by Lori Devoti
I relaxed, then stiffened. While I found comfort in the idea that our talents were part of us, that no matter what happened we would retain them, it also meant the other Amazons, the ones who had deserted Artemis, would hold those skills too.
“However . . . ” Bubbe ran her fingers down the leather thong that hung from her neck and grasped the tiny stone wolf that dangled from it. “While we are born with our talents, our worship of the goddess enhances them—especially our magical talents.”
I smiled. “So these Amazons who have deserted Artemis, they will have lost some of their skills.” It was good news, the best news.
Bubbe’s hand closed more tightly over the wolf. She held her breath and for a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she placed the stone against her lips and kissed it. With it still held in front of her, she replied, “But their new goddess will bring them more.”
“More? More than the Amazons?”
Bubbe’s lips lifted on the sides, a shade of a smile, but still the wire that had started to weave around my heart loosened a tad. She opened her fingers and the wolf thumped into place over her heart. “More, perhaps is wrong . . . different, like the goddess they choose. Each goddess, she has different skills from the next. Artemis strengthens our magic, our use of the wild forces of nature. She looks down on us during childbirth, and helps us to hunt. She attracts us to the woods, and gives us the strength and skills of her chosen animals.” Bubbe’s fingers flitted over the stone wolf. “But another goddess, she would have skills too. If she accepts the worship of these Amazons, she could bestow her skills, like Artemis has bestowed hers upon us.”
“What kind of skills . . . stronger skills?”
Bubbe lifted one shoulder. “I tell you what I know. It depends on the goddess and how she receives these Amazons.”
I clenched my jaw, uncertain again. “What about Artemis? Could they have her talents too?”
Bubbe smiled, a full smile this time. “Artemis, she is a jealous goddess. She would not like to share.”
I sat quiet for a moment, letting this new information sink in. Finally I looked up. “What now? How do we know who is following Artemis?”
How do you identify your enemy when she looks just like you, is you?
Chapter 17
We talked another hour or so but got nowhere. Bubbe had no more idea than I did of what to do next. As the morning sun began to creep up on the horizon, we split up. Mel left to research other goddesses. Lao and Tess went to start breakfast so Dana could get some sleep.
I ordered Bern to take a nap too.
I was sure Bern could survive without sleep, but while things were calm I wanted her to take the opportunity to get some.
Our future was uncertain, and I needed everyone in my circle strong.
We were officially in war mode. We would sleep by rotation and be on constant alert.
I plodded toward the gym/cafeteria building myself, not sure what I planned to do. I was exhausted yet at the same time fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Cleo had already made it clear she and Bubbe would be up for the next few hours, as would Mel. I could take this turn to sleep, or I could sit and stew and hope some solution came to me.
As my feet pulled their way through the long grass that covered the hillside, I knew which one I would do.
I didn’t even bother going all the way to the gym. I lay down in the grass and stared at the sky. The day was going to be warm. At maybe five in the morning it was already approaching seventy degrees. I jerked off my T-shirt, lay back down, and enjoyed the feel of the cool grass against my bare shoulders. The jog bra I wore had a high neck to cover my givnomai. So if one of Mel’s customers came by, it was decent while still being cool. The sky was a ruddy pink now, and the birds were in full swing, chirping and fighting for whatever territory they thought of as theirs.
It was peaceful—the most peaceful place I could remember being in for quite some time.
My eyes were closed and my brain had just started to settle when I heard someone approaching from behind. I shot forward into a somersault, landed on my feet, and turned immediately.
Jack stood a few feet from where I had lain, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his camouflage pants.
“Mateo is going to have to sleep in the gym with you and your camp if you won’t let him take Andres home.”
“Andres?”
He pulled his hands from his pockets, then shoved them back in. “Your brother.”
Right. The baby . . . Andres. I wasn’t sure I liked knowing his name; it made him more real.
“So what’s the plan?” He took a few steps down the hill.
“Did you talk to anyone?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell Jack, should tell him. My loyalties were a tangled-up ball of yarn right now.
“No.” He stopped and stared down at me. I could see he was waiting, knew what I said or did now was going to set a tone for where we went from here.
I glanced up at the sky. The moon was barely visible now. Maybe it would be one of those strange days where you can see the moon, even when the sun was at its highest. I took it as a sign.
I gestured for Jack to sit, then I told him everything Bubbe had told us. When I was done, I sat down beside him. The silence that settled between us felt right, comfortable. We were both lost in our thoughts, but we were lost in them together. I wanted to stretch out again, to share the peace of lying on that hillside with him, but I knew I couldn’t.
This wasn’t the time to relax; this was the time to act.
But how?
Mel walking up behind us brought part of my answer.
She dropped a stack of papers onto my lap. “I don’t know that there are answers there, but maybe some clues. I printed out descriptions of thirty of the most popular goddesses.”
The papers felt like it; they weighed a ton. I carefully picked them up and thumbed through them. My eyes quickly blurred.
She smiled. “I know.” She kneeled and took a place on the grass beside me. I was flanked now, her on one side, Jack on the other.
“But if we do notice something strange . . . a power we’ve never seen before or something . . . we have something to reference.”
I stared at the stack of paper. Amazons were not scholars. As an Amazon destined to be a queen, I’d been taught more than most, but by modern human educational standards I’d probably have barely graduated high school . . . unless the school gave credits for wrestling or sword fighting.
The thought of reading these papers made my head ache.
“Too bad Harmony isn’t here,” Mel murmured. “She’d love diving into this.”
Her face turned sad. If I’d been a different kind of person I would have reached for her hand, but that wasn’t me and Mel knew it. It would have just made us both uncomfortable.
As it was, Jack reached over and grabbed the papers. “Let me. I studied Greek mythology in college.”
I looked at him, surprised. “You went to college?”
He grinned, a slow sexy slide of his lips over those impossibly white teeth. “When I was fifty. The sons don’t have the same antimingling beliefs the Amazons do. I figured a little education would be good.”
“What did you major in?” Mel asked.
He rolled the papers into a scroll shape, or tried to. They were too thick and sprung back out flat. He slapped them against his palm. “I didn’t graduate, just took classes, whatever interested me. Mythology did.”
“What else?” I asked, realizing how little I knew about my self-named godfather.
“Usual things: girls, athletics . . . explosives.”
“Like the birders used?” I asked, instantly alert.
He lifted a shoulder. “Somewhat. What they did wasn’t fancy. I could have done it.”
I turned, my hand forming a fist as it rose.
He grabbed me around the wrist.
“I said I could have, not that I did. Anyone with an Internet connection can build
a bomb these days.”
“How about the supplies? You know where they got those?” I asked. He still held my wrist. I didn’t pull away; I just waited, tense.
“I’m a gun dealer, not a terrorist. There is a difference.”
“Then why’d you study explosives?” My voice vibrated.
His, however, was calm. “That came after. It’s why I left college. There was a war going on in Europe. I left to join it.” He dropped his hold on my arm and stood. “It was a long time ago. Things have changed, but I thought you’d like to know I had some knowledge in that area too, that if needed we could match them explosive to explosive.”
Explosives and guns. I couldn’t see using either. In fact, I bristled at the thought.
Mel stood too. She angled her body so she was between us. “Are we on the same side, or not?” she asked.
Still seated, I stared up at them.
Were we? Did we all want the same thing here? Guns and explosives were two things I knew nothing about, didn’t want to have to know anything about.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should ask.” I bounced the question back to my best friend. “What is your goal in all of this?”
Hurt and a bit of anger showed on Mel’s face. “I don’t care about the tribe. You know that. But I care that they want to kill children. I care about that a lot.”
I believed her, but then I’d already known Mel’s motivation. I looked at Jack.
He tapped a finger against the sheaf of paper he held. I suspected he was weighing whether he should answer my question at all. Finally he did. “I don’t want any children killed either. And I want the tribe to survive. You may not believe me, but I care about the tribe, not”—he added as I opened my mouth to disagree—“in the same way you do. More like an ecologist cares about an endangered species. Amazons are rare and old; they are part of the world, a part I think should continue to exist.” His finger quit moving. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t think they shouldn’t change; they should. And I’d like to be a part of both things—the save and the change.”
I weighed whether being put in the same class as an endangered animal pissed me off or not. Deciding there were plenty of other things to piss me off, I let it lie.
“Close enough.” I stated and stood. Neither of them had missions that would get in the way of what I wanted . . . the tribe together, strong and not operating out of a place of ignorant fear.
Jack flipped through the papers again. The sheets made a rippling noise and I caught snippets of pictures of various goddesses as he did—one regal, crowned, and holding a scepter; one fanciful, with a rainbow arching from one palm to the other; and even one I might have mistaken for a human’s angel, with wings. There were others, but as I watched the pages flip past, they blurred into one.
Then I saw Artemis and something clicked into place.
My contact on the high council. I hadn’t spoken with her since before Thea arrived and we got the order to steal Andres.
I looked at Mel. “If I have a name, can Bubbe find her?”
Mel jutted out her jaw, thinking. “It’s easier with her telios and givnomai. Do you know them?”
“Not her givnomai, but her telios. Is that enough?”
There were twelve members of the council, a representative of each clan. There were also currently four warriors on the council; I knew each of them by name and which clan they were from.
Looking uncertain, she replied, “We can talk to Bubbe. I never know what the old reprobate can do for sure.”
With that uncertain offer, I headed up the hill toward the school. I guessed my contact’s disappearance meant she was on the losing side, my side now. She could help identify the rest of the council. And with that knowledge we’d be able to learn who was behind the split.
I stared down at my foot, hidden in the long grass. The same grass that earlier had been cool and reassuring now seemed to grasp at my legs, to let go with an unwilling whisper as I pulled my shoe free. Tamping the disturbing feeling down, I swallowed and kept walking.
We would figure this out. We would stop whoever was trying to split the Amazons in two.
If I could find my contact, that is.
And if she was alive.
We left Jack at the sidewalk that connected the school to the gym. He raised his hand holding the papers. “I’ll read up.”
With the basement stairwell closed, we went in the front and then down the main steps. Bubbe’s space, where she ran her business, was off the main room, near the outside door that was now inoperable.
The priestess was inside and she was alone. She was sitting on the floor, her legs crossed and her red skirt pulled up almost to her waist. Her legs were bare and pale with firm muscles that didn’t match the age of her face. It made me wonder if she did something to make herself look older to others.
Humans tended to underestimate the elderly. Bubbe wasn’t beyond taking advantage of that.
As Mel often pointed out, Bubbe wasn’t above taking advantage of much.
The old priestess spread a pile of dirt over the floor in a circle in front of her and without looking up, asked, “What did your Internet tell you?”
Mel growled, and I guessed this was yet another sticking point between them. But then she answered, “Too much. Jack is looking it over.”
Bubbe snorted, then picked up the stone image of a panther and placed it on the edge of the dirt. There was a pile of similar stones, each carved into the shape of one of the Amazon telioses sitting beside her. One by one, she placed each into the shape of a crescent moon. When she was done, she looked up. “You have a job for me? One you cannot do yourself?”
Annoyance flickered over Mel’s face, making it obvious her grandmother was prodding her in a way I couldn’t see.
“Zery has a name. She wondered if you could locate someone based on that.”
“She wondered? And you could not tell her?”
Mel’s jaw hardened. Afraid the two of them would let their personal issues get them off track, I stepped in.
“She’s a past queen and on the high council. Until a few weeks ago she was my contact.”
Bubbe’s gaze stayed on her granddaughter for a few breaths, then with a sigh she turned it on to me. “You are not to reveal the name of your contact. You know that.”
I had the unexplainable urge to squirm, not all that differently than I had when I was six and was caught playing with Mel in her grandmother’s workroom. But I was too old to allow her to intimidate me now, or at least to let her see she intimidated me.
I lowered my chin, stayed strong. “The council is broken. The rules don’t hold.”
“If you respect the tribe, the rules must hold.”
“Like the rule to kill Andres?” I asked. “You can’t pick and choose.”
She rubbed the pads of her middle finger and thumb together. Again I had the feeling she could reach out with some power I couldn’t see and swat me to my knees.
I braced my legs and stared her down.
She smiled. “Come. Whisper in my ear.”
Beside me, Mel murmured with strained patience in her voice, “You passed the test. Artemis knows what it was, but you passed.”
Pretending not to have heard, I knelt beside Bubbe and did as she had asked.
“The telios?” she said.
I opened my mouth, but she shook her head. “Touch. Move into the center.”
Feeling completely out of my element, I plucked a boar from the line and carefully placed him in the middle. I started to pull back then, to stand and give the priestess room, but she grabbed my hand and held it tightly in her own.
Then she started to chant, low, fast, and in Russian. I didn’t understand a word of what she was saying.
The dirt rose from the ground, darted back and forth, thickening in spots, then thinning—fleeting images, or what almost was an image before flattening out into nothing but dust. It swirled and boiled, rose up and spread out . . . then with no warning, it fell
.
The boar was still sitting in the middle. All the fetishes were sitting where Bubbe had placed them, but the dirt had formed a shape, one that looked familiar but that I couldn’t quite place.
Bubbe held her hand out over the crescent and muttered. When she looked up, her eyes were worried.
“She is here.” Her finger jabbed toward the center of the shape, shoving away dirt to reveal the concrete floor beneath it.
I stared, trying to see what she was telling me.
“Here.” She jabbed again.
I frowned, then I saw it. The dirt had formed the shape of the North American continent and her finger was right of the center, where I guessed Wisconsin, perhaps the northern part of Illinois would lie.
I gasped.
“She’s here.”
Chapter 18
I wasn’t sure what my high council contact being in the area meant, if it meant anything. Like any Amazon, she could be traveling through for the upcoming fair, visiting relatives . . . lost.
Or she could have come looking for my mother, or me.
If she was looking for my mother, she would be at Mel’s. If she was looking for me . . . ?
The safe camp.
I went to wake Bern.
I slept on the way down, as did Mel. There were two cars’ worth of us. Everyone except Dana, Mateo, and Bubbe came, and the babies . . . we left them at Mel’s.
Leaving Bubbe behind was a tough decision, but we couldn’t trust the babies with just a son and a hearth-keeper, even if that hearth-keeper had a mother lion’s ferociousness when it came to protecting her child. And, to be honest, I had no idea what, besides shifting into a massive bird, Mateo’s skills were.
Weighing everything, it made sense to leave Bubbe with them. Heading back to Illinois, we had three warriors, two hearth-keepers, a son, and Mel, who while classified as an artisan I knew had strong warrior and priestess skills too. It was a strange group, but one I trusted for the job—even Jack.
Oh, and we also brought the dogs. Bubbe had insisted.
We pulled into Jack’s driveway around nine thirty.
There was nothing left of the cabin, at least nothing that could be used as shelter, but with access to the safe camp through the woods, it seemed like a good place to set as our base of operation.