A battle cry split from my lungs. I kicked, the sole of my foot jamming into her forehead. The gun fired again.
My mind searched for the pain but came back empty. I landed four feet past where she had stood and spun.
She was lying prone on the ground. Jack in his wolverine form was over her, his jaws around her neck. Her fingers twitched; her lips moved.
'Wait,' I yelled.
Both Kale and Jack froze.
I could see the craziness in Jack's eyes, the lust for her blood. I didn't know what happened to the sons when they shifted-how much of the animal they truly became, but I knew as I stared into Jack's wolverine eyes that he want to kill, wanted to taste blood more than he wanted anything at that moment in time.
I lifted my staff so it was angled across my body and took a step forward.
Mel stood where I'd left her. She blew the breath she'd held into her closed fist. 'I'm not sure he can, Zery.' She shook her hand as if something alive was concealed in those closed fingers. And I suspected it was, or close enough. . a tiny tornado buzzing with whatever energy Mel had blown into it.
'Zery,' Kale muttered. Her eyes shifted in her face. She blinked. 'Zery,' she repeated, softer. Then she glanced to the side, toward the woods.
Dread, thick like tar, settled over me. My staff still held ready, I sidestepped across the clearing.
At first, with my eyes not yet adjusted from the bright light of the clearing, I saw nothing, then hidden in the shadows I saw a hump, like a fallen log. . or. . I moved closer, close enough I could see the lump wasn't a tree or anything else that had grown naturally here in Artemis's woods.
It was a body.
My jaw tight, I started to kneel, then I saw the second one.
* * *
'Don't kill her,' I yelled-an order, one I hoped Jack would respect. I placed my foot on the closest body and pushed. It flopped over. The face of the birder who'd pushed the button and blown up the stairwell stared up at me.
The glassiness of her eyes told me she was dead, almost as much as the round bullet hole in her forehead.
'What is it?' Mel, close behind me now.
I held one hand to the side, blocking her from coming closer.
'The birders. The women who tried to take the babies. They're dead. Shot.' Mel paused. It was a tangible pause, one I felt as much as saw. She opened her hand and the tiny tornado spun down into the ground. Dead leaves rustled up from the floor of the forest, broke into tiny pieces, and scattered over the dead woman's face.
Moving past me, Mel pulled the second birder over and onto her back. She was shot too, in the chest. It was bloody and gory and everything I'd dreamed it would be. . except I'd planned on delivering the blow.
'She shot them,' Mel said.
'Looks that way.' I turned and trudged to the clearing.
Jack still had Kale pinned. Neither had moved. Which was strange. An Amazon warrior didn't lie in place and wait to be killed. . and a warrior on the high council? I would expect her to do what I'd never been able to do myself. . defeat the wolverine son so thoroughly that there would be no denying Amazons were the stronger sex. . had no need of a fairy godfather.
Disgusted, I kicked the pistol that lay less than a foot away from the fallen high-council member deep into the woods, in the direction of the bodies.
Then I twisted my staff and jammed it into the center of her back. In an advantageous position if the need to battle arose, I gestured for Jack to back off.
His lip curled and the ugly growling bark I'd come to recognize followed, but after only one such complaint, he loosened his jaws and shuffled backward.
The air around him grew fuzzy, like someone had rubbed Vaseline over a camera lens. Knowing what was happening, I waited, and just as quickly as it had begun the spot lengthened, the air cleared, and a naked Jack replaced the wolverine.
His lip raised revealing teeth. 'She shot at you.'
I stepped away from the fallen queen and spun my staff so it was directed at the son. 'Dead, she can't tell us anything.'
Kale was my only hope of convincing the Amazons that the basic premise of the high council and the trust we had placed in them had been violated.
He growled again, but turned and stalked to where his pants lay in a pile near the edge of the clearing.
Kale didn't move. I watched her with one eye as I walked to the sword shoved halfway to its hilt into the earth. I jerked the weapon out; a boar was engraved on its blade, answering any doubts I might have had as to her identity. I walked back and pushed the Amazon over with my foot, just as I'd pushed the dead birder.
Kale's body moved in the same manner, lifeless, with no fight. She could have been dead, if it weren't for the up and down movement of her chest and the slight humming noise coming from her throat.
I pressed the tip of the sword against the base of her neck until a bead of blood appeared. When I got no reaction, I pressed harder.
'Where is the rest of the council, Kale?'
She blinked, and the fog lifted. I realized then it wasn't a hum I heard, but a chant, a low repetition of words I couldn't make out.
Her lips dry, her voice cracking, she rasped, 'What happened? Where is-' She grabbed the sword with her bare hand and pushed it away.
The tip tore at her skin as she did, leaving a long ugly line of blood and ragged tissue. Then she bent her knees, raised her hips, and propelled her body to a stand.
Ready for another attack, I spun.
Except, she didn't. . she staggered, backward then sideways like a drunken middle-aged man surprised to find he couldn't hold his liquor like he had in his youth.
Her hair fell forward over her face. When she looked at me, strands still clung there, half-hiding her features. 'What have you done to me?' Then her knees buckled and she fell forward onto the ground.
'Zery. .?' Mel behind me, warning in her voice.
Thinking she was afraid I would skewer the fallen council member where she lay, I lowered the sword to my side. 'Don't worry, I won't-'
'No. Someone's coming. And not Mother, Bern, or any Amazon I'd guess.'
I listened. There were voices, male, and the sound of bodies thrashing their way through the woods.
I retrieved my staff and tossed it to Mel. Then I bent and levered the fallen warrior's body onto my shoulder.
'What about the birders?' Jack asked.
'Leave them.' And I jogged out of the clearing.
'What the hell is that thing?'
I stiffened.
She shook her head.
Still holding the sword and with the unconscious, bleeding warrior over my shoulder, I couldn't move closer, not without risking discovery.
But I also couldn't see or hear what I wanted.
Jack held up his hand and pointed for Mel and me to leave, then he shifted.
