Amazon Queen

by Lori Devoti

  Jack jumped back into the conversation. “They found the bodies. It shook them up. I heard one of them say they’d been shot. I don’t think they went there expecting to find anyone dead.”

  Which made me wonder what they had expected, why Thea had directed them toward the woods.

  “Did any of the Amazons come with them, or show up?” I asked. If human authorities had wanted to investigate in Artemis’s woods while I was at the safe house, I would have done everything I could to stop them. As it was, I’d had a hard time not challenging their right to be there. Point being, if I’d been forced to pretend I was cooperating, I still would have tagged along after.

  “No,” replied Jack.

  I glanced at Cleo. She shook her head. “They came to the camp and Thea talked to them. Then she directed them to the path.”

  “She directed them to the path? To the obelisk?”

  Cleo nodded. Her jaw jutted out to one side.

  “Did no one object?”

  “No one.”

  I looked back at Jack. “What about the sheriffs? Did they say who they thought shot the women?”

  “They thought they shot each other. They found two guns.”

  I’d only looked at one of the bodies, but whoever had shot her had either known what she was doing or made one hell of a lucky shot.

  Jack continued, “After they talked a bit, they broke up and started searching the woods. One of the guns wasn’t where they expected to find it, not if one of the dead women dropped it. I was afraid they’d find you.”

  The gun Kale had held, the one I’d kicked. “We left,” I replied.

  “And they haven’t been by here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. But he had a point. Eventually someone would realize there were houses close to the obelisk that weren’t the safe house. Even if they did think the two women killed each other, we needed to be prepared for the authorities to come calling.

  “So how’d they know to come to the safe camp?” I asked, going back to my original question.

  “I think someone from the camp called them, reported hearing two trespassers arguing. Whoever called said the pair had acted strangely and they were afraid to approach them to run them off.”

  “Do you think Kale shot them?” Mel asked, directing the question at me.

  “She says she doesn’t remember.” Lao stepped onto the porch. “Doesn’t seem to remember much. Aside from that I’d say she’s hale and hearty, or should be.” The hearth-keeper stared at me.

  I only registered the first of Lao’s words. I looked at Jack. “Any of the goddesses have the power to steal someone’s memory?”

  “You think someone at the camp is on the other side?” Mel dropped her hand from the head of the puppy I held.

  I raked my fingers over the tiny dog’s fur.

  “I don’t think we can discount the idea. . . . We can’t discount anything.”

  Not long after Cleo had returned to the safe camp, Tess came to find me. I was still sitting out back in a rocker, this time waiting for Kale.

  Tess wandered out looking shy and insecure. For the first time I noticed her chin-length hair was uncombed and her clothes were rumpled.

  She walked to the end of the porch and wrapped her arms around the rough wood pillar.

  I waited.

  “I . . . I was thinking . . . Cleo, Mel’s mother . . . she said no one would talk to her at camp.” The young hearth-keeper slid one foot over the wooden porch floor. Her thick-soled sandal hit a rock and knocked it down into the long grass. “When I was there, people talked to me. I think they would again.”

  I frowned. “You want to go back?”

  She straightened her arm, pushing her body away from the pillar. The position showed she was thin but muscular. Her arms had almost as much definition as mine.

  The benefit of youth, or maybe the hearth-keepers’ household tasks gave them more of a workout than I gave them credit for.

  She continued, “Not want. I mean I understand what you are doing, how important it is. The fact that they wanted to kill that baby . . . ” She shook her head, her mouth pulling down at the corners. “But I think I could go back. I think they would trust me. I could find out things Cleo can’t. And you don’t need me here. I sat with Kale for a while, but she’s well now.”

  “You want to be a spy?” It was hard to imagine the soft-spoken hearth-keeper as an undercover agent.

  She nodded, eager now. “I could tell them I didn’t agree with you, that I missed being part of the tribe and hitched a ride back to camp. I don’t think they’d suspect anything. They wouldn’t think I’d be up to anything.”

  Her eyes were wide and innocent and her voice held a tremor. She was right, they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  “You could tell them we forced you to come,” I added.

  She smiled. “Yeah, kidnapped. That would be cool.”

  “By Bern?”

  The silent warrior had just stepped onto the porch.

  Tess laughed. “They’d believe that.”

  “Maybe in your escape you could have taken her down.”

  “Poisoned her eggs.” The girl was grinning now.

  “I like that.”

  She laughed and I even managed a smile. Bern grimaced.

  Kale, led by an annoyed-looking Lao, appeared in the doorway. There were circles under the warrior’s eyes and a long white strip of bandage taped to her throat. She looked like something you’d see on a slasher movie poster.

  I gave Tess my blessing and asked Bern to walk her as far as the highway. The girl would send any information she learned back to us through Cleo. If for some reason we decided to pull Cleo or something happened where she needed to contact us directly, she would come through the woods.

  Her arms crossed over her chest and her brows pulled together, Lao watched Tess and Bern disappear down the drive.

  “You okay with that?” I asked her.

  “Don’t see the sense in it.”

  “She wants to do something.”

  “There’s plenty of doing here—toilets to clean and Amazons to feed.”

  “You don’t need her, though, do you?”

  She snorted. “No. But I still don’t like it.” She shoved her hands into her pockets and whirled back toward the house.

  Leaving Kale and me alone. Considering that the last time the council member had faced me with her eyes open she’d tried to kill me . . . and to be fair I had pierced her in the neck with a sword . . . it was natural we could only stare at each other with distrust at first.

  Just as I thought the tension wouldn’t pass, the mother dog tromped onto the porch. She shoved her nose into the box with her puppies. They kicked their feet and moved their snouts, vying for her attention. She pulled her head back out and stared at me—with what I interpreted as strained patience.

  The stuffed cow that had been in Andres’s baby seat was lying on the porch’s wooden deck. It must have made its way in with our things and someone had put it in with the puppies.

  I threw it out into yard; the mother gave one last glance at her puppies, then sailed off the porch after it.

  Kale laughed. “She’s recovered quickly. The pups can’t be what? A week or so old?”

  I let my hand fall toward the pile of puppies, enjoying the feel of their pin sharp teeth on my skin. “Less than that. I found her in Artemis’s woods; maybe she’s part Amazon.”

  Kale nodded. “Must be.” Then she collapsed into one of the porch’s redwood chairs.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Why’d you quit calling?”

  When she looked up, there was confusion in her eyes. For a moment I thought she didn’t remember our conversations, but then her emotions cleared. Still, she only stared back at me, seemed to be composing her thoughts.

  Lao reappeared with a glass of cloudy green liquid and shoved it into her hand. Kale lifted it, the drink inside sloshing back and forth as she did. As she drank, a bit dripped onto her leather wristband. Sh
e wiped it off with her thumb.

  “Lao said your mother is dead.”

  I inclined my head slightly.

  “A waste.” Her gaze was steady, assessing and unnerving.

  Taking her comment as a form of condolence, I nodded. “What happened?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything, you know. High council business . . . what happens at the circle . . . we don’t discuss it.”

  “The council is dead,” I said it as bluntly as I could. I was past wasting my time honoring tradition for tradition’s sake. Or letting someone take advantage of my regard for those traditions by not questioning something that needed to be questioned. “Ex-high priestess Saka”—I didn’t use Bubbe’s first name because I didn’t know it, and it felt strange to call her Bubbe to a council member—“tried to find them. You know what she said?”

  Kale took a drink. Her eyes quiet, her body quiet, she looked at me over the top of her glass. “And she shouldn’t have done that.”

  A growl loomed inside me, misplaced loyalty was not going to save the tribe, but before my annoyance grew too big to be contained, she sighed. “Yes, Tess told me. I don’t know if I can believe it . . . another goddess. We never suspected that.” She ran her thumb over her wristband, then looked up. “What can I tell you? What did your mother tell you?”

  The growl evaporated. Finally I was going to get the answers I needed. I asked her to start wherever she thought the story started, didn’t explain how little I’d learned from my mother, how little time we’d had for her to tell me anything.

  She seemed hesitant, but finally she spoke. “I didn’t suspect anything, not like you are saying. We disagreed on what to do about the sons, but that was nothing new. The council doesn’t tend to agree on anything; unwilling compromise is about the best we can hope for.”

  She took another drink.

  “But this time it went past that, got more intense, quickly. Valasca brought up the idea of going back to the old ways first. I was surprised, her being a hearth-keeper, but then I figured she was older and probably hadn’t really agreed with the shift when it happened. For a while she seemed to be the only person who really felt that way, and it seemed like there was no rush on deciding. We did our normal thing, what feels like arguing for argument’s sake. Until your mother got pregnant. Then things changed. Padia spoke up; she was for going back to the killing too. Soon Fariba joined her, and one by one they all seemed to follow—everyone but your mother and me.”

  Padia, the priestess who had called back when I’d tried to contact Kale, who had told Thea I was no longer queen. Things were beginning to fall into place.

  “Mother said there were two groups, with the majority in the middle.”

  Kale swallowed. “She didn’t know. They quit talking about it in front of her and I didn’t want to tell her. The more determined they became, the more determined she became, and I knew she wasn’t going to hand over that baby—no matter the ruling. I should have, though. They tricked her or tried to. Your mother took the baby and ran. She told me she was giving him to his father.”

  “And she did. That’s who we stole him from.”

  “You stole him?” Her expression sharpened.

  “Yes, but we lost him soon after. The sons stole him back . . . ” I paused, thinking. “How did the council know where Mateo would be?”

  “Mateo?”

  “Andres’s father . . . the baby’s father.”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know. Padia must have run some kind of spell that located him.”

  “So Padia is behind all this?” A priestess, it made sense.

  Kale placed her hand over her eyes as if the early evening light bothered them. “Yes. I don’t know why she was so adamant about killing your mother’s child, but she was. . . . I don’t think . . . ” She shook her head and stared at the clumps of green floating in her glass. “What happened to me?” she murmured.

  I waited for her to sort out whatever she was going through. “Do you remember anything else? Why you came to the safe camp? When? Do you think someone drugged you?” My mind went to the flask she had dropped when we first entered the clearing.

  “Drugged? Could I have been?” she asked. She sat there frowning, seemed lost in her own thoughts. “Drugged . . . that would explain how—” She looked up. “I don’t even know how I got here. I remember leaving the Northwest, knowing I needed to find you for some reason, or maybe it was your mother. That would make sense, that I was going to help her keep the baby from Padia, but . . . ” Her words faded away. Uncertainty . . . insecurity . . . shone from her eyes. She stared down into the glass. There was only an inch or two of the green liquid left.

  “How did I come to this?” she murmured.

  My fingers dug into the stuffed cow in my lap. The dog, waiting for me to throw it again, looked up expectantly.

  I wondered the same thing as Kale.

  How had any of us come to this?

  Chapter 20

  The sheriff showed up a half hour later. I was still out with the dogs when Bern whistled the alert.

  I plucked all three puppies from their box and slapped my leg to call the mother dog to my side. Then I walked quickly in the direction of the main road.

  The car, a white sedan with a gold stripe down the side, pulled to the side of the road as I approached. An older man wearing a tan uniform rolled down his window.

  “You live around here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Not lately. My boyfriend owns the house, or what was a house, next door.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry about that.” He cast his glance to the home behind me, then back at me, a question in his eyes.

  I smiled. “Damn dog.” I gestured to the mother dog walking beside me. “She disappeared the night of the fire. Jack dropped me off so I could look for her. I found a little something extra.”

  He laughed. “Looks like you did at that.”

  I nodded to the runt. “You wouldn’t want one, would you?”

  He held up his hands. “Not me. Might want to tell your boyfriend he needs to get the bitch fixed, though. Or maybe this will teach him.”

  With a sigh, I replied, “Maybe.”

  After a few more questions, ending with me assuring him there was no one around Jack’s property or his neighbor’s house, he backed the car back out the way he’d come.

  The bitch needed to be fixed.

  He didn’t know how true the statement was. And now, thanks to my conversation with Kale, I knew who the bitch was . . . I just needed to find her.

  After the sheriff left, I went to find Mel. She was standing on the other side of the garage talking on her cell phone. Probably looking for privacy. I walked up and stood a couple feet behind her.

  Her shoulders tightened, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t alter her tone, volume, or what she was saying either.

  “No more tattoos.”

  Pause.

  “I don’t care.”

  Longer pause.

  “Get Peter.”

  Short pause accented by Mel moving two short angry strides forward.

  “Harmony—”

  Her daughter must have hung up. Mel muttered a curse and stared at her phone. She started dialing.

  I stepped around her, so we were facing. Her expression said to back off.

  I didn’t. “Is she looking at a full sleeve?”

  Mel flicked her eyes upward.

  “Neck tattoo, or maybe some kind of mask?”

  “This isn’t funny.” She had lowered her phone, but I could tell by how she was holding it that she was one good breath away from blowing me off the continent so she could recall Harmony and restart their argument. Finally she sighed. “You asked how I could trust Makis with her? Well, I don’t—not one hundred percent. I’m new to this too. It’s not easy letting go. And I know more than anyone the power tattoos can have. What I don’t know is everything about how the sons use them.” She pressed the heel of her palm to her f
orehead. “She says it’s purely decoration, on her ankle, but how do I know that?”

  I tilted my head in a do whatever you like gesture. “If you call her and say no again, she’s just going to want it more.”

  Mel’s nostrils flared. I could see she didn’t like my answer, but without replying, she shoved the phone into her pocket . . . hard.

  Her arms crossed over her chest, she asked, “You just eavesdropping or did something happen?”

  It was a little of both, but she knew that. I filled her in on both my conversation with Kale and the sheriff’s visit.

  “So you think Padia is the problem?”

  “Or the hearth-keeper who brought it up first, but since Padia’s the one who went after my mother and Andres, she’s my guess.”

  “Unless she’s just a minion.”

  I twisted my lips. I didn’t like my theory being batted back at me. “Do you think we should start somewhere else?”

  Her eyes sparked. She was laughing at me. “Would it matter?”

  I ignored her question. “Can you find her?”

  Her mouth opened and snapped closed.

  “Bubbe found Kale.”

  This time when her eyes flashed, it wasn’t with amusement. “I’m not Bubbe.”

  I waited. Mel knew I thought she underestimated herself. I’d always thought that, but in the years we were apart, before being reunited last fall, her talents had grown even more. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she could out-priestess her legendary grandmother—not at all.

  “I don’t have the tools.”

  “What do you need? Totems?” I pulled the stone lion that hung from a leather cord over my head. “We should have, what? Four of them covered.” Mel, Lao, Bern, and myself—none of us shared a clan. “We can get your mother to borrow the others from camp.”

  Mel stared at the lion, then turned on her heel without taking it. “Give me an hour.”

  I spent the hour getting in some fighting practice with Bern and Jack. The son had never used a weapon with me. I’d stupidly thought he couldn’t.

  I was wrong.

  He decided to teach me a game he’d watched as a child. He stood fifteen feet away armed with twelve knives. My job was to dodge them as he threw.