This is a story that appears to be set in Toledo, Ohio, but it isn’t at all. The street map is different, the newspapers also, and though all the other TV stations are fictional there really is a Channel 24, WNWO-TV. I am very grateful to the staff members there who allowed me to hang around the newsroom to learn enough about how a local TV newsroom works to write about one. My real knowledge of fencing is equally limited, but I have to thank the owners of a now defunct salle for letting me hang around several evenings and even work out with them—rather ineptly—in order to be able to give what is hopefully a realistic portrayal of an enthusiast of the sport as it existed in 2003 when most of the story was written. Any character similarities to those of other books are also just that, similar. –WB

“Dull damn night,” Corporal Janice Watkins said from the driver’s seat of the patrol car. They were pulled up in a used car lot, trying to lie low. It was a Sunday night, and she and her partner, Officer Rick Mattison, knew that this stretch of Dorr was sometimes used by teenaged punks for drag racing. Besides, there was always some fool who thought since traffic was light, they could just go ahead and sneak through the stoplight a half a block away. They’d already written up three of those jokers tonight, but all in all, it was a dull shift. That was fine with her; the ones that weren’t dull usually were a major pain in the ass.

“Yeah, only a couple more hours—” Rick started to say, when the radio erupted.

“Car 321, silent alarm, Shop’n’Go, Reynolds and Dorr.”

Yeah, that one would do, he thought, looking as he slowly drove by, his hands already shaking some. He needed a hit, badly, and that little convenience store would do just fine. Just get the cash, head back to the ’hood, lose the car, then make a buy and he’d be fine again.

The store was a long ways from the ’hood, and his experienced eye could see that the cashier didn’t work in a cage with bulletproof glass and all that armor shit—she was out in the open, a sitting duck. Hell, even the front door was propped wide open, probably to let in some cool air for what was a hot September night. Looked like she was alone, too, not even any cars sitting at the gas pumps this late.

He’d done this before, and this one ought to be easy. He circled the block and parked out by the curb, out of the lights of the pumps. Didn’t need the security cameras getting a look at the wheels, even if they were hot. Somehow fighting back his cravings, he pulled on the ski mask, pulled the iron from his pocket, and moved quickly across the oil-stained concrete toward the open door. Just be cool, man. You know how to do this.

As quietly as he could, he walked through the open door. The cashier had her head down, working on some papers, and didn’t notice him till he said in a gruff voice, “This is a stickup. Gimme the cash.”

“Y-yes, sir,” the cashier said, looking up, terror showing on her face. Not real good looking for a white bitch, he thought, kind of fat.

Frantically, the cashier popped open the cash register, took out the tray, and slid it across to him. One glance told him that there wasn’t much money there. Fifty, maybe, if that much … shit, that wouldn’t even hold him tonight. “I said give me the money, bitch!”

“That’s … that’s all there is,” she said, fear showing on her face. “We got a drop box, I don’t have the key.”

“Damn it, bitch, give me the money!”

“That’s all there is,” she said, nearly in sobs, now.

She was scared shitless. Damn, that was the way he liked his women, especially the white ones … be nice to get some leg, even off a bitch like this, but no time. At least he could make her grovel a little, almost make it worth his effort. “I said, give me the money,” in a harder voice as he raised the gun, pointed it at the ceiling, and fired a single shot. Damned little .32 didn’t make a lot of noise, but plenty for inside; even made his ears ring a little.

Instantly the bitch became hysterical. “Please don’t kill me, that’s all I have …”

A classic-looking 1920s car, shiny white and in perfect shape, pulled up to a convenience-store gas pump and the driver climbed out. No one was standing around to notice that the driver was a tall, statuesque woman in a strange black costume that included a face mask. Just as she started closing the driver’s door a gunshot rang out from inside the store…

“Drop the gun, meathead!” the robber heard, a woman’s voice, hard as steel—

On sheer reflex, the robber looked toward the door. If he was quick enough … not a cop, some fancy bitch dressed all in black … he started bringing the gun around … what the hell … he barely noticed she was swinging something toward him, only caught a glimpse of it when his gun hand exploded in pain. The gun went flying, and between the pain and the surprise, he found himself on the floor, his head lying on the bottom shelf in a rack of Twinkies, with packages of Ho-Hos falling on him... The next thing he knew, this black-clad angel of death was standing over him, the point of a sword—a sword!—at his throat. “You bitch,” he moaned.

“Shut up, meathead,” the death-angel told him, a sneer on her blackened lips. “I’m Hippolyta, I’m an Amazon, and I can send you to the hell you deserve with a flick of my wrist.”

Janice hit the lights and siren with flashing hands as Rick grabbed the mike and replied, “Roger, 321 responding.” Patrol cars on a speed trap like this always kept their engines running—for quick starts as well as the heat or air conditioning—so all Janice had to do was tromp on it and the patrol car burst out of the used-car lot, hung a left on the lightly traveled street, and started accelerating toward the scene. The Shop’n’Go was only a few blocks away. “Probably nothing,” he commented.

“You never know,” Janice snorted.

“Car 321, caller reports shots fired, Shop’n’Go, Reynolds and Dorr,” the radio barked again.

“On the other hand,” Rick said, reaching for the radio’s mike and responding quickly, “Roger from 321, shots fired, Reynolds and Dorr.”

The radio barked again, calling other units to the scene. “No one real close,” Janice commented, turning off the lights and siren, but keeping her foot in it. It really wasn’t the brightest idea to go roaring up to the scene of a known shooting with lights and siren announcing their approach. Fortunately, the stoplight was green. Janice slowed going through the intersection, hung a left into the Shop’n’Go, noticing some sort of a white hot-rod parked at the pumps, and a woman standing at the door, frantically waving them in. As Janice burst out the driver’s side, the excited woman said, “Oh, thank God you’re here! She saved my life!”

“What? Who?” Janice asked, running through the open door. There, in front of the counter, a black-clad woman was standing in a spreading pool of blood, holding the tip of a sword to the throat of a man in a ski mask, obviously the perp.

A frickin’ sword? What in the name of hell?

“Better call EMS,” the black-clad woman said in a calm, husky voice.

“Uh, right, ma’am,” Janice said, unable to make sense of the scene before her. The first thought that crossed her mind was “Batgirl.” The woman—and from the shape of the snug-fitting top and pants she was wearing, it was very obvious it was a woman—was masked too, with a hood like Batman’s, also in black. She could see from the lower face that Batgirl was white, although she had on black lipstick. “We’ll take care of this now,” she added, wondering what the hell was going on here? This is Toledo, not Gotham City! And not even in Gotham City would a sword make it against a gun unless the bullet reported over the radio had bounced off, but superpowers like that weren’t real!

“Fine, you can have him,” the woman said with a sneer obvious in her voice. She drew the sword away from his throat, making him flinch as she wiped it on his shirt, then she stepped back.

As soon as the perp realized that he didn’t have the tip of the sword threatening him any longer, he literally broke down in tears. “Thank God you’re here,” he said hysterically. “She was going to … aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” a scream of pain coming as he tried to move his arm.

Oh, shit, Janice thought. He’s bleeding like a stuck pig. He was desperately holding onto the wound on his right hand. “Settle down, don’t move,” she said, then yelled, “Rick! First aid kit, right now! Call Central, situation under control, but we need EMS here right now!”

The next few minutes were busy. The perp was pretty well out of his mind in pain and fear, and Janice didn’t have time for details. She managed to get a compress on the wound, not that it did a whole lot of good, but before long there were other officers on the scene, and then the EMS crew appeared, led by a paramedic Janice had worked with before but knew only as “Divebomber.”

“Good grief, what happened to him?” Divebomber asked, kneeling down next to her.

“Got sliced up by a sword,” Janice reported, only half believing her own words.

Despite his normally highly professional demeanor, Divebomber couldn’t help but grin as he cracked open his field case. “That’s a new one on me. First time I ever heard of that happening, ’specially against a gun.”

“This gal …” Janice frowned. Now that she realized it, she hadn’t seen the woman with the sword for a few minutes. But then she’d been busy. “Hey, Rick. Where’s that gal in black?”

Rick looked up, looked around. “Dunno, Janice,” he said, confusion in his own voice. “She’s not inside.”

“What happened to her?”

“Hell if I know,” Rick shrugged. “I’ve been down here getting my pants messed up, too.”

“Oh, shit!” Janice said, getting to her feet to let the EMS crew work on the perp. She glanced outside; the white hot-rod that had been sitting at the pumps when they’d pulled in was gone. “Ma’am,” she said quietly to the cashier, who seemed still not quite in control yet, “did you see what happened to the woman with the sword?”

“I tried to thank her for saving my life,” the cashier said, still tearful and shaking from the experience. “She gave me a hug, told me to pull myself together, then she got in her car and left.”

“Oh, hell,” Janice said, realizing that she wasn’t going to get off shift at midnight after all, and she was probably going to catch hell even before that. “I wanted to talk to her.”

A couple miles to the northwest, Hippolyta was still shaking some as she drove down Central. She was glad she was sitting down, since she felt a little weak at the knees. Neither condition was advisable while driving the Shay. She’d now had enough practice with it that she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to bite her, but it kept her on her toes enough to prevent her from drifting off into her mind very far. That was hard.

She was sure that the shakiness was just from a collapse of adrenaline … but what an experience! After all the years of fantasizing and speculating, for a couple of wonderful minutes there, she’d been Hippolyta, not just dreaming of it. She’d felt the power of being an Amazon as she held Penthesilea’s tip at that bozo’s throat. She’d smelled and tasted his fear, and he’d had every right to be fearful, for she’d literally held the power of life and death in her wrist, in a way she could never feel on a strip.

Hippolyta smiled at the memory. She’d seen the thug reveling in his threats to the cashier, getting his rocks off at causing her to fear for her life—then, in an instant, she and Penthesilea had turned the tables, giving him some of his own medicine, letting him know what fear really was. It was a heady experience, one to savor, to remember, hopefully for the rest of her life.

She’d played at being Hippolyta all day at the FantasyCon in Detroit, gotten into the character almost totally, and had decided to drive home still in costume, just to wallow in her fantasies a little longer. She’d immersed herself in them so well that she’d missed her exit and decided to drive back through town. Along the way, she realized that she needed gas. Part of the deal with Daddy letting her use the Shay required her to return it with the tank full, so she had stopped at the convenience store with the intent of stripping out of some of the costume while the gas was pumping. Without parts of it, she’d just look goth, a little freaky, nothing to be concerned about, nothing to send a cashier reaching for a silent alarm.

When she’d heard the shot and looked through the store’s windows and realized that a holdup was going on, the Amazon character that had come to life in her mind over a dozen years and more took over her body without question. She’d reached in and yanked Penthesilea from the scabbard laying on the seat, raced into the store … not worrying as to consequences at all, just reacting to a woman in danger like an Amazon should. Then, when the cops were there and the situation was no longer under her control, she took a moment to comfort the still-hysterical cashier. Realizing afterward that delaying to get gas there would likely cause more problems, she got back in the Shay and drove sedately off so as to not draw unwanted attention … just like an Amazon, not taking credit for her duty to her unknown sister, just enjoying the satisfaction of her good deed done well.

For years now she’d thought how wonderful it would be to really be an Amazon. To really be Hippolyta—at least for more than a couple minutes. But there was a good reason Hippolyta had been mostly a fantasy in her mind—there wasn’t room in the real world for black-clad Amazons swinging magic swords, or even non-magic ones. Most girls grew up with secret dreams of being famous actresses, perhaps, or princesses, great temptresses, or such things. Hers had been to be Hippolyta, and now she really had been for a couple of minutes. That was better than most girls could ever pull from their fondest dreams.

The thought gave her pause. She was driving along, still dressed as Hippolyta. She could wallow in the warm feelings as much as she wanted to, but she would have to re-enter the real world very soon. Maybe she’d better get started.

She slowed the Shay and turned onto a quiet, dark side street and drifted to the curb. She was well out in the suburbs now. It was quiet and the streets were just about rolled up for the night. She took the Shay out of gear, but kept a foot on the brake.

It was only the work of a moment to pull off the hood and unsnap the spiked collar. Though it looked tightly laced, the corset actually had a zipper busk, and it was only a few more seconds to get rid of it and turn around to shove both into the duffel bag sitting under the back deck. It was only the work of a few more seconds to pull on a short white wrap-around skirt and tie it off. In seconds, she no longer looked like Hippolyta, no longer looked like the Amazon she’d been for an exciting couple of minutes she’d never forget. She was now just a freaky goth-looking girl who needed gas. Even in a square town like Toledo, that wasn’t unknown enough on a Sunday night to draw any comment.

“Will you tell me,” Jason Metheny said, half in anger, half in resignation, “Why the homeboys in this town can’t knock off a convenience store in time to get it on the late news?”

“Not interested in ratings, maybe?” Shane Gritzmaker replied from the driver’s seat of the Channel 5 First to Know News van. Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing to say, he thought as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He’d been running TV cameras while Metheny was still watching Sesame Street, and if Metheny had enough brights for even a vestigial sense of humor, Shane had never noticed it. At least he didn’t have to run the camera for him very often.

“I mean, we didn’t have squat for a lead,” Metheny snorted, apparently ignoring the wisecrack—or, more likely, not noticing that it was a wisecrack at all. “Boy, I really love leading with a live shot from a county fair, and now this has to happen.”

“I don’t know,” the cameraman said, trying to sound businesslike. “Sounds like a routine holdup to me, except that it’s in a part of town where holdups aren’t routine.” They’d just wrapped up the late news when the police scanner went off, announcing first, a holdup in progress, then shots fired. Liz Kennedy had yelled—her normal tone of voice—for the two of them to get out there. Metheny still had his makeup on from his stint at the anchor desk—boy, hadn’t he been a proud puppy, and Gritzmaker figured that would go on his résumé real quick.

“The action’s probably over with anyway,” Metheny said sadly.

“Sounded like it,” Gritzmaker said. By the time they’d made it out to the truck and got the slightly illegal mobile scanner on, there were calls that the situation was under control, and that EMS was needed. “Might get a shot of someone getting hauled out to the ambulance, though.”

“Can’t you hurry the hell up?” Metheny growled.

“I’m already way the hell over the limit,” the cameraman protested. “I got enough points on my license now.”

“Don’t you think that every cop on this end of town is already there?” the reporter snarled angrily.

“Could be,” Gritzmaker said, stepping on it a little harder. It sure would have been nice if this proud pinhead was driving, so it could be his driver’s license on the line, but no, he couldn’t force himself to stoop that low. The cameraman let out a quiet sigh. There was some decent on-air talent around Channel 5, given everything, but this joker was absolutely convinced he was God’s gift to television. Oh well, it wasn’t far now, maybe he could slow down a bit before he got to the scene—after all, there were sure to be cops there.

As luck had it, they beat the other stations to the scene—not real surprising, since they were the closest, only a couple miles from the store. For once, Metheny had been right—wasn’t that a surprise? There were four cop cars sitting around the Shop’n’Go, three of them with bubble gum machines going, the old citizen’s band radio slang for the spinning lights on top, and a St. Vincent’s ambulance there with its lights going, too. Gritzmaker parked the van as near as he could without being in the way, ran around to the back and pulled out the video camera with the light bar, then threw the power pack over his shoulder while Metheny looked on, fuming at every instant of delay.

One of the cops was already stringing yellow tape, but they could still get fairly close to the door and see that the EMS crew was still working on someone inside. “What happened?” Metheny asked the cop.

“Stickup. The perp got stuck instead. I ain’t real clear, but something about a gal in black with a sword.”

“A sword?” Metheny frowned. “What the hell?”

“Like I said, I ain’t real clear, sir.”

“Anyone hurt, besides the perp?” Metheny asked.

“The clerk got shaken up some,” the cop said, clearly more interested in getting the scene secure than in yapping with any TV crew. He nodded toward a heavy-set woman in her thirties, sitting on the curb and nervously smoking a cigarette, not far from where the tape was now hanging. “She’s right over there.”

“Ma’am?” Metheny called to her as he smiled, putting on his best behavior. “I’m Jason Metheny, from Channel 5 First to Know News. Could we talk with you for a moment please?”

“Uh, yes, I guess so,” she said, getting up and walking over to the yellow tape.

“Let’s do this on-camera,” Metheny said to the cameraman.

Figures, Gritzmaker thought. The braggart wants to get his mug on the air whenever he can. Damn showoff. Just on general principles, he’d try to shoot it so there’d be enough footage where the reporter was off-camera to edit up a decent package, if one was needed. He waited until the woman got near Metheny before lifting the heavy video camera to his shoulder. “Ready when you are,” he said.

“Run it,” Metheny said, then faced the woman as Gritzmaker turned on the light bar, flooding both of them with light. “Ma’am, can I have your name, please?” he asked, at his most charming.

“RuthAnn Richardson.”

“RuthAnn, can you tell us what happened?” Metheny prompted.

“That Amazon woman … she … she saved my life …”

Gritzmaker could see through the viewfinder that the woman was on the verge of hysteria. Take it easy, Metheny, he thought. Don’t send her over the edge.

“Amazon woman?” Metheny asked.

“She … she came in and hit him with her sword.”

“Mrs. Richardson,” Metheny said, putting on a good show. “Maybe we’d better start from the beginning. Could you tell me what happened?”

The woman took a couple deep breaths as Shane zoomed in on her. “This man came in with a ski mask and a gun and wanted money. There was only a few dollars; the rest was in the drop box … he said he’d shoot me if I didn’t give him more. He fired … he fired a shot up, up into the ceiling. Then the Amazon saved my life.”

“Mrs. Richardson,” Metheny went on. “How did she save your life?”

“The Amazon came in and hit him with her sword,” she said, still on the verge of hysteria. “I-I don’t know where she came from; she was just there, and all of a sudden the robber was down on the floor, and she had her sword pointed at him, at his neck.”

“How did you know she was an Amazon?” the reporter asked.

“She said so, said her name was Poleeta or something, and that she was an Amazon.”

“What did this Poleeta look like?”

“She … she was all dressed in black,” RuthAnn said hesitantly. She even had kind of a black mask over her face, like Catwoman or something … but … but she saved my life. She was real, Mr. Metheny! She was real!”

God, Gritzmaker thought. The poor woman was shaken up even worse than he’d thought. A hell of a hallucination. She had every reason to be upset, though, with a perp willing to shoot and then something weird happening to rescue her. That thought didn’t stop him from taping.

“How did you know she was real?” Metheny asked gently.

“She … after the police got here, she came over, put her arms around me,” RuthAnn said hesitantly. “She said … she said, ‘I’ve been strong for you, sister. Now, pull yourself together. You be strong, too.’ I mean, I felt her, I know she was real.”

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