Wild Women Collection

by Rachel Sullivan

  Anger won out, and my huldra stirred to the surface, ready to enact a punishment worthy of the crimes committed.

  “How far?” I half-asked, half-growled.

  Aleksander stumbled over his answer and cleared his throat to begin again. “The GPS says we’re close. Maybe another ten minutes or so.”

  Marcus squeezed my hand to calm me, but my huldra didn’t much appreciate the gesture. Comfort was not what I wanted right now. I gave him the side-eye and he released my hand.

  Shawna, who sat on the floor between me and the row in front of us, rubbed my shins with both hands.

  None of the others in this vehicle knew the reality of an uncontrollable Wild Woman. None, other than Shawna. The others had had the privilege of inviting their inner Wild to come out through practices and meditation. They were able to gently coax theirs out. They didn’t understand the effects of having their Wild’s first full reveal to be one of trauma, of being drugged and having to fight for your life. My inner huldra and I were connecting better—I was able to stay present when she emerged—but it still often felt as though she and I were two separate beings working to coexist in the same body. And when I couldn’t control my huldra, it felt as though I couldn’t control myself. I hated not being able to control my own thoughts and desires. And if I were honest with myself, I loathed the fact that my power had been first forced from me rather than eased out by me.

  The Hunters had just about taken everything from me. And now they were attempting to finish the job. Fury pulsed within me and my vision blurred. Shawna rubbed my shins more vigorously.

  “Marie,” Aleksander called from the driver’s seat. “You want to deal with that for me? I am too busy making sure we aren’t noticed by law enforcement to calm her uncomfortably erratic energy.”

  Marie didn’t waste time in answering. She turned from the front row of seats and glared straight into my eyes.

  “Don’t,” I heard myself beg before a cloud of relaxation settled over me.

  Aleksander pulled off the highway and located a back road to take toward the fire. The flames lit the night sky with an eerily orange hue. The mini-van made its way from the dirt road into an opening among the trees lining the forest. The moment the car stopped, the cloud of relaxation lifted and my huldra stirred to attention.

  “Cover your noses,” my Aunt Patricia shouted as the side van door slid open with force then stopped with a jolt.

  “And if you feel depleted of oxygen,” I said as I sprang from the van and surveyed the land before me. “Try to grow your roots deep enough to attach to a plant’s. They may be willing to share.”

  I pushed off to bolt into the woods when Marcus grabbed my forearm to stop me. I spun around and glared at him. My huldra did not want to be held back from saving her friends.

  “Don’t go alone,” Marcus said. “Please. The Hunters could be out there, waiting.”

  “The Hunters are here,” Aleksander said, his eyes closed and body facing the heart of the forest. “But they are heading toward the water, toward the lake.”

  “The lake is this way,” I shouted so everyone could hear over the roar of the hungry fire. “Follow me!”

  I raced past trees into the thick smoke. Ferns smacked my legs. Already the air seemed void of enough oxygen, so I pulled my shirt up to cover my nose and mouth and pushed forward. My eyes burned and watered. Intense heat from what felt like an oven all around me caused sweat to pour from my brow. I wiped the back of my hands across my eyes and searched through the smoke for hints that I was headed in the right direction. Seeing in the dark was not an issue, it was the smoke that kept my line of sight from being visible. The faint scent of water lingered in the air and I trusted it enough to run in the direction it came from. If the Hunters were nearing the water, odds were I’d find the rusalki there too.

  My huldra vibrated along my surface but allowed me to keep the reigns and stay in control. I followed the hint of moisture in an otherwise parched setting—the normal wetness held by a Maine forest in the winter devoured by the heat of flames. The footfalls and panting of my group told me they followed close behind. My ears caught the snapping of burning branches and the crackling of dead leaves being consumed by the orange glow.

  The lake was near. I could feel it. I picked up my pace…and ran right over the edge of land and into the water. With a shock, I scurried to climb back over the short drop-off and onto the muddy shore. I sat, sopping wet, hidden by smoke and branches, searching for a trace of Hunters within the water, hoping a head would pop up out of the surface so I could jump on top of it and dig my roots into the lake floor to drown him.

  I unlaced and pulled my boots off in a hurry, throwing them haphazardly to the side. Marcus, Shawna, and Aleksander stopped short behind me before falling into the water from the land ledge. I didn’t turn to look at them, but their silence told me everything I needed to know. They too were studying the water for any sign of movement. And then the movement came.

  The head of a male peeked out of the lake top. I stood to dive in after him, but Aleksander grabbed my arm right before I jumped. I turned to glare and fight him off me, when he motioned his head toward the water. I followed his gaze to see the Hunter’s head lean back so that his mouth could inhale oxygen. Instead he belted out a scream before being pulled back under. A tail fin thrashed the water, creating bubbles around the man as he sank from view.

  Aleksander must have felt the presence of the mermaids.

  They’d beaten us here. And despite the bad dealings between the mermaids and the rusalki, the mermaids were out for blood.

  Another Hunter surfaced and kicked his legs like his life depended on it, swimming toward the shore. A sleek scuba mask wrapped around his face, but inner condensation kept me from seeing his eyes. His wetsuit-covered arms shoved him forward. The Hunter’s strength proved no match for the mermaid’s water prowess. A green scaled arm shot up from the water beside him, nails latching into his back, tearing at his wetsuit. The mask muffled his scream as he twisted himself to fight off his water predator.

  “They’re coming,” Aleksander whispered loud enough for Marcus to hear. The incubus turned toward the tree line behind us and raised his arms, at the ready.

  Marcus instinctively reached for his dagger but came up short. “Fuck,” he grumbled under his breath.

  Shawna and I stood behind the two men, no longer watching the water, but close enough to jump in if needed. The first Hunter crept from the smoke, between evergreens, like a shadow becoming whole. Three more followed, their daggers raised for attack.

  I thought to call out for my coterie, but their own shouts suddenly rang through the forest. “Mother?” Shawna yelled, turning on her heels to try to get a better idea of which direction to run. “Mother!”

  Two more Hunters closed in on us from the right side, the side Shawna and I decided the shouts of our coterie came from. The smoke must have kept them from following us. Each Hunter wore black cargo pants, black boots, and black zipped-up jackets with black beanies. Empty dagger holsters hung from their hips.

  The thick air around us tingled with the flow of energy. Droplets of sweat tricked down the back of Aleksander’s neck. He was keeping the Hunters at bay, but for how long?

  All six Hunters stared at us, antsy to attack, as though an invisible bubble kept them from coming any closer, as though they waited for the bubble to burst.

  “How much longer can you hold them?” I asked Aleksander quietly enough to hopefully keep our enemies from hearing my exact words.

  “Minutes,” he responded in a strained voice. “And I can’t fight them all at once either. This is depleting me too much.” He stiffened his stance. “You have one minute to come up with a plan of attack.”

  “We’ll rush the four in front of us and you two rush the two to our right,” Marcus said to Shawna and me with hurried words. “Once you’ve taken them out, find your coterie. Does that work?”

  Shawna nodded.

  “Yeah,” I s
aid. I turned to my partner sister. “Take your shoes off.”

  She looked down at her tennis shoes. “Oh yeah.” She pulled them from her feet and flung them, along with her socks, to rest beside mine.

  “Ready?” Aleksander grunted the words out.

  “We are,” I answered, ready to launch myself at the Hunter to my right. Shawna flexed her fingers and cracked her neck.

  Aleksander warned us, “The energy shield is coming down in five…four…three…two…”

  War cries of more than five women sounded from behind the Hunters, muffled at first, but growing in clarity and riotous. The four Hunters in front of us turned to view their incoming attackers.

  “One!” Aleksander yelled. He and Marcus ran for the four Hunters whose backs were now turned toward the supernatural males, only to stop short as two burst into flames and screamed out in pain.

  Aleksander turned to run back toward the lake and warn us in the process. “Get out of their way!”

  “Whose way?” I yelled back, an arm’s length from my target.

  A Hunter swiped his dagger at me and I ducked out of the way. I splayed my fingers and shot vines from my fingertips to tangle and restrict his fighting arm.

  “Theirs!” Marcus shouted, pointing to the women’s silhouettes as they moved through the haze, each carrying fire in her hands.

  Ten

  Technically, the enemy of my enemy should be my friend. But a cliché saying was nowhere near enough to answer whether these fire-wielding women were friends or foes. And I didn’t want to wait to find out. A ball of flames hit the man I fought on the shoulder. I quickly pulled my vines from his arm and backed up. I grabbed Shawna’s hand and ran to jump with her into the lake. We’d swim to our coterie. Mermaids we knew were a safer bet than fire-throwing women we didn’t know.

  Before we swam up the lake, I treaded water and called to Marcus and Aleksander to join us. A ball of fire shot past Marcus’s ear, barely missing his hair, and landed in the water, extinguishing on impact.

  No way would I allow these women to hurt my man. I struggled to get up the slippery lake edge and onto land, when Marcus jumped into the water, followed by Aleksander.

  “Swim between the two of us,” I shouted to Marcus and Aleksander, trying to be heard above the women’s battle cries and the Hunters’ screams of agony. “Hopefully the mermaids will know not to mess with you.”

  I had no way of knowing whether or not the Wilds in the water knew Marcus, and I doubted they knew Aleksander. I couldn’t risk losing the man I loved and my ally, the other man who claimed to love me. Haze settled over the lake, bringing with it an eerie glow. We swam as quickly as possible to get the men to safer land and away from both the fire women and the water women.

  When the fire women’s voices quieted with distance, and the shouts of my coterie became clearer, we veered toward the shore nearest our people. Our feet touched the squishy lake bottom and we ran up the shore, water streaming down our soaked bodies.

  An inhuman screech bellowed from below the surface of the lake and we all instinctively turned to see where exactly it came from. A yellow and orange scaled tail cut through the lake top and smacked back down, sending waves rippling. Blood bubbled to the surface as all traces of the mermaid disappeared beneath the water. The men ran faster toward dry land.

  “Your coterie is this way,” Aleksander yelled, waving his arms to the right.

  Shawna and I met up with the men on the shore and sped through the forest at their pace. Depleted from using his energy manipulation abilities during the drive and against the Hunters, the incubi leader ran slower than usual.

  I saw my sisters’ and aunts’ silhouettes fighting larger shapes before I could make out their faces. With two Wilds for every Hunter, my sisters and friends were crushing the enemy in a way that relit the ember of hope I held for our kind winning the war for our freedom.

  With vines spurting from her fingertips, Shawna bolted to her mother and Patricia. She whipped her mother’s and aunt’s attacker in the face before wrapping her vines around his neck. Her mother, Abigale, and Patricia each grabbed one of the Hunter’s arms, holding them down from slashing Shawna’s vines. Together they brought the Hunter to his knees until he was blue in the face and toppled over from affixation.

  I sprinted to the Hunter held face down in the dirt by Marie and her succubi’s energy influence. He struggled to push himself up, his forearms beneath his chest, pressing into the leaf-littered ground beneath him.

  He tried to put up a fight when I wrangled his dagger from his hand, but it was as though he hadn’t the energy left to hold it any longer. The succubi had rendered him speechless, so he only watched me yank the dagger from his weak grip. His eyes widened when I lifted his head from the dirt and moved his dagger under his neck, ready to end him.

  It wasn’t anger or hatred that flashed through his eyes, but something else. Almost as though he begged me to let him be done with this all. In a way, I related.

  He mouthed something to me before I pressed the dagger’s blade against his neck enough to ease blood from his skin.

  “Marie,” I called out. “Let him speak for a second.”

  She narrowed her eyes but gave a stiff nod.

  Sound sprang from the Hunter’s moving lips. “Find my brothers,” he whispered in a raspy voice, no doubt depleted from fighting against succubi energy in the smoke. “They want to help you.”

  “Hunters want to help us?” I asked, confused and weary of another trap set by the Hunters to ensnare my Wild sisters and me.

  “They’ve left the brotherhood,” he coughed out. “Braver than me.”

  Marcus’s words flowed through my mind. He’d once spoken of Hunters who would one day see enough atrocities committed by their brothers that they’d denounce the organization they’d known their whole life and work to clear their consciences by righting the wrongs of their fathers. At my feet, I believed, lay a Hunter ready to clear his conscience.

  “You can still leave them,” I encouraged the Hunter amidst fighting, weakened battle cries, and screaming. “I know a couple ex-Hunters who can help you.”

  For less than a second, the Hunter gave me a smile, his eyes lighting up with what looked to me like thankfulness. “I’m not brave enough,” he whispered before butting his forehead into the dirt and catching his neck on his dagger’s blade. He choked on his blood as the red liquid pooled between his chin and the ground. His body went slack.

  I dropped the dagger and backed away, still crouched low to the ground.

  “Marcus,” I called out, sounding about as frantic as I felt.

  The ex-Hunter left the incubus to help Olivia and Celeste finish off their combatant and ran to my side. He crouched down to my level and touched his hand to my cheek.

  “What happened?” he asked softly. “What did he do?” He lifted my chin and then searched my hands and arms. “Did he hurt you?”

  I shook my head. “He said he wanted to leave the brotherhood, but he was too weak.” I paused. “And then he killed himself.”

  Marcus’s shoulders slumped, and for the first time, he gazed down at the dead Hunter with sympathy. “He was done fighting against himself for the sake of the brotherhood,” he said with a sigh. He gently eased the blade from under his brother’s neck and wiped the blood from the metal. “The oppression of the Hunters hurts more than the Wild Women.”

  “He was like you,” I uttered, the thought being the only one swirling in my mind, cluttering and confusing my prior beliefs about Hunters. Marcus and Rod weren’t the only sane needles in the Hunter haystack. Marcus had told me this was the case, but I hadn’t fully understood until this moment. “He was like you and now he’s dead because of it.”

  Marcus wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his chest. The base in his voice vibrated against my cheek. “There’s many more out there like him, Rod, and me.”

  “He said he had brothers who left the brotherhood and want to help us.” I spoke
into Marcus’s muscular chest.

  “We’ll find them,” he assured me. “Aleksander and I have already started discussing how to locate the rogue Hunters.”

  I nodded, and for the first time since hearing the dead Hunter’s words of redemption, I noticed the fighting had stopped. My coterie, Aleksander, and the succubi stood around us, watching and listening. I peered up at them and gave Marcus a squeeze of a hug before standing. He stood with me, his arm wrapped around my waist.

  “Don’t move,” said a woman’s voice from the beyond the haze. “Release the female and we’ll think about not blowing a hole through you.”

  “I think they may be talking to you, Marcus,” Aleksander said through unmoving lips.

  “I have to move to release her,” Marcus replied to Aleksander, before freezing again.

  One woman, flanked by six others, emerged from the cloud of brown and gray smoke. All stood with palms up, cradling flames of various colors and shapes within their hands. They looked alike, with dark sun-kissed skin and long black hair.

  The woman who looked to be the leader couldn’t have been younger than forty years old. She wore a floral print halter top and cut-off jean shorts. Her bare feet walked along the earth leaving singe marks in their wake. The fire she carried burned red hot and circled in on itself like an ever moving ball of flames.

  “If we had known you Hunters were still active in your oppression of Wild Women,” the leader said, “we would have come a long time ago.”

  I moved in front of Marcus and shielded him with my left arm. “Where do you come from?” I asked.

  She regarded me with suspicion. “Why do you protect the Hunter? I feel your Wild fire burning within. Have you sided with your oppressor?”

  “My name is Faline Frey,” I started. “And I am a huldra of the Washington coterie. This ex-Hunter is my mate.” After the words left my mouth I realized I probably shouldn’t have started with exposing my connection to Marcus. The feud between Wild Women and Hunters was old, worldwide, and well established. Introducing myself as the mate of our enemy was a bonehead thing to do. But I’d meant to express my claim on him—that not only was this fire woman in American Wild Women territory, but she was threatening my mate. Something she should rethink.