Wild Women Collection

by Rachel Sullivan

  My curt response did nothing to dissuade his friendly demeanor. “She’s young, you know,” he said to me, like that explained everything. “An adult, yes, but young by my standards anyhow. She still cares what her leader thinks of her, doesn’t wish to let her leader down.” He jerked his head toward Marie a fraction of a second before she began talking.

  “While it’s easy to believe what you say, how can I leave without seeing my sister first? Without ensuring her safety?” Marie asked. She crossed her legs and sipped her drink. I couldn’t be sure if her relaxed confidence was real or not. I supposed that was the point.

  In a way, I felt like a child watching the adults discuss matters above my head. Except they weren’t exactly discussing these things verbally, I assumed. I was at a disadvantage in that I couldn’t read energy the way those two were probably currently doing. I had no idea what kind of energy messages were flying back and forth. My methods of getting information were more physical and, like a child, I didn’t know how much longer I could sit still.

  Aleksander considered Marie’s words as he rubbed small circles with one finger on his tumbler. He didn’t look my way, but I sensed he saw me watching his finger. A smile rose on one side of his mouth and too late I realized he felt the sexual energy building within me. It had been a while since Marcus and I had had any kind of good sex, and I don’t mean quiet quickies. If I really thought about it, the disconnect between Marcus and me had started before the Oregon winery trip, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly when.

  Speaking of fingers, I pulled my gaze from Aleksander’s and pushed all thoughts of sexual pleasure from my mind. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong male.

  The incubus’s half-smile dropped and he gulped down the rest of his drink before standing to set his glass on the cabinet counter he’d pulled it from. “I’ve got an idea,” he said, turning to face us.

  My legs itched to stand, to be at eye level with him, but I did as Marie and stayed seated.

  “Do tell,” Marie said not too quickly so as to seem needy, but not too slowly so as to seem suspicious.

  “Well, the way I see it, you need to know your sister is here on her own accord and faring well before you’ll feel comfortable enough to leave. Yet your sister fears telling her leader that she wishes to stay with a kind that is not her own,” he said.

  Marie nodded.

  “Middle men tend to work well in these situations. And I’ve got one on standby for such an occasion as this.” Aleksander ran his fingers through his brown hair, just long enough to give way to his hand, but still keeping it tidy.

  Before Marie gave an answer, Aleksander landed three loud knocks on the door we’d entered through and stepped back. It opened and a younger looking man with blond hair entered the room, shutting the door behind him. Still, I balked at Marie’s lack of vehement rejection to the idea of not seeing her sister, not checking to make sure she was okay.

  “You called, my king?” the baby-faced man said.

  “Yes, thank you for joining us. Please,” Aleksander said, motioning to the couch he’d been sitting on earlier. “Take a seat.”

  With both men on opposite sides of the room, I wasn’t sure which to keep an eye on. But Aleksander quickly relieved my little problem when he stood behind the younger incubus. “Mason,” Aleksander said. “These are our neighboring Wild Women. I’m sure you can feel the succubus, you’re well acquainted with such energy, but the other three are huldra, if you were wondering.”

  Mason’s eyes widened as he took in my sisters and me. I made a mental note to ask Marie if they could see energy too, and if there was any way to hide mine from view. “Thank you, sire,” the young man uttered.

  “Mason, these women are concerned for Heather’s well-being. Will you please explain to them why their succubus has chosen to stay with us?” Aleksander requested.

  Mason nodded. “Yes, of course, sire.” He spoke mainly to Marie. “We are in love.”

  Marie’s control wavered for a millisecond before she regained it again. “I’m uncertain how this is even possible,” she said with the diplomacy of a queen.

  “Your sister respects your place in the galere and is thankful for your concern,” Mason went on to explain. “But we wish to be together, not separated. And her safety is my top priority.”

  His words hit a nerve and I accidently spoke up. “Her safety is her priority, how she stays safe is her choice.”

  He regarded me. “Yes, and this is her choice.”

  Marie gave one nod and pushed her hair back from her shoulder. “Then you may come stay with us temporarily, if she cannot be separated from you. But all sisters of mine must live under one roof.”

  Marie’s judgement may have seemed harsh, but I knew she did so with the best intentions. Succubi are stronger with numbers. Their group is the largest Wild group, outside of the mermaids, for a reason. They can’t flee by swimming into the sea, flying away, vanishing, or tree-jumping, like the rest of us. Their option is to stand together and combine their energies to overpower their foe. They need each other. The absence of one weakens them all.

  Aleksander answered Marie, the two leaders discussing what seemed like young love, but in reality was the basis of a political relationship. “She has heard the latest news in the Wild Women war, and she chooses to stay out of it.”

  Marie blinked her eyes and cleared her throat, obviously taken aback. “I do not accept this.” She flexed and then folded her hands on her lap. “She is one of us and would never choose to betray us with such disloyalty.”

  Aleksander gave a quick nod to Mason, who bowed his head before removing his long sleeve shirt. His stature was smaller than Aleksander’s, but still lean muscles lined his chest and abs. A dragon tattoo wound up his bicep, twisting around it. But our focus was the ink freshly needled into his skin, on his right pec, where a dragon and a snake were knotted up with foreheads touching. An outsider of the succubus/incubus world, even I knew the meaning behind such body art.

  Marie’s breath hitched. I didn’t need energy reading skills to translate the shift in the room from tense to battle-ready.

  “Please,” Aleksander said with hands open, palm out. “We are not your enemy.”

  “Clearly you are not my friend either,” Marie spat.

  “We have no place in this war of yours, and only seek to offer a place of refuge for those who desire it. Nothing more. We will not get in your way.”

  “You will not help us either,” I said.

  “You misunderstand me, huldra.” Aleksander paused. “I am sorry, I should have asked your name much earlier. I would prefer to address you properly, if you don’t mind.”

  “Faline. My name is Faline of the Washington huldra coterie. And if you’re not for us, then you’re against us.”

  “I do beg to differ, Faline.” Aleksander came around the side of the couch to sit beside his fellow incubus. “We support your cause, but not in the way you prefer. We have nothing to lose by standing down and everything to lose by taking up arms. Supporting someone does not necessarily come from a place of agreeing with them, only recognizing their plight.”

  “Seriously?” I scoffed. “You think you understand what we’ve gone through? You don’t, or else you’d be standing beside us, not behind us.”

  “Technically,” Aleksander said with an infuriating twinkle in his eye. “We do not stand behind, or beside, or in front of you. We stand beneath you, in the underground.”

  “Why the hell is this so funny to you?” I said, unable to contain my anger any longer. I jumped up from the couch. My sisters quickly joined me. “If Heather doesn’t return to her galere, they’ll all be imprisoned. And without them, we have no—”

  Marie shot up and sent me a harsh glare. I shut my mouth. Shit, I’d done it again, let my temper get the best of me and showed our cards.

  Aleksander stood and took a step toward me. He reached his hand out to plant it on my arm, but Marie quickly stood between us. “Do not touch her,�
� she seethed, finally showing her true feelings.

  He stepped back. “I was only trying to help.”

  “Your methods of helping us have yet to inspire any amount of trust on our part,” Marie warned.

  “You cannot doubt that the young incubus and the succubus are in love. She too has a matching tattoo,” Aleksander said, taking two more steps back until his legs hit the couch Mason still sat upon, shirtless. “But beyond that, we’d like to prove our support.”

  “Oh? And how do you plan to do that?” Marie asked, nearing the door to leave. We followed, at the ready for anything.

  “I hear you have a check-in coming up,” he said.

  I almost asked how he knew that—was it what I’d just said or had he already known?—but didn’t want to interrupt him showing his cards.

  “Rather than attend the check-in and risk never leaving the Hunter complex,” Aleksander offered, “come stay with us. All succubi are welcome. Our presence is unknown by the Hunters and they’ve never taken much notice of our existence anyhow. Come. You will be safe and free here.”

  Fear shot through me. If Marie took Aleksander up on his offer, the rest of us Wilds would not succeed in rescuing our mothers and sisters from the Hunters. Without the succubi galere, we wouldn’t be able to take the other Hunter complexes. The harpies were few in numbers, as were the rusalki, who’d just lost a sister at our last battle and hadn’t contacted us since. I couldn’t count on them to show up to the next battle. That left the mermaids. And after the rusalki uncovered some of the mermaids playing double agents, I trusted them about as far as I could see their sneaky scales. The harpies and the huldra were in no way able to take down whole Hunter complexes on our own. And my mother could still be out there, suffering whatever foul plans the Hunters were concocting. I’d made a promise to myself to get my mother back. I refused to accept anything less.

  Marie opened the door to the dank, dark tunnels and left the room, with us huldra flanking her. “I will think on it,” she said.

  Aleksander caught up to us, moving quicker than any other being I’d seen, and pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. “Call me any time, day or night, with your answer. In the meantime, know that your sister is safe. You could be too, if you chose.” He spoke smoothly as though he’d just casually walked right up to us.

  Marie turned on her high heel and walked back down the tunnels, the way we’d come from. Aleksander snapped his fingers and the two incubi who had stood guard outside his chamber door hurried to walk in front of us, leading us out of the maze. One handed us the black fabric head coverings.

  Marie gladly took the bag and placed it over her head, as did I, happy to be free from the claustrophobic underground. And I didn’t have to be able to feel energy to know she was even more ticked than I was about the outcome of this meeting.

  We convened as we briskly walked back to the apartment complex down the busy Portland streets. The morning sun barely shone through the clouds, but even the small amount of daylight made me wish I’d thought to bring sunglasses after spending an hour underground.

  “Bullshit,” I murmured as my boots pounded the pavement.

  “Which part?” Celeste asked.

  “All of it.” I let out a huff. “Of course they want to be Switzerland in all of this. Why would they mess up a good thing? The Hunters keep their every watching eyes on us, which means the incubi can just slink through the night, unnoticed, as they drain human women of their energy and create new incubi.”

  “Maybe the Hunters don’t know the incubi exist,” Olivia offered.

  “No, the Hunters know,” I said. “Marcus didn’t want me meeting with them because of their reputation.” I wondered if the Wilds walking with me bristled at how I connected Marcus to the Hunters, but I didn’t look to find out. I hadn’t meant to do it. From what I’d seen, he’d been wrong about the incubi being overly dangerous. Or maybe he had just overreacted out of jealousy. I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  “And I thought for sure bringing you three would do the trick,” Marie muttered.

  “Why would you think that?” I asked.

  Marie’s heels clicked the pavement in rhythm as she spoke. “I wanted him to see the succubi united with other Wild Women, to know that he’d be outnumbered if it ever came to a fight.”

  Apparently, Aleksander didn’t think it’d come to that.

  A blue-striped city bus rumbled by and my pony tail whipped at my face. I spit strands from my mouth. “They think that cheering from the sidelines is helping us to destroy the opposing team. We don’t need cheerleaders; we need those who’ll stand beside us and join in our fight for freedom. But the free get great comfort from believing everyone else enjoys the same freedom as they do. Admitting that someone is oppressed almost forces anyone with a conscience to help the oppressed group, and so it’s easier to tell yourself they’re fine.”

  We rounded the corner, within sight of the succubi’s white brick apartment building. Trees lined the sidewalk, full of orange leaves, but not nearly mature enough for my taste. Their thin trunks told of life in a city that only recently began appreciating nature.

  “What are you thinking, Marie?” Celeste asked.

  When the succubus didn’t answer, only stared ahead at her home, I added, “You’ve been awfully quiet. Don’t tell me you’re actually considering Aleksander’s offer.” Or was she too angry at her sister to speak? Pissed over her sister’s selfishness in endangering the galere by insisting to stay with her incubus rather than attending check-in together?

  I waited for a reassuring answer, but got none. “Marie, if you and your kind forsake the Wilds, we’re doomed.” There, I’d said it. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to reveal how much we needed her and her sisters, but her silence bore into me the way impending doom twisted one’s insides into knots.

  Marie bounded up the apartment stoop ahead of us and through the front door. At the base of the stairs she paused and turned toward my sisters and me. “Feel free to rest in the apartment we’ve loaned you. I must meet with my sisters and discuss our next move.” She took the steps up to her top-level apartment, two by two.

  All we could do was stand there and watch as the threads of hope for our kind potentially unraveled.

  Eleven

  When I finally took my throw-away cell phone off airplane mode, it buzzed repeatedly with messages from Marcus. I called him back, filled him in, and listened to him warn me repeatedly about the risks of dealing with a kind of creature I hadn’t wanted to deal with in the first place. It didn’t go well. Even more frustrated than before, I ended the call to join my sisters at the small table. Olivia called our coterie to let them know the latest news.

  “Marie won’t abandon us,” Celeste insisted. “She’s got a good heart.”

  “In all honesty,” Oliva said, “you’ve only spent a night with her. You don’t really know what Marie will do.”

  I fought the urge to openly agree, but my sister didn’t need salt poured on her wound.

  “Either way, we’re going to have to leave our homes soon,” I said, changing the subject for Celeste’s sake. “We know that despite the records burning in the Hunter complex fire, it’s only a matter of time before they find out where we live and our name changes won’t happen soon enough. We need to think about where we want to go. The mermaid’s island is out. They’ve already abandoned it for who knows where. We obviously can’t stay here. The rusalki live in a literal hole in the ground, so that’s out of the question. And the harpies have a nice place on a mountain cliff, but it’s not very big, so it’d be cramped.”

  “I need a time out from all of this,” Celeste said, covering her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I can’t do this right now. It’s too much.”

  I softened my voice, “Okay. We can pick this up later.”

  “I’m going to lay down now. Let me know when Marie returns.” Celeste stood and made her way to her bedroom.

  “A nap is a
good idea,” Oliva agreed, standing to stretch.

  I followed her into our shared bedroom, eager for an hour of catch-up sleep.

  “Marie wants to talk to us,” Celeste said, her head peeked through the bedroom door. Afternoon sun streamed through the window and settled on my bed. Celeste left the door open and waited on the threshold, arms crossed, looking impatient.

  Olivia sat up and yawned. “Seriously? She literally just slept in a bed with one of us last night. And now she’s summoning us?”

  My thoughts exactly.

  We rose and followed her out. Celeste refrained from responding as she urged us to move quicker up the steps. When we entered Marie’s apartment déjà vu hit me like a branch to the face. More than ten succubi stood, crammed into her living room so tightly they spilled into the kitchen. Each of them sported some kind of snake tattoo, seen or unseen. All of them watched us, waiting for Marie’s signal. Uncertainty crawled through my mind. Marie wouldn’t use energy against us the way she’d pinned me the first time we’d met, would she?

  Bark tingled to the surface of my skin and spread up my back, wrapping around my waist. A succubus, let alone more than ten of them, would not be stopped for even a second by my bark. But my inner huldra didn’t know or care.

  “Thank you for coming,” Marie said.

  She patted the cushion on her red couch beside where she sat. Celeste shook her head no. Despite my aggravation with her, the sight caused pride to swell in me. The two of them may be lovers, but huldra are always loyal to one another.

  “Very well then,” Marie said as she sat up straighter. “My sisters and I have taken a vote and come to a decision.” She canvassed the room before setting her gaze back on us. “We will pack our things and leave tonight to stay with the incubi.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” I exclaimed.

  Two succubi stepped closer to where Marie sat, one on each side.