Lori Devoti: Amazon Ink

Nick jumped, grabbed at another notebook page.

Makis threw the knife he’d had tucked behind his back, but Nick had already begun to shift. The knife missed, hit a file cabinet, and clattered to the ground. The blur of air that was Nick transformed into a horse, then just as quickly moved again back to the boy. He picked up the knife he’d held before shifting. Threw it. It sliced into Makis’s shoulder, pinned him to his chair.

The old man flinched, tried to jerk the blade free. Nick stalked forward, to the sink tucked in the corner. Death in his eyes, he twisted on the spigot, began to chant and move his fingers. The water began to morph, until it changed into a hangman’s noose. The water-and-magic-formed rope dropped to the floor, slithered across the vinyl tiles like a cobra-headed toward Makis’s chair.

Harmony pushed me away and shoved the totem into my hand. I didn’t pause to question the move. I lurched to Makis’s chair seconds before the noose would have reached him, yanked the knife from his shoulder, and without stopping to aim, threw the blade.

It struck, plunged into the center of Nick’s chest. He crumpled to his knees, shock and betrayal on his face.

It isn’t pretty watching someone die, and despite my lust for Nick’s blood earlier, he was no different. Harmony crept to him, through the puddle of water that had been his last weapon, and pulled his head onto her lap. I wanted to tell her to stop, not to touch him, but she hadn’t lived with his evil as long as I had, had known a different side of him.

And even he deserved some company in death. Or that was what I tried to tell myself when the Amazon in me roared, demanded I jerk her away, curse him as he took his last breath.

He’d threatened my child, killed others. I didn’t know what he’d endured to get to this place, but right now I didn’t care…doubted I ever would, at least not enough to forgive him.

I waited to make sure he was truly dead, not a threat, then I stalked to the front of the store. I needed a minute alone to calm the monster inside me, to convince my still-raging adrenaline that he was dead, Harmony was safe, and the entire nightmare was over-or just about.

There were still a lot of loose ends to tie up, Zery to free, Peter to kick out of my shop and life, and a grandmother to…I clenched my jaw. I didn’t know what I was going to do with Bubbe or Mother, or…any of it. Not right now.

But I didn’t have to think about it, not for a while. Makis’s wheelchair whirred behind me. He had a paint-and-blood-soaked rag held against his shoulder. The sight reminded me of my own wounds, my bloody palms and shoulder. Lost in the fight, I’d forgotten them. I picked at my shirt where it clung to my shoulder, winced when the thickened blood released its hold, pulled at the wound. I put that aside and turned instead to my palms, prodded a bit to see if glass lay hidden beneath the blood.

“I’ll dispose of the body,” Makis interrupted my self-exam.

I must have looked surprised. He rapped on the wheelchair. “Don’t be deceived. I make do, and there’s a…group to help.”

“The sons,” I inserted, wiping a sliver of glass I’d dug free with my fingernail onto my jeans.

His face turned solemn. “Peter told you?”

I quit worrying about my wounds. They didn’t matter.

Instead, I stepped closer to the front window and peered through a slit of clean glass not covered by the mural. “It’s dark. Harmony and I need to go home.” The words sounded idiotic even to me. I turned back, embarrassed by my answer. “The police need to be called. They need to know Zery wasn’t the killer.”

He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “She’s my granddaughter.”

I frowned, surprised. “Zery?”

“Harmony.”

I swayed, hit one of the plants. Water dripped onto my shoulder-the good one.

“I want her to know.”

I slowed the swinging plant, tried to slow my spinning brain. Grandfather. Of course he was. My life wasn’t complicated enough.

“Where’s her father?” I had to ask, had to get all the skeletons dug up, so I’d know what I needed to worry about burying.

“Dead.”

“Dead,” I repeated. Seemed I had a record going.

“He was our first casualty.” A shadow hovered behind Makis’s eyes.

“Casualty? That sounds like some kind of war’s going on.”

He pulled the rag away from his wound, glanced down at the bloody tissue. “It is. This isn’t our first skirmish with the others.”

Skirmish? This nightmare I’d been caught in-three dead, four if I counted Nick, Harmony almost taken-it was a hell of a lot more than a skirmish to me. I didn’t comment on that but questioned the last word instead. “Others? I thought Nick…I didn’t get the feeling he was part of a group.” In fact, he’d screamed loner to me. If anything about this made sense, it was that. Nick seemed like every alienated boy I had seen on TV who for some twisted reason turned to violence to make him feel whole.

“He didn’t get his ideas on his own. And his talent”-a hollowness seeped into Makis’s eyes-“so varied and strong. We had no idea.”

Meaning what? There were others like him out there? Sons of Amazons with skills I’d never dreamed existed-with a thirst for revenge? That I could never relax? That life would never feel safe or secure again?

Harmony wandering toward us, her arms wrapped around her body, her eyes dazed, saved me from asking…from learning something I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.

“He’s dead,” she said. “You killed him.”

It wasn’t a judgment, just a statement. Like she needed to say it to understand it, to believe it.

I held out a hand to her, let my fingers trail down her arm. I wanted to hold her, to tell her it had all been a bad dream, but it hadn’t and I was done lying to her. “There are a few things we need to talk about,” I said.

Her eyes, dark and round, stared at me. “You think?” Then shaking her head, she walked past me, out the door and to my truck.

I smiled. Harmony was going to be okay, which meant I’d be okay. I could survive anything as long as I had my family. I needed them. I huffed out a breath.

Which meant Bubbe and I were going to have to have a long talk.

A week later I was sitting on the front steps looking through Harmony’s artist notebook. My daughter and I’d had a long talk after the scene at the studio. We’d stayed up most of the night, in fact. Luckily the next day had been Saturday. My girl had needed a few days to adjust before returning to her life. It wasn’t often a girl saw her mother kill her hoped-to-be-boyfriend. At least I hoped it wasn’t going to be an everyday thing. With almost four years of high school left, who knew?

Anyway, she knew who she was and where she came from. Bubbe and Mother were thrilled-with that, at least. They were not so thrilled with Makis’s claims.

Bubbe had babbled on about genetic tests, but she was blowing smoke. She knew without any help from science that Makis was telling the truth. Bubbe just knew things like that-at least once the possibility had been plopped down in front of her. Without Makis staring her in the eye and making a claim, I don’t think she ever would have acknowledged the relationship on her own.

But he had and she did and that was that-although his appearance had already added a new dimension of conflict to our home. He and Bubbe would work it out eventually-or not.

I wasn’t getting involved. At least not until one of them blew my house down around me.

Makis and I’d had a long chat too. He told me all about Harmony’s father, how he died, why he’d searched me out. And he told me about Michael. His affair with me hadn’t been part of the plan, but how the sons had been happy when it happened. How Michael’s death was another casualty of their war, how they now suspected Nick/Tim had been the dog who’d killed him. That Nick’s fascination with me may have started then.