Amazon Queen

I hid my reaction.

His fingers moved again. Somehow, without being able to see the tattoo, he was tracing its border.

A shiver erupted from my core. I gritted my teeth.

He cocked his head. 'You really don't let people get close, do you? Have you ever? Maybe that's what's wrong with the Amazons. . what they need to change.' He leaned in. This time his lips brushed my ear. I stood still. I could take him down at any moment. Knowing that was enough, gave me the patience to stand there and listen. . to learn. I hoped to get him to talk more, to give me a clue how many of the sons watched us and where they lived. And then, after I stole the baby back, I would kill him. He and his fellow son had stolen one of our own-he couldn't live, not after that.

'Has anyone ever gotten close to you, Zery? Have you ever loved anyone or anything? Or can't you, because no one has loved you? Because your own mother doesn't give a damn about you?'

It wasn't his words that angered me, but his tone, the mockery in them-I'd had enough, waited enough. I lifted my knee to deliver the most basic, but fulfilling of attacks.

Behind me an owl called. The sound seemed to startle him; he froze.

I smiled. . a mistake on his part.

His hold on me disappeared. My weight shifted, but my knee was already moving, guaranteed to hit its mark. . but once again I struck nothing but air, because the man was gone and the animal I'd first encountered was back.

He looked at me, his eyes free of emotion now. Then he did what I'd imagined he would when I'd first seen him; he opened his jaws and chomped into my calf.

Then, just as quickly, he let go and was gone.

Blood streamed down my leg. I took a step forward or tried to, but my knee buckled. I cursed and used my staff to force myself to stay standing.

With each step, I forced my brain not to register pain, let the adrenaline flow unimpeded through me. It kept me going, but the son hadn't taken the path as he escaped. He had dived into the thickest brambles, using his animal form and instincts to get him quickly through areas that, even unwounded, I'd have had a tough time negotiating, at least without a sword to clear my way.

Also, I had lost blood. The pain might have been muted, but my leg was rubbery and my knee wasn't answering the demands of my brain as it should have. I placed my palm against a birch and mumbled my frustration. I would heal, much quicker than a human, but it would take a day or so, not seconds. Amazons were descended from a god; we weren't gods.

'Zery!' Thea yelled from the clearing.

I pushed myself away from the tree and scowled after the son. He was long gone now, and hard as it was to face, in my injured state I had no hope of catching him.

I swallowed that truth, then returned the way I'd come. Though short, it was a hard trip. The adrenaline that had pushed me forward before, now ebbed. And with its waning, my leg began to throb. But I was used to pain, was trained to handle it. I blew air out of rounded lips and limped on.

Thea stood next to the obelisk, her hands empty and a scowl on her face. As my eyes met hers, as my foot hit the flattened grass and dirt, the pain, manageable seconds before, ripped through me. With no explanation or warning, I lived the attack again, in slow motion. The animal's teeth punctured my flesh a millimeter at a time, his jaws crushed against my bone. He pulled; my leg screamed; my mind screamed.

I staggered, and a shudder shook my body.

Then the pain was gone, not completely, but down to a gut-twisting ache.

I stared at the high priestess, wondering if she'd seen what had happened, had some explanation. But if she did, she didn't offer to share.

She tromped to the obelisk and smashed her fist against the stone. 'You lost him.' Her head lowered, she muttered something.

'We lost him,' I corrected. I assumed she meant the wolverine son and not the bird, but she had obviously been no more successful in stopping either than I had been.

Her gaze dropped to my leg, then back at my face. There were words behind her expression, angry words. I waited for her to throw them, or something else at me. Then we could face the wrath that boiled inside both of us, the frustration of our lost battle. I flexed my fingers, then curled them back around my staff. . ready.

Her eyes stayed flat and her lips tight for a flicker of a second. Then she shook her head. 'The pressure of losing her after we had just saved her, and before I could present her to the goddess. . I didn't mean to. . How could you have expected an attack from above?' She glanced again at my leg, letting her gaze linger there for a bit.

I adjusted my stance. 'True, we couldn't expect it, but it shouldn't have happened. The child should have been safe inside the house, surrounded by the tribe.' She had endangered the baby by bringing her here. Apparently she needed to be reminded of that.

'I was so close. . ' she murmured. 'To presenting her to the goddess,' she finished as if in explanation. Her jaw tense, she picked up the bowl and walked to the edge of the trees with it. Her back to me, she mumbled a few words, then spilled the contents of the bowl onto the ground.

She seemed to miss that she was the reason the child had been stolen, that she had brought her here. So what if the baby had been 'presented' before the sons grabbed her? She still would have been taken. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. 'Did you see where the bird went?'

She shook her head; anger, loss, and disappointment warred in her eyes. 'I had my. . I followed him as long as I could, but he was too big, too fast. It was impossible to keep up.'

'What direction did he go?' I made no pretense of politeness. It was obvious we both thought the other had failed.

She pointed to the north. 'Toward the town.'

Our camp was twenty miles from the nearest small town. 'He could have been headed to Deep River, or the highway, or Canada.' I smashed the end of my staff into the ground. There was no telling.

Thea twisted her lips to the side and a shadow passed over her face. 'What about the other one? What was it?' she asked. 'It looked like a wolverine. Do you have wolverines here?'

I shook my head. 'Not that I know of, but that doesn't matter. The sons can shift into whatever animal their givnomai is.'

'So it's true.' Despite the fact she'd just seen a bird the size of a small plane swoop down on us, she looked skeptical.

'You saw for yourself how true it is,' I replied, realizing she hadn't believed the stories, not before today. 'You saw the son I battled, saw him shift.'

She shook her head. 'I saw the wolverine, then I saw the man. That doesn't mean they were the same. But the bird. . obviously what it did wasn't normal. It wasn't normal.' She looked at my leg again. This time she knelt down. When her hands touched me they were cool and covered in whatever oil she'd been stirring, then spilled on the ground. As she rubbed the oil over my wound, the smell intensified, but I didn't work with oil either for magic or cooking. I couldn't identify the scent.

'Trust me. He shifted,' I said.

'I'd heard the stories, but. . ' She held up a hand. 'Give me your shirt.'

I pulled it over my head. She folded it around her hand and wiped oil and blood from my skin.

I continued, 'What did you think the bird was, if not a son?'

She refolded the cloth and wiped some more. 'A bird. An agent of someone, his moves orchestrated.'

'Orchestrated? By who?'

'The sons obviously, eh.'

'But you believe it now? Believe they can shift?' I hadn't seen a son shift before today either. I had to admit it was hard to believe they could. Amazons couldn't shift. Why could their sons?

She tilted her head side to side in grudging agreement. 'I believe I underestimated them. I believe next encounter I'll be ready.'

On that we both agreed.

She returned to my wound, tying the cloth around my leg. When she stood, her expression was tame, almost