Soon, none of that would matter.
“Hey, does the idea of changing someone’s memory of an event feel a little off to you?” Marcus whispered into my ear as we ascended the cement steps toward the glass front doors of a twenty-story building.
It was something I’d thought about on our drive to the city. “I guess if he was a doting father, excited to meet his baby, yeah, I’d feel bad erasing his memories leading to his upcoming fatherhood,” I said. “But he’s not. He has no idea she’s pregnant, and he’s putting his career over the livelihood of a living being.”
We passed the guard at the front desk on the main floor and within seconds Marie and her sisters spun their energetic abilities. The beefy guard waved us by with a goofy grin plastered across his face. I didn’t want to know what the succubi had made him feel. We crammed into the elevator and Marie pressed the button to the eleventh floor, where the guard had told her we’d find Brice.
“True,” Marcus said, once the elevator began rising. “If the harpies were found out, I know of a few government agencies who’d stop at nothing to get their scientists’ hands on them. Wings and talons on soldiers would be helpful weapons.”
I shivered at the idea, one I hadn’t thought of and one that made me better understand why the unknown Wild Women were so set against allowing word to leak out. If the world knew even one kind of Wild Woman existed, they’d begin to believe the other folklore as well. It could lead to a worldwide hunt, each country searching for supernatural women in hopes of creating the biggest and baddest war machine. My stomach turned at the thought.
A few Wilds in the elevator with us shifted in place, clearly uncomfortable with Marcus’s revelation. When the elevator doors opened on the eleventh floor we all exited with a stronger sense of mission to our task. Rows of cubicles greeted us along with sounds of fingers tapping keyboards and cell phones vibrating on desks. Flat screen TVs hung from each of the four walls, all on different news channels, the sound muted and the newscasters’ words dictated in quick moving letters at the bottom of the screens.
Despite the group of ten supernatural beings wandering onto their work floor, no humans seemed to notice our presence. I looked to Aleksander who wore a glassy expression as he focused on the buzz of the room and its human inhabitants. The incubus was hard at work keeping us energetically invisible.
Marie popped her head around the gray half wall of the first cubicle closest to us and asked the human for Brice’s office. With her question answered, she turned toward us and began walking to the left. We followed, passing rows of cubicles, until we reached the far wall lined with offices. Each office had a wall of windows separating the room from the larger portion of the eleventh floor. We found Brice’s office as the second to the last on the left. “Smith” had been etched in block font on his glass door.
“Wait out here. We’ll only be a few minutes,” Marie said as she started to open the office door to let one of her two succubus sisters walk in with her.
Through the windows, a man who looked to be in his forties peered up from his laptop and watched our group outside his office. His overgrown beard stubble and bloodshot eyes told me he’d been pushing tirelessly to get his Pulitzer story out to the public. I wondered if he was working on it at this exact moment. How close had we come to being dissected and our DNA studied to build super warriors?
“No,” Marie’s other sister said, grabbing her arm. “Let me help do it.” They exchanged a knowing look, and Marie gave a nod. She stepped back to stand beside Celeste as the blonde, tattooed succubus entered Brice’s office alongside a second succubus.
A tired smile rose to Brice’s lips as they walked from window to window, closing the blinds to shut out the world and give them the privacy they would need.
“You look exhausted,” I heard the blonde say quietly in a poor-you voice.
“I am,” Brice said with a sigh. “I’ve been trying to put a huge story to bed so it can go to print tonight.”
“Oh?” she said, even quieter.
He started to reply, but a moan replaced his words.
Okay, I’d heard enough. I didn’t care to listen to what was to come…or who was about to come.
I hurried away from the office and toward a mess of newspapers strewn atop a long table backed up against a wall beneath one of the flat screen TV’s. I decided to read to occupy my mind because Goddess knew, if I heard another moan I’d…I didn’t know what I’d do, but I didn’t want to find out either.
The others seemed to feel the same as they made their way over to me and the table of newspapers, and grabbed something to read, something to distract themselves. Aleksander was probably used to hearing the sex noises of others. It probably didn’t bother him in the slightest. But he joined us nonetheless. I assumed he kept close to maintain the energy of disinterest around us to the humans in the office.
Shawna shoved the front page of a local newspaper in my face. “Look,” she exclaimed and she shook the paper so much I couldn’t read the print. “Another teenage girl, a self-proclaimed wiccan, has gone missing.”
I snatched the paper and steadied it enough to read. “Holy shit,” I said on an exhale.
Marcus stood behind me and read the headline story over my shoulder. “This is the Hunters’ doing. Look how the story is spun to make the victim look evil, like her disappearance was somehow her own fault by toying with the occult.”
“Are you saying a Hunter wrote this article?” Renee said, stretching her neck to see what we were reading.
“Either that, or a Hunter is the editor of this newspaper,” he answered, still reading over my shoulder.
“That’s not a newspaper from this company, is it?” Renee asked.
“No,” I said quickly to quiet what I knew was a worry inside her that would soon take over if not squashed right away. “This isn’t the Charlotte Tribune.”
As long as we weren’t in the presence of a Hunter, other than Marcus of course, I didn’t care where this man worked. I had no intention on finding his office. Why hunt one Hunter when I could hunt a whole complex of them and rescue the innocent women they were collecting in the process? Still, my blood boiled by the time I finished reading the article and handed it off to the next huldra who wanted a look.
Shawna gently touched my arm. “We’ll get them,” she assured me. “We’ll save the girls.”
“The article said her friends reported that she’d texted them to say she was heading out to a private ritual on someone’s property, but they didn’t say who,” I explained to my partner sister. “We know who. They’re making it out to look like she’d been involved with some private cult that meets to sacrifice dogs and cats. It’s ridiculous.” How the Hunters spun a story about a wiccan woman rubbed raw the justice-seeking part of me, not to mention my huldra side. It was as though at every turn the Hunters created lies to suppress powerful women who held a kind of magic the brotherhood couldn’t access.
“We know the truth, though,” she said with a kind smile. “Just like we aren’t evil demon beings who lure men into the woods to eat, she’s not evil either. Hers is just a religion like every other religion.”
“Not according to the Hunters,” Marcus corrected.
“Well,” Shawna said in a less gentle and comforting tone. “The Hunters are close-minded and think anyone who doesn’t believe how they believe is wrong and on the path to hell. They’re bullies.”
My gaze caught the flat screen hanging on the wall across from us and I drowned out the conversation between Marcus and Shawna about the atrocities committed by the Hunters in the name of correct belief systems. “Breaking News,” flashed across the screen as a female reporter stood at the edge of a forest, a fire blazing behind her. Her words streamed across the bottom of the screen, telling of the odd timing of a local forest fire in Maine—odd for the time of year. She went on to talk about how local firefighters were struggling to keep the fire from spreading to the populated regions.
“As far as the unpopulated
area behind me,” the reporter said, motioning to the burning trees, “we’re still awaiting word from the new owners of the land, a private commercial real estate investment cooperation, as to how they’ll move forward in containing the fire. I’m told they’re currently in talks with Greenville’s fire marshal.”
“How much you want to bet that new real estate investment cooperation is led by Hunters?” I asked no one in particular, as we stayed glued to the television.
“They’re probably trying to convince the fire marshal to hold off, to let a portion burn because they’re planning to develop it anyhow,” Marcus answered.
The reporter went on to speculate the fire’s cause—teens getting high while camping in the woods behind her.
I hadn’t realized Olivia watched the broadcast too, until she groaned and said, “Must they demonize everything? In that one statement they’ve made a whole generation and a plant out to be culprits.”
“Those trees look familiar,” I noted. “I think…” I studied the backdrop, up in blazes. “I think that’s where the rusalki live.”
Marcus and Shawna stopped talking and shifted their gazes to the flat screen.
“Oh shit, they’re doing it,” Marcus muttered, shock painted along his wide, focused eyes.
“Doing what?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me to respond. “You know how I told you I thought they were staging little attacks here and there to see how you all would react in different situations, different scenarios?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You told me that’s what they were doing when they landed on the mermaid’s island and when they invaded my coterie’s property and the Airbnb in Oregon.”
“I also said that once they collected enough data they’d strike for real.” Marcus paused and swallowed. “Faline, this is it. They’re striking now, and they won’t stop until every last one of you is captured. I know it. I can feel it in my bones.”
I backed away until my butt hit the table of newspapers. My heart thrummed and my throat went dry. This was it. Their big push. They must have found what they needed to complete their plans to do with us what they’d been working on for the last twenty years or more. I had hoped to attack their remaining two complexes, to win the two remaining battles. But the Hunters, they were clearly done with battles; they had just started a war.
Nine
Marie paused abruptly and turned toward the direction of Brice’s office moments before I heard his door softly open and shut. Relief washed through me when two succubi came around the corner with smiles plastered to their faces. At least the Brice issue had been handled. One less fire to put out.
I cringed. Now we had a real fire to deal with. One our team didn’t start.
No words were exchanged between the succubi and us. They simply joined our group huddled around the newspaper table. Those of us who were still holding any papers dropped them back onto the pile and made our way to the stairs. I doubted any of us had the ability to contain the anxious energy pinging around inside us. From the change in her expression, I assumed the blonde succubus, who didn’t know about the fire in the rusalki’s woods or the news article, felt our anxiety and knew something was up.
We made it down the many flights of stairs in the cement stairwell, to the first floor, and out of the building before a succubus spoke up. “Brice no longer believes the wings he saw on Eonza were real,” she updated us. “Hopefully, the replacement memory we gave him will stick.” Her eyebrows scrunched in a concerned look to her leader, Marie. “What’s wrong?”
Marie exhaled and shook her head slowly. “We can’t be sure, but Faline thinks the Maine forest on fire is where the rusalki live.”
“We can be sure,” I corrected. “The newswoman said she was standing in front of the forest surrounding Moosehead Lake. That’s where the rusalki are.”
Marie turned to address me. “That area is huge, according to the maps.”
How’d she know? Did she actually research the rusalki?
Marie rolled her eyes. “I can feel your distrust rising. Yes, we’ve done a little digging into each of the Wild Women groups we have agreed to fight alongside. It would be stupid not to.”
“It’s not distrust,” I clarified.
“Then what would you call it?” she asked in the same tone a mother would question her child with crumbs on her shirt, claiming to not have eaten the missing cookie.
Cars and busses barreled past us as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the multi-leveled business building. The mid-morning sun hid behind thick, grey clouds, casting a muted darkness onto our surroundings.
“I’d call it questioning,” I answered.
“Same difference,” Marie said, turning toward her succubus sisters to ask for particulars in their completed mission of placing new memories in the journalist’s mind to push the old ones containing Eonza’s wings out.
A horn honked. The scent of a hotdog cart caught my attention and my stomach growled, despite our coffee house breakfast. I patted my pants pocket for my cell, to check the time, and remembered I hadn’t picked up a new burner phone.
“Help them,” a disembodied voice called to me on the autumn breeze.
I spun on my heel, searching nearby crowds for the person who uttered the words.
A cold hand rested on my right shoulder. “My sisters, they need your help,” the voice said again, this time centimeters from my ear.
I froze in place, my arm hairs standing on end. Were the harpy ghosts real? Had they escaped the underground tunnel system to find me?
I slowly reached my hand out to grab Shawna’s arm and squeeze. She paused in the middle of her conversation with Marcus and Oliva. “What’s up?” she asked in a tone way more lighthearted than the situation called for.
“There’s. Someone. Standing. Behind. Me,” I said.
“No there’s not,” Shawna responded.
“It’s a spirit,” Marie said. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly. “A rusalka spirit, from the feel of her.”
My fear dissipated. Within a breath I went from scared shitless of the unseen to almost crying with the opportunity to communicate with the rusalka who helped to save my sister. It had to be her, the only rusalka who’d died and would know to contact me. “Azalea?”
“Yes,” the voice answered. “Please, they need you.”
I hushed the few conversations still buzzing among my group of supernaturals. When I had their attention, I said, “We need to get to Maine, ASAP.”
“The fires?” Renee asked.
Azalea answered into my ear, “Our forest is burning, our home.”
“But they’re safe in the lake, aren’t they?” I asked the rusalka out loud.
“They pull from the Great Mother,” she explained, “from the forest and the lake, to create their dome under the water. Without the power of the trees, the dome will collapse.”
I reiterated her words to the group.
“Can’t they just zap themselves out of there?” Olivia asked.
Good point.
“They call upon Mokosh for their abilities,” Azalea’s spirit explained. “Mokosh lives in the dirt, in the trees, in the water, in the ferns, and animals. The trees are dying rapidly, the animals have fled, the plants fear for their lives. None have energy to spare to aide my sisters.”
I had so many questions. How was Azalea able to visit me? Was I able to hear ghosts now, or just her? And why couldn’t the others hear her? I suspected it had everything to do with her and not much to do with me or any new abilities.
But one image roared through my mind—the blazing fire flames I’d seen on the screen. The orange flames licking up and down tree trunks, burning my favorite parts of nature to ash. We didn’t have time to postulate as to how a spirit came through to the living. We had Wild Women to save.
I sat in the back row of the mini-van as Aleksander sped down the freeway away from the airport and toward Moose Lake. This time we didn’t bother with luggage, or lod
ging, or even letting the foreign Wild Women know what we were up to. After a two-and-a-half-hour flight that Aleksander was kind enough to cover for all of us, we’d taken an Uber straight from the sidewalk in front of the Charlotte Tribune headquarters to the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
We saw the smoke of the forest fire from the plane before we began our descent. The view only intensified our need to be there already.
“Has she come back?” Renee asked, wringing her hands. “Has Azalea given you an update?”
Marie and I shook our heads at the same time.
None of the car rentals within the airport carried an available passenger van, so Aleksander had opted for the next best thing. Of course, there weren’t enough seatbelts for all of us, but desperate times… Squishing in among sisters and friends was nothing compared to what the rusalki were dealing with at the moment.
“The mermaids will meet us there,” Patricia said to calm her sister. “They may be there already, helping. Everything will be okay.”
When we had returned back to the old moonshine house after breakfast, before heading to Charlotte, Sarah called to give us her number. She hadn’t clearly said the mermaids would help us in our war against the Hunters, but we’d figured giving us her number was a good start to the discussion. On our way to the airport Aleksander let me use his phone to call Sarah and let her know the rusalki were in trouble. She said she’d call back and within minutes she called to let me know a few sisters of hers were in the Nova Scotia area and would swim over.
“I just…I just can’t help but think,” Renee said with a shaky voice. “What if the Hunters had burned down our woods, our home, when they’d descended on our property?”
I shook with worry and anger and fear. Was nothing sacred to the Hunters? Not even nature? I almost scoffed at my own question. Wild Women were of nature, created by Goddesses, and we were nowhere near sacred to the brotherhood. We were the opposite, animals filled with evil intent. In an effort to destroy us, they were killing off plants, trees, and animals.
Wild Women Collection Page 57
