“He’s also a very powerful incubus,” the young man added.
We considered him for a moment, and he seemed to finally realize he was standing before a deadly huldra coterie. He straightened from leaning against the door frame and fidgeted with the hem of his shirt.
“Well,” I said in an antagonizing tone. I’d had enough of the incubi coming in, acting like they understood shit that was so out of their realm of existence that they assumed they knew all about it. “I do apologize for our obvious ignorance in the ways of the world, but you still haven’t told me why the succubi went to check-in at all. And also, what would give Alek any indication that the women were in trouble?”
Mason’s eyes shot to me. “Oh, he doesn’t like being called Alek.”
“I’ll take note of that,” I answered, mentally reminding myself to call the incubi leader Alek to his face the first chance I got.
“And,” the incubus continued. “We feel energy. I can’t sense that there’s anything wrong with the succubi, but if Aleksander sent me to fetch you then he must be feeling something.”
Celeste grabbed her purse from the couch and slipped her shoes on beside the front door. The incubus took a few steps back when my sister got too close. Is this out of fear of the unknown or something else, I wondered.
“He’s come to fetch us,” Celeste said, repeating the incubus. “I’m going to find out why.”
Five more incubi had been waiting in an alley when we arrived. Marcus refused to allow them to place a covering over his head and lead him into their underground home. I quickly agreed, citing that Aleksander could just as well meet us out in the open rather than having us go through the trouble of coming to him. Celeste bucked my opinion a little, but in the end, the discomfort of our fellow coterie members won out and she sided with her kind.
It took another twenty minutes before Aleksander stood before us, his gaze bouncing from me to Marcus and back again. If he was as powerful as his subordinate believed, he was connecting the dots of Marcus and my relationship. I almost wanted to ask him to let me know what he found once we were done, because when it came to Marcus and me our feelings for each other were so clear they confused me. Maybe for a mermaid and a human that kind of clarity would be illuminating. But for a huldra and a Hunter? Not so much.
When the two men, both over six foot and riddled with muscles, were done peacocking, I started in. “So, Alek, what’s this about the succubi going to check-in?”
The sun shone in the sky on this crisp morning, but its light failed to touch us, crammed in between two multi-story brick buildings. Wet remnants of boxes lay between a large trash bin and a moss-covered wall.
Aleksander bristled at my title for him, but he didn’t openly object. “You were not in the safe house I had secured for you.”
Celeste answered before I strung together enough words to turn down his offer. “We will gather our things and go straight there after this.”
I rolled my eyes. Apparently, my coterie had made the decision during breakfast while Marcus and I were upstairs. I didn’t blame them for wanting to feel secure, and admittedly, that was the exact point of a safe house. But nothing came without a cost, not even safe houses.
“I feel a shift in Portland and its surrounding areas,” Marcus started, answering my earlier question about why he thought the succubi were in trouble. He eyed Marcus again before pretending to relax by leaning against a brick wall void of moss. He folded his arms in front of him and kicked a leather shoe up behind him to wedge onto the wall. “An energy shift. It feels heavier around here.”
Seeing as I didn’t feel energy any more than anyone else, I had to take him at his word. Still, I wasn’t gullible either. “Couldn’t that be caused by an incoming natural disaster or something?” I asked, thinking about how I’d read that animals can sense impending disasters and run for the hills before it claims their lives.
He nodded. “It can, Faline. Very insightful for you to suggest. And I’d probably allow you to sway me into believing that’s precisely what I’m sensing. Except, I’ve been walking this earth for longer than his grandmother’s been alive.” Aleksander motioned to Marcus. “And in that time I’ve picked up a few…helpful abilities. One of which is being able to tell the difference between a flash flood, an earthquake, and a group of scared women.”
Now it was Marcus’s turn to bristle. My ex-Hunter, who already stood as tall and straight as possible, jerked his head toward the incubi leader and tilted his chin just enough to pop his neck. I almost laughed. And I probably would have if we weren’t talking about the safety of a whole Wild Women group. A group I’d come to befriend and trust. A group whose leader my sister had developed feelings for.
“You know,” Aleksander said with all the ease of a clear summer day as he pushed from leaning on the wall and dusted the lapels of his dark gray blazer. “If you joined my…group, your neck problems would be a thing of the past, if you agreed to me changing you.”
“What did you just say?” Marcus asked, done placating the cocky incubus.
“Oh, no offense,” Aleksander added as an afterthought. “I’m sure you’re lovely just the way you are. But, how much more lovely would you be joining me, as a near-immortal? I could use your muscle.”
I’d never had to hold Marcus back before. Until now. The man gave me no warning. He didn’t shake his head or spew assaults. He took two steps and swung a fist at the incubus.
Aleksander ducked out of the way a millisecond before Marcus’s fist grazed the tip of his nose. It took me that long to get between the two of them and sprout branch nubs from the palms of my hands to threaten them both. Act right or get tied up. Those were my conditions. Although admittedly, my close-up view of Marcus’s pecs flexed under his thin cotton shirt distracted me enough to keep bark from rising to my skin. So my threats weren’t exactly backed up by much. Still, they didn’t know that.
Of course, my conditions didn’t include them playing nice-nice either. So the two men, much taller than me and certainly more muscular, glared at one another over my head while I stood, separating them.
“I would never willingly place myself in a bloodline of vampiric ancestry,” Marcus seethed as though the mention of “vampire” turned his stomach.
“Enough!” Celeste scolded. “Why did Marie go to check-in?”
“And,” I added, retracting my branch nubs. “Why the hell are you offering to change Marcus for his muscles if your group is made of pacifists?” Something didn’t add up, and my bounty-hunter senses told me that somehow this equation could be connected.
I turned from Marcus to face Aleksander, who quickly backed up after making eye contact with the ex-Hunter behind me. Marcus must have mouthed something. Either that or Aleksander felt Marcus’s feelings for me.
“We talked about her going to their check-in, at length, and came to the conclusion that it was in the best interest of her galere to go. Heather agreed to join them if they returned, together, back to the incubi home once they were done,” Aleksander explained with a shrug of his shoulders. So he was concerned enough to have one of his incubi come get us, but not concerned enough to actually act like he cared? Was this an incubi thing or an Aleksander thing?
Or maybe this was a child of Lilith thing. Marie liked to play games too.
Marie. How would her galere survive the Hunters? They already had the misfortune of absorbing the emotions of humans around them, how much worse were the emotions of Hunters?
“Did you actually tell them to go?” Celeste asked with nothing short of disgust. She had to have some strong feelings for Marie if she was blaming Marie’s bad decision on another person.
Aleksander regarded Celeste. “I did nothing of the sort, huldra.”
Ah, yes, he was definitely related to Marie.
The incubi leader went back to leaning against the brick building behind him. “I simply listened to her concerns and her justifications for going.”
“Which were?” I asked.
<
br /> He gave a long sigh as though we were meddling kids and he was the adult we shouldn’t question. I didn’t care how old he was, it tested my patience. Giving him a fierce look, I made bark spring from the tops of my forearms as a little reminder of who exactly he was speaking to.
He began, “Well, if you must know, she was not quite sure about her galere’s decision to hide underground.” He paused. “We had a leader-to-leader conversation, which, I’m not absolutely sure she’d appreciate my sharing.”
“At this point, seeing as it’d help us rescue her galere, she’d be fine with it,” Celeste said dryly.
Aleksander gave a nod and continued. “She believed they were making this choice out of fear, which she deemed an unwise foundation for a decision. She felt that if they went to check-in, it would give her galere one more month to be absolutely sure this is what they wanted. She hoped time would ease their fear and help them to think more clearly.”
“It makes sense,” I added, thinking out loud.
“Which is precisely why I refrained from dissuading her,” Aleksander answered. “She also thought that if they experienced what hiding underground would be like, they may change their minds. She wanted to give them the freedom to do that—change their minds.”
“But the Hunters are on high alert since the destruction of the Washington complex,” Celeste said, putting the pieces of her lover’s decision together like a heart-wrenching puzzle. “And she knows Oregon Hunters attacked us at the winery, probably thinking we were succubi. Why would she knowingly walk into that situation?”
Celeste had a good point. If Marie would have just stuck to our plan—if she hadn’t asked me to derail my plans to come convince her sister to come back from the incubi—we’d all be heading to the east coast by the time the Hunters figured out the succubi weren’t showing up for check-in. She wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this.
“She did mention that,” Aleksander said, with a slight brow lift.
“Then why didn’t you stop her?” Celeste asked.
“Because she’d assured me that they knew what they were doing when it came to the Hunters. If the Hunters tried anything, they’d manipulate the energy. When they work together, they’re incredibly strong. She led me to believe that if worse came to worse, her galere could take down that complex on their own.” Aleksander pushed away from the brick wall. The four incubi who had been waiting at a distance in the alley walked over to flank him.
It occurred to me that they hadn’t joined him when he and Marcus were toe-to-toe. How powerful was this incubi leader?
“Besides,” he added as an afterthought. “How bad can the Hunters be?” He waved an arm at Marcus. “This one doesn’t seem so vicious.”
Probably not the best comment to make. Not to a Hunter, but most certainly not to a Wild Woman. I closed my eyes for a quick moment to steady my emotions and took a deep breath. To make sure the man beside me didn’t do the opposite, I wove my fingers with his to hold his hand.
Also, how did he know Marcus was a Hunter?
“All right, then,” Aleksander said as he walked away from our group with his men. “I think I’ve told you as much as you need to know.”
He made it halfway out of the alley before I spoke up. “Wait.”
He turned on the heel of his leather shoes and cocked his head. “Yes?”
“Did you feel any emotions from Marie before she left? You told us what she said and thought, but not how she felt.”
A smile drew the corners of his lips upward. “Very astute. I knew there was a reason I liked you the most.”
I squeezed Marcus’s hand tighter. He squeezed back.
“She felt unsure, not fear, nothing so basic as fear,” Aleksander said. “Most emotions are difficult to explain to those who can’t feel them like we can, you see, so this is an impossible question to answer thoroughly. But, if I had to give her emotions labels, I’d say unsure with bits of hesitancy sprinkled throughout, covered in ambition parading as courage.”
He began to turn to leave, but I stopped him with another question. “Why did you offer to turn Marcus if you knew he’s a Hunter?”
“For no reason other than that it’d make both our lives easier.” And with that, the incubi leader in his casual suit walked out of the damp alley and took a hard left, joined by his men.
“What was that supposed to mean?” Marcus whispered.
“I have no idea,” I said, thankful Marcus hadn’t been changed into an incubus.
As an incubus he’d know I was lying.
Seventeen
The walk back to the empty succubi apartments was a silent one, void of words yet full of tension. We knew to be careful when approaching the apartment building; the Hunters could be there waiting for us. But we had to gather our things before high-tailing it to the safe house. Plus, whether or not the Hunters were at the apartment would tell us just how much information they’d already gotten out of the succubi, if they’d questioned them enough to know the Washington huldra coterie roamed their territory. Once we got that bit of information out of the way, we’d know better how to move forward.
Despite our being blocks from the apartments and unable to be heard or spotted by a Hunter waiting to attack us within the building, my coterie remained silent. I couldn’t decide if my sisters and aunts kept quiet because of the humans passing by on the sidewalk, or if it had more to do with a lack of answers.
We spread out to approach the three-story succubi apartment building from different directions, slinking around edges of the brick buildings behind and next door to it, crouching behind the tires of a car with Oregon plates parked across the street from it. We waited, unseen from one another, as my coterie took turns giving the all-clear through whistles too quiet for Marcus to hear. He crouched beside the car’s back wheel as I took the front.
“Okay,” I whispered to him. “That’s six whistles.”
We stood and crossed the street to make our way to the stoop. “I don’t smell anything different from when we left. Can’t hear any movement inside either. Is there a way you can sense them?” I asked, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
A smirk nearly smoothed his brow, furrowed in concentration. “No, I can’t sense them,” he said in an amused voice.
We paused after stepping onto the sidewalk directly in front of the apartment building. I wished we’d thought to bring an incubus, to know if he felt any male energy inside the building. But all things considered, with the lack of movement and sound, I was fairly certain we were alone on the property. I puckered my lips and gave a nearly silent whistle.
My sisters and aunts answered my whistle by joining us on the stoop so we could walk in together. Marcus entered the building first and I followed close behind to secure the first-floor apartments. Olivia and Celeste jogged upstairs to check the second level while Renee and Patricia checked the third. Once we gave the all-clear in our temporary housing and shut the main entry door, I realized the true answer behind my coterie’s lack of conversation since we’d left Aleksander. The absence of hope had a way of sealing mouths shut and causing hearts to stammer.
Marcus broke the wordless silence suggesting the end point we all knew needed accomplishing. Except, none of us knew how to actually accomplish it.
“They’re trapped and we need to get them out. The sooner the better.” His words faded into nothingness when my coterie sat on the couch and chairs as though the weight of the world became too heavy for their knees to bear. “I know for a fact that they won’t be coming home without our help,” he urged, standing and trying to rally the troops.
When we didn’t respond, he paced the living room, still talking, trying to express his urgency to a group of defeated Wilds. “The ambush we experienced at the winery was the Hunter’s first retaliation attack. I know their methods. They start out small, quiet and private, and then grow. They took Wild Women from their groups. Then they attacked the mermaid’s island where only mermaids would know of the occurre
nce. The winery was another step up—their way of taking a slightly bigger risk, of feeling things out as they plan their next, bigger blow.”
His thoughts about the winery attack got Shawna’s attention. She’d been pretty quiet since returning from home, after fleeing from the Hunters’ surprise attack. Reserved. “You forgot their most recent attack on our house,” she uttered.
“Exactly my point,” he answered, pointing to my partner sister, probably glad to finally get a little interaction from us. “It’s a tactic. They make small advances to feel out their foes. It’s smart really. And proves the different complexes are working together.” He paused, in thought. “It’s almost like a dance, actually. They take a step forward, partly to gauge the reaction they’ll get, and partly to take a small step back and see if there’s retaliation. The whole time, while their dance partner just thinks they’re doing the waltz, the Hunter leaders are studying their partner so they can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’ll have the upper hand in their last dance, their last stand in achieving their end goal. They’re studying the reactions of you all, of the Wild Women, on different turfs. How will you react in public? They tried that at the winery. How will you react in private, when you’re caught off guard? Those were the island and home invasions. Now they’ve captured the second largest known Wild Women group, for a new level of testing their responses.”
“Stop,” Celeste demanded. “I can already imagine what they’re doing to her. I don’t need you to set that picture into stone for me.”
Shawna reached over to place a hand on Celeste’s thigh.
“The largest Wild group is the mermaids,” Renee offered. “If we can enlist them, we may have a chance at getting the succubi galere back.”
Olivia turned to answer my aunt. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of them. Last I heard, they were leaving their island, but that’s it. It’s like they trashed their phones and dropped off the face of the earth.”
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