The Amazon could feel the powerful white charger between her legs shy at the smell of smoke. The magnificent mare was brave for a horse, brave indeed, and had saved her life not once but half a dozen times since she’d stolen her from the camps around the fallen city of Troy. But the mare was a Greek horse and unused to moving and fighting in the night, just like the Greeks themselves.

The woman warrior had no idea of the name of the beast, but she’d taken to calling it ‘Eohippus,’ and it seemed to be learning the name. She gave the powerful mare some quiet words she’d learned as a child to relax beasts such as this. She was now in familiar country, known from youth, when she’d grown up and trained to be a warrior on its brushy hills. Now, she too smelled the smoke of the fires of Themiscrya. It was good to think of home not far ahead. Though she was returning with sad news, her return to her sisters was with honor.

She gave Eohippus a little chuckle and a swat on the flanks with the reins to get her moving down the hill to the nearly dark city. She could smell the mare’s fear. Though she’d borne an Amazon on her back for days and fought like an Amazon horse as well, she still had the fear of Amazons that any Greek should have. Though the night was dark and there was no moon, familiarity and starlight were enough to keep her on the path, and soon the dark walls of the city rose before her.

“Hail!” she heard the cry of the guard at the gate. “Who goes there upon a white horse?”

“It is I, Hippolyta,” she said calmly, to try and cover up the joy she felt at returning to her sisters.

“Hippolyta? News had you dead at Troy.”

“Rumor flies faster than the swiftest arrow,” she replied, “but does not always fly as straight.”

“Pass, sister, and welcome home,” the guard said, then turned and yelled in her loudest voice, “Hippolyta is returned from Troy, alive!”

As Eohippus carried her through the gates, prancing and snorting in fear of the Amazons who surrounded her, Hippolyta kept a firm grip upon her—and a firm grip on herself. It would not do for her sisters to see her tears of joy at returning to their arms. She could see a fire in front of her, see some of her sisters gathered around in a circle—and she could see the circle open, to welcome her. “Hail, woman of the stampeding horse,” she heard Lysippe herself say as she took the reins of the skittish horse, and whispered a few words to calm it. “In the name of your sisters, I welcome your return.”

“I fear I return with sad news,” Hippolyta said. “Troy is fallen, and I saw Pantariste, Xanthippe, and Antiopeia fall before my eyes.”

“Died they with honor?” Lysippe asked.

From deep within her dream, Sally heard the phone ringing. Deep in denial, and enjoying the wonderful sensations of returning to her sisters, she tried to ignore it.

“They died as Amazons,” Hippolyta replied as she swung off of Eohippus’s back. “They died with far more honor than the Greeks who slew them, but they killed enough to pay the ferryman’s fee and have servants in the netherworld. Penthesilea and I managed to avenge my fallen sisters. A hundred Greeks chased me from the ruins of Troy, and there were but seventy remaining when they gave up the hunt.”

“Then you return with honor, sister,” Lysippe said. “You have converted many dishonorable Greeks to good ones. Come! Let us open skins of wine to celebrate your return, and you can tell us of your mighty deeds.”

God damn the fucking telephone! Sally thought as the dream receded … what a wonderful dream … she fumbled for the infernal instrument on the bed stand, managed to get it in her hand, and said in an extremely sleepy voice, “Hello?”

“Hi, Sally,” Rick’s voice came at her. “Sorry to call you so late, but I just got up. It went kind of late last night, and I forgot to set my alarm.”

“I know,” she said sleepily. “It got kind of late for me, too, I sure needed the sleep.”

“Damndest evening,” Rick said. “Did you hear about it?”

“Yeah, I watched it,” she yawned, knowing that it was almost a lie, but one that she knew she would have to tell, having reconciled events while in the Mustang on the way home last night. Rick could think that she’d watched it on TV, but didn’t need to know she’d watched it on the scene as Hippolyta.

“Why don’t I swing by in a little while? Maybe we can go to breakfast, then work out a bit.”

“I could do breakfast,” Sally replied, feeling a pang of hunger. She hadn’t eaten since the third of a sub early yesterday evening, in what felt like another lifetime. “Give me a little time to shower and get dressed. Half an hour, anyway.”

“It’ll take me that long,. See you in a bit.”

Damn, Sally thought, sitting up. Might as well get up and do it. There was no chance of recapturing that wonderful dream anyway. She glanced at the clock: ten after ten. Well, a good sleep-in for a Sunday morning, and there was still time for breakfast and a good workout before she had to head into the station again. She still felt a little groggy. She hadn’t taken Charlie up on the idea of trying to sleep in the Hippolyta outfit as it seemed too childish. But her mother had trouble sleeping sometimes and had some sort of nuclear weapon of sleeping pills. One of them was all it took to knock her on her butt. She’d barely managed to get the Amazon outfit packed up in its duffel bag before she collapsed into bed, still in her underwear. Few clothes made it easy to head for the shower. It wouldn’t do to have Rick smell the leather scent on her body.

The shower finished the job of bringing her to her senses. Though she was slow getting started, likely due to the lingering effects of the pill, the drug had probably helped her mindset, brought her ancient fellow Amazons to her to relieve some of the tensions of the night before. Though the memory of the dream was fading away quickly, she still had vague hints of earlier dreams that night, of desperate battles in the falling city of Troy … she thought she could almost remember herself and her fellow three Amazons fighting desperately with their swords as the Greeks poured out of the immense wooden horse … better watch those pills, Sally, they could be habit forming, she thought.

The real events of the night before were coming back to her now: the fear of walking into the strange house, trying to keep up a brave front, the discussion with the fearful Mrs. Cordero. Then came the fight on the porch, taking Rodriguez down with Penthesilea while Rick made a desperate tackle, the news conference—a busy half hour, no matter how you cut it.

She remembered also the too short but still depressing conversation with Charlie as they’d headed away from the scene. Hippolyta was no less a pain in the butt for Sally—but she was an honorable warrior too. How would those ancient Amazons feel about her if she turned her back on an Amazon’s duty? After last night, it was clear that the Amazon she’d created couldn’t slip silently into the shadows, at least not yet. She could see lots of potential loose ends dangling out there.

As the hair dryer roared in her ears, a decision reluctantly came to her: if Hippolyta needed to appear again, then she would. She’d have to be careful about it, not do it any more than necessary, and she really needed to talk with Charlie at the earliest opportunity about tightening up security—if she hadn’t already made too many slips. If she could let Hippolyta just fade into legend, fine, it would be wonderful. But if she was needed, she’d do it, at least until it got too dangerous.

Shower completed, she returned to her room and got dressed—it was nice to dress grungy, in jeans and a sweat shirt for once, rather than the nice clothes she usually wore to the station. She’d have to shower again and change anyway after a workout with the sabres, but that was no big deal. Her eye lit on the duffel bag with the Hippolyta outfit in it, and Penthesilea, too. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep it in the Mustang, she thought. She might not get lucky again and have her folks gone when it was needed … and the .357 was already in the glove compartment, where she’d put it on her way home.

If Hippolyta had to appear again, she needed to be ready.

Since the plan of the morning was for a good fencing workout, there was no point in going halfway across town for breakfast, so Rick wound up driving Sally to a Denny’s on Reynolds. The place was on the crowded side, and the waitress finally led them back to a table for two. With her attention more on Rick, Sally didn’t notice the couple at the next table until they’d sat down, and a familiar voice said, “Well, look what the cat drug in.”

Good grief, it’s Jason! Sally thought. What did I do to deserve this? I’ll have to watch myself. It had proved tricky enough with Rick already, but at least with him she could keep steering the topic back to sabre. Now Jason would get to rub it in her face. She wished she had seen the coverage to know what actually went out on the air, rather than have to fake it from her Hippolyta memories of being there. “Hi, Jason,” she said gamely. “I saw you had a good one last night.”

“Yeah, got a little wild there. Got some real good footage. Keri and I were up half the night putting together a package for network.”

“Good going,” she said, holding her increased dismay inside. Up till now, Hippolyta had been just a Toledo thing. If the Amazon got picked up nationally, the situation would be even worse if her secret were to get out. Still, she had to say something positive to him, if nothing more than to lay a false trail. “You’ve gotten a couple of raw ones recently, so it’s good that you get a good one to balance it out.”

“Yeah, about time things went my way for once. It still burns my butt the way I got kicked off the police beat.”

Oh, crap, I don’t want to go there, she thought. “Speaking of police, you know Rick, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. He used me for a hurdle last night. Anyway, this is my girlfriend, Andrea Berkstock. Andrea, this is Sally Parker, from the station.”

Oh, so this big-boobed blonde is the squeeze with the tease, Sally thought cattily. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, wondering if the blonde was as dumb as she looked. About had to be if she hung out with Jason. There was no doubt that she was qualified to work at Hooters.

“Hi,” the blonde said with an obvious false smile. “Jason has told me a lot about you.”

Probably none of it good, Sally thought. Jeez, why didn’t I just offer to throw together something for breakfast at home? “Same here,” she said in reply.

“Glad I ran into you, Rick,” Jason said with all the affability of a snake eyeing its prey. “I wanted to ask you last night what happened inside the house between Turner and Hippolyta.”

“Not a hell of a lot. Lieutenant Turner spent a minute thanking her for her help, then asked her to do that little press conference. About that time, they found the snow, and he hustled upstairs.”

“That Hippolyta, she’s really something,” Andrea commented. “It’s hard to believe there’s someone like her in Toledo.”

“Yeah, she’s been keeping life interesting,” Sally said. Just then a vastly harried waitress showed up to take Rick’s and Sally’s orders. Sally was hungry. The part of a sub the night before hadn’t cut it, and it had been a long and difficult night, so she ordered a fairly big breakfast.

“Hey, Rick,” Jason said, still pumping him. “While I was waiting around outside with the people from the other stations last night, we were kicking it around. The consensus of opinion at the other stations is that Hippolyta is really a cop. You’ve spent as much time with her as anyone except Charlie Parker. What’s your thinking?”

“Don’t want to say yes, and don’t want to say no,” Rick commented after thinking about it for a moment. “I mean, I can see how it would be a plausible scenario, especially if you’ve read too many comic books. I mean, woman cop gets pissed off at cops overlooking the law or something, goes rogue. Right out of a comic book, or even Hollywood. But, when you stop and think about it, that doesn’t make sense in Hippolyta’s case. She’s worked quite closely with us three times now, handed the perp to us, and disappeared, even shrugging off the credit, what any good citizen would do. Back in the beginning, my partner and I spent a lot of time trying to track her down, but after Melissa Spangler everything changed. I don’t think Lieutenant Turner would have called her last night if he didn’t have some degree of trust in her, whoever she is.”

“Sally,” Jason snorted. “I don’t suppose you’ve made any progress in finding anything out from your brother about who she might be?”

“Not a thing. He’s just not going to tell me, even if he knows, and I don’t think he does.”

“After last night, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know who she is,” Rick frowned. “I mean, he never came out and said it, but apparently he has to contact someone else who either knows who she is or at least knows how to get hold of her quickly, and he may not even know who the contact is, either. He finally got hold of the contact, real late, and they said that Hippolyta had already heard about it on the late news and was on her way.”

“Damn, and he’s the closest thing anyone’s got to a lead on her. Keri and I tried tailing him last night. He led us to hell and gone over the west end of town, and then went right back to the scene. We tailed him close enough that he was never really out of our sight, and she still disappeared into thin air somewhere along the way.”

Well, good, Sally thought. A clean getaway. If I have to do it again, I’ll remember to be careful about leaving the scene after that, because he’ll try it again if he can, and others could get that bright idea too. “You’ve seemed fascinated with her all along.”

“I am. This is turning into a serious mystery now. The person who cracks it is going to have a real feather in their cap.”

“Or a sword through the gut,” Rick said. “That woman is a serious hardass. I don’t think I’d want her pissed off at me. She seems to have set her own rules to play by, and that’s why I don’t think she’s a cop. Now, if you have a thing about black leather, or about taking risks, well, that might be different.”

“Well, the black leather is kind of sexy, but the thought of cracking that story, well, that’s a hell of a lot better.”

“On the other hand,” Sally commented. “She’s handed us several good ones, mostly to you. Maybe you want to think about the goose and the golden eggs.”

“Yeah, but damn. Getting to the bottom of it, that’s a bigger deal. Damn, I don’t like that broad running rings around me and making me look like a jerk all the time. I’m the one who discovered her, and it still pisses me off that she ran straight to your brother with the story. Now I want to settle this. Granted, we’ll get some good coverage out of this thing, but we have to scramble against everyone in town to do it. I want to crack the Hippolyta story wide open before anyone else gets wind of it.”

“Hey, Jason,” Andrea said. “You really like black leather?”

“Well, yeah, babe,” and he smiled at her. “I guess I do.”

“That’s nice to know,” she smiled expansively. “How’d you like to go shopping with me today? I heard about this leather shop out west of here that has some really neat stuff.”

Jason got a really lurid smile on his face. “I think I could be talked into it.”

Just about that time, Rick’s and Sally’s breakfasts came, and while they were eating, Jason and Andrea finished their coffee and left, with Sally wondering if Andrea was going to have her boots licked before the day was over. She was glad to see the two of them go. The danger of a slip in front of Jason and Rick had been huge, but she thought she’d pulled it off, and maybe she had introduced some misdirection too. Might as well try for some more, she thought. “So,” she said, once Jason and Andrea were out of earshot, “now that they’re out of hearing, do you have any ideas about who Hippolyta really is?”

“Not a clue. Janice and I worked on it for a few days, back before the Missy Spangler thing, and all we ran into was dead ends. All I really have to go on is guesses. Metheny might have a point that she is or was a cop, but I don’t know. Former cop, or cop wanna-be, maybe. At one time, before I met you, I thought you might be a candidate, what with the sword and all. But, no, you’re shorter and smaller, don’t have the same build. And, really, unless something happens, I don’t care that much, not in an official sense, anyway.”

“How’s that?” she said as she took a sip of coffee, making a mental note that she’d better avoid high heels and platform shoes around Rick. She was fairly tall for a woman anyway, and four-inch heels and inch-thick platforms made Hippolyta appear around six feet tall—taller than he was.

“Well, last night I overheard Turner tell her directly that he had no interest in finding out who she really is, for as long as she stays legal and works with us. Boy, that sure has changed since she first appeared. Turner was convinced he had a nutcase running loose.”

“I picked up some of that.”

“All changed now. You know, I think if I were to find out accidentally, I’d still keep it a secret.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, we need a little mystery,” he said with a thoughtful smile. “We need an anonymous superhero or two running around. Keeps a little wonder in life, a little magic, a little mystery. I mean, this is Toledo, after all. It proves John Denver wrong, after all.”

“‘Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio,’” she said with a big smile. “Nothing to do but sit around the bakery and watch the buns rise. Or watch our own hometown superheroine on the late news.”

It was an absolute jewel of an October day, warm and bright, with the trees near their peak color. Leaves were falling, and Sally could see people raking them up as she drove in to work that afternoon, following a good workout with Rick. Best of all, the workout had shoved the events of last night into the background.

Rick really was coming along amazingly well, especially with sabre. As Stan had said yesterday, which seemed like a half a lifetime before, it was clear he had a long way to go. He needed a lot more experience, especially with fencers of varying skill levels, styles, and techniques—and, realistically, the only way to get that was to start going to tournaments. There was one a couple weeks off over in Cleveland that more or less opened the tournament season. If their schedules allowed, they could go over and break him in. It wouldn’t hurt for her to get back into the swing of live tournament action again, either. Maybe take Emily and Justin along too—the pressure from official matches would help them a lot.

She wondered if Emily and Justin really knew how good they had it. Back when she was in high school, she would have given a lot to have a boyfriend who was a fencer, someone to go to tournaments with, practice with, share triumphs and losses with. Oh, there’d been both friends and fellow fencers, but with no fencers as close friends it wasn’t the same thing. Even when she was high school state champion, it wasn’t a big deal around the school, since most people weren’t aware that she was even a fencer. It wasn’t something she advertised. A boyfriend would have made a lot of difference.

Now it looked as if Rick was turning into a boyfriend, and she knew she had to mull that over sometime. Like soon. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had boyfriends before—she’d had a couple in college, and she’d gotten fairly serious with one of them, until it came down to a choice between fencing and him. When she’d weighed the options, fencing won. There was a guy she’d dated some up in Battle Creek, but that one never went anywhere, as it was clear that he wasn’t leaving town, and she would have to.

It had been something of a surprise to wind up back in Toledo, after all. If the phone call from the station in Indianapolis had been six hours sooner, she probably would have gone there from Battle Creek. Realistically, she couldn’t expect to stay in Toledo all that long, likely another year, certainly no more than two—during which the glances and then even more serious looks at Web sites and some résumés and demo tapes would be going out. In fact, Hippolyta had become enough of a threat to her career that perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to start looking now, even if it was a lateral move, so she could leave the Amazon outfit in Toledo. It was a logical idea and one worth some serious thought, though she would really rather have at least a year at Channel 5 before she considered a move. There was such a thing as being too flighty.

At this point there was no telling where she might be next. It could be as close as Detroit or as far as California. She had decided that wherever it was it had to be a place with a local fencing program. In the last month, she’d discovered how much she’d missed it.

But it led right back to the question of Rick’s civil service job. He had to stay here, since moving anywhere else would destroy his seniority. If she got serious with him and her next job was in Detroit or even Cleveland, they would be close enough to be in contact. But unless it was close like that, maintaining a relationship would be an enormous pain in the butt. Besides, it was nice to be in a place that she knew well, where she knew people. After four years in college and two more in Battle Creek it was refreshing to be back home, but she knew it couldn’t last.

The only thing she could see to do was sit down sometime soon and make sure that Rick was aware of the fact that she’d be moving on eventually, or maybe even soon. She couldn’t say it was a get-serious thing, but he did need to know that it was bound to happen.

So she was ruminating about Rick and the possibility of spending some time on the TV job search Web sites at the first opportunity when she drove into the station. That was a blessing. At least she wasn’t thinking about Hippolyta and the night before.

Being a Sunday, there had been no noon news, and also none at five p.m. It was entirely possible that even the six o’clock newscast would be truncated due to football running late. People were starting to drift in now. Brett was on assignments again tonight, Kevin was the producer, Lydia on weather, Carl on sports, and Dave was the other anchor, as usual. She glanced around to see if Jason was present, but there was no sign of him. Good, that would be a relief. Presumably he wasn’t scheduled, and Andrea likely had his attention.

Only one other reporter happened to be in the room, Hank McMahon, though there were probably one or two more due in shortly. Sally hadn’t worked with Hank a lot; he was normally on the other shift. He was fresh out of college last spring, but had a reputation for being highly professional, at least partly from having been brought up around a weekly newspaper that his parents managed way up in Michigan’s north woods some place. He had an impressive clip book, and he’d made mention one time that he’d covered his first fire for the paper while he was in fifth grade. “So how was your weekend?” he asked.

“Fairly quiet, for once. I had a good workout today, getting tuned up for a tournament in a couple weeks.”

“Did you catch any of that action last night?”

“Not here. It started after I went home,” she replied noncommittally. “It must have been interesting around here for a while last night.”

“That’s what I heard. I just looked at the package Jason uplinked to the network last night. He sure likes to have his face in front of the camera, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, he’s not much on voice-overs,” she said, glad to know that Jason’s self-promotion irritated someone besides her.

Kevin shook his head. “He put together a package for the six o’clock tonight, and it’s all full of his face, too. He’s not supposed to be in tonight. I don’t see how we can rip him out of it entirely, but we should down-play him some. It’s also longer than it should be, we need to hack it down to like sixty.”

“That can be done,” Dave agreed, “but do you want to listen to the shit fit he’ll pitch if we re-cut it to knock him out of it?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Kevin nodded. “How about if we mention him, get a few seconds of his commentary, and have Sally voice-over some of the rest? We have to have some background, we can voice-over that, have a short piece of Mrs. Cordero’s statement, Rodriguez pushing Jason down, the cop hurdling him and tackling Rodriguez, Hippolyta taking him out, and end with part of her statement?”

“It makes sense,” Dave agreed. “The reporter isn’t the news, after all. But if we don’t include that statement about Hippolyta finding out about the incident on First to Know News, Ben will have us all in the unemployment line in the morning.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Kevin said. “Especially after we’ve been teasing with that all day as it is.”

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