Amazon Ink

Chapter Twenty-seven

I grabbed a palette knife from the mess on the floor, and raced toward the monster, plunged the dull blade into what I guessed was his head, or neck. The creature heaved, dropping my daughter. I pulled back, ready to sink the weapon in again, but it slapped me to the side, sent me spinning and sliding like I’d sent Tiger a few minutes earlier.

My side rammed into a file cabinet and I scrambled back to my feet, searched frantically in my mind for a spell or weapon that would force the thing to release my daughter. As my crazed gaze danced back to Octopus, I saw something…the notebook Nick had carried. Octopus held it too, one tentacle caressing it. Getting strength from it, I guessed.

I leapt again, this time aiming not for the center of the beast, but the far tip of one tentacle-for the notebook that I guessed held three dead Amazons’ givnomais. Givnomais that Nick was somehow leeching of power. My foot on the corner of the notebook, I jabbed the knife into coral flesh and shoved backward with my foot. The tentacle rose, reaching for me, and the notebook went flying. I dropped and rolled, evading Octopus’s reach, then belly-crawled toward the notebook that had slid beneath a shelf. Behind me I heard a thump. I glanced over my shoulder, saw my daughter sprawled on the floor, pale and lifeless. Octopus was gone, but Nick, naked and bleeding, was rising to his feet.

I jerked the notebook free, held it to my chest, and stared at the bleeding boy.

“Give it to me,” he said.

“Don’t,” a voice beside me spoke. Makis. He was slumped in his wheelchair, but the tires spun, moving him forward.

I didn’t care what either of them wanted, only that Harmony was all right. As if reading my mind, Nick looped his arm around her waist, pulled her up beside him. “She’s alive. I wouldn’t kill her. Not like this. I never intended to hurt her anyway. Not until you showed up, attacked me.”

He frowned, his eyes pulling down like a confused little boy. “Why are you fighting me? I thought you understood.”

Harmony stirred, or was it just her body swaying, an illusion of life?

Still, my grip on the notebook loosened; the tightness in my chest lessened. “Understood what?”

With Harmony so close, within his grasp, I couldn’t move too fast, wasn’t even sure what to do with the notebook now that I had it. If I destroyed the pages, set them on fire, or shredded them into the wind, what would happen to the girls’ spirits? Would they always be trapped between two worlds?

“What I was doing. Why it was right.” Something flashed in his hand and he held a knife-short-bladed and sharp, not at all like the dull tool I’d plunged into the octopus’s neck. “The Amazons threw me out like trash-killed your son with no more thought than they’d give to stomping on a roach. Even him-” He jerked his head toward Makis. “Look what they did to him. But he was weak, wanted to go back to them, after everything. Thousands of years of disrespect, pain, death, and he wants to blend with them. Can you believe that?” His lip curled. “But you, you did what no other Amazon had. You walked away. That’s why I thought you’d understand. Why I’ve watched you for so long, tried to please you.” He shook his head. The knife glimmered. “I brought you gifts. Then I tried to warn the others off-to get them to leave you alone. I even offered you their queen, but you turned her down. I tried again. I knew Pisto would please you. She fought against us, was everything we’re trying to stop. Why aren’t you happy?

“Is it because I didn’t join you at the shop? I couldn’t. I saw Dana, knew she wouldn’t understand. But I didn’t leave you-was there in my dog form. I wasn’t rejecting you. Can’t you see that?” He lifted his arm, caused Harmony’s weight to sway.

Makis wheeled forward, not far, just an inch. He wiggled a finger, pointing to the ground where the totem he’d given Harmony lay.

I placed my hand over it, slid it closer. Trapped inside my closed fingers, the figure began to throb like a tiny beating heart. I clenched it tighter, tried to keep the surprise from showing on my face.

“Harmony,” Makis said low, but Nick still heard.

“I said she’s okay. I don’t want to hurt her. I love her-like Dana. Dana’s happy now, right?” He looked at me. I couldn’t reply. “That’s the problem with the sons. They weren’t selective. They took any Amazon they could.”

I swallowed the saliva that seemed to have pooled in my mouth, the nausea his words created.

Makis gestured again; this time he leaned forward. Hidden in his chair, behind his back, was a throwing knife. I shook my head. Harmony was too close.

Makis shifted his gaze to the notebook, then Nick. My fingers slid in between pages and cover, brushed over something warm and alive-skin. I shuddered, then forced my fingers back to the spot, recognized the power pulsing there-a givnomai, Pisto’s. Feeling as if I might retch, I jerked the book open, yanked the pages free of the binding, and tossed them in the air.

Nick dropped Harmony to the floor and lurched forward, grabbing at the pages as they floated downward. I whirled my hands overhead, creating a tiny cyclone to keep the pages out of his reach, then raced to my daughter. She had a pulse, but her lips were blue. I pressed my ear to her heart, began blowing into her mouth.

“The totem,” Makis urged.

I ran my finger over the figure, not sure what I was supposed to do with it, how it could help Harmony. Then I stopped thinking, just put my trust in Artemis and believed. I shoved the tiny figure into my daughter’s hand, kept my fingers wrapped around hers, prayed and breathed into her mouth. Breathed for her, in and out.

The pulse I’d felt in the figure began to grow until I could feel it creeping up my arm, through my shoulder, into my chest, until my heart matched the rhythm inside it. I wanted to drop the thing, get away from it, but knew if I was feeling this, Harmony was too, if my heart was beating with it, so was hers. On cue, she opened her eyes. They were round, alive, and more aware than I’d ever seen them.

There would be no hiding her heritage from her anymore. No hiding anything from her anymore. It was time I let her grow up and make decisions for herself-at least some. I jerked her to my chest, whispered a prayer of thanks into her hair.

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.

I struggled with coming to terms with that, that my rebellion had given sons like Nick fuel, but I got past it. Finally accepted that I wasn’t responsible for others’ insanity, could only do what I thought was best…just. And leaving the Amazons, standing up for equality between men and women, hearth-keepers, warriors, artisans, priestesses, all of us that was right.

After sorting out those issues, I’d had my talk with Bubbe, visited my son’s fake grave, and driven to the hospital where she’d left him so long ago. I hadn’t gone inside. Hadn’t talked to anyone…yet.

He was out there, and I was going to find him, but he was now ten years old. Me popping up and claiming him as mine wasn’t going to be simple. I needed to think about it, prepare myself, and decide when I did find him exactly what I was going to say, how much truth I was going to tell this child. I’d spent so long lying to the first one. Lies had almost become more natural than truth-but that was over.

Harmony knew all-her heritage, her brother, even Bubbe’s betrayal-and, superball that she was, she’d rebounded with barely a flicker of disbelief. I suspected she was the one not telling me something now, but I was letting it go for a while. I owed her that-at least until I thought her secrets put her in danger.

Now I sat on my front steps, flipping through my daughter’s notebook, admiring her work, and feeling grateful my life was back to normal, almost.

Detective Reynolds stepped around the corner. He was dressed casually in jeans and a Packers sweatshirt.

I flipped the notebook closed and lay it on my lap.

He stopped a few feet away, next to the banister, cocked one hip against it. “Kind of weird how everything wound up…all neatlike.”

The sun was battering down with all the strength it could muster on a fall morning. I squinted as I looked up at him, but didn’t raise a hand to block it. The warmth felt good.

“Has to work out that way sometimes, I guess,” I replied.

“Does it? Doesn’t seem to.” He moved his hand on the railing. “How’s Zery?”

I lifted one shoulder. “Don’t know. We don’t talk much.” After being released from jail, she’d gone straight back to the safe camp. I told myself she was needed there, that after learning about the sons, the Amazons had a lot to sort out, but it still hurt. Of course, I could have called her, or gone to see her when Bubbe and I visited my son’s faux grave, but I hadn’t. I guessed Zery and I both needed time before facing whatever our relationship had become.

“She came with the mothers when they claimed the bodies,” he said.

And Dana, she’d gone with them too, but she hadn’t mentioned seeing Zery.

“You know what happened to the missing skin?”

The question caught me off guard. He’d never mentioned the missing patch where the girls’ givnomais had been removed. Now he was acting like I’d know exactly what he was talking about. Which, of course, I did.

Makis and the sons had left Nick’s body in his apartment along with his notebook and knife, but they had removed the tattoos, given them to Alcippe so she could complete the ceremony to release the girls from this plane. They’d set things up to look like he’d attacked another girl, one who got away, but not before shoving his own knife into his chest.

“Any leads on the last girl?” I countered.

He stared behind me, at the shop’s front door. I’d heard a creak a few seconds earlier, knew someone was standing there listening.

“Not a one,” he replied, then slapped his palm against the railing and turned. “I’ve got tickets to the Badgers next weekend. You ever been?”

I shook my head.

He stepped away from the railing. “Saturday, noon. We’ll tailgate. Wear something red.” He slipped one last glance to the door, then strolled around the corner.

“You going?” Peter stepped through the door, onto the concrete behind me.

He looked good, relaxed in a pilled fleece and jeans with a tear in the knee. What was it about worn-out clothes that was so damn sexy?

“What are you doing here?” I’d fired him before racing off to save my daughter. Or thought I had. Maybe slamming him into a wall, then peppering him with tchotchkes hadn’t been direct enough. I hadn’t seen him since then, although I’d picked up the phone more than once.

“Guess he survived our little encounter okay.” His eyes were focused on the spot where Reynolds had disappeared around the side of the building.

“You don’t sound too excited about that. What happened, anyway?”

Reynolds and Peter had both been gone when I returned with Harmony. I figured Peter had gone to help Makis. I’d expected to hear from Reynolds, with a warrant in his hand. I had kneed him in the groin: assault on a police officer. But I guess he got sidetracked, what with finding his serial killer with a six-inch-deep gash in his chest and all.

When he’d shown up today, I’d thought for sure he’d bring up our last meeting, but he hadn’t.

Maybe he was saving it to discuss over beer and brats.

“What did he tell you?” Peter asked.

I snapped my attention away from my musings. “Nothing. We hadn’t talked until just now.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets and wandered down a step-still far enough away I didn’t have to strain my neck too much to look up at him.

“I jumped on him. He fired and missed. I slapped his gun out of his hand, then ran up the stairs-back out the window.”

I nodded. Pretty much what I’d figured.

“So, you going with him?” he asked again.

I arched a brow. “I might.”

He walked closer then, sat down beside me, and stared out toward Monroe Street.

I faced the front too, placed my hands on Harmony’s notebook. Traffic was light today, but it was Sunday, not much going on.

“I can help you find your son, now that you know what happened to him.”

My fingers straightened, splayed out stark white against the notebook’s black cover. “Why?”

“It’s what I do.” He placed his forearms on his knees and laced his fingers together. “And I want to help…you.”

I didn’t reply for a while. Felt my breath entering and leaving my lungs, realized just how hard and cold the step was beneath my butt.

“You want your job back?” I asked.

“I hadn’t left. Check the schedule. I had the week off.”

I shook my head. Next time I’d have to throw something bigger at him, maybe my truck. “I haven’t forgiven you for Harmony. I don’t trust you.”

He slid his hands up and down his thighs. “I know, but you will. I’ll make sure of it.”

I looked at him, expecting to see a grin or at least a smile, but his expression was dead serious. “In the meantime, are you going to let me help you?”

I gripped Harmony’s notebook, thought about the little boy out there somewhere growing bigger every day. Days I’d never get back. “You can help.”

Then he smiled. “Good.”

And it was. It was all good. Things weren’t perfect, but they were out in the open-or as out as they were going to get for a while-and I had friends, family, and two men who seemed inexplicably willing to put up with my crap.

And somewhere I had a son. I couldn’t wait to meet him.