Amazon Ink

Chapter Twenty-five

I closed my eyes and tried to hide the emotion racing through me.

Peter’s hand grazed my arm. I took another step away, this time toward the window. Once there, I shoved it open, felt the cool, slightly damp air of a day that had turned gray flow into the room. The wind pushed my hair away from my face-I welcomed it.

I didn’t know if Peter had priestess skills, but I was about to find out.

I pulled in a deep breath, then turned. Peter was staring at me, his brows lowered, a line between his eyes. He held out his hands as if about to say something, ask something.

I didn’t wait to hear his words. I let go, let the wind blast from my lungs. The force of it almost sent me reeling backward out of the window. I dug my fingernails into the old wood of the window’s frame to keep from falling. My fingers ached and my back snapped against the top of the double-hung frame, but I stayed in the room, my gaze glued to Peter.

The wind should have hit him full strength. I’d done nothing to signal my move, but he still seemed to have known. As the air rushed across the room, less than a heartbeat from when it would have hit him, he dropped to a crouch-stayed there, balanced on the balls of his feet and splayed fingers.

My initial inhale spent. I grabbed the first thing my fingers reached, a terra-cotta saucer that had sat under a long-dead plant and now gathered dust and loose change. I whirled it across the room, aiming a foot or so higher than Peter’s head, instinctively guessing that he wouldn’t sit still and wait for my missile to hit. As it left my fingers, I spun them in the air, adding momentum.

I didn’t wait, didn’t watch to see if my impromptu Frisbee would hit its target, I started grabbing everything I could find-books, painted rocks, even a Xena Warrior Princess doll my employees had given me as a joke-never realizing how close to the mark they’d hit. All went flying.

I could hear them hit, could feel the floor shake as Peter leapt to escape. An old tattoo machine in my hand, I pulled in more air and glanced in his direction, ready to spin a shield if he threw magic my way.

He was crouched again, his gaze on me and his muscles tense. I could see the question on his face-like I was the one doing something wrong, who’d gone crazy.

I threw the machine, let go of a blast of air at the same time. For one second he was trapped-between where I’d aimed the blast and the machine.

Indecision shone in his eyes, and I knew I had him-that he was about to reveal his true talents. I expelled the air out of my lungs, moved my hands in a circle, and chanted, using the air to form a barrier between me and whatever magic was about to be propelled toward me. And as I did all of this, I kept my gaze on Peter. My chest tightened; I knew once he attacked I’d quit playing, attack him for real-kill him rather than let him kill another girl.

He leapt again, toward me, blurred as he moved. I squinted, unable to make out what was happening, what he was doing. Suddenly he was back in focus, but it wasn’t Peter flying toward me. It was a lynx-just like the one I’d seen tattooed on Peter’s shoulder.

Stupidly, I dropped my hands, dropping the shield as I did. The cat hit me square in the chest, knocking me back against the wall. My fingers wrapped in its gray-brown fur. I pulled on its head, tried to keep its teeth from sinking into my neck.

I slipped and we fell, tumbling to the ground and rolling. The lynx’s front paws wrapped around me and its feet wedged against my stomach. I could feel its breath on my neck and I tried not to panic, knowing the claws on those back feet could tear into my gut, easily do as much damage as its teeth. I groped around the floor as we moved, frantically trying to find something…anything I could use to fight the creature.

My fingers wrapped around a metal ruler and I pulled back my arm, determined to somehow thrust it through the animal’s throat. Then the creature began to blur again. I froze, fixated on what was happening, unable to process what I was seeing…or not. And suddenly, lying on top of me, staring down into my eyes, was Peter.

“What the fuck?” I said, dropping the ruler and shoving against him with every ounce of strength I could muster. I quickly realized my hands were pressing against bare skin-that Peter was completely naked.

He rolled off me and moved to a sitting position. His leg was bent, hiding anything too shocking, but with the amount of bare skin revealed, I couldn’t stop myself from dropping my gaze to the floor.

My heart was pounding as if it might explode from my chest. Peter had turned into a lynx; my mind skittered trying to understand that.

I exhaled, no magic this time, just a way to release some of the confusion swirling inside me. “What…” I looked up, stared at his face. “What did I see?”

He moved one shoulder. “Me.” He tilted his head, studied me. He wasn’t even winded-looked cool and calm, analytical, even. “So, it’s true. Amazons don’t shift? You haven’t seen that before?”

I dropped my face to my hand, let my fingers drag across my skin as I looked back up. With them closed and still lying against my lips I answered, “No. I’ve never seen that before.” I’d planned to force him to reveal his skill, and I had, but it hadn’t been what I’d expected, not at all. A lynx hadn’t killed those girls, not that Peter couldn’t have other skills as well, but…I shook my head. I didn’t believe he was the killer, not anymore.

The corners of his lower lip pulled down; his head nodded. “That’s what I’d heard, but…” He shrugged. “We didn’t know for sure. There’s a lot about the Amazons we don’t know.” He walked over to where his clothes lay in a haphazard pile.

I couldn’t find the strength to follow him, to stand, to do anything but sit on the floor and stare at him. Too much adrenaline had shot through me, too many certainties proven false in too short of a time. I felt deflated, lost like a balloon blown away by the wind…floating.

“The sons can all shift, but not until after we get our givnomai. That’s one reason I thought it was so important for Harmony to have hers.”

“You think Harmony will be able to shift into her givnomai?” I couldn’t imagine, or worse-I could. I wanted to ask what tattoo he had given her, what animal I could expect to face the next time I banished her to her room, but I didn’t. A givnomai was personal. She’d tell me when…if…she wanted to.

It hit me then. I was beginning to accept the idea of Harmony with a givnomai, beginning to think of her as a young Amazon, and not just the little girl I’d spent the last ten years protecting from everything that even hinted of Amazon.

Peter had pulled on his pants, stood barefoot and bare-chested while he answered. The lynx on his shoulder seemed bigger now, impossible to ignore. I forced my eyes to look away.

“We don’t know, but since she’s second generation, we think it’s possible-or it might be a trait that’s gender based. There’s no way for us to know.”

Standing there, he was glorious, all male with his long firm muscles, even his tattoos had a masculine look that the same animal and scenery wouldn’t have had on a woman. I couldn’t put my finger on what the difference was, but it was there-and I was drawn to it, but I was still angry too, and wary.

“What other skills do you have?” I asked. I had to check.

His shirt bunched in his hand; he frowned. “I’m an artisan. I figured you knew that.”

“No…” I twisted my mouth to the side, not sure of my word choice; finally giving up, I went on, “Priestess skills?”

“Magic?” He lowered the shirt, frowned. “You have both, don’t you? And not just shades of both. You can truly use both-compete as either.”

He seemed fascinated by me again, watched me like I’d just shared some new pain-free technique for tattooing.

“Are you sure you don’t shift? Have you tried?” he continued. The expression in his eyes was so intense, I couldn’t help but place my hand over my givnomai. Even through my shirt, I could feel the power that had been put in the little creature pulse.

“No. I don’t shift and I wouldn’t even know how to try. I never realized…” I let the words drift off. I had never realized the possibility existed.

The creature under my fingers seemed to move, swish its tail. I curled my fingers over it, silenced it…or more accurately, my imagination gone wild.

Peter wanted to know if I’d tried shifting. He didn’t know how useless shifting into my givnomai would be. I wouldn’t gain any great strength or athletic prowess, but then…I’d be able to blend anywhere, hide out in the open.

Again, I wondered what Harmony had chosen.

“Did you tell her? Tell Harmony? Or does she think she just got a tattoo?” I asked.

He finished tugging the shirt over his head. “Just a tattoo. It’s not my place to tell her about the Amazons. I can’t imagine she would have believed me if I had. But I did tell her she had to keep it secret, that no one could find out she had one…that you could lose your business.”

I shook my head. Oh yeah, my daughter wouldn’t tell anyone she had a tattoo. I believed that. Obviously, Peter had no experience with teenage girls, especially one who would see a secret tattoo as some kind of victory over her too-protective mother. Which brought me right back to where I started. Harmony had a givnomai and there was a killer somehow connected to me, or drawn to me, who was collecting them.

Peter was dressed now, but his feet were still bare. He lounged against my desk, relaxed, apparently willing to stay there all day and chat. Seemingly unaware that he might have put Harmony in the path of any danger.

But then, while he knew about the killings, I didn’t know if he had realized the victims were Amazons. And he couldn’t know what I’d been hiding-their delivery to my door, or their missing givnomais. Couldn’t know unless he was the killer, and frustrating as the realization was, I didn’t think he had killed anyone. I really thought by giving Harmony a givnomai he believed he had been helping, doing what was right.

Not his choice to make for my daughter or my family, but I couldn’t fault his motives. Truth be told, Mother and Bubbe would have applauded his motives, maybe even his actions-if he hadn’t been a man.

Looking up at him was beginning to make me uncomfortable. I stood. “There’s something you don’t know.”

“There are all kinds of things I don’t know.” He shoved a piece of broken pottery across the floor with his foot. It came to a rest next to mine.

“The girls, the ones found dead near Milwaukee? They were Amazons.”

He looked past me, to a spot on the wall.

He knew.

“The girls on that site you showed me? The one of the tattoos? Two of them were the victims.”

Again, nothing.

I picked up the pottery shard and threw it at his feet. “What don’t you know? What else have you been doing besides tattooing my daughter and-” I clamped my lips shut before “tempting me” could come out.

“You asked why I came here. A big part was Harmony. We hadn’t been able to get close to her before, at least not as close as we wanted, and with her age and the need for a givnomai…well, when you advertised for an artist, we couldn’t let it pass by.”

“How did you know she didn’t have a givnomai?” Ugly scenarios were playing out in my head. My hand tightened on the tattoo machine I’d thrown earlier. This time I’d figure out a way to use it more effectively.

His brows lifted. “We didn’t for sure, but we’d been in your shop, heard the two of you arguing. It seemed pretty obvious.”

I pressed the tattoo machine against my leg, felt my heart slow a little.

“But after I was here, I noticed things. Things that worried me. That’s why I called in Makis.”

“Makis? The art teacher?” The art teacher…“The wheelchair? You don’t mean…?” The mutilations. They’d been horrifying enough when they’d just been in theory, something that had happened long ago, but to realize someone I’d met…“He’s a son,” I finished, unable to say more.

“The son or our leader anyway. Makis is one of our oldest. Both of his legs were broken, then he was left on a church doorstep. Medical care wasn’t much back then, and no one wanted a crippled baby, but he survived. As he grew, he realized he was different, started finding others like him, and slowly pieced together who we were, where we came from.”

“He must hate us.” I said the words without realizing their significance at first, just voicing what I felt.

“You would think, but he doesn’t seem to,” Peter replied, but I barely heard what he said.

“He must hate us,” I repeated. I dropped the machine back on the floor, took two giant steps forward, crushing another chunk of pottery under my boot as I did. “Is he a priestess?” I was too focused on my suspicions to worry over terminology this time. “Can he do magic?”

Peter lost his casual posture, stood erect. “Yes, but he doesn’t hate Amazons. I don’t know why he doesn’t. He has every reason to, but he doesn’t.”

“He’s a priestess and an artisan.” Again, to myself. I headed for the exit.

“Where are you going?” I could feel Peter moving behind me, heard him curse as he stepped on another shard of pottery or some other debris left on the floor. Still, he followed me.

I raised my left hand, blew air over my shoulder, and slammed the door in his face, mumbled a spell and twisted my fingers-using compressed air to turn the lock.

He’d get out eventually, but at least I had a head start. I didn’t think Peter was involved in the killings, but I didn’t need him arguing with me, slowing me down.

My life was a mess, but none of it mattered-not compared to stopping this killer.

I met Reynolds on the steps. I tried to walk past him. He stepped in front of me. My body shook with the need to get past him, to shove him out of my way and sprint down the stairs.

“I didn’t give you permission to come in here,” I said.

“This place is open to the public. I don’t need your permission.” He placed his hand on the railing beside me.

My jaw tensed. “I’m leaving. You do need something to stop me.”

One finger tapped the wooden rail…once, twice, three times. “Depends. Maybe I think you’re acting”-his gaze drifted over me-“suspicious. I have reason to suspect you, you know?”

Sane Mel, the Mel who wanted so much to blend, would have stood there and argued, would have played the game, but that Mel had disappeared when she’d realized her daughter was on her way to meet a killer, and that Mel wasn’t coming back-not for a long time, maybe never.

I kicked him in the groin.

The look on his face, the way his eyes rounded, then squinched together as he doubled over, would have been comical, if I hadn’t actually liked him, already regretted to some small degree the need for the move. But any humor or pity was lost as he fell to his knees and reached for his gun. I started moving, fast.

“Stop.”

I looked back. He was hanging onto the railing with one hand. In the other was a black handgun, and it was pointed at me.

I shook my head. “I can’t.” Then I turned my back on him.

Behind me, he cursed. I could hear him rustling, forcing himself to stand, I guessed. I quickened my pace, made it to the front door, and jerked it open.

“Mel,” he yelled. He was closer-too close. I sped through the door, thinking I’d have to lock it behind me, play the same trick on him I’d played on Peter, but as the breath seeped from my lips, a grayish-brown body streaked around the corner of the building toward me.

Open window, tree. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how Peter had escaped.

“Mel,” Reynolds yelled again.

Peter stared up at me, his eyes still his, just in the face of a cat.

“Please” was all I said. I didn’t have time to fight Peter and Reynolds too. Didn’t have the mental wherewithal to stand there and argue either. I needed to get to my daughter.

Reynolds’ shoes squeaked on the floor. He was almost to the door. I glanced back, could see him lunging forward, his gun still drawn.

Peter saw it too, leapt past me and into the building.

Reynolds yelled a curse. A shot fired, hit the door as the breath I’d been holding shoved it closed behind Peter.

I broke into a run.