Amazon Ink

Chapter Twelve

I didn’t pause to think about what questions my bond with the dead girls might bring up. I didn’t pause to pull on pants or shoes. I didn’t pause for anything.

I leapt up and rushed from my room, ran straight down the fire escape. Once outside, I stared at the closed doors of my gymnasium. A few dozen Amazons slept inside. I couldn’t rush in, screaming for Zery. To do so would pretty much guarantee I wouldn’t leave with my head attached to my shoulders.

I took a breath, waited for my pounding heart to slow. I’d have to go in like a warrior: calm, controlled, and ready to fight whatever waited inside. I had my hand on the door handle when fingers wrapped around my upper arm.

“What are you doing?” Mother, fully dressed and armed for battle, squeezed my arm. Normally I would have flexed the muscle or pulled away, but honestly, I was just too darn glad to see her.

“Zery. Something’s happened to her.”

“How do you-?”

The expression on my face must have told her there wasn’t time to ask.

She pushed me behind her and knocked on the door with her staff, a fast but complicated rhythm that I had no hope of memorizing.

The door was flung open. An Amazon, wide awake and obviously on guard duty, slammed her staff across the opening, barring our entrance.

“We need to talk to Zery.” Mother had the art of body language down. Every inch of her said don’t question me.

The guard flicked her gaze from my intimidating parent to me, then twisted her lips to the side. “Not her.”

I moved forward, copying Mother’s stance as best I could, but it was hard to look intimidating in a stained UW Badger tee and no pants-or bra, for that matter. “Yes-”

Mother cut me off, with an elbow to my side. “We need to see Zery.” I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell by the other warrior’s that Mother’s expression had to be somewhere between pissed-off mother bear and starved lioness. The warrior stepped aside.

Mother left her staff by the door. I started to object, but she gave a terse shake of her head. “Their house. If something goes wrong, I’ll deal with it.”

I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t my choice. Already ten feet ahead of me, Mother cut to the right, weaving behind the sleeping Amazons who had tossed sleeping bags on the main gym floor. Zery, as queen, had taken an old office as a bedroom. It was in the basement, near the showers. I followed Mother down the steps. Behind me a warrior followed-not the guard. She must have awakened another to keep an eye on us while she stayed by her post at the door.

Mother waited for me by the closed office door. Her attention was behind me. “Pisto,” she said, giving a slight nod of acknowledgment. I glanced at the taller woman-the daughter my mother never had. She, like Mother, was fully dressed. Did they sleep that way or was speed-changing part of the training?

“What’s so urgent you have to wake the queen at this time of night?” she asked. Neither her body nor expression gave away any annoyance, at least to someone who hadn’t lived with a cryptic warrior all her life. But I could feel tension rolling off her like heat off a summer sidewalk.

Mother opened her mouth, but I decided it was time to take charge. “I just need to see her. If she’s angry because we woke her, she can take it out on me. You can all take it out on me.” Let her be in there. An angry Zery I could deal with, a…I cut my own thoughts off. I didn’t know why the spirits said her name. It didn’t mean…

Tired of the games, I pushed past the larger women and shoved open the door. The original furniture consisted of a metal desk and a chair. Zery had added a wooden box full of weapons and a cot. The cot was empty.

Panic flooded over me. I groped for the electric switch, somehow thinking in the dark I’d missed my six-foot, one-hundred-and-eighty-pound friend. But the yellow glow only revealed that the cot had been slept in. The pillow bore the indentation of Zery’s head, and the thin quilt lay bunched at the bottom of the cot, like she’d shoved it down before standing.

I started to move forward, to search for some clue, but a knife jabbed into my throat.

“Where is she?” The heat of Pisto’s body released the woodsy smell of the homemade soap preferred by Amazons. She was shaken. I couldn’t blame her. Her queen was missing.

My friend was missing. I was shaken too, and pissed.

I spun out of her reach and grabbed a weapon of my own, a flail, from Zery’s box. I had no clue how to use the thing, but Pisto didn’t know that. I held it above my head as if ready to give it a swing, but my action seemed unnecessary. Mother and Pisto both stood back, staring at me as if I’d just performed a miracle. Which perhaps I had. I’d escaped the clutch of a seasoned warrior. How had I done that?

I didn’t have time to analyze the question. Instead I pressed my advantage-swung the flail until it twirled in a slow jerky arc. “You tell me. Where would Zery go? Is anything missing?”

Her brows lowered, Pisto stared at me. Her gaze tracked the round-and-round movement of the studded metal ball. My shoulder began to ache, and I realized I’d screwed up royally. I had no idea how to make the thing stop, not without bashing my own brains out.

Mother cursed, an unprecedented act on her part, then jerked the flail from my hand. The head hit the wall, knocking a foot-wide chunk of plaster onto the floor. I grabbed my arm, began massaging my shoulder.

“Her sword. Does she keep it here?” Mother asked.

I glanced at the box. There was no sword.

Lips pursed, Pisto nodded. “But she prefers a staff.”

Zery’s staff stood angled against the wall.

“Well, she has a sword. That’s something.” I tried to take comfort in the words. I tried to tell myself Zery was too strong to be taken by the killer-the girls he had taken were just that, girls-inexperienced and too full of their own emerging talents to realize danger. But it didn’t help.

Above our heads, the floors rattled-feet pounding as Amazons awoke and raced from the building.

“Pisto, it’s Zery. Come now.” The guard’s voice.

I didn’t wait for Mother or Pisto. I grabbed Zery’s staff and flew up the stairs.

The Amazons were back in my front yard. This time there was no fire, but there was an Amazon queen staked out spread-eagle.

Zery lay unconscious on the ground. She was stomach up, and dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. Her arms and legs were spread, her body forming a five-pointed star. Shoved into the ground next to her was a sword-the one missing from her room, I guessed.

Bubbe had control of the scene, holding the Amazons back with one hand and a good dose of magic. She’d gathered air into a flat spinning disc that she held out like a shield. If an Amazon tried to approach, she knocked her aside like a gnat.

She had also, I hoped, done something to put a hush over the noise the group was creating. Yells, feet stamping, and unsheathed swords clattering drowned out anything I could hear, but I ignored it all and rushed as close to where Zery lay as Bubbe’s air shield would let me. I tried to get past her, but the old miscreant pointed a finger at me, letting me know she wouldn’t hesitate to send me soaring into the grass-covered hill behind me.

Then Mother and Pisto arrived. With a few smacks of their staffs against one another’s, the raging Amazons quieted-not completely still, but still enough we could hear my grandmother speak.

“She’s caught in a web. Not one easily broken. I’ve tried.”

I frowned at my grandmother. I had never heard her say she couldn’t do something.

“But she’s just lying there,” one of the warriors called out.

Pisto strode forward. Bubbe, her focus on the warrior who had spoken, missed her movement. The Amazon lieutenant got within three feet of Zery, before my grandmother noticed-telling me my grandmother was truly shaken. That fact scared me almost as much as what happened next.

Zery’s body jerked. Her eyes, which had been closed, flew open. Her face flashed shock, then pain, then determination.

“Pisto, stop!” I yelled.

The Amazon froze, her gaze on her queen’s face. She’d seen it too-the pain. But like me, she couldn’t see what was causing it. Then, with no movement of her head, just her eyes, Zery glanced down toward her left breast, and I saw the source…a growing circle of blood, right where Zery’s givnomai tattoo was-or should be.

My stomach lurched. Was it missing; had the killer already stolen it from her? Was she dying before our eyes?

“Zery.” Her staff fell from my hands.

Ignoring my grandmother’s glare, I stumbled to her side. “What can you do? What have you tried?” Accusations camouflaged as questions. I knew Bubbe wouldn’t leave Zery there, pinned to the ground like a dead bug on a collector’s Styrofoam pad.

She jerked a hand toward Mother, who grasped me from behind.

“Melanippe. What do you think? You think I leave Zery there for no good cause? The web. It’s set. I take a step; she bleeds. I reach my hand to unravel the spell; she bleeds.”

I took a breath. Tried to focus. “What’s holding her there?”

The creases in Bubbe’s forehead deepened. “The magic.”

“No bonds?” I leaned forward, looking around my grandmother at Zery’s wrists. There was a shadow on them-a design.

Bubbe pushed her lips against my ear. Her lips were dry as they brushed against my skin. “A drawing. An artisan’s work, one skilled as priestess as well.”

I turned my head. Our noses almost brushing, I stared her in the eyes. Questions, concern, fear-all three showed in her gaze.

Not me. I wouldn’t…The objections must have shown on my face. She reached with a gnarled hand and stroked my face. “I know, devochka moya, but the others…? I have no control of their minds.”

“Any priestess could do this,” I whispered, my mind rolling, thinking of Alcippe and her anger at Zery for sending me to the camp.

“Some, not all. And none would use an artisan skill when a priestess spell is quicker.”

She was right, why take the time to draw something, murmuring over each line, pouring some of yourself into every bit of shading, when you could wave your hand, call up the wind or fire or one of the other elements to do your bidding? Only an artisan, someone who loved that connection, needed it, would go to that trouble, but still my mind couldn’t shake an image of Alcippe…the anger in her eyes when she’d stepped out of the safe house’s front door.

“Can art do that?” I nodded to Zery. “Hold someone down?”

“I would have said no…” My grandmother clucked her tongue. “And I would have been wrong.”

“I have to get closer.” I had to see what the design was, see if I recognized it.

Bubbe looked away, her lips disappearing into her mouth.

“I’m the only artisan here,” I said, enunciating each word with precision.

Finally she stepped away, her hand going up as she did, ready to pummel back the warriors if needed. Mother’s fingers squeezed my arm one last time before she stepped back. She motioned to another warrior, and a flashlight was pushed into my hand. I shined it first on Pisto. Her body was rigid, afraid to move forward and hurt Zery further, but forced by allegiance to not leave her queen.

I respected that, but I didn’t want her getting in my way. As I waited, Mother circled around the group, placed a hand on Pisto from behind. The younger warrior ignored her at first, but Mother bit out something I couldn’t hear, probably wouldn’t have understood if I had. Something about loyalty and death, maybe with a dash of tradition thrown in to round it all out. In other words: Amazon propaganda.

I wasn’t going to save Zery because she was an Amazon or my queen. I was going to save her because she was a living being and my friend-my best friend, no matter past differences.

With Pisto under Mother’s control, I moved the beam of light onto Zery. She was still awake, her gaze glued to me. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Her eyes just looked confused, like she didn’t know where she was or what was happening to her. I wondered if she recognized any of us.

The thought was disturbing, but at least she wasn’t jerking in pain. I shifted the beam again, this time only a little lower to a shadow I hadn’t noticed before-across her mouth. Lines, like stitches. I almost dropped the flashlight.

Her mouth was sewn closed.

No wonder she hadn’t called out-she couldn’t. Something caught in my throat, the pie I’d gorged on earlier being heaved upward.

My body jerked, a hacking noise leaving my chest. Bubbe spun, her glare like a physical touch knocking me back upright. Show no weakness. Act strong even when you aren’t-the key to dealing with animals and Amazons.

I stiffened my shoulders and forced the beam back on Zery’s face-not stitches…lines. A drawing, like Bubbe had said held her down. Someone had drawn stitches on her mouth, closing it with ink and magic. I took a breath. Sick, but not the horror I’d first imagined. Unless Zery…how had the magic felt when her attacker drew those lines? Could it have been that different from the actual act?

A shiver danced up my spine, but I shook it off. Focus, focus, focus. I had to break this spell, not let myself get lost in the hideous act itself.

I redirected the light to her wrists and bare feet. Chains were drawn around her wrists. Stakes of ink pierced her feet.

I knew how to free her.

I looked across at Mother. “Denatured alcohol. If you can’t find it, bring Listerine.” Without a question, Mother took off at a trot toward the shop.

Then I glanced back at Bubbe. “You said a web?”

She nodded. “A spider’s work.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. Hard to escape? I reached out, let my mind go like I had when I’d discovered Bubbe’s serpent. This time it only took seconds. A complicated web of silver magic glowed before me. It covered the space between where Pisto and I stood and in the center of all the spirals, under the web, lay Zery. So, she’d been pinned down first, and the web spun on top of her. Made sense.

Now I could see the trap, but how did I navigate it? How did a fly?

The answer was easy. He didn’t, but a spider could travel across his own web without getting stuck.

But I was no spider…or was I? I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were taking me, but I had to follow them. The dead girls had been left for me. Had Zery too? Was it possible I could walk this web, when Bubbe couldn’t? Was she simply a fly, while the killer saw me as a fellow spider?

I hated the thought, but prayed it was true too.

I closed my eyes, pulled in another breath, and dug my bare toes into the grass until I felt the soil beneath. I needed contact with the earth for this, needed all the strength I could call on. Then I opened my eyes.

The web still shone, as silver and perfect as before, one concentric circle around another with lines intersecting their core over Zery’s heart. But that was it, no secret entry, no key to the path to my friend.

Disappointment, failure. I lowered the flashlight, dropping my gaze as I did. And there, right where the web started to go out of focus, I saw them-tiny bronze spots speckled throughout the web. A path leading from the outside of the web, curving around, then back, jutting out on a straight line, then following the curve again, until stopping next to Zery’s sword, not the Amazon queen herself.

The sword. It wasn’t there because Zery had brought it. It was there so I could kill her.

The realization hit me hard. What kind of sick bastard did this killer think I was?

It didn’t matter. What did matter was that I could see the path. I could save her.

Mother arrived, a plastic bottle of denatured alcohol in her hand. I grabbed it like the desperate alcoholics you hear of, who supposedly drink the stuff for a cheap-if potentially deadly-buzz. Then, with the bottle held against my heart, I sidestepped around the edge of the web, careful not to step on even a sliver of magical silk.

I took my first step, and Pisto jumped in front of me, her staff lifted, ready to jab into my throat. The web quivered, like it was coming to life. Surprise rounded Pisto’s eyes. Her feet slipped beneath her or, more accurately, the web now stuck to her feet moved beneath her. Her knees buckled. She flailed the staff overhead, then jammed it into the ground in an effort to keep from falling, but the web began to grow around her, around her legs, like an invisible spider was wrapping her, his prey, with silk. The whole process took only seconds.

I clutched the alcohol to my chest, determined not to drop it, and stared at the mummified Amazon. She was coated in silver threads, nothing but the top of her blond head visible.

“What-?” I could feel the group behind me move forward, felt Bubbe’s shield click into place too. She was holding them off, but it was harder now. They’d seen one of their own fall.

“Melanippe?” Bubbe, her voice more unsure than I’d ever heard it. “What happened?”

I glanced at my grandmother. Her back was to me, but when I glanced at Mother, saw the confusion in her eyes, I realized having her back turned wasn’t the issue. They were flies. Bubbe might sense the design, but she couldn’t see it, not like I could, not like the spider.

“Is she breathing?” I asked my mother.

She gave a short nod. “Barely.”

Barely was enough. I had no idea how to save Pisto from the web. I hoped if I saved Zery, somehow the rest of the spell would disintegrate. Besides, I had no time to waste. While Pisto lay quietly in her bundle, Zery had come to life-bucking against her bonds, her lips pulling against the stitches. If she made contact with the web, what would happen? I didn’t want to find out.

“Zery, lay still.” It was an order, plain and simple-a tone no one had probably used with the queen since she was fourteen and her destiny had been discovered.

To my surprise, she quieted. Everyone did. A group of twenty-plus Amazon warriors stood completely silent, watching me. Every hair on my body would have been standing at attention if I wasn’t already slipping back into the zone, channeling every nature show I’d ever seen-becoming the spider.

My sight dimmed, almost to the point of blindness, but it didn’t matter, didn’t disturb me in the least. I didn’t need it, knew deep inside I could feel my way along the web. I picked up my foot and held it out in front of me, the silk path vibrated as my weight shifted, but only slightly, not enough to alert my prey-not that it mattered. She was caught…waiting for me. I turned away from the victim already subdued and moved toward the one still waiting in the center of my web. My foot hovered over the thread, but I didn’t set it down. Magic-cold, cloying-tickled my sole. I shifted so my foot would land six inches farther down the path-nothing. I lowered my foot, picked up the other, and continued on my way.

Somewhere along the way, my speed increased. I scurried along the silk, hopping from one safe section of thread to another-never doubting where I was going or that I wouldn’t arrive there safely.

At the center I stalled. My path stopped at the sword, not my prey. I scuttled around the weapon, unsure what to do next. I reached out and realized I already had something grasped in my hands-a bottle.

A bottle. I looked up. Forms surrounded the web, spots of light-one shone on me. I held my arm up to block the glare and liquid poured down my chest-cold. And the smell…medicinal…familiar. I shuddered and turned my head to save my lungs.

With the movement, the spell I’d sunk into snapped. My sight returned, but suddenly I had no idea where to place my feet. I could feel myself swaying as if I were trying to stay on a tightrope.

The bottle fell from my grasp. I watched it fall, end over end, alcohol pouring out of it, splattering me, Zery, and the ground. Seconds before it was going to hit, I dove for the sword, jerked it from the ground just as the thread began to weave around me.