Wild Women Collection

by Rachel Sullivan

  Aleksander’s smile dropped and he shot me a look. “You find disgust in me so easily.”

  Ugh, I’d forgotten his ability to sense my energy, my emotions.

  I fought back an eye roll and then felt a little guilty. “Sorry, I just pictured you making moonshine to help aide in your incubus efforts.”

  “You mean you assumed I needed alcohol to intoxicate human women to sleep with me?” he asked. “Do you think I’m some kind of monster?”

  His question caught me off guard and I had to do a quick reevaluation of my unfair beliefs surrounding incubi. If they were the product of a night of passion between a succubus and a vampire, then their energy abilities were passed down from their maternal side. The succubi were not monsters. They did occasionally enjoy naked escapades with humans, giving them the best sex of their lives, but it was all very willing. So why would the same actions from an incubus make him a monster? Why was it okay for females but not males? It wasn’t, and I’d been really sexist in thinking so, even subliminally. Part of me just really wanted to dislike this guy due to the whole “mate bond” thing he claimed to have with me.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Aleksander. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have assumed that.”

  “When I lay with a woman,” he clarified, just to make sure I got the point, “I desire her to be in her right mind, without the influence of drugs or alcohol. It’s not enjoyable if it’s coerced, if she’s not in full participation.”

  Salis raised her eyebrow at Aleksander’s proclamation and I wondered if she were thinking about her sister, Eonza, who planned to bed the incubi leader sooner rather than later.

  Awkwardness filled the basement almost as much as the scent of vinegar and yeast. After a couple minutes of silence, Salis graciously changed the subject. “I’ll show you the rest of the house,” she said, turning toward the stairs without blowing out the candles.

  Our group followed her, but Marcus hung back. He grabbed my wrist as I began to leave and pulled me into his arms. The secret basement door closed, but from the sounds of it, they didn’t cover the door with the hutch, thankfully.

  “We’re finally alone,” Marcus whispered into my ear, his warm breath and the bass of his voice commanding all my thoughts to focus on him.

  I gladly accepted and wrapped my hands around his back, pushing my body into his. His kisses started out sweet, soft, gentle. But they didn’t stay that way for long. By the time his lips reached my neck they’d become hungry, demanding, and everything in me yearned to satiate him. Marcus went to work pulling my shirt off and once it was thrown onto the table, barely missing the lit candles, I grabbed the hem of his shirt and stretched it up over his pecs and shoulders until it joined mine amidst years’ worth of dust.

  His chiseled chest acted as the perfect canvas for the artful tattoos covering it. I pulled my head away from his just enough to take in the sight, the dagger and cross, the twists and twirls that started out thick and black and ended on pinpricks. The more I fell in love with Marcus Garcia, the more his tattoos reminded me less of his Hunter lineage and the more they belonged to him. They weren’t Hunter tattoos. They were Marcus tattoos. That distinction made all the difference. The divot between his traps and his collar bone called to me and I gave them each a light kiss before shoving his thick body into the brick wall behind him, set on unlatching that belt of his.

  Dust sprang from the motion and brick cracked behind him. We both snickered at our combined strength as we got back to kissing and touching, when something more than a crack sounded…and the wall moved.

  We jumped away from the slowly shifting wall as a door-sized portion of it ground its way backwards.

  Marcus and I shared a stare. “You think this is the cursed tunnel Salis so casually mentioned in the van?” he asked.

  Curiosity rose in me, pushing aside my desire, for the moment. I grabbed our shirts from the table and tossed him his. Once fully clothed, I took a lit candle and pocketed the matches just in case, because seeing in the dark was easier with at least a little light. “I guess we’re about to find out,” I said.

  Marcus reached for the other candle and gave a nod.

  We passed through the opening into darkness. The square ends of bricks from the wall jutted out to meet the ends of bricks from the door when it closed, keeping the opening unseen. I made sure not to hit my head or any other body part as I passed through the threshold from brick flooring to stone and dirt.

  Marcus and I didn’t have to discuss the need for quietness, we already knew. While we didn’t seem to be in immediate danger, it was always safest to assume we were. The Hunters would stop at nothing to find us. That included traipsing through old bootlegger tunnels—if they’d been able to find out about them. We crept single file down the tunnel, the curved walls maybe about three people apart and the rounded ceiling barely taller than Marcus. After a slight decline and a right turn, the air grew damper with the scent of mold and stagnant water. Old cobwebs littered the stone walls.

  After walking for over five minutes in pure silence, without so much as a hint of another life form, other than spiders and rats, I figured it was safe to speak. “You think they used this tunnel to transport the moonshine?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” he answered, slowing to walk beside me rather than in front of me. He took my free hand in his. “I wish I could feel the energy down here for a better idea, though.”

  I hoped he wasn’t attempting to resurrect the idea of allowing Aleksander to change him into an incubus.

  I stopped and he turned to see why, still holding my hand.

  “Maybe we should come back with Marie and Aleksander. What’s the point of exploring a tunnel with nothing in it, nothing on the walls?” I answered my own question, thinking out loud. “I mean, we could see where it ends, that would give us some insight as to what it was used for. But if it’s miles long, walking the whole thing is a lot of wasted time when we’re supposed to be finishing the war I started.”

  “True.” Marcus looked up at nothing, in thought. “This whole time I’ve been wondering if the place is cursed. How would we know?”

  I cocked my head. “Wait, you believe in curses?”

  He gave me a duh stare. “Faline, I’m a Hunter, supernatural warrior forged by monks, talking to a huldra, a folkloric protector of the forests created by the Goddess Freyja. Of course I believe in curses.”

  I studied the wall beside me. “Point taken,” I uttered. “Well, if there is a curse there’s nothing written about it on the walls—no warnings or anything. The whole curse thing could just be a figure of speech.”

  “So could Hunter,” he added.

  As he finished saying “Hunter” the light sound of pebbles being pushed around down the tunnel caught my attention.

  I put my hand up and whispered, “I just heard something.”

  Marcus mouthed “What?” I shrugged my shoulders and listened for more. I couldn’t be sure.

  I closed my eyes to focus my heightened senses and lifted my nose to deeply inhale. The scent caught me off guard and slammed me with fear. Without an explanation, I grabbed Marcus’s hand and turned on my heel, pulling him back toward the brick-lined basement opening. Our quick steps nearly glided over the stone, we were so quiet.

  Once our shoes hit the brick and we were back in the moonshine basement, I searched the wall I’d slammed Marcus against to figure out how to close the damn secret door. Every brick looked like the other, none stood out as the one. I pressed my hand on each reddish square his back could have hit until one gave just slightly, pushing in. Slowly, the door eased shut, reuniting bricks until they once again melded into a seamless wall.

  Only after we were alone again did Marcus ask, “What was that back there? One minute you were fine and the next you looked like you smelled a ghost.”

  I swallowed and exhaled. My fists clenched and unclenched. Tears sprang to my eyes. “I did,” I said on shaky breath. “I smelled Gabrielle.”

 
Three

  Everyone gathered around Marcus and I in the kitchen. Some sat at the small breakfast nook. Others leaned against the white and yellow tiled counter tops, obviously refurbished in the sixties some time. Celeste held the corded house phone Salis had told us about, its base attached to the wall between the refrigerator and the kitchen opening. She’d dialed the house where the succubi stayed and had Marie on the line. After grumbling about the old technology’s lack of speakerphone capabilities, she held up the earpiece and pointed it at me.

  I didn’t want to say the same thing over and over again, and possibly leave out details in the process, so I’d waited until a harpy, the incubi leader, the succubi leader, and my coterie were within earshot to explain what Marcus and I had witnessed. I figured I’d call the foreign Wilds next.

  “After you all left, Marcus and I stayed down in the basement to talk,” I began.

  Celeste snorted and I gave her a look.

  “Marcus pressed a brick in the wall,” I continued, “and a hidden door swung open, leading to a tunnel.” My gaze found Salis. “Is that the cursed tunnel you were referring to?”

  Salis gave no indication she heard me or even cared, until she opened her mouth, her expression still blank. “We have only heard stories. I wouldn’t know.”

  “In the stories,” Marcus asked her, “how was the tunnel cursed? Who put a curse on it?”

  Salis finally raised an eyebrow. The small bit of facial expression showed me the large extent of her concern. “My foremothers died in that tunnel,” she said and then pursed her lips. “It is a tunnel of hope and death.”

  I wanted to be sympathetic to the topic, but the questions spinning in my mind won out. “Wait,” I said. “Hope and death? Your foremothers? Can you unpack that all?”

  “My grandmother’s father’s father had used the tunnel to transport illegal alcohol,” Salis explained. “When my grandmother’s father fell in love with her mother, a harpy, our flock had been much larger in size, somewhere between the size of the huldra coterie and the succubi galere. They found a deep love in one another and he refused to stand by while she and her flock were tortured monthly by Hunters. He’d begged her to come live with him in this house, but she would not subject his family and their descendants to the Wild Women lifestyle of façade and oppression. After months of planning, he arranged for her and her flock to leave the continent with him accompanying them.”

  Salis paused from her story to add a current fact. “We can fly long distances as long as we’re able to stop for breaks and food. Flying over the ocean does not enable breaks so easily and is something I’ve never heard of a harpy trying.”

  “Not even with the added energy of a succubus?” Marie asked through the phone.

  Salis cocked her head in question. I repeated Marie’s words for those who didn’t have heightened hearing.

  “No, we still wouldn’t risk it,” Salis answered before continuing with her story. “When it came time, the whole flock, along with my grandmother’s father, rushed through the tunnel. It supposedly lets out in what used to be a carriage house. There they used to load the moonshine into a wagon, cover it up, and then transport it to its buyers. At that time, my mother’s grandfather had wagons waiting for them with plenty of blankets to cover themselves. Men, friends of his, were waiting to drive the wagons to the docks where he and the flock would board a ship set for Europe.” She paused. “They knew the chances that Hunters operated in Europe as well were high, but if they traveled as humans would, no one would know their true identities, including the European Hunters.”

  “But they never made it, did they?” I asked. This male ancestor of Salis and her sisters had tried to do what I was currently hoping to accomplish—save the Wild Women. I braced myself for the rest of her story, for the fate of the man who tried to do what was right and probably paid the ultimate price for his deeds.

  Salis nodded. “There was a police raid at the carriage house. They had heard rumors of bootlegging from that building. While there, they noticed steps to the basement and the tunnel opening. The police inspected the tunnel and found the harpy flock, carrying bags of what the police believed to be outlawed liquor. They began shooting. My ancestors fought hard for their freedom, assuming the men were connected to the local Hunter authorities. When it was all over, only my grandmother’s mother, pregnant with my grandmother, and one of her nieces had survived.”

  The harpy shook her head. “This is why I say the tunnel is cursed with hope and death.”

  This was why the harpy flock was so small. Maybe now they chose to keep their numbers down, but the murder of so many of their kind had to be the reason behind their decision. Fear pricked at me from all sides. Would we, in our own quest for freedom, suffer the same fate?

  “How was his family able to continue transporting moonshine if the cops were onto them?” someone asked, but I couldn’t be sure who with my thoughts too blurred by worry for what was to come.

  “My grandmother’s mother and her niece moved the bodies of the police to a separate location,” Salis responded. “The tunnel was never again raided, to my knowledge.”

  “That explains why you smelled Gabrielle down there, Faline,” Shawna interjected.

  “How so?” I asked after taking way too long to process what she’d said.

  “If Wilds died down there, their ghosts could inhabit the place,” Shawna explained. “It’d make sense that another Wild ghost joined them.”

  I trudged through my memories of what the rusalki had told me under their lake in Maine. Had I asked about Gabrielle’s ghost? Hadn’t they mentioned communicating with her? Maybe it was the exhaustion or the sudden fear that we’d fail our mission to be rid of the Hunters just like the harpies’ ancestors, but I couldn’t remember that part of my underwater discussion with the rusalki.

  I switched my thoughts to bounty hunter mode by default. “We should walk the whole tunnel and make sure it’s not opened at the other end. I don’t want any sneak attack surprises in this house, like in the last.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Marie, Aleksander?” I asked.

  The two answered simultaneously, one through the phone and one in person, “Yes?”

  “Will you accompany us, go ahead of us, to feel out the energy of the place? If it was ghosts I heard and smelled, you’d be able to sense them before I smelled them.” I couldn’t believe I was talking about hearing and smelling ghosts, but maybe it wasn’t too farfetched.

  Of course the two agreed, but we didn’t get too far into setting a time before the front door opened without so much as a knock.

  Being that the whole kitchen-full of beings were on edge with talk of Wild Women genocide and haunting ghosts, the comfortable entrance of Eonza and Lapis surprised us and caused a few screeches and startles.

  When the crowd cleared and Eonza entered the kitchen in all her glory, followed protectively by her sister Lapis, we startled again, but for a very different reason.

  Eonza stood, beaming with pride, tall and lean, and rubbing the large bump on her belly.

  “Eonza,” I uttered, looking from Aleksander to the harpy and back to Aleksander.

  “Did you?” I asked the incubi leader.

  “I didn’t do that,” he answered, motioning to Eonza’s protruding, round belly.

  Salis quickly moved to stand at the other side of her sister, both harpies seemingly protecting the one in the middle…and the unborn harpy she carried.

  Four

  “How did you get pregnant and start showing in the two days since I saw you, Eonza?”

  The blonde harpy smiled widely at her accomplishment. “I found a male with which to mate before the rusalki called upon us to fly to Oregon. On the flight home I realized the mating had worked.”

  My aunt Renee, ever the nurse, stepped forward and looked at Eonza as though she were an experiment. “But how is that even possible? So soon.”

  Lapis answered, “We are not like you or huma
ns. We do not carry our young in gestation. After successful copulation, we lay our egg seven to ten days later. We then incubate them for forty to forty-five days. Which reminds me,” she said, turning to her sisters. “We need to get home and begin building the nest in preparation.”

  My mouth nearly dropped open.

  “But it makes no sense, scientifically,” Renee said, aghast.

  Marie spoke up through the phone, knowing my aunt would be able to hear her. “None of us make sense, scientifically.”

  “How does this affect your flock’s ability to fight alongside us in the coming weeks?” I asked, some part of my mind always on the mission at hand.

  I realized how callous I sounded and added, “Congratulations, by the way. I know this is what your flock has been wanting.”

  Eonza actually smiled and her sisters nodded. If I had a diary, tonight’s entry would be: Today I saw a harpy smile.

  “Eonza cannot fight,” Salis proclaimed. “Not until she lays her egg.”

  “But doesn’t she have to incubate the egg after that?” Renee asked. “That’ll take her out of fighting for over a month. We can’t wait a month.”

  “We’ll have to go ahead without her,” Celeste said.

  I looked to Aleksander to see if he showed any signs of feeling the amped-up energy in the room. Even I sensed the nervousness shared between the Wilds in the kitchen, and my abilities had nothing to do with energy work. The incubus stood tall and rigid, showing no signs of opinion or emotion.

  “We each take turns with the egg,” Lapis answered, defensively. “It increases the bonding effects, as we will all be this baby’s mothers.”

  “Okay,” I thought out loud. “So then when we’re planning the attacks, we’ll need to also take into consideration who will be with the egg and for how long.” Wilds nodded and I continued. “You do realize this means that when we storm into the North Carolina Hunter complex, where your mother is probably being held, one of you will miss being there when she’s released?”