TWENTY-SEVEN

THE WOMEN

"You're a much more intelligent man than I'd at first believed," the Drago-thing said from her chair. "I admire intelligence. I admire strength of purpose as well."

Evan's eyes moved slightly. Mrs. Giles - or what had once been Mrs. Giles - standing in a corner of the den; No-longer-Mrs.

Demargeon standing at the foot of the stairs; a young blond woman wearing a mask of callous hatred standing to the left of Drago's chair. He measured inches against seconds.

"Don't be a fool," the woman in the chair said.

He glanced up at her. The woman-thing's eyes burned bright and fierce. Laurie. The fear slashed at him like a gleaming ax blade.

"Where's my child?"

"Sleeping."

His gaze moved toward the stairs.

"Not here," the woman said, the rumble of the Amazon language echoing from wall to wall, as if the words had been spoken within a time-lost cavern and not within the den of a wood-framed house. "Somewhere else."

"Where is she?" He forced himself to keep his gaze steady, but even so, he felt the power within this woman as surely as if he stood before a white-hot blaze.

"Safe, I promise you. Interesting. The end of your own existence may be seconds away. Why do you concern yourself with the child?"

"Because I'm a human being," Evan said, choosing his words carefully. "I doubt if you know much about the feelings of real humans anymore."

The Drago-thing paused, regarded him for a moment without speaking. "Oh, yes," she said finally. "You're referring to the maternal instinct. Unnecessary. The strong will always see to themselves. The weak must be weeded out as a threat to the perpetuation of the race."

Evan's eyes narrowed. "I saw an example tonight of what you've 'weeded out.' "

"Yes," the woman said. "So you did. You went into the Field of Bones, where our enemies lie fallen by the will of Artemis...."

"Enemies?" Evan said incredulously. "Men and infants?"

"Men and men-to-be," Drago said softly, her voice velvet and iron, the Amazon voice lower and harsh. "Two of you went into the Field of Bones. Only you returned; where is the workman?"

"He's dead. Killed by one of those...things on horseback."

"Warriors. A pity Mr. Ames was struck down; he'll never see his children now."

"Children?"

She responded with a tilt of the head. "Two women are pregnant by his seed. We hope one of them will bear us a daughter. Of course, Mr. Ames never knew; Antigatha's potions strengthened his sexual potency and blanked his memory."

"Antigatha?" Evan's heart pounded. "Mrs. Bartlett?"

"The one you call Bartlett, yes. You underestimated our superior senses of sight, of smell, and of hearing. Antigatha easily overheard your conversation behind that locked door. But unfortunate about the man; the younger warriors have yet to learn restraint, even against the enemy. I had hoped that the man would be a successful breeder."

"Then they weren't sent out there to kill us?"

"No. Only to" - she paused, searching for the proper word

- "herd both of you back to the village. I assure you, if I had ordered you dead, you would now in fact be dead. And buried by now, along with the others." She shook her head, eyes blazing eerily. "I don't want you dead. Not yet."

Evan looked quickly around the room; the other women hadn't moved. They watched him like animals eager for the kill. A shudder rippled up his spine; he could see the spiderish shadows cast across the walls by the moonlight. Creeping nearer and nearer. "What in the name of God are you?" he asked her, his voice trembling. "What are all of you?"

"We are...survivors," the Drago-thing said, two voices echoing, intertwining. "Survivors by the sheer force of our individual wills, gathered together in a place of cold darkness for...a long time of waiting. We are the chosen of Artemis, the vanguard of Her might, and our hatred sustained us when we were broken to our knees and cast into the maw of Hades." She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and stared down at the man on the floor before her.

"We are warriors first and always, and one can fight in Hades as fiercely as on the steppes of Athens. One can fight Master Death in a clash of wills, and with the divine help of Artemis, win. Yes! Win!"

Her eyes flamed; the power seared Evan's face, and he drew back.

"You know nothing of the desire to survive," she said, her lips curling as if she were snarling at him. "You know nothing of the will to live, to walk the earth and the forests, to smell the sea again, to stand beneath a burning sun and scream toward the sky! We know all that, and we know bitter, limitless cold and dark, and we know wanting to shriek but having no voices, and wanting to see but having no eyes!" Her voice rose, rose, hammering at the walls. "We know the grip of Thanatos, with his scaled hands and his red burning eyes, and we know what it is to fight that grip as one raging power fights another! And we know what it is to wait and to wait and to wait!" Her arm flashed out, golden bracelet gleaming around the forearm; the fist crashed down on the coffee table, and there was a piercing craaaaaack! as the table split from one end to the other. She blinked, as if for an instant the power within that flesh sought to burst free, out of control. She brought her hand back and sat staring at him over the broken table.

His mind slipped, slipped; he gritted his teeth, tried to quiet the scream that had begun in his soul. "You're not Kathryn Drago any longer," he said after another moment. "Who are you?"

The woman-thing lifted her fist up, clenched tightly. It trembled with repressed rage. "The last of the royal blood," she whispered.

"After Troy" - she spat the word out - "after the murder of Penthesilea, the Chair of Power fell to me. But that was in the last days, and we were weak from the wars that had depleted our ranks."

Her eyes were half-closed now, hooded with memories. "And so the cowards came, horde after horde of them; black-bearded destroyers lapping at our shores, at the gates. of our city. We fought them back again and again; Artemis lifted up corpses and gave them life to fight still, and we battled day and night without rest. Until the end. Until the end." Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

"The end came in that cavern, didn't it?" he asked her.

She looked at him sharply. "The corpses were heaped together and burned. The cavern was sealed, and the invaders took over Themiscrya..."

"Enough!" the Drago-thing shrieked, the word a hoarse bark in the Amazon tongue. Not-Mrs. Giles stepped forward a few paces, as did not-Mrs. Demargeon.

"Why gather within Kathryn Drago's body?" he asked her, watching her carefully, ready to leap backward if she attacked him.

Knives. There were knives in the kitchen. Could he get to them in time?

But she didn't move. Instead, she smiled - a thin, haunting smile that drew the flesh tight across her cheekbones, giving her a look of a flaming-eyed death's-head. "Because this one had been brought to us by the will of Artemis. Because this one was fulfilling her own destiny, drawn to where we waited in darkness. And this one had already delivered justice to the destroyer. "

Evan didn't move; his mind was racing. Knives. Knives in the kitchen.

"Perhaps you would understand if I told you her maiden name.

Bethany Katrina Nikos. Her father and mother emigrated to America from Greece in 1924; the father purchased a plot of farming land and built a wood frame house, and in 1932 his daughter was born. But he was a rough, uneducated man, and he knew only how to work with his hands; his wife was frail and intelligent, but she bent to his wrath because she knew no better. When his crops began to fail, he spent his rages by drinking and beating her bloody; very often the little girl was awakened in the night by the sound of blows and piercing, terrible screams." She blinked suddenly, and Evan knew that the small portion of Kathryn Drago that served as a disguise for the fiercer power was remembering. "Terrible screams," she hissed. "By this time a village was beginning to spring up. Everyone knew that the man beat his wife, but what could they do? It was his business.

And at night I remember...I remember my mother, her face puffed by bruises, sitting on the edge of my bed, telling me stories of a land where men did not dare inflict these pains on women, of a land where women were the masters, and men in their rightful place. She told me the legends of the Amazons when we were alone, when he was drunk and sleeping, and those stories seemed to take fire in my soul...." She blinked again; the face contorted, grinning. "He killed her on a night when the winds howled around the house and snow had frozen the earth. He hit her, and hit her, and she fell down a stairway and her neck snapped. The little girl heard the bones breaking." She gritted her teeth, stared into his face. "Of course the police came, but the little girl was afraid to speak. He told them they'd had a fight over his drinking and she'd slipped and fallen.

Those men all...grinned at each other, as if they shared a secret with" - she blinked again, and a shade passed over the eyes - "my mother at the center. Oh, yes. A fine, fine secret. And so I lived in the house with him, as he drank more and more and began to seek someone else's flesh to strike his hand against. But I knew what I must do, and I...waited...

"Until he was drunk with wine again, and he lay in a bathtub filled with tepid water." The power had returned to her eyes again; her lips were curled savagely. "The little girl waited until he'd fallen asleep, and she took his straight razor and stood over him in the bathtub." The tongue flashed out like a lizard's, licked across the lips. "Slashed. Slashed. Slashed while the bitter tears streamed down her face. The water ran red with his blood, and the walls were streaked with it. And then she went to the police to tell them what she'd done, and why she'd done it. Justice. She'd wanted justice. She was sent to live with relatives in Athens. And from there she began her search."

"Bethany's sin was murder," Evan said tonelessly. "The villagers named this place after what she'd done."

"Not murder!" the Drago-thing hissed, leaning forward.

"Justice! The true justice of the Amazons!" She paused for a moment, gaze glittering, pockets of moonlight caught beneath her cheekbones. "When we returned with her, she purchased that land and built the temple of Artemis on the foundations of her father's house. And to give thanks to Artemis we directed her to begin the hunting time. We found other suitable vessels, and some unsuitable, which we destroyed. Now the youngest of us gather at the estate and ride in Artemis's honor when the moon is at its height."

The heat seemed to be slowly strangling Evan; he shook his head, dazed, unable to think what it was he should do. Run for the kitchen? fight here? What? His brain shrieked, and above that noise he could hear the other things breathing.

"This world is strange," the Drago-thing whispered. "So very strange. filled with mysteries we did not even dare to imagine. But still the same; you and your kind are our enemies, and we will have no rest until we destroy you."

"What are you going to do with me?" he heard himself ask.

"We need your intelligence and stamina in our daughters," she said quietly. "We wish to use you for breeding purposes."

Images of mutilation streaked through his mind: slashed and severed arms and legs, screaming faces. He shook his head. "No!

No, I won't!"

"It can be good for you, if you don't try to resist. We'll honor you as a special captive..."

"No!" Evan shrieked. "No by God no!"

The woman stared at him, fury churning in her face. Stared at him until he thought he would either scream or go mad. "You have a second choice," she whispered, and reached down to the floor beside her chair; the golden bracelet caught moonlight, reflected it briefly into Evan's face.

She lifted up Harris Demargeon's severed head by the hair and placed it before her on the cracked coffee table. The dead eyes were rolled back to white, like the unseeing orbs of a statue; the mouth hung limply open.

"Now decide," the Amazon said.