Amazon Queen

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.