But someone had to lead it, or it’d never happen. And it needed to happen.
I pushed through the front door to the common house. The energy in the room stilled with all eyes on me. I was the Hunter-lover. Not to be trusted. Yet I was the leader of this whole thing. I was the one who’d traveled and visited with all the Wild groups. I had the connections and all the details.
I took a deep breath and shut the door behind me.
And then I realized what truly plagued their thoughts, deeper than their dissatisfaction with my choice of male helper. Shawna. She’d been taken after their sisters and mothers were taken, and she’d been in bad shape. They probably wondered how much worse their loved ones were, and if we’d get to them in time. Their anger toward Marcus was only an afterthought.
They needed me. And deep inside, I needed to help them. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t help them, if I didn’t uphold my promises.
I made my way to the front of the living room and waited for the talking to quiet. “My coterie extends their immense gratitude for your help in rescuing my sister and destroying the local Hunter compound,” I said. “We are ready and willing to return the favor.”
Eonza stood behind the couch and nodded. Marie sat on the couch. Her red lips turned upward into a smile.
“We will visit each group’s home, stake out their local Hunter’s complex, and create a plan to infiltrate and destroy the compound and the Hunters in it,” I announced. “We cannot do it the same way twice. We need to assume that someone got away tonight and is spreading the word through the Hunter community of what we did today. The other compounds will know we’re coming. We must assume they’ll be prepared.” Then there was the matter of Clarisse being spared. If she escaped the fire, her people would surely question her.
“It’ll be easier for us to access compounds closer to larger bodies of water,” Azul said from where she sat on the floor, surrounded in a cluster by the other mermaids. “The river today was not deep enough. We had many problems.”
“And that was why you were late?” Aunt Renee asked with a clipped voice. “Not because you’re traitors?”
I eyed my aunt and shook my head. We needed to band together, not fight one another. Yes, there was something fishy about the mermaids, but the rusalki only pointed to Azul as the mermaid working with the Hunters alongside Gabrielle. I wanted to get my facts straight before approaching the shoal with what I knew. Since Azul wasn’t killed during the attack as Azalea and I had planned, I had to let the mermaids dole out their own brand of justice. And I needed concrete evidence to show the shoal or else their whole group would turn against me. I wished the rusalki were here, but I understood why they weren’t.
“Excuse me? Traitor?” Azul said. “I’m not the one whose coterie member is in bed with a Hunter!”
“Are you talking about Shawna?” Olivia shot up to confront the mermaid.
Azul stood. “Absolutely not. I’m talking about Faline, screwing around with a Hunter. What self-respecting Wild Woman doesn’t sense that a man’s her enemy?”
“This Wild Woman,” I said sternly. “The one who’s going to lead a revolt against the Hunters and help every single one of you reclaim your right to freedom. Do you have a problem with that?”
Azul sat. Olivia gave a nod of satisfaction and found her chair.
“I’d screw him,” Marie added. She licked her lips. “If you’re down to share, so am I.”
I laughed a short laugh. Ugh, Marie. “Marie, that’s not helpful,” I said, knowing she’d only made the comment to diffuse the situation without using energy.
“Oh? Because you didn’t mention you needed my help.” Marie closed her eyes, inhaled, exhaled, and then opened her eyes. A calm, uniting energy filled the room. Tense shoulders relaxed. Clenched hands opened. Gritting teeth separated for a smile.
“Thank you,” I offered. “That’s better.”
“Imagine what else I can do,” she quipped.
“Duly noted,” I said. I addressed the rest of the room. “I think we should hit an east coast complex, they’re less likely to have heard about what we did here in Washington. I’m sure they’ll hear bits and pieces, but according to Marcus there’s a disconnect between the west coast and east coast. The east coast Hunters are more old school, if you can imagine that, and they’ve been there longer, so they behave like they’re the “big brothers” to the west coast Hunters. Which, if you know Hunters, they don’t like to be dominated; they like to dominate.” I paced in front of the big flat screen TV. “They probably assume we’ll hit the Oregon complex next. So let’s throw them off.”
My words were met with head nods and agreement.
“What happened to Shawna?” Salis, one of the harpies, asked. No doubt she was worried for her mother.
This was the part I didn’t want to share, though I knew they deserved to hear it.
“The Hunters have sunk lower than we thought possible.” I considered my words and then continued. “Twenty years ago, a number of Wilds went missing. My mother was among them. At the time, we didn’t know that the Hunters were behind the abductions. We trusted that they’d been honest in their promises to protect us.” I took a breath to steady myself. “They’ve started abducting Wilds again, but this time in full force. From what I’ve gathered, the Hunters are trying to impregnate Wilds, hoping to create hybrid Hunters. Boys with their strength and our abilities,” I said. Since Marcus and my whispered conversation over my sleeping sister, the wheels in my mind had been turning. “The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that they’d raise these boys to exterminate our kind.”
“But we can’t have boys,” Azul said.
“I think that’s the problem they ran into twenty years ago. But Marcus believes they’ve found a way around that. Over the last few days he’s heard things,” I said.
His name caused a few females to bristle, so I counted on Marie to continue to regulate the calm energy in the room as I set the record straight. “Okay, so I’m going to say this one more time and then never again. Because honestly, after what he sacrificed for us, I shouldn’t have to repeatedly defend this male.” I let that settle into their minds and continued. “He renounced the Hunters years ago. He does not agree with their way, mindset, beliefs—none of it. He is a police officer with a heart to help. And helping is what he’s been doing. Through all of this. He flew out to the east coast to bring me intel. She clings to her rescuer, not her captor.”
As I spoke my heart melted a little more for Marcus. Marie cocked her head. Yeah, she could feel my energy shift. Damn obvious energy.
“I asked him to re-join the Hunters. He didn’t want to, but he did it to help us rescue Shawna. He’s not sure if he has a job to go back to, depending on who knows about his actions. You’re sitting here cursing him, and me for trusting him, while he’s sleeping on the floor beside a Wild Woman’s bed because she’s so scared from the trauma she suffered that she’s clinging to the person who picked her up from that awful makeshift lab bed and removed her from the situation.” I thought of how Shawna flinched when I’d tried to grab her from Marcus in the Hunter’s house, and hoped her reaction had more to do with the drugs they’d given her than from seeing my wild huldra in action and fearing me.
“Please tell me you killed the Hunter hurting her,” Marie said with anger in her eyes.
“I did,” I said, and wondered when Marcus and I would talk about what he saw. I had a lot to sort out when this was all over.
“Good.” Marie addressed the group. “I trust the male.” I appreciated that she didn’t call him a Hunter.
The others nodded in agreement.
“But we must bind together if we are going to be successful,” I said. “Yes, we are huldra and mermaids and harpies and succubi, but above all of that, we are Wilds. We may not be sisters, but we are certainly cousins, and we should behave as such.”
Eonza stepped forward. “We should bind this decision with a traditional Wild Women
treaty,” she suggested, looking around the room for support.
I wanted to kiss her for suggesting that. The treaty was sacred. No one would doubt it’s binding. “I agree,” I said.
Others followed in agreement.
Aunt Patricia popped up from the couch. “I’ll gather the basin and tools.” She hurried out of the room and down the hall.
I eyed the silver braided wolf bracelet on my wrist and reached for the Freyja charm on my necklace, thankful to my goddess for enabling us to rescue Shawna.
“We need water,” Azul spoke up. “To participate in a ritual.”
“We’ll conduct it where the rusalki were staying,” I said. “Near the only creek on our property. It’s no ocean or roaring river, but it’ll have to do.”
Heavy clouds slowed their pace as large rain drops fell on our heads. A piece of me hoped the rusalki would appear during the ritual. Yes, they’d been strange and distant, but they were also comforting. And after all, it was my fault they’d lost a sister tonight. For that, I would always owe them.
But they’d fought beside us, in their own ways, and they deserved to be among us as we joined hands and promised a united front. I’d grown to like the rusalki. In fact, I’d grown to like all of the Wild Women I now celebrated alongside.
We formed a circle in the woods near the rusalki’s hole, holding hands and swaying, naked as the day we were born. My sisters and aunts had fought long and hard and viciously. Their earned bark darkened and covered their skin in more than splotches.
The twelve mermaids, six succubi, three harpies, and five huldra sang the songs of our foremothers under our breaths. Pride filled me and tears streamed from my eyes.
We had been taught to compete with one another. Taught to hate our differences, to distrust and conspire against each other. We’d been forced apart, picked off in our weakness. But in this moment we stood together, embracing our differences, trusting, and conspiring to take down the very establishment that tore us apart. If my mother could see us now.
My mother.
If she’d been at the Washington complex, a rusalka would have known. No matter how many complexes I had to burn to the ground, we’d find her and get her back.
A bronze basin stood in the center of our circle, held up off the ground by an iron stand with three winding legs, twisted to look like vines. When the quberacho stick was passed to me, I accepted the piece of wood with a sharpened tip on one end and the image of Freyja etched into the other. Blood already soaked the sharpened point, but I added my own by dragging it across my right palm until liquid crimson dripped from my skin. I passed it to the female on my left and exited the circle to squeeze my blood into the basin. As I walked toward my place in the circle, another Wild made her way to the basin.
When the quebracho stick had been passed completely around the circle, the humming stopped and so did the swaying. Shawna’s absence weighed heavy on my heart. She deserved to be here more than any of us. She’d suffered the most at the Hunter’s hands. I promised myself that one day, when Shawna was healed and everything returned to normal, I’d tell her all about this moment. Maybe we’d have a bigger circle, a victory ceremony. And every missing Wild would be rescued and able to join in the ritual.
Aunt Patricia stood in the center of the circle and stirred the blood in the basin with her pointer finger. She pressed her finger along her forehead and then across her chest. We took turns around the basin, placed our combined blood on our heads to symbolize our joined thoughts, and over our hearts to symbolize our love for one another—the love of family tied together by both bonds and blood.
The last Wild completed the ritual. Aunt Renee sang out a prayer of thanks and the rest of us followed. Normally, we’d run through the woods, tree-jump all the way home, to end the night, but out of respect for the mermaids’ ways, we ran towards the creek. We yipped and laughed and tossed water on one another in utter freedom and hope for our future as a species. For the future of our ways.
As the ritual wound down, the mermaids ran to the common house by way of the creek, splashing all the way home. The harpies flew through the evergreens. The succubi ran along the dirt, touching the trees and ferns, harnessing their energy as they moved.
The others made their way to the common house, but I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than a shower and a bowl of steaming hot noodles. I jumped from the tree onto the moist dirt. I figured the group would understand. I hit my stairs at a run, too tired to climb the trunk.
I pulled the noodle packet from the fridge and placed it on the counter. No, shower first and then food, on the couch, in comfort. I didn’t have to shed any clothes, seeing as I was already naked. I only willed my bark to melt into my skin and climbed into the shower.
In the middle of sudsing up my hair, the front door creaked open. I tilted my head under the water to rinse my hair and not be caught off guard. Marcus stood in front of the glass shower door as bubbles streamed from my temples.
“I woke up and your sister and aunt were sleeping, so I thought I’d visit you,” he said. “Have anything to eat here?”
His dark hair was disheveled and he still wore the black Hunter outfit from earlier.
“I want to burn that uniform,” I said as I finished rinsing the suds from my long hair.
“I’d have to take it off first,” he responded.
I didn’t want to think anymore. I only wanted to feel. And I only wanted to feel good. I’d had enough of feeling shitty to last me a lifetime.
“What’s stopping you?” I asked.
He pulled his shirt over his wide shoulders and pushed his pants and boxers down past his ankles. Cuts, scrapes, and bruises covered his body. I’d forgotten. Before I was in the attic losing my mind, Marcus was downstairs fighting a room of Hunters, singlehandedly.
He ran a hand through his hair and looked at his palm. “I’ve got blood in my hair,” he said with remorse.
“Me too.” I sighed. “Come in and wash it out.” I opened the shower door and he stepped under the water with me.
“Brrr, it’s cold.” He jumped from the stream of water.
“Oh, sorry. I don’t feel temperature so well.” I turned the knob toward “Hot” for him.
He stepped into the water and relaxed his shoulders. I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned my head against his chest. This. I wanted to feel this. Comfort, security, hope, pleasure.
I don’t know how long we stood in the shower holding one another. But I broke the silence. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“Tomorrow morning, or maybe the afternoon, after she’s slept off the drugs, she’ll realize where she is and who you all are. She’ll be much better.” He kissed my forehead.
“But her mind…the trauma. I’ve see what it can do to people.”
“If she’s patient with herself, and maybe gets therapy, that’ll heal in time too.” He ran a hand from the crown of my head and down my hair. “The worst is over for her. She’s safe at home surrounded by nothing but support and love.”
I gazed up at Marcus. His defined jaw. His soft lips. His soulful eyes. “Thank you. For everything. I mean it. Thank you.”
When I first went out with Marcus, I’d only intended to have a little fun with him, break my dry spell. But now, two weeks later, he had done more than break my dry spell. He’d stood beside me as I broke my old ways, as I threw a rock into the Hunters’ expectations and cracked their establishment. One day, hopefully soon, we’d shatter it to the ground.
THE END
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LILITH’S CHILDREN
Book 2
Preface
In the Garden of Eden, the ultimate tempter was a snake, evil incarnate. But the serpent was once a symbol of the goddess, for females too shed their lining and yet still they live. Soon, though, the Goddess will rise again, and her snake ch
ildren will unite to reclaim their life of paradise.
These were the nighttime whispers of Faline’s mother.
The Hunters told a different tale.
One
My day of wine-tasting had not gone as planned, a fact I bemoaned as I flung an elbow at a Hunter’s nose and sloshed pinot noir down my white shirt.
The large, blond Hunter who’d advanced on me, and the four other Hunters he’d brought, wore black cargo pants and black long-sleeved shirts, just like the Hunters back home. They also kept a special dagger concealed on their bodies like my oppressors back home. But they were most certainly not Washington Hunters.
I’d just wanted a trip away.
A vacation. Relaxation between hunting the Hunters and annihilating their complexes, one at a time.
Was that too much to ask? Apparently, yes.
My blow to the Hunter’s face fazed him for all of two seconds before he reached for my hair to lift me off my feet. Bad idea on his part.
I couldn’t tell you how the Hunters found us. How they knew we’d left the state of Washington and ventured into pinot noir country in Oregon.
I could tell you, though, that these weren’t Washington Hunters ruining our little vacation. They knew nothing about defending themselves against huldra. Which was one reason Shawna hid in the corner, half-petting the cat and half-covering her ears. Minutes earlier, my partner sister, Shawna, had grabbed the petite grey and black striped winery cat from atop a square plastic behemoth of a wine container to comfort her in the corner of the winery warehouse.
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