My sisters shot me a look. Thank you, Marie, for putting words to emotions I hadn’t dared to sift through yet.
“We’re not here to talk about me,” I reminded. “This visit is all about you.”
“Yes, well.” Marie leaned forward and poured red wine into four glasses, then gestured for us to join her. Olivia and I sat in separate chairs facing the couch. Celeste eased onto the couch beside Marie with hesitance before grabbing a glass of wine. “I’ve found myself in a bit of a predicament.”
“With supernatural males?” Celeste asked before taking another sip of wine.
Marie turned to her and I saw the exact moment her eyes twinkled at my sister. A smile lifted half her face as she took Celeste in. My sister’s dark hair, light skin, and almond eyes made Marie sit up straighter and smooth the wrinkles in her silk pants.
“So, tell us about these males,” I interrupted Marie, who was clearly taking in the sight of my sister. I’d come for a reason and wanted to get that out of the way so I could leave.
Marie snapped to attention. “Oh, yes, excuse me. Lost my train of thought.” She cleared her throat and took a drink of wine. “Last time you visited we discussed a younger sister of mine. Her disappearance.”
I remembered. “I’d visited the mermaids to get her back.”
“But she wasn’t with them,” Marie added.
“And so we figured she could be with the Hunters,” I said. At least I’d assumed as much. Not sure if there was an actual discussion about it, not with everything else going on and Marie’s secrecy around the whole thing.
“But she’s not with the Hunters. She never was.” Marie paused and looked up to the ceiling while nibbling her lower lip. Her voice barely cracked as she said, “She ran away.”
“With the supernatural male,” I added. Thoughts of Marcus and how being with him would mean leaving my coterie filled my mind.
Marie took a deep breath. “Yes. An unfortunate situation I have tried to rectify. But it’s gotten past the point of my being able to fix it on my own. She won’t come home, feels more thoroughly protected living with the males.” Marie glanced at Celeste before directing her words at me. “Our check-in is in three days.”
“Shit, Marie.” And now I knew why she’d insisted I come. “You don’t think this is just a little last minute?”
“I know, I know. But I believed she’d listen to reason.” Marie exhaled and her shoulders slumped forward. “I was wrong.”
Celeste comforted Marie by rubbing her thigh. “It’s not your fault. You can’t hold yourself accountable for what your sisters choose to do, who your sisters choose to love.”
Was that comment directed at me? I controlled myself, held my mouth shut and didn’t call my sister to the carpet. I’d do that in private, not in front of the succubi leader she was making googly eyes at.
Marie rested her hand on Celeste’s. Their eyes met. “Thank you.”
I stood to pace. Yet another letter was being thrown at me to deal with. “If she doesn’t show for check-in, the Hunters will be even more suspicious that you all may have had something to do with the destruction of the Washington Hunter complex.” I spoke my thoughts as I worked them out. “If they grow too suspicious, they’ll imprison you at their compound.” I shook my head at the impossibility of all this. I was a huldra. A young, scared succubus would never listen to me. That is, if I could even get past the big, bad, protective males to get to her. “And if they imprison you, that’ll jeopardize our whole plan. You won’t be able to fly out to help us take down the east coast complex, and the other Wilds won’t have enough time to be here and ready with a plan in three days to take down the Oregon Hunter complex. We need every Wild if we want to pull this off. All of this.”
Yeah, we were screwed.
I paused my pacing to stare at an orange and red tapestry almost covering a whole wall. I had no idea what the geometric design represented, but I assumed it had something to do with energy. Crystals tied to a string hung from each top corner of the tapestry.
If the succubi were detained, trying to take down another Hunter complex would be too risky. That meant the other already-imprisoned Wilds would have to suffer even longer. Including my mother. They’d already waited for our help long enough. And hadn’t the Wilds as a whole already waited long enough for the freedom to be wild?
“You have no fear of attending check-in?” Olivia asked. “Despite using your abilities last week during our Washington complex battle?”
Marie shook her head. “We’ve figured out a way to use just enough of our energy-manipulating abilities to not give us away at check-ins, but that’ll also prove effective when combined as a group. If we each use a little, at the same time and in the same way, it appears as though we’re using a lot.”
“Smart. Makes sense,” Oliva stated.
This succubus sister of Marie was really irritating me. First, she pulled me away from my much-needed time with Shawna and Marcus, and now she threatened the safety and happiness of every United States Wild. “All right. Well, where can I go to find her?” I wanted to meet this young succubus causing me all this trouble.
“You’re skipping the male part of this equation,” Olivia reminded me.
Of course. Why did there always have to be a male in every difficult equation?
“I’ve set a meeting with them for tomorrow morning,” Marie said. “It’s better that way—to wait. Your energy is all over the place. They’ll see you as unstable and won’t trust you enough to give you access to my sister. They may even immobilize you, somewhat like my sisters did the first time you visited us. If you’re still feeling this way in the morning, I am more than happy to work on you before we leave.”
Only succubi saw and manipulated energy. And succubi were female. Not male.
A headache formed in my right temple and grew with each breath. “What type of male creature has succubus abilities?” I asked, turning away from the tapestry and focusing on the three Wilds.
Marie slowly drank her wine and carefully set the glass onto the coffee table, leaving her hands free. She didn’t need her hands to manipulate energy, but they seemed to help. I suddenly became super-aware of everything I felt, in an effort to know if Marie was shifting any of those emotions.
“Some would call them the cousins to succubi,” she answered. “Some would call them our brothers.”
I suppressed a groan. “And what do you call them, Marie?”
“Before they showed up in Portland, I hadn’t called them anything. The humans, though, they call them incubi. Incubus. Our male counterparts.”
Well, shit. Males with all the power of a succubus and twice the size. I’m such a lucky lady. Now I wished Marie had softened the blow with a little energy manipulation.
Five
When Marie opened the door to a first-floor apartment, four succubi were finishing up cleaning the place. After quick hellos, the four left with a broom, rags, buckets, and a mop in tow. Marie didn’t have to say the words for me to know that her giving us the bottom floor apartment was her way of showing us we were free to come and go. I appreciated the sentiment.
“There are two bedrooms,” she said as she stood in the doorway and the three of us moved around the small living room-kitchen combo, taking in our surroundings. “One has two twin-sized beds and the other has a double.”
I leaned on the white-tiled kitchen counter. “That won’t work. We need to sleep in the same room.” I trusted Marie…to an extent. But I didn’t trust her with my life. Or more importantly, the lives of my sisters. Sleeping apart from one another was unsafe.
“It’ll be fine,” Celeste said, brushing off my concern. “I’ll take the double bed so that my sisters can share a room. Thank you, Marie, for giving us our own space.”
Marie’s smile warmed until her eyes smiled too. She gave Celeste a slow nod. “It’s that one.” She pointed to a closed door across from the entrance to the apartment.
Celeste peeked into the room.
I assumed Olivia’s and my room was the next door over, but I was wrong. Still, I toured the little bathroom with its single sink and claw foot tub. The next door over belong to us, our temporary bedroom. Dark tapestries made up the bed coverings and curtains.
“There’s microwavable meals in the fridge. You know where to find me if you need anything. I’ll be around tomorrow morning at seven to pick you up.” Marie left the apartment and shut the door behind her.
After a more snoop-centered tour of the place to check for cameras and anything of the sort, my sisters and I convened on the dark green couch beneath a wall painting of Lilith. She stood tall and proud, her white eyes glowing against dark skin. Snakes wound around her naked forearms and calves like jewelry.
I folded my legs beneath me and rested my back against the couch’s arm. “What do you guys think?”
“I want to help them,” Celeste said. She pulled her knees to her chin and faced me. Olivia sat on the middle cushion, between us.
“Of course you do,” I uttered under my breath.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Did you feel your emotions shift at all while we were up at her place?” I asked. “Like, one minute you felt one thing and without a reason that feeling went away and was replaced by another?”
“No, Faline, Marie did not manipulate my emotions. She’s a good person.”
“How do you know what kind of person she is?” I asked, offended that my sister took offense to my protectiveness. “You’ve barely talked to her.”
“Marie and I trained together at our house,” Celeste informed me with a raised voice. “We ate meals together. I’ve taken more time to get to know the succubi leader than you’ve taken to get to know any of the other Wilds.”
Olivia raised her hands between us. “You two are getting too loud. They’ll hear us.”
I spouted off, “Well, according to Celeste, it shouldn’t matter if another Wild group hears us, right?”
“We’re all on the same side,” Celeste reminded.
“We. Don’t. Know. Them,” I stated through a clenched jaw.
“Because of the Hunters. We don’t know them because of the Hunters, Faline,” Celeste countered. “Not because the other Wild Women are bad or unsafe to be around. The Hunters fed us lies to keep us apart, to divide and weaken.”
“Yeah, the Hunters lied to them too, about us. What do they still believe? We don’t know. And until we do, they aren’t safe. They don’t have our best in mind. They have their own in mind.” I let that little fact sit with Celeste for a moment.
“And whose best does your Hunter have in mind?” Celeste scoffed. “You’re lecturing me on connecting to a succubus when you’re sleeping with a fucking Hunter.”
Olivia shot Celeste a shut-up glare.
“No, she needs to hear it,” Celeste insisted. “Marcus is the huge male elephant in the room, even when he’s miles away. I get why Shawna insists on having him around, in a weird and twisted way. But you? Why do you insist on having him around, Faline? Does he make you feel more powerful or something? Because I don’t get it. None of us get it.”
My sister’s words knocked the wind from my pipes and I stuttered to give her an answer. Except, I had none to give. Her concerns echoed my own private thoughts. Why Marcus? Was it some seduce-the-oppressor crap I dealt with mentally to make me feel more in control than I actually was? No. “I liked him before I knew he was a Hunter,” I heard myself saying.
I’d forgotten. Our jail-house chats and argument of superheroes and heroines over dinner seemed like lifetimes ago. When I thought he was human and he assumed the same of me. When life was so much simpler.
When life was so much more laid out for us, chosen for us by the Hunters.
With self-empowerment came layers of personal truths, some messier than others—all foreign and in need of close examination. That’s the hard part. Examining my own heart.
“He has proven his loyalty.” I closed my eyes before speaking the words begging to come out. I couldn’t look my sisters in the eyes when my true feelings saw the light of day. I couldn’t stand to see their disappointment in me. “I have feelings for him. Deep feelings.”
Olivia sighed and touched my knee. I opened my eyes to see Celeste’s filling with tears. She bit her lip and shook her head. She had to have known. Wasn’t it obvious? But maybe the confirmation was too much.
“But he’s a Hunter,” Olivia said gently.
“You guys keep saying that,” I said. “Don’t you think I already know? Don’t you think I hate it a thousand times more than you do? But he betrayed his own kind for our cause. That counts for a lot.”
“It’s just, his past is his past. He can’t help who he was born to,” Olivia said. “But, Faline, we know close to nothing about Hunters, other than they are supernatural. What if something in him is triggered, something he doesn’t even know about? And he can’t control his strength, his urge to dominate you, to control us, physically, mentally, and however else they do it? What if he gives us up to the Hunters by following an order he can’t deny?”
I thought of the night I’d blacked out and killed a man. How I’d thought my huldra had taken over without my consent because I was born that way, evil to my core. But I had been wrong. My huldra protected me, strengthened me, because I worked with her and not against her. I shook my head. “I have to believe they aren’t born with the uncontrollable urge to hurt and lord over us. I have to believe it was ingrained in them, like fearing our abilities was ingrained in us.”
“Would you risk the safety of your coterie for that belief?” Celeste asked.
I swallowed the burning lump in my throat. Of course I wouldn’t risk their safety.
“I support you. I love you,” Celeste said in a softer tone. “I just worry you haven’t thought this through all the way. I don’t want to see you get hurt. I don’t want to see any of us get hurt.”
Neither did I.
I leveled with my sisters. “You’re right, I haven’t thought about this in detail. I don’t want to, if I’m being honest. I don’t have the headspace for it right now. I’m thinking of the survival of our kind. I’m thinking of the future for the next generation of Wilds and the one after that. I want our daughters to grow up loving the skin they’re in rather than suppressing their strength to gain acceptance from their oppressors—literally having their skin marred with a number as though they’re nothing more than branded cattle. I want them to be whatever profession they desire and not have to cower down to some asshole Hunter telling them that their thoughts don’t matter, that their life and happiness is not equally important.” My voice cracked. “I’m thinking about things like having my mother back in my home someday, in the room next door to me, safe and proud of what her coterie accomplished.”
“We realize you’ve done a lot for us. And we appreciate it,” Olivia said.
“Really?” I asked. “Because it doesn’t feel like it.” It had been a while, since before the night I’d blacked out, that I’d had an honest and open conversation with anyone other than Marcus. And it felt cathartic to get it all out and on the table. “I don’t like the role I’ve been put into. I don’t want it. But I want what’s best for my coterie, for all Wilds, so I’ve accepted it. But every day I struggle with uncovering the real me, who I would have been without the Hunters governing our lives, which parts of me are products of their brainwashing and which are my own.”
“We’re all going through that,” Olivia said.
“So are the succubi,” Celeste added. “Marie is trying to lead a galere of succubi who can see and feel the emotions of others, with a confidence she’s not sure she has. Consider how challenging that is.”
“But is she trying to lead a war?” I started to say, but then realized the words came from a place of hurt. “I shouldn’t compare struggles.”
My sisters nodded. Celeste and I scooted closer to Olivia until the three of us met in the middle of
the couch. We held hands like little girls, like best friends.
“I know this is hard on all of us,” I whispered.
“It is,” Olivia said as she squeezed our hands. “Thankfully, we’re not going through it alone.”
“But if we don’t talk about it, compare notes and support one another, it’s as if we are going through it alone,” Celeste added. “So can we be more open, talk through it with each other without fear of stepping on toes and hurting feelings?”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Me too,” Olivia agreed.
Olivia pulled us in for a group hug before standing and stretching her legs. “In one day we tasted wine, beat up a group of Hunters, and found out incubi actually exist. The sun is down and I’m ready for this shitty day to be over.”
Celeste gave me one last squeeze before hopping from the couch and heading to her bedroom for the night. She shut the door behind her.
Olivia made her way to our room and stopped at the door. “You coming?”
“In a minute,” I answered.
Olivia shut the bedroom door behind her, leaving me alone, standing in front of an altar to Lilith. I rubbed the Freyja pendant hanging from my necklace as I watched the candle’s firelight dance. The succubi who’d opened their home to us prayed to a Goddess in the same way we did. Burnt incense lay in the hollow part of an upturned turtle shell. A small snake skin lay atop a dark velvet runner across the back edge of the altar.
Like the snake, as we grow, we shed our old ways of thinking and beliefs, our old skin, to don new selves. Lilith has been demonized by many for having the attributes of a snake. But according to my mother’s whispers, before the Hunters came to be, people revered the snake for her ability to grow and change despite the discomfort it entailed. “They honored the snake,” she’d say during bedtime stories. “For the snake conquered death to live anew each time it lost its skin. Much like we women bleed monthly and do not die. This is why the Hunters demonized Lilith. Because Lilith could do what they could not.”
Wild Women Collection Page 31
