Лори Девоти - Amazon Queen

"I don't think she cares about the Amazons," I added, still thinking.

"What does she care about?" Mel turned in her chair and looked at Kale.

The warrior's lips formed a thin line. "Herself. Power."

"She was already on the high council. What more power could she want?" I asked.

"Her own tribe?" Kale offered, her eyes flashing.

"She declared herself queen," I added. A safe camp wasn't a tribe, but it was a start. And now I realized I had no proof aside from Thea's word that my position had been taken from me. She had made the announcement after speaking to her "contact" alone. Which brought another question to mind. I had spoken to her contact. That contact had identified herself as Padia. If Thea was Padia, who had I talked with?

Still surfing the Internet, Mel lifted her fingers from the computer mouse. She spoke, interrupting my train of thought. "If she's a true follower of Athena, guided by logic, she has to have a plan. She had to realize she would be found out at some point. What then? Are the Amazons at the safe camp going to continue to call her queen?"

I gripped the back of her chair with one hand. "Maybe. We know she did something to Cleo, and Kale. She tried to do something to me and Bubbe. She has to be doing the same something to the Amazons at the camp."

"She didn't make any of you do anything you didn't believe in."

"I killed those humans." Kale shook her head. "With a gun. Even if the women attacked me first. . " She frowned. "I wouldn't have done that. Padia is dangerous. She has to be destroyed."

"Maybe you killed them. Maybe Thea did and left you there to take the blame. Maybe they did kill each other. We don't know. When we found you, you were confused and, yes, I think you were acting under some influence Thea put over you, but it didn't last. It wore off." Mel stared at Bubbe, who had become uncharacteristically quiet. When her grandmother made no move to offer any additional comments, Mel sighed.

"The point is, if Thea is using some kind of mind control over the safe camp, we haven't seen any evidence that it will last. And I think if she could do it, she would have already. You wouldn't have been able to remember what you just have, and Mother wouldn't have been hidden inside a stack of hay bales. You are both warriors, valuable if Padia planned on taking on other Amazons. Why would she throw you away?"

Bubbe snorted. "Because the head does not control the heart."

"So, what does Padia want from killing Andres?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, but if Padia is getting her power from Athena and she really wanted to show her loyalty, there is something she might do." Mel twisted the computer's monitor so it faced us. A line drawing of an altar appeared, an animal of some sort lying across its top, its throat slit. "Sacrifice."

"And what better to give your goddess than the blood of your enemy mixed with the blood of those you desert for her?" Bubbe closed her eyes and began to murmur.

The image of the knife Thea had handled in the woods flashed through my mind. I described the object.

Kale tensed. Bubbe captured her wolf totem pendant between both palms. "That is not Amazon. The deaths of the sons were never for ceremony. Never to pay a price. Like our telioses, we killed to survive."

A chill tripped up my spine. The bowl of oil, the knife. . "She had been setting up for the ceremony when I arrived."

"The knife will be with her, in the house," Kale murmured. "We need it too, to keep this from happening again."

I agreed. I couldn't wait to see Thea again, to call her Padia to her face and expose exactly who and what she was to the tribe.

I just prayed Mel was right and any power she had over the camp was fleeting. If so, all we had to do was separate her from them and everything would go back to normal.

After much discussion with Mel and Jack, I accepted that we had to change our tactic if we wanted to stop Padia.

She didn't play by Amazon rules, but she knew them. Which meant she also knew what to expect from us.

The only way to defeat her was to do something she wouldn't have planned for, something completely out of character for Amazons.

Meaning we couldn't rush in, we couldn't depend on our hearts, we had to use our heads.

When I made the announcement, Bubbe muttered, but then she clasped her hands behind her back and didn't object further.

We had waited until full dark to gather in a crescent in view of the moon. Athena was a sun goddess, Artemis a moon goddess. From now on, if our battle went past this night, Mel insisted we plan our attacks for when the moon was in the sky, when Artemis was the strongest and Athena the weakest.

Kale had objected that it would be what Thea expected, but she was overruled. As Mel said, we had to assume the safe camp Amazons were under Padia's influence, at least for now. Which meant we were still outnumbered and in need of every advantage we could find.

So, change one: night was our friend.

Change two: we didn't attack head-on.

We were outnumbered. Approaching your enemy from the front might be honorable, but in these conditions it wasn't logical.

Tonight we would become spies. We would sneak into the safe camp and grab Padia without waking anyone else.

That, at least, was the plan.

Change three: we spent actual time discussing how best to unarm the priestess.

We had decided her powers were mental: putting thoughts into people's heads, blocking memories, and, I suggested, moving things.

"What kind of things?" Jack asked.

"Rocks, knife blades." I described the rocks exploding from the ground and the knife moving in my hand while I battled to hold it still.

No one spoke. We looked at Bubbe.

"It is possible," she replied, her face solemn.

"Anything else?" Mel asked.

I glanced at Mateo. He had returned an hour earlier. I hadn't had a chance to talk to him yet, but I suspected he had another of Padia's skills to tell us about.

"She has spies," he said, his accented baritone startling in the gloom. We hadn't lit a fire or torches. We weren't calling on the goddess and didn't want to risk a fire alerting anyone to our presence, something we hadn't worried about earlier. . another change.

"What kind of spies?" Mel again.

"Owls."

Another wave of silence.

"When you found Cleo in the hay, an owl flew from the rafters."

"We startled him," Kale said.

Mateo moved, I sensed he was smiling although I couldn't see his expression in the dark. "Yes, but he didn't fly because he was afraid; he flew because it was his job. He was a lookout, there to let Padia know if Cleo escaped."

"Let her know. . " Mel's skepticism was palatable.

"I followed the owl, kept him from returning to the camp, then snatched him from the sky. Owls here aren't used to having to fear other birds. . " I sensed the smile again. "He screamed his warning, his message that the nest had been violated."

"The nest?"

"Cleo's storage place," Mateo explained. "He fought to escape, but not for his life. . to deliver his message. His message, the warning, consumed him. I held him as long as I could, to allow you all to escape, then I released him, followed him back to whoever had planted the mission in his brain."

"And?"

"The priestess, Thea. She was standing outside the barn with the warriors. He landed on her shoulder. . "

"He did?" Kale asked.

"He did," Mateo spat. "She broke him. His freedom is gone. His mind is gone. He sat on her shoulder for only a second, then flew off again. He seemed lost, searching for something he couldn't find. . "

"Perhaps he was looking for something else," I offered.

"No, Mateo is right. If she could do what she did to me and Cleo. . imagine what she could do to a bird," Kale said, her voice soft but bitter. "She has to be destroyed. We shouldn't wait. We should find the blade and kill her tonight."