Lori Devoti - Amazon Ink

“You have to come with me, back to camp.”

I glanced at the shop where my daughter and Dana slept.

Dana. Pisto.

I swallowed. The young hearth-keeper had just lost the last of her immediate family. Pregnant and the end of her line-except for the baby boy the Amazons wanted her to give up.

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving.”

“We’re not giving you any choice.” As if solidifying from mist, Alcippe stepped out of the shadows.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Making sure a killer doesn’t escape.” She swept the long skirt of her dress out of her way and stalked forward.

Seeing her now brought forth every suspicion I’d ever had. I started to move too, toward her. “That’s a good idea. Why don’t you tell us what you know about the killings?”

“Me?” She laughed. “It’s over, Mel. Your hatred has gone too far.”

“Mine or yours? Both girls broke the rules, didn’t they? Snuck up to Madison without your permission. Did they like what they saw here? Were they questioning the need to stay hidden? Is that why you killed them, to preserve the precious Amazon way of life?”

Her hands disappeared into the sleeves of her kaftan.

I took another step, barely noticing that Bubbe had stood, that the staff she’d held earlier was back in her hand. “You tattooed them all too, didn’t you? Is that why you took their givnomai, taking back what you gave them, denying them their right to be Amazons by killing them, then stealing their personal power?”

“What?” She and Zery said the word at once.

Zery began to walk toward Pisto, her gaze locked on her lieutenant’s T-shirt-covered breast.

Alcippe pulled her hands from her sleeves, shoved them up into the air. Grass that had been flattened under my bare feet seconds early shot upward until skinny green tendrils curled around my thighs, pulled on me.

I cursed and clawed at the weeds, managed to jerk one leg free just to have it captured again as soon as I set my foot back onto the earth. Past trying to hide any of my skills, I pulled in a breath and exhaled.

A gale erupted from my lungs. Fed by my emotions, it knocked into the high priestess. Her kaftan molded to her body. Her hair whipped free of the braid she’d contained it with, snapped like something alive into its full length behind her. She stumbled, and her face…her expression, the shock that I was doing this to her…it was worth the wait.

Her magic forgotten, nothing but weeds to be trampled under my feet, I stalked forward, inhaling as I went, spinning my arms with each step. I was going to do what I should have done ten years ago-would have if I’d had the skill. I was going to blow her so far and so deep across the earth, there’d be a trench from here to the Gulf of Mexico.

I was strong, powerful, and unstoppable. I held the breath, felt it in my lungs. Then as I opened my lips to set it free, I saw Bubbe move, saw her staff swing toward me.

There was no time to do anything except watch as the hard polished end of my grandmother’s staff collided with my forehead.

My knees collapsed and the world around me faded…the power in the breath I’d held fading along with my consciousness.

I woke in the cold and the dark. Something about the space seemed familiar, but it took a few minutes to realize I’d been locked in my own basement-in the boiler room with my dirty laundry and Harmony’s outgrown toys. The front of my head pounded. I touched my fingers to the pain and quickly found the reason-a ping-pong-ball-sized lump.

Who knew Bubbe packed such a wallop?

But at least she’d hit me and not responded with magic. My head probably wouldn’t have survived that.

I allowed myself another few seconds to become accustomed to the knowledge that my five-hundred-year-old grandmother had KO’d me with a staff, then I tried to stand. My head tilted left and right, like some demented bobblehead-doll, my stomach, though, surely empty…I’d lost all track of time…clenched…I made it as far as my knees before giving up, at least somewhat.

On all fours, I crept to the door, then, my head still down, reached up and twisted the knob. As I’d guessed-locked. I fell back onto my belly and lay there with my nose pressed against the one-inch crack under the door.

“Shit.” Not my favorite curse, but it fit my mood.

A staff rapped into the floor on the other side of the door. “She’s awake,” a female voice I didn’t recognize announced.

“I’ll get Alcippe,” replied another.

“No. I put her here. I’ll talk to her.”

The voice of my conqueror, all five hundred years of her.

The guards, at least I assumed they were guards and not my own personal servants waiting for me to awaken so they could serve me lemonade and cookies here in the luxury of my boiler room, must have agreed to her demand because the next thing I knew the door had whacked me firmly in the side of the head.

With a groan I rolled over, giving Bubbe ample space to squeeze into the room-or at least as much space as I was willing to give at that moment.

The door snapped closed behind her, and she peered down at me. “How are you feeling?”

From this angle she was upside-down, and I couldn’t tell for sure if she was smiling or frowning. I knew which I was doing. “Peachy,” I replied. “You could have killed me.”

“I could have, but you were a difficult labor. My daughter wouldn’t appreciate it if I dispatched her efforts so easily.”

I humphed and rolled again, making it back to a sit. “So, what’s happening?”

She slipped a glass of cloudy liquid into my hand, then walked to the nearest pile of laundry and began rooting through it. “Harmony is at school. She was not happy you left on your trip without telling her.”

“My trip?” If I’d been able, I would have stood. Instead, I choked down a gulp of whatever she’d put in the glass and grimaced as I swallowed the nasty brew.

“Trip. You have to stay here-” She jerked Harmony’s favorite pink jeans from under a stack of sweats and towels, then sniffed them. With a grimace she dropped them back onto the stack. “And she will make do.”

“What about Dana?”

Bubbe sighed. “She has been told.”

“But…where is she?” My head was beginning to clear, the pounding to lighten to a rap.

“Here. I won’t let Alcippe take her against her will. I won’t let them take her baby.” She dropped her attention back to the laundry. She was leaving something unsaid. A “but” or something seemed to hang in the air.

Her fingers tightened back around the jeans. “Zery has taken Pisto to the safe camp. Her funeral will take place there. Cleo and I will take Dana and bring her back home.”

“And what about me? What about Alcippe? You know she has more reason to have done this than I do.”

“Alcippe has no reason to have killed Pisto.”

But I did. Bubbe didn’t say that, didn’t have to.

She took a breath and kept talking. “Alcippe doesn’t live in Madison, didn’t find the bodies and keep them from the tribe. Alcippe didn’t bring men into our midst.”

Alcippe was damn near perfect whereas I was a complete and total fuckup. But I wasn’t a killer. “I can’t stay in here,” I said. “The killer”- Alcippe -“is still out there. Dana is still at risk. Harmony could be at risk.”

“You will stay here.” She started to move toward the door, the jeans gathered in her hands.

I managed to stand. Wobbly, but on my feet, I put a hand next to hers on the denim. “I have to do something. The givnomai. The killer is taking them for a reason. I know Pisto’s was missing too. I could see it on your face. If I tell you what hers was, will you bring me the totem? It and her telios?”