by Лори Девоти
Bubbe stood behind them, her lips pursed and disapproval in her eyes. Beside her was Mel's mother, Cleo. The older warrior mouthed "stay" in warning.
My world clicked back into place. The pain wasn't gone and neither was the anger, but seeing Mel's family, knowing they would both support me and punish me if I stepped out of line, reminded me of who I was and why I had to be strong and in control-why I had to be queen.
Things moved fast after that. The police broke the crowd into small groups, sending gawkers on their way while trying to corral those of us actually involved. I saw Bern in the back of the crowd beyond the front of the gym and motioned for her to leave.
A police officer approached her, and after a last glance at me she shook her head, denying she'd witnessed anything. He waved her toward the street behind us and she stalked off.
She wouldn't go far; I knew that. But the fewer of us involved even slightly from the police's point of view in this mess the better.
The police never got around to questioning me. I'm not sure why, but I suspected Bubbe had a hand in it. While the police were occupied clearing out the crowd, she'd walked in a wide circle around me and Jack, murmuring.
As the two officers who'd tried to question me earlier finished their crowd duties, a new group of police arrived. The first two turned as if to point at me, then stopped and stared at each other instead. They glanced at me again, then shook their heads.
I wasn't sure if they couldn't see me anymore or just didn't remember me, but either worked. I squatted down on the dirt next to Jack and waited for the human part of this drama to play out.
"What happened? Where did the women go?" I asked, my voice low. I wasn't sure how strong whatever spell Bubbe had woven was. I didn't want to do anything to draw attention to myself, at least not as long as it appeared Mel and her family had the situation under control.
"They got spooked. They didn't know what they were dealing with."
Amazons. They didn't know they were dealing with Amazons, but if that was true, why were they here at all? I didn't recognize either of them, but they looked like the birders. There had to be a connection.
The thought was there and then it was gone. The police were photographing my mother's body where it lay in the stairwell.
"She shouldn't be dead," I murmured. Two humans against two Amazons and a son. How had we lost?
"We accomplished what she wanted. They didn't get your brother or Pisto."
His words held little comfort for me. My mother, who had survived fights with legendary warriors, had been felled by two gray-haired women with guns.
I stared at Jack for a second, my anger shifting to him. He sold guns, could have sold the ones those women used. .
He laid his hand on my knee. His skin was warm, almost burning. "She chose to draw their fire."
Still angry, I glared. "Why?"
"Why did you charge them in the first place?"
Because it was what I did. I hadn't made a conscious choice; I'd just done it.
I licked my lips and shifted my attention to my mother's body, now removed from the rubble. A man and a woman squatted next to her, examining her. They had found the gunshot wound.
I looked back at Jack. "Who were they? Do you know them? Did you sell them their guns?"
Shock showed on his face; he shook his head. "No. I didn't-know them or sell to them."
I let that set in, waited to see if my anger lessened. Finally it did. He was on my side. Because of my past, I might not agree with how he made his money, but it didn't mean he was responsible for my mother's death.
I nodded, letting him know I accepted his answer.
He nodded his too. We were in agreement, focused on the same puzzle. "Do you know them?"
"Maybe." I told him about the birders and the two women I'd found at the safe camp when I'd returned from Madison.
I stared at him, willing him to see an answer I didn't. "Why would two old human birders, if they even were part of the group I confronted, try and steal babies here?"
"Revenge?"
"Because they think I killed the birder Bern found?" My nunchakus had been used to kill her. Another birder could have found her first, seen the weapon, and recognized it as mine, but then why not go to the police? Why follow me to Mel's and take two infants? It made no sense.
Unless, while roaming our woods, they had heard something? Did they know more about the Amazons than they should? Had they heard the baby was in Madison and realized he was important to us? Did they plan to use him to get us to do something for them?
It was as logical an answer as anything else I could come up with.
"The babies. . " Jack began, but I stopped listening.
I'd been so focused on why the birders were here, I hadn't thought of what might have happened before, how they got the children in the first place. I'd also forgotten my mother wasn't the only mother who would fight to the death for her child.
Forgetting I was keeping a low profile, I jumped to my feet. "Dana. Where's Dana?"
Mel raced toward me. "Keep still. We're almost done with them." She nodded back over her shoulder. The police were questioning Bubbe now. It was obvious from the expression of strained patience on the officers' faces it wasn't going well.
"The"-I hesitated for a second, not sure what to call them-"birders. . women had two babies. One was Pisto, wasn't it?" I asked.
"Yes. He's with Mandy."
I nodded; that was part of my concern. I hadn't seen Dana. I'd lost my lieutenant last fall; if I lost her sister too. . "Is she okay? Was she with them?" I tried to sound calm and in control but knew by the understanding expression on Mel's face that I'd failed.
"Dana wasn't here. She took Lao to a neighbor's. We trade produce with them. She heard the explosion, though-everyone did." Mel grimaced.
Tonight's happenings were going to cause a lot of problems for my friend. She tried hard to blend with humans. Attention like her shop was getting tonight would not be welcomed. But she seemed mostly unflustered by it. She smoothed her hands over her shorts, getting more dirt on them than she removed. "You said birders. Who are they?"
"I don't know. I'm not even sure they are birders, but the coincidence. . " I told her the same story I'd told Jack minutes earlier.
"Could they be Amazons?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No." There was nothing about the women that said Amazon. "But. . " I explained my theory that they might think Bern or I were involved in the other woman's death, that they might have followed us.
"But why take the babies?"
I shook my head. "I have no idea."
"Opportunity?" Jack suggested.
"They came into the basement and found the babies unattended and took them thinking they'd make good bargaining chips?" Mel asked.
"And the rest was just coincidence? The fire and explosion outside too?" It seemed too much to me.
"No." Jack again. "I don't believe in coincidence. The explosion was planned. They wanted us to be doing something else. It's why I came around here in the first place.
"Blowing up a line of trees. . " He snorted. "Who would do that?"
"Teenagers, according to the police. Apparently there's been a group of them vandalizing fences and businesses lately." Mel's face was devoid of expression.
"And I guess these teenagers may have gotten scared and shot when Zery's mother came out of the basement?" Jack asked.
Mel shrugged. "Not an accusation I would make."
"And if they find a suspect?"
She smiled. "I don't think they will get their man."
"Why not describe the real shooters? We've decided they can't be Amazons." Jack's suggestion. I knew the answer.
Mel looked at me. Jack did too.
"Because we don't want them arrested." We wanted them dead.
Mel's eyes flickered. I wasn't sure what my friend who had left the tribe a decade earlier was thinking. The old Mel would understand, the new one? I didn't know, but she hadn't told
the police about the women. For now I'd take that as a sign she was on my side.
She twisted her lips to the side. "We do need to find them. They weren't hurt, were they?"
"The one, maybe. The bird attacked her. The other. . I don't think so." Either way, both had managed to escape and quickly.
"We could check the hospitals," she offered, but she didn't sound convinced and I wasn't either. If I had just set a line of trees on fire and shot someone, I wouldn't be heading to the hospital unless absolutely necessary. And I didn't think either of the women were that hurt, if at all. Still. . "When Lao gets back with Dana, I can send her. She will blend better than the rest of us."
With that avenue, unlikely as it was, covered we returned to our conversation.
"Maybe we just need to break this down more," Mel suggested. "Zery, what happened exactly, when you ran around here? Why'd you run around here?" There was a groove between Mel's eyes. I could see she was working as hard as I was to make sense out of what had happened.
I glanced at Jack.
He shifted his jaw to the side. "The sons have watched the Amazons for a long time now. We know how you think."
Despite the fact we seemed to be working together at the moment, I didn't appreciate his view that the Amazons could be so easily pegged.
"That told you to catapult around the building?" I asked my voice dry.
He nodded. "There was no obvious reason to set that fire, or to sound the explosion. No real damage was done. No one was hurt. So why do it?"
Mel released a noise from the back of her throat. "To divert our attention."
Jack and I had already had this conversation. I tapped my toe, impatient for us to move on to something that would bring my mother's killers into arm's reach.
Jack touched the tip of his nose. "What was here someone wanted?"
"The baby." Me this time. "But we've been over that. Unless they heard us talking and knew the baby was important to us, there was no real reason to target him."
He shrugged. "I didn't know your birders would be here. I was just thinking of what wasn't where we were."
He looked at Mel. "Do you know how they got the babies? That might tell us something. Would they have been hidden somewhere, or could they have just stumbled over them?"
Mel rolled her lips into her mouth. "Scy, Dana, or Bubbe was with them all the time, but Dana, as I said, was gone, and when she heard the explosion, Bubbe came up to help me."
Leaving my mother alone. But my mother should have been enough. Two humans shouldn't have been able to get past her.
Mel continued, "Bubbe said the babies were asleep when she left, alone with Scy in Mother's workout room."
"So they got the babies away from my mother somehow."
Mel nodded, looking unsettled. "Or lured her out and stole them while she was gone."
I looked at Jack. We had seen the birders. We let them go past us. We could have stopped them, stopped everything.
He moved his head slightly, telling me there was no reason to explain that, that it didn't change the outcome.
I bit back the confession, but it boiled and churned inside my stomach, mixed with the rest of the guilt stewing there.
"When I came around the corner, my mother was in the stairwell. The birders warned her to stay put, but she didn't."
Mel smiled. "She was a warrior."
"And a mother." I'd seen Mel when she thought someone had killed her son. I'd thought the crazed emotion that had overtaken her was a Mel thing, but now I realized my mother had felt it too. It made me uncomfortable, wondering if I'd misjudged her all along. I'd never had to balance being on the high council with raising a future queen. Maybe she'd cared for me more than I knew.
Or maybe I just wanted to believe that now that she was gone.
"What happened then? Did you see where the birders went? If there was anyone else with them?" Mel asked.
I shook my head. The dirt had provided a perfect cover for their getaway.
"This was not all some strange coincidence. We have to assume they wanted the babies. That this was all planned."
My lips thinned as I pondered my next move.
I wanted to revenge my mother's death, but every moment the high council's rule to kill infant sons stood, a baby might die. Which would my mother think was more important?
I forced my mind to focus, to push emotion aside. The answer was obvious; my mother had died trying to save two infants. If I let even one die now, it would be an insult to everything she'd been trying to accomplish.
Somehow I had to do what my mother had failed to do. I had to change the high council's rule.
And then I'd kill the bitches who took her life.
Chapter 16
As soon as the decision firmed in my head, I began moving forward. Mel grabbed me.
"You can't leave."
"My mother is dead. There's no reason for me to stay here."
"What about your brother?" she asked.
I blinked, confused for a moment. Then realization hit me. . the baby. My mother had been caring for him. Would that responsibility fall to me now? I stiffened. A child wasn't in my plans, never had been.
"His father will take him." Jack watched us, his eyes moving back and forth in his face.
His father. . I looked at Jack. "The man helping. . with the concrete." Jack had told me the bird was the baby's father, but somehow once I'd put my mother into the picture, I'd forgotten him.
He nodded. "He met Scy a few years ago. She didn't know he was a son at first."
"But she did before she got pregnant." No one had said it, but I knew it was true. My mother had wanted her children to be strong. . the strongest. She had wanted it for me and she would want it for this child too. What better way than to give him a son as a father?
Jack's gaze dropped for a second, but then rose. "I don't know when she found out. Mateo hasn't told me."
Mateo. He didn't like me; it was obvious from how he looked at me. It made me wonder what my mother had told him about me. . Then I remembered he knew me not as my mother's daughter but as the queen who had hunted and, he thought, tried to kill his child.
I stared at Jack, unsure how I felt about turning the baby my mother had been so determined to save over to a son who hated me. I shouldn't care. If asked, it's what I would have said was the best solution. . give our male children to the sons who wanted them. . but now faced with it. . it felt wrong.
I pressed the pads of my fingers into the heels of my hands. I couldn't afford to quibble about it now. Even if I knew word one about caring for an infant, I couldn't do what I had to do with a baby strapped to my back. Maybe my mother could have, but I wasn't her.
I accepted Jack's proposal with silence and looked back at Mel.
"My mother's position on the high council is open. She couldn't convince them that things need to change, but maybe someone else can."
"You would try to get on the council?" There was reservation in Mel's voice. I knew what she was thinking-the council was the enemy-but according to what my mother had told me, they weren't.
But I wasn't a queen. I wasn't sure where I stood with the Amazons right now. To think of joining the council was ludicrous.
That didn't mean, however, that I couldn't try to open their eyes to the fact that the sons weren't their only enemy. It might be enough to convince them killing infants wouldn't keep them safe from attack.
I returned my focus to Jack. "Will you help me find the birders?"
Confusion flitted across Mel's face. "I thought-"
But Jack held my gaze. "I will."
He knew what I was asking. I didn't know how he knew when Mel didn't, but that didn't matter right now, what did is that he'd agreed to be my ally. He'd agreed to fight my enemy.
The Amazons, some at least, would respect that. Another plus in my case to not demonize the sons.
I shifted my attention back to Mel. "I need Bubbe to tell me where the council meets." Years ago, years before
Mel had left the tribe, Bubbe had been on the high council, and even if they didn't meet in the same place, I'd never met a priestess more powerful than my friend's grandmother. She could find the council; if she had to ask Artemis herself, she could find them.
Mel's face was grim. It was obvious she didn't agree with what I planned to do. I wasn't sure why-if it was her general hatred of the council or her lack of faith in me. It didn't matter. I had already made my decision.
"You won't get ten feet from where you stand. You move out of this circle and Bubbe's ward will be broken. It's anchored to you, but it won't move with you. The police will remember who you are and why they wanted to talk to you, and they won't look kindly on you leaving without doing it."
Behind Jack, two men lifted my mother's body and placed it in a dark zippered bag. My throat tightened.
"Get Bubbe. She can hurry them on their way."
Mel's lips were pressed into such a flat line now that I could barely see them. Finally she spat out, "They tried to kill her, Mel. Your mother didn't tell you everything. She didn't want you to know, she wanted you to keep your love of the damned tribe, but the council tried to kill her. She had to leave, they were going to kill her son and her if she didn't."
Mel's revelation should have surprised me, but it didn't. I'd already accepted that I didn't know the tribe like I thought I did. .
But the tribe was still the tribe, and I still loved them enough I was willing to die to protect them, even from themselves.
* * *
The police continued to measure and photograph. Then the media showed up. Shootings weren't common in Madison. It was a blessing, though. It drew the police's attention and made it easy for me to step away-even without Bubbe's help.
Back inside Mel's shop, we gathered and discussed our plan.
Jack called the bird son, my half brother's father and my mother's lover. He was at an art shop owned by Makis, the son confined to a wheelchair, but immediately agreed to return to take charge of the baby. Jack went to get him so he could arrive in his human form, clothed. He left the baby with us. I insisted. I was willing for the bird man to watch him, but I wasn't handing him over totally. Not yet.
