“But how did they know where we were staying?” Eonza asked. “They’d snuck in through the doors and windows and blindsided us. We’d tried to fight back, but there were too many of them and we weren’t prepared, our guard had been down. They herded us into the bedroom where other Hunters had broken in and already began setting up the red stones. It all happened so fast. How?”
Rod shook his head and exhaled. “Now that one I couldn’t tell you. I have no clue how they knew where to find you.”
“They’ve banned together,” I said, thinking of the Hunters I’d taken down earlier and what they’d said about the North Carolina complex. “Which means they’ve got more resources than Rod or Marcus know of, since they’re mainly familiar with the Washington Hunter ways and intel.”
The room quieted again, as we all went back to work and no-doubt back to considering what exactly it meant for us that the Hunters had banned together.
As I cleaned and made my way back into my room, my mind buzzed with new information.
First, my huldra and I had come to some sort of agreement to work together, which opened new doors for me when it came to fighting—doors to truths I still hadn’t quite figured out completely. Second, and the part that made my bounty hunter side the happiest, according to the North Carolina Hunter, the women being stolen from the Seattle area and trafficked were being funneled through the Hunter’s North Carolina complex. That had to have been the “whores” he’d referred to.
The Hunters clearly had a detailed system set up of transporting the women for holding and then shipping them off to wherever their buyer lived.
“But it makes no sense,” I said to Marcus who’d tired of sitting on our bed and now scrubbed a blood stain on the wooden floor beside the nightstand.
He paused to look up. I eyed his amazing traps through his t-shirt from my vantage point and quickly felt guilty for ogling him when his eyes clearly expressed his inner pain. Although, he didn’t want to discuss that pain at the moment. So I changed the subject.
“What doesn’t make sense?” he asked.
“If the Hunters value chastity and feminine virtue so much,” I said. “That they don’t let their betrothed daughter be alone with single Hunters, why would they kidnap women to sell for sex?”
Marcus shook his head and scrubbed harder. “Just the idea of them selling women for sex makes me wish I could attach dynamite to each and every one involved and light them all up like Christmas trees. Makes me sick to call them my brothers.” After a few beats of him scrubbing so hard it looked as though he were wearing a hole into the wood, he paused and leaned back to sit on his knees. He exhaled slowly. “But to answer your question, they say their rules are for their women’s own good, that the rules protect their virtue, but that has nothing to do with it. To them, women are objects.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Would you want someone messing around with your new car?” he continued. “Say you were picking it up from the lot, brand new, and you saw that there’s already someone else’s scent in the car, and coffee stains on the seat. Then you go to drive it and the steering wheel keeps pulling to the right.”
“But what does a car have in common with a woman?” I asked, pausing from disinfecting the broken dresser.
“Nothing,” Marcus answered gruffly. He returned to his scrubbing, his strong shoulders moving back and forth under the thin layer of cotton. “But to them, everything. No one wants their one and only car to be used, with used car problems. They want brand spankin’ new. The fact that they liken cars to women sickens me.”
“So, then,” I clarified. “You’re saying they don’t value unvirtuous women because those women are no longer wife material and therefore have no value?”
Marcus nodded. “Disgustingly, yes.”
“It’s archaic,” Aleksander added, striding into our room like he owned the place, which in a rental-agreement way, he kind of did. “Don’t worry about that dent, Faline. I know a guy.”
“Speaking of worrying,” I said to Aleksander. “You were in the front yard. Why didn’t you use your energy powers to stop John and Marcus’s dad from running away? Couldn’t you have forced them to stop and walk back?”
“I had just finished bringing a deservedly slow and painful death to the Hunter’s who had tried to follow you down the stairs. The moment their weakness set in and allowed their deaths, I had found myself otherwise occupied, bringing a succubus back from the brink of death,” Aleksander replied. “Such a use of energy takes all my concentration. I hadn’t noticed the leader Hunters’ escape until it was too late.”
Wow, so incubi had the ability to bring people back from the brink of death. Good to know.
A toilet flushed and then Rod stood in the doorframe to the bedroom, making the room feel more cramped. He worked his sore and swollen muscles, a side effect for Hunters after being around so many Wild Women, releasing their wildness. I was actually impressed that he’d been able to keep it together and not accidently turn on one of us during the fighting. It was in their genes to want to kill us.
“So, Rod,” I said, tying another black bag of bloody items. I wasn’t about to try to remove blood from an orange and white mandala quilt, so into the new empty bag it went. “What do you know about the whole human trafficking thing your brothers are involved with?”
Rod sat on the bed and exhaled. “Marcus told you then?”
I shot a questioning glace to Marcus.
He sighed. “No, I haven’t had time to tell her. And then today happened, and—”
“Tell me what?” I asked, my interest thoroughly piqued.
Marcus sat back on his knees. “The final straw that made Rod leave the brotherhood, or think about leaving to take a break.”
“Well, I’m out now, brother, they saw me,” Rod chimed in.
Marcus ignored him. “You remember they’d recently had him promoted in his precinct.”
I nodded.
“Well,” he continued. “They did that for a reason, in exchange for a favor. Only he didn’t learn the favor until after the promotion. They wanted him to talk his golfing buddy, an investigator with Seattle PD, into burying a complaint made against Samuel Woodry, the same guy you brought in the day we had our first date, the guy who’d recently become a runner for the trafficking ring before you caught him.”
“Holy shit.” I stared off at nothing, compiling my thoughts.
Marcus went on. “The complaint made against him was from the parents of a barista in Seattle. Apparently, the day you brought him in, he’d creeped out their daughter, an eighteen year-old senior about to graduate from high school.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand. “I think that may be the one I witnessed. Did he just creep her out at the coffee shop, or did he approach her somewhere else before that?”
Somewhere that would give me a hint as to where the Hunters were setting their sights as of late. Maybe they’d had Samuel feeling out a new market for them, a new crop of women, spoiled by the world’s evils, to pick off.
“He’d joined their private online group, Witches not Bitches, under an alias, and started sending inappropriate messages to the ladies,” Rod answered. “When he ordered his coffee at her shop, he quoted something he’d said to her in one of his messages, about her teacher.”
“That’s it!” I dropped the trash bag and slapped my thigh. “That’s it. They’re targeting young pagan women. I remember seeing her wearing a pentagram necklace and she had a tiny crescent moon tattoo on the inside of one of her wrists. But it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d been stalking her. I thought he was just jonesing for a fix.”
When Clarisse had told me, after she’d killed Azalea, that their plans had already been set into motion because of Samuel, she’d meant that he’d found where they’d locate their newest victims, or commodities as they saw it. Online groups brought in people from all over the country. Of course, they had to move their operation out of Seattle, out of the limelight, and t
o a broader location. They were gearing up, if they hadn’t started already, to target young women from pagan and wiccan online groups, kidnap them or lure them into a trap, funnel them through the North Carolina complex, and sell them to the highest bidder.
My stomach turned in on itself and my huldra stirred from her nap. Marcus caught my gaze with a look that assured me we’d put a stop to this.
My coterie and I, the three harpies, Marcus, Mason, Aleksander, and the snake foreign Wilds crammed ourselves into the now packed Airbnb living room. I watched Eonza for signs of making advances on Aleksander, but so far she’d only peered in his direction a time or two, quickly looking away when he noticed her watching him.
Celeste sat beside Marie on the flower-print couch, clutching her hand as though she planned to never let it go. Marie stood and Celeste proved my assumption by standing with her.
“Now that we are all here, I have an announcement to make for my galere,” Marie started. “We have decided the underground life is not for us.”
I gazed around the room to see succubi smiling and Heather crying quietly, tucked under Mason’s arm. Even if they interpreted Marie’s declaration as the end to their relationship, I had no doubt those two would find a way to be together. But seeing as the two Hunter leaders got away, and probably noticed Aleksander in the process, I assumed the incubi leader’s earlier declaration to stay out of the war had gone out the window much like the two Hunters. The fact that he helped to blow up the Oregon Hunter complex only strengthened my assumption.
“Our snake sisters from across the sea have pledged themselves to our cause, and we have pledged ourselves to the huldra’s and harpies’ cause.” Marie paused long enough to find my face among the crowd. A smile lit her eyes and for a second, I thought I saw what Celeste had found and cherished in the succubi leader. “You have our vow; we will assist you in returning your mother, and the mothers and sister of other Wild Women. Together, we will bring freedom to the Wild Women of this land.”
The living room filled with cheering and clicking tongues and yipping, as though most of these women weren’t covered in bandages and others with their arms in slings. The scene spoke to our resilience and reminded me of what Marcus had said about our fire being bigger than the Hunters’.
When the excitement died down I took the stage, so to speak. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that, Marie.”
“We aren’t safe here,” I reminded. “So I say we leave tonight. I know we’re battered and bruised, but if we load into rental vans we can take turns driving and sleeping and recoup when we get to the harpies’ home. They don’t have much space in their house, but they own and rent out vacation homes in the area that they’ve offered to us for the time being. John knows that the harpies were here with us, and he’ll no doubt alert the North Carolina complex, but they assure us that they’ve already taken steps to keep the Hunters from learning of their properties. Each rental home was purchased under an alias name, and aren’t even managed by the same property managers, so there’s no connecting them to one owner.” I knew the harpies’ distrust of all things human would come in handy.
“What do you say, sisters?” Marie canvassed the room with her eyes to ask her fellow succubi. Their answer was a resounding yes.
“The Hunter leaders saw me,” Aleksander spoke up. “There’s no longer a reason for me to stay out of this. I’ll go, and bring Mason with me, as my hoard holds down the fort here in Portland.”
Eonza gave a short nod, as though readying herself for her next phase of incubus seduction.
Marcus snuck his hand to mine and squeezed my fingers before releasing it and letting it fall to my side. My heart ached for him. What inner turmoil must he be feeling? I wondered. I could only imagine and hoped that when we were finally alone, he’d be willing to open up and share his thoughts.
Mason thanked his leader. Aleksander addressed the young male, who stood beside the fireplace in the center of the room. “It is the least I can do, and I am sure it will keep you and me both sane in a way that holding you back from your mate will not.”
Heather clung tighter to her incubus and smiled.
“I have something else to say. An announcement,” I said boldly. I grabbed Marcus’s hand and held our joined hands above my head. “I’m done watching love blossom between others while I feel forced to hide my own. Marcus has more than proved himself, many times over, so I’m done pretending for the comfort of others.” I peered around the room. “I love this male, and he loves me back. And that right there, is enough.”
Marcus pulled me into his chest and leaned me backwards, pushing his lips passionately into my own. My huldra stirred again, this time more than content with my choice to declare my lover to the other Wild Women.
Celeste clapped and my coterie joined in, hesitantly at first. But hey, it was a step. And honestly, their acceptance was all I really cared about, even if I’d said I didn’t care. Even Shawna gave a smile, although worry settled behind her eyes. Her savior had a chance at killing her captor and didn’t take it. My sister had new emotions to work through, and I caught her gaze with mine, sending silent promises to stand beside her every step of the way. A root promise isn’t one taken lightly.
“It’s settled then,” Marie said, above the hesitant laughing and exhaustion-filled conversations. “Everyone gather your things. We’ll stop by the incubi’s underground to get our stuff and then it’s off to North Carolina. We leave in an hour.”
With that, Marie and Celeste left into Celeste’s room and closed the door behind them.
I grabbed Marcus by the hand and we made our way down the hall. He closed the bedroom door behind me, and before I could ask him how he was doing, he pressed his lips onto mine, shutting us away from the world and our inner battles, if only for an hour.
THE END
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ISHTAR’S LEGACY
Book 3
Preface
There once was a little girl, as rich and deep as the very earth itself. Within her heart, seeds were planted, and one by one these seeds took root. The little girl was not aware of the growth within her, for she did not know how to recognize such vines and leaves. Until one day, when she was much older, the vines burst from her fingertips with a power she never knew she possessed. And through these vines, seeds were planted into other hearts, until across the globe, the trees of change took root and grew to heal us all.
This was the last story Faline’s mother whispered to her little girl, the last seed she tucked into her daughter’s heart.
And the Hunters never saw it coming.
One
The moment I set foot in the waiting area outside the one-story Ashville Regional Airport in North Carolina, the soles of my feet tingled with the need to push roots into the east coast soil. Stars twinkled in the distance, peeking out between shifting winter clouds, their brightness muted by the city’s light pollution. Above us, a sign clung to the cement outer walls, encased in lit bulbs.
Arrivals.
I’d walked through this relatively small airport, along the grounds of this part of the country, before. This time my heart quickened with a knowing. With the culmination of the past months, of the fighting and hiding and absolute hell, my body insisted that I rise like an ocean wave and crash onto the Hunters’ shore, wiping them out for good.
Marcus grabbed my hand, pulling me from my battle fantasy and back into the moment.
“Where were you just now?” he asked with a twinkle of curiosity in his eyes and a smirk on his lips. We had unintentionally matched, both wearing bomber-style jackets and jeans with boots. Though, if you asked me, he wore it better.
“I think you already know the answer to that,” I teased.
“I know I know the answer,” he said, squeezing my hand, “but how does it look in your mind?”
I
exhaled. My breath, visible in the winter night’s frigid air, dissipated before I put words to the images in my mind. “I think you and Aleksander were on to something. I like the idea of blowing up the last two Hunter complexes. But this time with bigger explosions. I want the whole country to feel the fall of our oppressors.”
I looked to my partner sister Shawna, who hooked her left arm into mine. Every huldra had a partner sister—another huldra born around the same time within her coterie, a best friend and sister to spend her life with. Shawna gave an approving nod.
We’d planned to drive rental vans to North Carolina, but decided it’d be smarter to fly instead. And my aunt Renee showed signs of travel fatigue not more than a day into our journey.
“Where are they?” my aunt grumbled. Her feet balanced on the edge of the sidewalk as she leaned into the road to peer left, in the direction our ride should have been visible from by now.
“Be patient,” a nagin, Anwen, said. She stood tall, her long black and silver hair framing her dark skin and eyes. “They flew here on their own wings, not a machine’s.”
Renee ignored the British Wild Woman and silently continued toeing the edge of the sidewalk.
We hadn’t wasted much time in Oregon after blowing up their Hunters’ complex and then coming back to a Hunter ambush at our Airbnb. After collecting our things and trying to clean the place up as much as possible—though our new ally, the incubus Aleksander, was still going to owe repair charges, which we’d fully reimburse him for—we piled into our vehicles and made for the airport. We couldn’t all get on the same flight headed to North Carolina—the flights were too full—so we had opted to use cash and buy tickets to leave the following afternoon. We’d rented hotel rooms under an incubus’s name and Aleksander had his incubi bring the succubi’s things to pick through at the hotel, deciding which items to leave behind and which to take with them on our little east coast excursion. Thankfully the incubus had brought us each fake identification cards as well, promising the cards had worked for other traveling supernaturals, but refused to tell us which and what kind.
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