Burned (45 page)

She reached for her bow.

Then she froze, uncertain.

In ancient days, she would’ve already known the perpetrator’s identity. As Artemis guided the moon across the sky, she heard the pleas of women and witnessed the crimes of men. No one could hide from her swift vengeance. But she’d lost such supernatural abilities more than a thousand years before. Selene raised a finger to the swollen bruise on her chin, feeling the silky texture of the powder, a tangible reminder of how far she’d fallen.

In recent decades, she’d preferred to work in the shadows, defending only women who asked directly for her help – those like Jackie Ortiz, whom the cops usually ignored. Now, if even a bully like Mario Velasquez could overpower her, what use would she be tracking a murderer? Then again, how could she not try?

She looked down at the woman.
You were killed steps from my home
, she realized.
Sacrificed as a sick invocation, a perversion of rituals I once held sacred. And I did nothing to stop it
. Disgusted, she thrust aside her self-pity, her hopelessness, her despair.
I may be only a shadow of what I once was, but that doesn’t mean I’m powerless. Not yet
. ‘I promise,’ she said aloud, ‘this will not go unpunished.’

She would let the cops do most of the legwork, but she didn’t intend to let them arrest the murderer. This heretic would die. Not in some cell, after a drawn-out trial and years of appeals, but at the swift and deadly point of a goddess’s arrow.