Amazon Queen (5 page)

First, though, I needed to track down my new high priestess. I walked through the living room. Except for the two threadbare couches and a few dirty coffee mugs and plates, the room was empty. The front door, however, stood open.

Thea stood in the yard with her hands raised above her head. Her hair was wet and her dark curls glistened in the early-morning sun, but it was the expression on her upturned face that stopped me. Her eyes were closed, as you would expect with the sun streaming down on her, but she still looked rapt, like she was soaking in the rays, recharging, growing stronger before my eyes.

For some reason, I found the idea disturbing. I stepped onto the porch.

Most of the other occupants of the house had formed a half circle around the new priestess. When I walked out the door, they turned faces filled with curiosity and a bit of wariness toward me.

I suddenly felt out of place—as if I’d stumbled into something uninvited, but that was impossible. This was
my
camp. I was queen here and had been for over a decade. Despite the fact that many of the Amazons present were newcomers to this house, I was the one steady factor. Their expressions were unfathomable.

Unless someone had told them something to make them doubt me, to question my reliability. I scanned their faces, looking for any sign of censure.

Thea dropped her arms and turned. “The queen joins us.”

The words were innocent enough, but there was something about Thea’s tone that caused my body to stiffen.

I opened my mouth to utter a rebuke, then saw her expression. While not friendly, it wasn’t mocking either. I snapped my jaws shut. She was new; we were still getting to know each other. I could easily have been reading her wrong. Most important, though—now was not the time to be taking our aggression out on each other. It would only get in the way of doing our jobs.

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to smile. Not that I smiled much anyway. Life was too serious.

I walked down the two steps that separated the wide front porch from the yard, then moved toward our new high priestess with my shoulders back and my footsteps tapping on the concrete walk.

The Amazons who had surrounded the priestess took a step back. I stopped a staff’s length away.

She tilted her head. “We are enjoying the sun. It helps me feel centered, ready to take on any challenge.” The fingers of her right hand brushed over her left arm, over Medusa.

I registered the gesture, realizing it was a habit of hers. What I didn’t know was why she did it, what emotion she was feeling at the time.

“I’ll be going to Madison today.” I paused, wondering if I should ask her to come along. After only a second of consideration, I added, “It would be best if you stayed here.”

It was normal procedure. It wasn’t often the high priestess and the queen were both absent from a safe camp. And I preferred to handle the trip to Wisconsin’s capital city on my own. Mainly because I didn’t want her with me when I visited Mel’s.

Mel was an outsider now. My relationship with her was not necessarily looked on kindly by others in the tribe. Plus I needed Mel to help me get access to the sons. Bringing a high priestess she didn’t know along would not be a help.

My plan announced, I turned to the other Amazons. The circle had broken into parts. The hearth-keepers were wandering back inside or toward the garden. Our one artisan was still at Thea’s side. As I turned away, she began talking to the priestess. The warriors had clustered together under a nearby maple. They were obviously waiting for something . . . direction from me, I assumed.

They were all fairly new arrivals. I knew them from Amazon gatherings, but most had only been staying at the camp since spring. I had, however, been running them through their paces for weeks. Not only did we have a martial arts exhibition at the Illinois State Fair in a month, I needed a lieutenant. I had lost my last lieutenant to our run-in with a son last fall—our first encounter with them. I hoped one of these warriors could fill the position.

I called to Areto. She was only five ten, small for an Amazon, but she was quick and limber. I’d had the group scale the side of the barn earlier in the week with nothing but a rope and Areto had arrived at the top minutes before the rest. She also reminded me of Mel; it might have just been a superficial resemblance, her dark hair and short height, but I didn’t think so. I thought I could trust her, as much as I could trust anyone.

“You’re in charge of the exercises today. Let me know if anyone slacks.” She didn’t question why and she didn’t glance at the high priestess I knew was still standing only a few feet behind me; she just raised her hand in signal to the rest of the group and led them toward the barn.

Thea was still behind me, still waiting. I walked toward the house. I needed car keys if I was going to drive to Madison.

“Are you going to inform the high council of what happened?” she asked.

I turned. My voice steady and sure, I answered, “I have a call in, but we can’t sit around and wait. We need to get the baby back.”

She inclined her head in agreement, then motioned for Sare, our lone artisan, who still stood beside her to move along. The girl picked up a leather bag from the ground and wandered off to sit in the sun and do her work—carving totems, I guessed. They sold well at fairs.

“You can’t go alone,” Thea said, her voice low.

I exhaled through my nose. I was not used to being ordered, at least not by anyone below the high council. My arms hanging loosely at my sides, I addressed her. “I don’t expect to find the baby in Madison, just information.”

“And you can’t get that with a phone call?”

I couldn’t. I needed to see Mel face-to-face if I wanted any hope of convincing her to help the Amazons. She didn’t trust us. She might even believe the child would be better off with the sons.

“No,” I replied, then walked away.

My foot had barely hit the step when she called again. “It was my failure too. I’ll get the knife and meet you here.”

I paused. My first instinct was to turn on her, to tell her exactly who was queen and what my orders were, but when I processed her actual words, they stopped me. She had admitted fault. She suffered guilt for it. I could appreciate that, could see how she would want to be part of righting what had happened in the woods. I still didn’t want her in Madison, but I couldn’t deny her the right to fix what she had been part of screwing up. Not without hearing her out.

I continued on into the house, torn on what to do.

Thea was crouched on the ground next to Sare when I came out. I could see that the artisan was drawing rather than carving as I’d guessed earlier.

As I approached, Thea took a piece of paper from her and rolled it like a scroll.

Ignoring them both, I got into the safe camp’s car, a ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee. The Amazons who came and went had their own vehicles; this one was communal property, meaning for today it was mine.

Despite my complete lack of acknowledgement, Thea climbed into the passenger seat. I took my hand off the key. I’d told her she needed to stay at the camp. While inside the house, I’d realized no matter her guilt or desire to right her part in our mistake, she needed to comply.

She tapped the rolled-up paper she’d gotten from the artisan against her leg. “What is your plan?”

“I am going to Madison. You are staying here.”

My direct response didn’t seem to bother her.

“You haven’t explained why you think going to Madison is the answer. Seems more likely we would find out something around here.” Her thumbnail flipped the edge of the rolled paper.

I hadn’t explained because I didn’t need to explain. I still didn’t, but remembering her admittance and not wanting to put more pressure on our strained relationship, I replied, “We know the sons have the baby. We just need to find out where. There are two sons in Madison. Seems logical they might know something about the pair who has the child.”

“And you think they will tell us?” She twisted her lips to the side.

I tapped my fingers against the top of the steering wheel. “Probably not, but if I ask right, maybe someone else will. Worst case, I can watch the Madison sons. Madison isn’t that far from Beloit—the sons who stole the baby probably know the others. With their Beloit cover blown, they may be in contact for help.”

She nodded. “Makes sense, but it seems like there might be a more direct approach.” She unrolled the scroll.

And there was my fairy godfather staring up at me.

I cursed myself silently. She’d described the son to the artisan and the girl had sketched a portrait. It was a good idea, a much more direct plan than spending two hours in a car and hoping I’d be able to get information out of the sons in Madison.

“He might live near here or at least have gone into town to get supplies, eh?” she asked.

“He does,” I replied without expression, and then I started the car.

The depth of my potential failure was making it hard to speak. He was my fairy godfather, of course he lived near here. Probably within walking distance of the safe camp. Hell, he might live in our woods in his wolverine form, be the creature the hearth-keepers were constantly trying to keep away from our chickens, for all I knew.

She smoothed the drawing, ran the pads of two fingers over his face. “You’ve seen him before?”

I put the vehicle into reverse, then headed down our drive. “No, but I know he lives close by.” I couldn’t kick her out of the car now. Besides, it didn’t appear I’d be going to Madison, at least not right now.

She angled her head, obviously waiting for more of an explanation, but that was all I was giving.

Finally she looked away and started digging in a corded bag she’d brought with her—the kind that could be used as a backpack too. It was yellow, a bright sunny yellow.

She pulled out a cell phone and started punching buttons. “If he has the baby, he will need supplies.”

I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Amazons had a long-standing resistance against technology. We had a landline in each of our safe houses, and I knew a few Amazons who had those pay-as-you-go phones, but that was about it. “What are you doing?”

“Searching the Internet. Trying to see where he might go for baby supplies.”

“It’s a town of three thousand. There aren’t that many choices.” Her thinking to have the artisan re-create the son’s image had shaken me, but I was past that. “We don’t need the Internet.”

She placed the phone on her lap. “Have you ever used it?”

I hadn’t. I wasn’t even sure what it did. I stared at the narrow highway in front of me. We were out of the wooded area where we lived and traveling through the more typical terrain of fields and more fields.

“It won’t help us find the son.”

I flipped on my turn signal and turned the Jeep into the hub of life here in Deep River—Walmart’s parking lot. When I slammed the Jeep’s dented door closed, Thea’s cell phone had disappeared. I rewarded her with a jerk of my head toward the store.

We only had the one picture, so we headed first to the photo department and had a few more made. Then we split up. I let Thea take the baby section. I headed to the cashiers.

After an hour of complete failure, I was feeling much better about my initial plan to visit the sons I
knew
I could find.

I went to the in-store cafe where I’d arranged to meet Thea. She had her phone out again and was talking to someone. When I walked up, she punched end and stood. “I found him. He’s living in a cabin about ten miles by road from the safe camp, maybe two cross-country.”

Success, or at least a step closer.

Thea held up her phone and smiled.

My fairy godfather was about to get a visit he wouldn’t forget.

The son’s place wasn’t hard to find. It was, as I had guessed, close to the safe camp if you traveled through our woods anyway. By road it was a good distance, but it was off the main highway.

I turned onto a spindly dirt road. There were two ancient steel mailboxes stacked on top of each other right at the highway, meaning there was at least one other house on the road. If the other house was occupied by humans, this might complicate things. Humans got jumpy when weapons and magic were tossed around. I preferred to keep our encounter with the sons under the human radar.

As we were pulling in, a compact hybrid was pulling out. I moved to the side to let it pass.

It didn’t look like what I imagined my tattooed godfather would drive, but I stared down the driver anyway. A woman peered over the steering wheel as she approached. I relaxed against my seat. Unless the wolverine could also shift into seventy-year-old schoolteachers, I was pretty sure it wasn’t him.

I waited to move until she was completely past, then looked to Thea for further instructions.

“It’s at the end of the road,” she replied.

“How long is the drive?” I asked. After seeing the son had a neighbor, I wondered if we wouldn’t be better off returning to the camp and approaching the cabin on foot through our woods.

As soon as I asked, we passed another vehicle, a truck . . . the kind with dual tires on the back end. It was parked nose out. Trees crowded around it, but I could make out an oversized fifth wheel behind it and a log house beyond that.

“Not there,” Thea commented. “It’s a bit further.”

A man in his fifties was standing beside the truck, seemed to be tinkering with some device on his dashboard. As we rolled past, I noticed a woman too, loading boxes into the trailer.

I made a point of not looking at them as we went by and I don’t think they paid much attention to me. They seemed too occupied with whatever they were doing. Right past their place there was a huge pothole; as I maneuvered around it, the truck started up and the pair pulled out, the trailer hitched up behind them.

With our potential witnesses gone, I relaxed a bit. We drove probably another quarter of a mile, then pulled off into the grass.

Thea got out first. I took my time. The son had picked a good spot. Even knowing he had a neighbor a quarter of a mile away, the place felt isolated. Of course, that didn’t mean we were alone—the son or sons could be there. I hoped they were.