by Lori Devoti
“Damn. He’s gone.” She lowered the binoculars and glared at me. “Without the picture, we can’t prove anything.” Her hair was steel gray and she was carrying an extra forty pounds around the middle, and it didn’t seem to occur to her or bother her that I not only towered over her, I was holding an actual weapon.
The free end of the nunchakus rapped against my knuckles, and a muscle tightened in my jaw. “Who are you?” I asked, my arm still raised.
She glanced at my upraised arm and poked me in the chest. “Don’t be threatening me. We have every right to be here. Who are you?”
As she poked me, I realized she looked familiar . . . the woman I’d passed yesterday pulling out of the drive shared by the son and the camping trailer’s owner.
Her four companions closed ranks. They weren’t all as old as she was, or as heavy, but not a one was over five foot seven in height. And even though the expressions they laid on me were deadly, I knew they couldn’t be.
I lowered my arm. “You are lost.”
One in pink, wearing a pith helmet, shook her head. “Can’t be. The GPS says we are right where we planned to be.” She held out a small black box.
The numbers on the screen meant nothing to me.
She pointed at them. “Here, see? Longitude and latitude exactly. Right here.” She stamped her white-tennis-shoe-clad foot.
I reestablished my grip on the nunchakus. “Where you are is on private property. You need to leave.”
“Karen, you idiot. She’s right. That should be a three, not a five.” Binocular Lady punched Ms. Pink T-shirt in the arm. “We want to be over there.” She pointed to their right, toward the obelisk. They started to move.
I stepped in front of them. “No. You need to leave.”
Binocular Lady stepped up again. “Listen, the International Friends of the Birds gave us the coordinates for this location. And they were right. We spotted one.” She nodded her head as if that declaration said everything.
I pressed my lips together. “One what?”
They exchanged knowing glances. “We’ll be gone soon.” Binocular Lady tried to shove past me again.
I growled. I wasn’t used to dealing with humans, at least not humans who were as completely unintimidated by me as these women. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. If they had been other Amazons or sons, it would have been easy; I would have used the nunchakus that my hands itched to set free.
But six unarmed women dressed in shorts and pastel shirts with kittens and puppies on them? How exactly should I go about defending our property from them?
I copied her move; I placed my hand on her shoulder. I was tempted to put it on her forehead, but I resisted.
“You need to leave.” I put as much force into the words as I could muster, and annoyed as I was, that was quite a bit.
She rolled her eyes to the side, staring at my hand, then looked back at my face. “Maybe we did get off track, but there’s no harm in us just checking the location. We’ll be gone as soon as we do, right, ladies? The owl . . . he can’t have gone far.” Her eyebrows disappearing beneath gray bangs, she glanced at her crew. They nodded. As one unit, they closed in again until they formed a tight half circle in front of me. Then they turned their stares on me.
I looked back, from one to the other. None of them said a thing; they just stood there staring.
I leaned to one side, half expecting them to lean too.
Instead, Binocular Lady placed her hand on my arm and said, her voice deep, “We’ll only be a minute.”
I tapped my nunchakus against my thigh. “No.” Then completely out of patience, I grabbed her by the upper arm and quickstepped her toward the shortest route off our property.
“What? You should have—” She snapped her lips together.
I didn’t ask her what I should have. I didn’t care. My fingers still wrapped around her fleshy bicep, I looked over my shoulder at Karen. “Which way to your car?”
Eyes round, Karen pointed to the right. Within ten minutes we were at our property line. I jerked up the barbed-wire fence separating our acreage from the farmer next door’s field and motioned for them to belly crawl out of there. One by one they complied until only Binocular Lady was left.
I leaned down and hissed in her ear. “Owl or no owl, this is private property. Keep off of it.” Then I shoved her to the ground and waited as her friends on the other side helped tug her under. Before her feet cleared the wire, I dropped my hold on the fencing. The taut wire sung in response.
Without another word, I turned and stalked back to the path. We had never had much of a problem with trespassers . . . now two sons and a group of bird-watchers in less than two days.
I preferred the sons.
After leaving our visitors behind, I gave up my stroll.
I was almost to the house when something hit me from behind. I struck the ground hands first. The nunchakus dug into my palm, and my back screamed. I grunted and sprang back to my feet.
When I turned, the wolverine son, in his human form and fully dressed in a gray T-shirt and camouflage pants, was waiting.
“You destroyed my house,” he muttered.
“You mean that eyesore of a hovel? Was that yours? Who knew?” I kept the nunchakus hidden for now, held up behind my forearm.
He stepped to the left; I did the same.
He didn’t appear to be armed, but his pants were baggy with numerous pockets. There was no telling what he had hidden inside them.
“Where’s the baby?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I really underestimated you, or maybe overestimated. I can’t believe you are part of this. I really didn’t think you were such a sheep.”
“A sheep?”
“Is that your givnomai, Zery? You have Mary’s little lamb tattooed on your breast? Is that why you follow instructions so blindly?”
My temper flared. I raised my arm and let go of one side of the nunchakus. Spinning the weapon, I leapt toward him.
He jumped to the side, but not fast enough. The wooden club struck him in the side of the head. He grunted.
“Be careful. It wouldn’t do for a sheep to take down a wolverine.” I spun the rod and moved forward again, but my back had suffered from my last swing. The muscles there contracted, hard. I stumbled.
He bent at the waist and rushed toward me like a football player planning a tackle. Ignoring the pain shooting through my back, I slashed downward. The rod struck him again, but he didn’t stop. His shoulder hit me in the stomach. My feet left the ground and for a second we were airborne. We hit the ground with a thud.
He was on top, but only for a second. I grabbed his hair, jerked back his head, and pressed my thumb into his eye. The ache in my back encouraged me to push harder.
He cursed and flipped so we were both on our sides. The hand I’d been using to push against his eye became trapped under his head, my thumb no longer reaching his socket.
He twisted his face and bit me. Pain shot through my hand where his teeth had sunk into skin and muscle. Then before I could react, he shoved the side of my face into the earth. I inhaled dirt and dead grass, was forced to open my mouth to breathe.
I still held the nunchaku. I lifted my arm and swung down, aiming for his face and neck, but my efforts were weak. He reached for my attacking arm and grabbed me by the wrist.
My curse was swallowed by the earth.
I tried to twist my wrist free, but at the current angle and in my current condition, I couldn’t. So I resorted to the trick that had worked before; I lifted my knee and aimed for his groin.
He rolled again. My knee hit his thigh, but my face was free. I could breathe, which meant I could fight. I balled my fingers into a fist and smashed him in the nose.
He grinned. His face was stained with blood, mine and his, and he grinned.
I struck him again.
“Maybe a butterfly? Is that your givnomai? Your touch is so gentle . . . ”
Again he rolled, slinging one thigh over my legs as he did,
trying to hold me in place. I groped the ground as we rolled and my fingers found a rock. I concentrated on his taunts and slammed it into his skull.
This time his grip loosened.
I shoved him to the side and staggered to my feet.
My nunchakus were gone, but I still held the rock, and as he sprung up after me, I held it where he could see it.
“Nice,” he murmured. Blood flowed from his scalp an inch or so behind his temple. He touched two fingers to it. “But your aim was off. You want to kill me, you will have to try harder than that. I won’t lie still, helpless like a baby.” He stared at me, taunting me with his words.
“You won’t get away with it. The Amazons will hunt you down.”
“Really? Seems to me if that were true, I wouldn’t be standing here now.”
We were both moving now, slowly sidestepping around an invisible circle. My breath was ragged and a mix of sweat and dust coated my body. I wanted to cough or spit, to get some of the dirt that had found its way inside my mouth out. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I followed his example and smiled too. “I’ll rectify that soon enough.”
He grunted. “Threats. You forget you aren’t the first Amazon to try and kill me . . . there was my mother. Left me in a trash pile, in the snow. I survived. I’ll continue to survive, and I’ll do everything I can to stop the Amazons from destroying any more sons.”
“As if the sons were the innocent ones. I lost my lieutenant to a son last fall and two others—teen girls. We weren’t targeting him. We didn’t even know he existed.”
“One. One son. Are you saying the Amazons have no bad within them? That the tribe is so perfect one of your kind couldn’t do what that one son did? Go out on her own?”
I snorted at his ignorance. “Amazons have structure. We follow the high council. It is what has kept us strong.”
He stopped and placed his hand on his forehead. Then he laughed.
Anger flickered inside me. I tightened my fingers on the rock.
He shook his head and then held up a hand. “Enough.”
But I wasn’t done and I certainly wasn’t going to let him dictate when I would be.
I fingered the stone. It was rough and jagged, as if it had broken off from a bigger mass rather than having been formed on its own, it edges worn off by erosion and time. I found the sharpest point. Then I lunged.
He grabbed me by the wrist and stared down at me, his dark eyes snapping. “I’m not giving you the baby. You need to accept that, and if I think you are close to finding that baby, or harming another infant, I will forget my job is only to watch and report.”
I swung my free fist.
He grabbed it too.
We stared at each other as if trapped in some kind of unwelcome dance. Then he jerked me toward him, twisted my arms behind my back, and lowered his face to mine.
My mouth opened to yell curses, but his lips were already over mine. Wisely he kept his tongue out of reach of my teeth. I snapped my jaws together and arched my body, trying to escape.
My inability to do so was infuriating.
I twisted my face to the side, the curses he’d stopped began flowing from my mouth, and I bucked my body against his. Somehow he moved my wrists to just one of his hands and reached into one of those pockets I’d worried about when he first arrived. Realizing he was going for something he intended to use against me, I slammed my foot down on the top of his. He grimaced but didn’t drop his hold. Instead he twisted toward me again, something silver shining in his hand.
A gun or a knife . . . I put everything I had into the struggle, forgot my pain, forgot everything but attaining freedom. I rammed my knee into his thigh over and over, turned toward him so my mouth was level with his shoulder, and bit down as hard and viciously as I could.
I was rewarded with the warm taste of blood through his T-shirt, but as quickly as the moment of success came, it was gone. There was a snap and cold metal closed around my wrists.
He shoved me to the ground.
I panted for breath, my mind whirling, wondering how with only my feet free, I could kill him.
It was little reward, but he was winded too. His chest heaved. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth as if scrubbing the area where our lips had touched.
Then he turned and headed off in a lope. Six feet away he stopped and called back. “Don’t be a sheep, Zery. Be headstrong and stupid if you must, but don’t be a sheep.”
I let out a yell and scrambled to my feet, but he was already gone.
Chapter 6
It was another long walk back to the farmhouse. I had tried to remove the cuffs on my own, but the son had snapped them tight and all I got for my efforts were scrapes to add to my already torn palm where he had bitten me. So I was forced to walk back to camp cuffed.
And the yard was full. Areto was running the warriors through their exercises, Lao had the hearth-keepers on the front porch tying bundles of herbs together, and Thea was sitting under the oak next to Sare. Today she was carving fetishes. As I approached, Thea held a falcon up to the sun. When she saw me, she dropped it onto the girl’s lap.
I walked past her. “Lao, meet me in the kitchen.”
The hearth-keeper took care of minor home repairs. She was my best bet for picking the lock.
“What happened?” Thea, of course. Alcippe, for all our disagreements, understood when I didn’t want to talk.
My new high priestess, however, seemed clueless in this arena, or more likely she just didn’t give a damn.
Lao had stood and was brushing bits of herb off her hands. When Thea asked her question, the hearth-keeper scowled. Mumbling, she stepped over a stack of lavender and tromped toward me.
“There should be a paper clip in the junk drawer. Should do the trick.”
Without answering Thea’s question or even glancing at her, I followed the hearth-keeper.
“Zery,” Thea called. “You had a call earlier. I told her you were out. Her name was Mel. Isn’t that your friend? The one who is out of town for a long time . . . ?”
My shoulders lowered. I stared at the safe-house door, scuffed and badly in need of a fresh coat of paint.
I didn’t know why Mel had called. She wasn’t supposed to be back in Madison until tonight. Maybe she had called from Michigan. No matter, I didn’t have to explain anything to Thea.
I kept walking. I was still going to Madison tomorrow and I still wasn’t taking Thea with me.
She would just have to deal with it.
I followed Lao. Behind me Thea cleared her throat
My strides strong, I stepped over the threshold.
My back spasmed.
I hesitated, feeling almost as if I had been poked.
I looked back. Thea still stood where I had last seen her, her arms hanging loose at her sides and a challenge on her face.
I kept walking.
Lao picked the lock on the handcuffs, then gave me a rag to run over my face while she got some medicine for my hand. I tried to wave her off, but she jerked my palm toward her and used her chest to cradle my hand as she dabbed medicine on the wound.
“Don’t know what bit you and I’m not asking to know, but there’s no reason to walk around torn up.”
After that I didn’t fight her. I just sat quietly as she put a piece of gauze over the wound and wrapped a bandage crosswise over my palm—not that different from how a pugilist wraps her hands before a fight.
She opened and closed my fingers, in and out of a fist. “Fine, won’t even slow you down.” She thumped on the table with her open palm, stood, and gathered up her supplies. She looked at the cuffs for a second before holding them out to me. “You probably have more use for these than I do.”
Chuckling, she shook her head and dropped them in my lap. Despite her humor, the gesture reminded me of Thea dropping the fetish in the artisan’s lap. I stared at them for a second. When I looked up, Lao was watching me; her eyes were serious.
“Best get out t
here.”
I waited, thinking she would say more, but apparently she was done. First aid kit in hand, she walked from the room.
Best get out there. Four simple words. She could have said them any day, but for some reason I didn’t think she’d said them casually today.
I pushed back my chair and headed out into the yard.
Thea was sitting beside Areto. I’d say she was whispering in her ear, but that was more a feeling than fact. As I stepped off the porch, both stared at me as if expecting something—an explanation, I guessed.
It was a fair expectation. I didn’t arrive at camp in handcuffs too often. Unfortunately for them I wasn’t feeling driven to be particularly fair at the moment.
“There were women in the woods earlier,” I said, addressing Areto. “I expect them to come back. Set up some patrols starting now and keep them going until I say to stop.”
“Through the night?” Thea asked.
“Go,” I said to Areto. She nodded and trotted off.
“What kind of women were they?” Thea took a moment; she seemed to be inspecting me. I still looked rough; I hadn’t bothered washing anything except my face with Lao’s rag. I hadn’t even bothered looking in a mirror. So I didn’t know exactly how rough I looked, and I didn’t care.
“Bird-watchers.” Down by the barn Areto had gathered the warriors. I turned to join them.
As I walked away, Thea followed.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” The question didn’t come across as pushy, more bored curiosity.
However, I wasn’t much in the mood for sharing.
The warriors stood in a row. Two were probably my age; two were older. Bern cracked her knuckles as I approached. She was pushing two hundred, in both pounds and years. Her skin was cocoa colored but her eyes were bright green, like new grass. The contrast alone made her stand out. Add her size, how she carried herself, and the fact that she’d chosen to dye her hair bright red, and just looking at her would cause most humans to cross the street. It was why I had assigned her the job of backup when we had gone to steal the baby from the sons.
“Put Bern on the dusk shift.” I figured the birders were looking for the same owl I’d seen right before I stumbled upon them. Most people thought of owls as being nocturnal and many were, but I’d seen mine not long after dawn, which probably meant he was one of the few who preferred the grayer skies of dawn and dusk.
