Amazon Ink

Chapter Twenty

Midnight I was jolted awake-this time by tiny sniffles. The dead girls were back. I didn’t pause this time, didn’t wait for them to approach me, just shot out of bed and headed to Dana’s room. At least this time I was dressed. I’d taken to sleeping in my clothes, never sure when I’d be awakened again, or by what.

Her door creaked as I pushed it open. The noise jolted me into realizing I was unarmed, without even a ward ready to protect myself. I paused, but only for an instant. I was too close. I wasn’t waiting for my mind to slow down enough to think of a spell. If the killer was waiting for me, I’d have to come up with something while on my feet.

I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and heard the soft rustling sound of movement in the bed.

“Dana?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

More rustling, then the sound of a hand feeling around in the dark.

“Dana. It’s Mel.”

A groan, and a lamp clicked, blasting the space in a blinding yellow glow. A tousled head appeared from behind a mass of covers. “Mel? What’s wrong?” Dana shoved her body to a sitting position.

“Nothing. Nothing. I just thought I heard something.” I backed from the room, pulling the door shut behind me. Then stood there with my heart pounding.

False alarm.

Or was it? Harmony…

I took off in a run, my bare feet pounding against the wood floors. It was a short trip, and this time I didn’t bother with the niceties. I slammed into the door, twisting the knob as I did. The door banged into the wall and I didn’t stop, kept going until my legs smacked into the bed and I’d jerked the covers back revealing my daughter, her eyes round and a scream ready, staring up at me.

I jerked her into a hug.

She panted against me, not resisting as I began rocking forward and backward, pulling her with me as I did.

“Mom, are you okay?” she finally got out.

I stroked her hair and squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to let the tears I could feel there spill out.

“Mom, seriously. You’re scaring me,” she whispered, her voice still rough with sleep.

I was scaring myself too, but I couldn’t let go…wouldn’t.

“Melanippe?” Bubbe stood in the doorway, her hair wrapped in a turban and a staff in her hand. I’d never seen my grandmother carry a weapon of any kind. That scared me too.

“Let the child go. She has school. Needs sleep.”

I nodded and tried to relax my arms, to release my daughter, but somehow my grip tightened and my face got lost in her hair.

“Mel. That’s enough.” Mother this time. Her hand touched my shoulder, then my hair.

A sob escaped my lips, and I knew they were right. I was losing it, but I couldn’t, not around Harmony. I dropped my grip on my daughter and pushed her lightly back against her pillow. Murmuring words even I couldn’t understand, I tucked the covers around her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She stared up at me and I knew I’d screwed up-scared her when I wanted her to feel safe. I wanted to say something to fix what I’d done, but at that juncture my mind was a blank. I let Mother take me by the hand while Bubbe stayed with Harmony, probably casting some spell to make her forget what she’d seen, to keep her from realizing her mother was insane or close to it.

With Harmony’s door shut and Dana tucked back into bed too-she’d wandered into the hall when I’d exploded into my daughter’s room-Mother led me into the kitchen and put a kettle of water on the stove.

Mother cooking. Things were worse than I’d imagined.

After a few minutes, she set a mug of hot water and a packet of instant cocoa on the table in front of me. I shook the packet and poured it into the water, more for something to do than because I wanted the cocoa.

Mother pulled out a chair across from me and sat, just watched me while I stumbled through stirring the mix into the water with a dirty spoon still on the table from dinner.

“There’s something you aren’t telling us,” she announced after I’d finally submerged the last of the mix into the cup.

“There’s much she isn’t telling us.” Bubbe walked into the room, her staff tapping with each step. She stopped next to the table. “Good she starts with the spirits who circle.”

My head snapped up. My grandmother held my gaze. How long had she known?

Mother straightened, her eyes shifting back and forth between Bubbe and me. I glanced at her, then down at my cup.

“I thought the killer…” I wrapped my hands around the cup, let the warmth seep into my fingers. “They came when Zery…I was afraid.”

“Who are they, Mel?” There were lines on Mother’s face I’d never noticed before.

I looked at Bubbe. She took a breath. I didn’t need to tell her. She knew. “How can we help, if you don’t trust?” she asked.

I grabbed the cup tighter and started to talk. I told them about finding the girls, about releasing their spirits and moving their bodies. I told them about going to the safe camp and delivering the totems, about trying to break into Bubbe’s office to learn more. I told them everything-except why I hadn’t told them before.

I saw the hurt and confusion on their faces, the realization that I didn’t trust them. Suddenly, I couldn’t look at them anymore. I dropped my gaze to my cup, stared at the hot cocoa my mother, the warrior, had made for me.

“Both of the girls who were killed went to this one bar, and were pictured on the Web site. Three other girls were too. Dana was one of them. When the girls’ spirits came back, I panicked.”

“You didn’t try to speak with them?” Bubbe moved closer, placed her gnarled hand on mine.

“No, but the last time they came was when Zery-” I looked up. “Zery.”

I shoved my chair back and headed for the steps. Mother and Bubbe were right behind me. The trip down the stairs felt longer than it ever had before. The ridged metal strips attached to the edge of each step cut into my feet.

I reached the doors first, didn’t wait for my family, jerked the doors open and fell onto my knees. A body…blond, face turned away from me, lay on the cold concrete porch. My hands shaking, I couldn’t bring myself to touch her, didn’t want to live this again…didn’t want to know…

“Mel! What? Who?” Zery stood a few feet away, a sword held in a halfway position, like she was lowering or raising it, I couldn’t tell which.

“Zery?” Relief hit me. A laugh exploded from my constricted chest. My hands dropped and brushed the body before me, reminded me Zery might be safe, but someone else wasn’t.

Zery raised her sword higher, crossed the few paces between us. “Step back, Mel.”

When I didn’t move, she pointed the blade at my throat.

I lifted my hands and edged my body backward.

“Who is it?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I thought it was you-was afraid-”

She shook her head in return, her hair moving around her face as she did. “Don’t say anything and don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.” Her voice was shaking. There was a slight tremble in the blade as well.

Behind me the doors creaked open. Bubbe and Mother. I could feel them, smell the scents of my home drifting out and mixing with the night air. It should have been comforting, but it wasn’t.

Couldn’t be.

My best friend was holding a sword to my throat, and she meant to use it.

“Put it down.” Mother, her voice strong, missing the deference she’d normally show a queen, was back to the voice she’d used on Zery when we were little and got caught messing with Mother’s weights. Rolling them across the room. Staging races.

Bubbe ignored them both, moved forward to place her hand on the woman’s shoulder and carefully roll her onto her back.

Pisto, her face peaceful, lacking the hate I’d seen sketched there the last time she’d looked at me.

My breath caught and my gaze shot to Zery. The sword moved up and down, as if she’d forgotten she held it. Mother jerked me backward, behind her.

The action seemed to knock Zery out of her trance. Her arm stiffened. She took a step forward.

“Why?”

Mother stood between us, and despite my efforts I couldn’t get around her. “She didn’t do it.”

“I saw her, and she laughed. She sat over Pisto and laughed.”

“From relief. I thought it was you.” I darted far to the right, out of Mother’s reach, made it past her to a spot not far from where Bubbe murmured over Pisto’s body. With my grandmother and Pisto between us, I stared at my old friend, willed her to believe me. “I didn’t care for Pisto, but I didn’t kill her.”

“Like you didn’t kill the other girls? How did you get their totems? Alcippe said you brought them to camp; I didn’t believe her. I convinced myself she’d made a mistake, that her dislike of you was coloring her perceptions. But it was you, wasn’t it? You killed them and now Pisto. Tell me why.” Her sword arm was stiff, her stance stiff too, rigid with anger.

“There is no why. I didn’t kill them, any of them.” I took a breath, prayed she’d believe what I was going to tell her. “I found them, like this, on my front porch.”

“On your front porch?” She shook her head. “I know you. You can do better than that.”

I held out my hands. “I can’t. It’s the truth. I don’t know why, but the killer brought them to me-woke me with a rock tossed at my window. I came down and they were here. The first one…when I realized she was an Amazon…I didn’t know what to do, had no idea who to trust.” I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “What would you expect me to do? What kind of greeting would I have received if I’d shown up at the safe camp with a dead Amazon teen in my truck? I convinced myself I had no choice, took her totem, released her spirit, then left her somewhere I knew she’d be found, so the police would be called in.”

Zery looked away, at the brick wall of my shop. I was sure she wasn’t even seeing the dusty red bricks and cracked mortar, that her mind was spinning as out of control as mine.

“The second…well, I realized the tribe might not even know. I had to do something to alert you. So, I brought the totems.”

“So, you brought the totems,” she repeated, like some kind of automaton.

“But the dead girls, they’ve been visiting me. They came tonight. I knew something had happened. I just didn’t know what.” I looked down at Pisto then, the full reality that she was dead setting in.

Bubbe brushed hair off the dead warrior’s face, started to fold her hands like I’d done with the others, then with her fingers posed above Pisto’s right breast, Bubbe paused and looked up at me.

I pressed my hands together in front of my lips, in a praying posture. “Like the others,” I murmured.

New creases formed on my grandmother’s face. I could tell she was disturbed. I wanted to ask her what she thought it meant, why anyone would mutilate the girls so, but as the question formed in my mind, Zery sprang back to life. She paced forward, her sword extended.

“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?”

“You’ll call on Artemis?”

It was what she wanted more than anything-me to admit my connection to the goddess, to work on my priestess skills in the open. She’d seen what I could do when I attacked Alcippe, guessed that I’d unwound her serpent ward, but I’d yet to openly admit any of it, to say I would at least try to follow her path.

“I’ve done it before. I told you about the girls.”

“But you didn’t put all your trust in the goddess. She would never have guided you to make the choices that got you here.”

I licked my lips. “My power has grown.”

She smiled, but not with the joy or pride I expected, more like you smile at a child who tells you her favorite color is red or that the sun felt warm on her face-like she wanted to pat me on the head. “But you don’t believe, haven’t trusted. If I bring you the tools, will you try?”

I had no idea what she was asking of me. I’d always believed. I’d grown up believing. As for trust…I didn’t trust anyone, hadn’t for a long time. Still, I agreed.

She frowned, but nodded. “They will bring you food soon. You’ll find what you need on the tray.”