Amazon Queen

by Lori Devoti

  He laughed. “One short two-hundred-year or so break. What? I’m supposed to give the Amazons an award? I don’t think so.”

  “I wasn’t asked to kill the baby, only to retrieve him.” I didn’t mention that I had been told the child was a girl. It would only strengthen the son’s case that the council had planned to have the baby killed.

  “Would you have?” he asked.

  I jerked, startled by his question.

  “It’s a simple question, Zery. If the council had told you the baby was the son of a son and a high-council member. If they had told you they wanted him dead. Would you have killed him?”

  I stared at the road in front of me . . . black, straight, and unending. I didn’t know how to answer him. I hadn’t questioned when I was told to take the child . . . what would I have done if I’d been told to kill him?

  A chill passed over me. I felt sick.

  “What will you do with him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s Mateo’s son. I assume he’ll raise him.”

  “And the mother?”

  “I haven’t asked.”

  A sort of truce between us, we fell silent for a while. I watched the road disappear beneath the car. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the council didn’t want to kill the child; maybe they just wanted to make sure he wasn’t raised by the sons.

  The sons were dangerous. They were, if they chose to be, a threat. The child did have the potential to be powerful.

  Did we want that power being raised in the hands of our enemy?

  But then that would mean Amazons keeping their sons, raising them alongside their daughters. That would mean the end of who and what we were.

  More confused than ever, I gripped the wheel and wished I was back at the camp sparring with Areto, not sitting here being forced to face that this baby signified a lot more than just his own tiny life.

  Jack tapped the pen against the heel of his hand. “All babies are important. All life is important. Do you believe that?”

  Finally I answered, “Amazon life.” It was the simple answer, pat.

  He sat silent for a second, then he replied, “I don’t believe you.”

  “You should.” Amazons lived too long. Saw too much death. It didn’t pay for us to value any life besides our own.

  “Because humans come and go?” he asked.

  I nodded. Came and went. Been there, done that.

  “Who?”

  The questions were going somewhere I didn’t like, somewhere I didn’t want to go.

  “You ever been in love, Zery?”

  I reached for the radio, to turn it on. He grabbed my hand. “Tell me your secret and I’ll tell you mine.”

  I glanced at him. “All of yours?”

  His fingers were warm on my skin. I wanted to pull back but didn’t let myself.

  He tilted his head. “Most. As long as it doesn’t endanger anyone I love.” His eyes flickered.

  I swallowed. Why not tell him my story? It had happened a lifetime ago; it wasn’t important, not anymore. The girl it happened to didn’t even exist anymore. Give him this, make him think I trusted him, and he’d give me more. I pulled my fingers away from the radio knob. He let me.

  “Once,” I replied. “I was young and stupid . . . sixteen. A baby in Amazon years. We were living in Arkansas and my friend Mel was in California. I was all alone, or felt that way.

  “It was hot that year, really hot, and before most people had air-conditioning. I spent my days swimming in the local springs, and I met a boy. Mother was too busy doing whatever she was doing to pay attention to me, and I was too old for the hearth-keepers to manage—to keep me on track with the warrior training my mother thought I was doing.

  “He was young too, and even more stupid. He started gambling—there was a lot of gambling in Hot Springs then, and prostitution and bootlegging. The place had it all. Made for an exciting time.” I wiped sweat off my palms onto the steering wheel. I hadn’t told this story in a long time, not since I’d told Mel . . . seventy-three years ago.

  “What happened?”

  I didn’t look at him. I felt silly telling the tale; it was so long ago . . . didn’t matter.

  I licked my lips. “We went out and gambled, even though we knew we’d gone over our limits. When they pushed us to pay, we ran. It was fun, a rush—until they started shooting.”

  I looked at him then, could feel the deadness in my own eyes. “It isn’t like they show in the movies; isn’t glamorous at all. Bullets hurt, and the noise . . . ” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I got him into the car and got us away. We’d both been hit, but I’m an Amazon. I heal fast. He wasn’t and he didn’t.”

  The son was quiet for a second, then, “And after seventy-plus years, you still have the scars.”

  Surprise and suspicion shook me out of the cloud that had settled around me. “How’d you know?” I reached across my body and touched the scars hidden under my shirt where the bullets had gone through my side.

  His gaze dropped to my hand, then moved back to my face. “Not those, the other ones, the ones you hide from everyone, even yourself.”

  I put my eyes back on the road. “Tell me about the guns,” I bit out.

  “What guns?”

  “The ones in your cabin.”

  “The cabin you blew up?”

  “I did not blow up your cabin. You know who blew up your cabin.”

  “Really? You?”

  I’d wanted to change the subject away from me, but this conversation was beginning to feel like a tennis match, and I was almost overcome by a desire to smash the ball back over the net—to flatten it, actually.

  “I told you a secret. One I haven’t told anyone for a long time. Now it’s your turn. Tell me about the guns.”

  He inhaled with long exaggerated patience. “I don’t know anything about any guns—at least not at my cabin.”

  It was my turn to breathe, and struggle to remain calm. “When we went to your cabin . . . before you blew it up and tried to kill me . . . I looked inside the window. There were guns, most in boxes. What were they for? What do the sons plan to do with them?”

  He leaned back. “Guns? Really? In my cabin?” His expression was studied innocence. Then he raised his hands. “Sorry. A guy has to make a living.”

  “By selling guns?”

  He shrugged. “That’s so much worse than stealing and conning?”

  “A picked pocket never killed anyone.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Do you research your victims? Know that they don’t need that last dollar to feed their families? Pay for some medication?” He leaned back against the door, looking superior. “Don’t judge me, Zery. In a moral battle, right now you are going to lose.”

  He twisted his lips to the side, thinking. “Actually, though, I’m surprised they were still there. That whoever”—he glanced at me—“blew up my cabin didn’t take them first.”

  “You’re insinuating we would take them?” I laughed. “Amazons don’t do guns, don’t do technology in general.”

  “Yeah, I know. Rather stupid of you, actually.”

  We passed a sign saying an exit was coming up in one mile. I got into the right-hand lane.

  My passenger had worn out his use. It was time to get rid of him.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” His expression said he did, or at least didn’t regret doing so.

  “I can see that. What I can’t see is how driving you back to my camp will be of any benefit to me.”

  He placed a hand on my forearm. Since I was driving, I didn’t jerk away, just waited, tense.

  “Sorry. I’m being honest; just maybe not as serious as I need to be. Go ahead. Pull over. Maybe it’s time we had a real talk.”

  A real talk . . . made me wonder what spilling my guts before had been.

  I took the next exit. At a deserted roadside park, I stopped the Jeep, and without speaking we both got out.

  We took up positions on opposite sides of a bird-dr
opping-adorned picnic table.

  He leaned forward, placing his forearms on the table as he did. The sleeve of his T-shirt pulled up, revealing the bottom half of his wolverine tattoo. I made a concentrated effort not to stare at it. My fingers curved toward my palm; I wanted to lean across the table and touch the animal—see if I could feel the difference between his givnomai and mine, feel why his gave him the power to shift and mine didn’t.

  “Maybe you’ll feel more comfortable if I tell you a little more about myself. As I said, I’m Jack Parker. I’m one hundred and twenty years old and I’ve known I was a son since I was twenty-two and shifted for the first time.”

  My eyes widened. “But your tattoo—?” I thought the tattoo gave the sons the power to shift, but if the shift came first . . .

  He lifted his sleeve, completely revealing the wolverine. It was the first time I’d seen it clearly and up close. It was colored exactly like he was when in the animal’s form and looked just as intimidating with its lips curled and its teeth clearly visible. My fingers twitched; I hid them under the table. He gave me an appraising look. I had the uncomfortable feeling he knew of my disturbing need to touch his art.

  “Got it when I was eighteen. I had no idea the guy who volunteered to give me a free tattoo was a son. Didn’t know sons existed.” He turned to the side and leaned toward me. “Go ahead.”

  I looked past him, as if his suggestion was insulting.

  He smiled and pulled down his sleeve. “The offer,” he whispered, “is always open.”

  I ignored the tingle that went from my fingers down to my toes—at least enough to keep a look of bored impatience on my face.

  He patted his arm where the wolverine was now hidden under his shirt, then continued. “The night I shifted five sons revealed themselves to me—got pretty torn up in the process too.” He caught my gaze. “Them, not me, nothing like a frightened wolverine who doesn’t have enough sense to know he’s a wolverine. Bad news.”

  “Why make you one, then? Whoever gave you the art had the choice, right?” I tried not to look too interested, but I couldn’t help myself, I was. The sons were little more than myth to us, and a new one at that. To have one sit down and reveal so much . . . it was seductive. I stiffened, realizing that sometime during the conversation I’d relaxed, let down my guard.

  Aware now, I looked around and checked to make sure there was no one or thing in sight. A squirrel skittered up a tree; grabbed my attention.

  Jack laughed. “Not one of mine.”

  I shot a stare at him. “How do I know? How do you know?”

  He shrugged. “Just do. It’s the magic; I can feel it. I’m surprised you can’t.”

  I paused. “All the time or just when they shift?”

  He studied me for a second. “I think that’s something you should figure out on your own.”

  For a moment I thought he was going to do it then, change into his wolverine form, but he just smiled and patted the table with his flattened palm. “In answer to your question, I asked for a wolverine. The artist didn’t prompt me or give me choices, just asked of all the animals in the world which one appealed to me, which one I’d want to know better.”

  “And you picked a comic-book character. Too bad you weren’t a fan of Spider-Man.”

  “Think you would have crushed me?”

  “Right under my boot.”

  The air between us grew tense; I could feel energy bouncing between us. Anger. Impatience. Then he laughed.

  “Doesn’t work that way, and you know it. I didn’t pick a wolverine out of a comic; comics didn’t exist yet. I simply was meant to be a wolverine or I wouldn’t have chosen him.”

  I still wished he’d picked a spider, with my feelings for the arachnid, there would have been dual pleasure in stomping him out of existence. But he hadn’t and I was stuck with him as he was.

  “So,” I prompted, “the sons found you and what? You started working for them?”

  “Not for them. It’s not a job.”

  “What is it?” They weren’t Amazons. They didn’t have our history, weren’t a tribe with a high council.

  “It’s . . . ” He frowned and shook his head. “It’s who I am, my history.”

  I snorted. “What history? You said it yourself, you didn’t even know you were a son until you were twenty-two. What kind of history is that?”

  He scowled. “You’re a snob. Did you know that?”

  A snob? I drove a ten-year-old Jeep I didn’t even own and shared a house with, at times, twelve women. I had very little besides my underwear that belonged totally to me. Even it at times got mixed in with others in the wash and wound up on another body.

  Reading my expression, he added, “Or maybe the term is elitist. You think Amazons are the only beings worthy of walking this earth. The rest of us are just annoyances in your oh-so-grand existence.”

  He made it sound, well, bad. I narrowed my eyes. “I haven’t seen a lot of evidence to the contrary.”

  “Of course not. You don’t mingle with anyone else, not unless you are setting them up to steal from them.”

  “And sons don’t steal? What about the car you left behind at the rest stop? I’m thinking if it was yours, you wouldn’t have abandoned it so freely.”

  He acknowledged my observation with a tilt of his head. “True, but I don’t just see humans as something put here to prop up my position in the world.” He stopped then and smiled like he’d just made some new discovery. “That’s it; that’s how you do it. You only allow yourselves to see humans as tools; you don’t get to know them, not as people.”

  “I did, once.”

  “And look how that turned out . . . ” He laughed. “You, my queen, are a mess.”

  Angry, I placed my palms on the lip of the table and straightened my arms. “I’m not your queen.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  The energy was back . . . thick, angry, and throbbing.

  Chapter 10

  I stood, my hands fisted. I had my belt buckle knife and the belt itself, but my anger was more basic than that. I needed to pummel something or someone with my bare fists.

  Jack, however, didn’t stand. He just sat at the table and glowered.

  I waited, my feet braced.

  He bit the inside of his cheek and stared. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t deny the sons and expect us to recognize your authority. You have no authority with us.”

  I flexed my hands. His refusal to engage physically was frustrating; it made me feel awkward standing there, waiting to fight an enemy who refused to fight back.

  I spun and paced toward the Jeep.

  “Don’t you want to know the rest? Don’t you want to know what I know about the Amazons?”

  I stopped and turned slowly, gravel grinding under my foot. Taking a cue from Jack, I gritted my teeth, tamped down my anger, and sat.

  He stared at me for a moment. I could see I’d misjudged. He was angry also. It simmered in his dark eyes, not just anger but a threat too. Like he was one straw away from losing control and wanted me to know it.

  Squaring my shoulders, I lifted my chin and let him know I met his challenge. “What do you know, or think you know, about the Amazons?”

  He flattened his hands. “More than I want to.”

  The anger pulsed between us for another second, then seemed to sputter and die. He huffed out a breath and glanced down. When he looked back up, the darker emotion was gone, replaced by resolve. “As I said, we have sons outside all of the Amazon safe camps. We have sons watching as many Amazons as we can—including the high council.”

  Not believing him, I smiled. “Really? The high council? And how exactly are you watching all these other Amazons? You follow them from town to town? You don’t think Amazons would notice if the same tattooed guy showed up everywhere they did?”

  “Amazons are like whales, geese . . . all migrating animals. You’ve been doing the same things forever. You travel the same routes. Work the
same jobs.” He lifted a shoulder with arrogant ease. “You’re predictable. We don’t have to follow you around. You come to us, over and over.”

  I moved my jaw to the side.

  He leaned forward. “You work at carnivals. We work at carnivals. You visit fairs. We set up fairs. Everywhere you are; so are we.”

  It was a struggle not to let emotion show. We were watched, everywhere . . . for how long? “The farmer’s market?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Someone direct you to your spot today? Buy some tomatoes? It’s really not that hard.”

  My first thought was that I’d have to tell Lao, that we’d have to find some other way to make money. Then I saw how Jack was watching me, the knowing expression on his face.

  There was no other way. There was no avoiding them.

  “What about the high council?” I asked. Honestly, I didn’t even know where they met. The group wasn’t like a safe camp. They didn’t live all together, and the location of their meetings changed from time to time. I assumed they went to various state campgrounds, but honestly didn’t know. As far as I knew, only the high-council members themselves did.

  He tapped the pads of each of his fingers against the tabletop, one after the other. Made me wonder what he’d done with his pen—if he was missing it.

  “What if I told you the high council knew about us, was working with us?”

  “I’d say you were a liar.”

  “How many Amazons are on the council, Zery?”

  I could see he knew the answer. I didn’t bother answering.

  “Twelve, right? And to get on the council you have to be what? Weak? Nonopinionated? Not an Amazon?” One corner of his mouth lifted. “You think they all get along? All agree? You think just because you hear the ‘final’ decision that there wasn’t talk of doing something different before that?”

  To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it at all. “The final decision is all that matters,” I said, my voice calm, bordering on bored.

  “Really? You think that?”

  I didn’t like the way he was watching me, didn’t like what his slightly amused expression meant.

  “I do,” I replied, keeping my face straight, confident.