had split. That didn’t mean the council was gone . . . it meant there were two now.
Which meant I had a choice of which one to listen to or, as Mel had suggested, the choice to listen to no one at all, to think for myself.
It was strange to realize I hadn’t been doing that all along.
So which was it? After the shock of realizing I’d been manipulated wore off, did I understand why some of the council might want the child dead? He was the son of a son and a high council member. The potential power in that combination was unsettling.
But he was also just that . . . potential. He was an infant; he had done nothing good or bad. Who were we to condemn him?
The choice was mine. I could return to Madison and go hang around Mel. I could wait for Peter outside her shop and follow him wherever he went. Then I could force him to tell me what he knew.
I could find the baby if I really wanted to. I knew that.
But did I?
A car pulled into the lot behind me, but I ignored it, choosing instead to change direction and walk toward the empty playground that stood about sixty feet from the rest area building.
It was windy and warm. A swing moved in the breeze and a bit of dirt made its way into my eye. I was rubbing it out when I got struck from behind.
“Ready to leave the flock?” A rough male voice whispered in my ear as I hit the ground.
I flung back one elbow and was rewarded with a pain-filled grunt. I pressed my advantage by slamming my head backward, into, I hoped, my assailant’s nose.
The grip on me loosened and I sprang to my feet.
My fairy godfather rose to his feet, blood streaming from his nose. “The sheep kicks,” he commented.
“Baa,” I replied, then circled to the left.
I needed this fight. I was even willing to risk human notice to have it.
He grinned and circled too. “Have a nice day in Madison?” he asked.
“Lovely,” I replied.
“Heard you stopped by an old friend’s.”
I rushed forward, pivoting as I kicked. My foot hit him in the chest. He let out an umph of air and staggered backward.
“Nice,” he murmured. He moved in quickly, swinging with his left fist. I ducked, but not fast enough. His closed hand made contact with my cheek. I could feel the flesh begin to swell.
He jumped back. “Oops. I hit a girl.”
“Good thing this girl”—I spun again, this time dropping low, going for the backs of his knees with my extended leg; he tumbled backward onto his ass—“hits back.” I finished, moving in to kick him again, this time in the head.
He grabbed me by the ankle and twisted. Pain shot through my recently reinjured back. I fell onto the ground beside him and he rolled over on top of me.
“You know, fun as it is, I didn’t come here to fight.” He was breathing hard; blood and sweat streamed down his face. Pea gravel that had been poured onto the playground to protect toddlers who tumbled off the slide bit into my backside.
“Really, why did you come?” I lo
cked one arm around his, shoved the other into his chin, and rotated my body, flipping us over as I did. On top, I knee-kicked him in the groin, then pulled back my fist to sock him again in the nose.
“What? Whoa!” A new voice boomed over us. “He bothering you, lady? Someone call the cops!” A trucker approximately six feet tall and almost as wide leaned over us. “Heard some noise. Thought it was some kids scrapping . . . Don’t you worry. I’ll hold him till the cops can get here.” He grabbed me and the son and hauled both of us to our feet.
Adrenaline raced through me and my breath came in quick puffs. Across the trucker’s wide body the son stared at me, his dark eyes almost glowing. Neither of us had been ready for the fight to end, but unless we wanted to take out the trucker, we had no choice.
Of course, I also didn’t want to stick around and talk to the cops.
Apparently the son didn’t either. After one last dark glance at me, he jerked his arm free of the trucker’s grasp and sprinted for the parking lot.
“Hey, you. Someone stop him!” the trucker yelled and lumbered after him.
I took the opportunity to run myself, in the opposite direction. My business with the son wasn’t over; I was tired of having him follow me around. And no matter what I decided to do with the high council’s orders, that was going to stop. But I couldn’t stop it now. The best I could do was get away before the trucker went through with his civic duty and called in the human authorities.
I circled around the restrooms, drawing curious stares from a couple getting out of a small RV. The man stared openly at me until the woman elbowed him in the gut. Fussing at each other, they continued walking and disappeared inside the building.
I cut across the grass and headed back to my car. The trucker was nowhere in sight, and there were now three cars parked in the semi area, making it impossible to say whether the son was still around or not.
I guessed, however, that he had left in whatever vehicle he’d arrived in.
I slipped into the Jeep and steered it toward the interstate, pulling the seat belt across me as I did. I’d gone maybe four miles and begun to relax when I caught sight of movement in the rearview mirror. Movement inside the Jeep.
Chapter 9
A boot-clad foot appeared over the top of the back bench seat. I recognized it instantly—the son. I kept my hands on the wheel, maintained my speed, and basically didn’t react at all, but my mind was spinning. We were in a stretch with no exits, making my only option to pull over onto the shoulder, but that wasn’t the wisest choice either.
Some busybody Good Samaritan would surely spot us and either stop or dial 911.
At that moment I wished more than anything I had a talent for magic. Unfortunately, I needed direct physical contact with the son to do him any harm—or did I? His leg followed his foot. I waited until he was straddling the seat and then I slammed on the brakes.
The Jeep fishtailed, swerving sideways across two lanes. The seat belt cut into my shoulder and jerked me backward. The son flew forward, his body twisting, his legs hitting the roof before the rest of him collided with the passenger seat and he fell to the floor. Smoke curled around us, five years of tire tread left on the road.
A horn sounded behind me, long, hard, and angry. A pickup truck pulling a horse trailer barreled toward us. I punched the gas and shot the Jeep onto the shoulder. Once there, I slammed the vehicle into park, unsnapped my belt, and threw myself over the seat and onto the son.
I socked him in the jaw. He groaned. I hit him again and pulled back my arm for another swing. This time he reached up and grabbed my wrist.
“I told you I wasn’t here to fight.”
I twisted my arm, trying to break his hold. His eyes glimmered. “Back down or I shift. Do you really want to be stuck in a closed car with a forty-pound pissed-off wolverine? And trust me, I’m getting mighty pissed off.”
His threat didn’t bother me, but truth be told I was getting curious. I pulled back and sat on the edge of the middle seat, but I kept my attention on him, my body tense and ready to spring. Still on the floor, he stretched out his legs and studied me. After a second he held out one hand. “Truce?”
I ignored the overture, choosing to stare back at him instead. I was curious what he wanted if it wasn’t to kill me, but I couldn’t begin to think of a question. Then I had it. “How long have you been watching me and why?”
He studied me for a second, then gestured toward the front seat. “Why don’t we get going before state patrol decides to check and see what the ten feet of skid marks you left back there are about?”
I must not have looked all that eager. He added, “You drive; I’ll talk. We’ve still got an hour or more, plenty of time to get to know each other as well as you like.” His voice lowered on the last.
I wasn’t all that keen on being trapped in a car with him, but on the other hand, if he was with me, I knew what he was doing and he was right, sooner or later a trooper would wander along. I climbed into the front seat, placing my foot firmly on his gut in the process.
He didn’t comment, didn’t even grab my foot, just let out a slight grunt. Once I was in place, he wedged his body through the opening between the seats and levered his long frame in the space allowed between seat and dash.
“You could have come through the door,” I said.
“And risk you peeling out over my foot? I don’t think so.” With another grunt he pulled on the seat adjustment and sent the thing whizzing backward.
I didn’t bother responding. He was right; I would have. After checking my side mirror, I pulled back onto the interstate. When I glanced back at my uninvited guest, he was lounged against the passenger door looking annoyingly pleased with himself.
“Well?” I snapped.
He raised both brows.
“Talk.” I whipped the Jeep into the left lane to pass a convoy of semis before a man in a sedan wearing a business suit and chatting on his phone could cut me off.
The son waited for me to get back in the right-hand lane. I frowned at him. “I can stop again.”
“In the same manner? I don’t know if your tires can take it.”
I put on my turn signal.
He held up one hand. “Fine. I’m Jack Parker, your neighbor of five years and an Amazon son.”
Sounded like a confession, like you’d hear at some twelve-step program. I waited to see if another confession was coming, but his lips were firmly closed.
“Five years?” I thought back to where I had been, what I had been five years ago. Two days ago I would have said exactly where I was now—but today’s events had made me realize that wasn’t true.
“Five years. That’s when we got organized enough to assign sons to the safe camps,” he explained.
“So all the safe camps have sons watching them?” This was information the council, if they still existed, would want to know.
He shrugged. “Of course. Don’t think it will help you, though. The sons assigned to the camps are good. You won’t find them unless they want to be found.”
I glanced at him. “I found you.”
“Not at your camp. I showed myself to you there. I didn’t have to.”
“You did if you wanted to steal the baby.”
“Save. We saved the baby.”
I concentrated on the road for a minute. I wasn’t ready to talk about the baby just yet. I had to decide what I was going to do about my assignment, but not at this exact moment.
“So, you’ve been watching us. Why?”
He twisted in his seat, sinking down a little and playing with a pen he’d picked up from the floor. He flipped it over the knuckles of his right hand so quickly the motion was nothing but a blur.
“I was told to.”
“Ha.” I shook my head. “Who’s the sheep?”
His fingers stilled. “I was told to, but I was given all the information. Then I thought about what I was doing, knew the consequences and believed in the cause.”
“I believe
in the cause.” Not his cause, but the cause of the Amazons.
“Really. Tell me what you believe. Tell me what you want for your tribe.”
What did I want? Survival, strength, happiness . . . I shifted my hands on the steering wheel. “I’m not the one who’s supposed to be talking; you are. Tell me how you got the baby, what else you know.”
He held up the pen and waved it back and forth like a no you don’t finger. “Bossy, aren’t you? Of course, I knew that.”
I suppressed a growl.
“The condor you saw. He knows the mother.”
I let that compute.
“So she gave him her baby?” I asked. It was possible; not all Amazon mothers were as “motherly” as Mel. “Does he have the child now?” I was avoiding stating the baby’s sex. I had been told it was a girl, but Mel claimed it was a boy. I’d like to hear this son confirm one or the other before offering it myself.
He smiled. “He may. Let’s talk about you and the Amazons.”
“You can’t beat us,” I replied.
He quirked his head. “Who said we want to beat you?”
“I’m sorry. I misunderstood the bite on my leg—what was that?”
“I didn’t start that fight.”
“You did, you—”
“Saved the baby. I know, we’ve covered that.”
Not really. But maybe it was time we did. “Why?” I asked. Attacking us like they had, two against two, had been a risk.
A shadow passed behind his eyes. “Because we know what the Amazons have planned for him.”
Him. He’d said it. “The baby is a boy? How do I know that?”
He frowned. “Why would I lie about that? He’s a son, Mateo . . . the condor’s . . . son. The mother is on your high council. When she learned some of the council members planned to kill her child, to send some kind of message to the rest of the tribe, she contacted Mateo.”
“What message?” I asked.
The pen stilled. “That the Amazons are the same baby-killing bitches they’ve always been?”
I tensed, but didn’t react. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be sitting in this car.”