I fought from holding my nose in their presence. Gone were the aromas of a delicious breakfast spread. These women brought in with them an odor of burnt dead things and algae.
Drosera closed her eyes and exhaled. “They have our sisters, and they are both alive.”
“Whoa,” Celeste gasped. “How’d you find that out? When did you find that out?” She paused and clarified her remark. “We know they’re likely at that complex, but last I heard you couldn’t be sure. Something with how they were able to block your mind reading.”
Drosera gave a slow nod. “The Hunters who attacked our forest last night had visited the Maine complex beforehand. Not all were stationed there. But a handful had seen our sisters and knew of their whereabouts.”
“Then we’ll plan on hitting that portion of the complex first. Where are they?” I asked.
Another rusalka, Vernonia, answered me. “The complex is small, smallest of all the American complexes. It is also the oldest.” Her hazel eyes lacked their usual sparkle. Her dark brown hair held more twigs and moss in its knots than her sisters’.
“Is it made of brick or wood?” Ailani asked.
“Wood,” Vernonia answered, dully.
Ailani and her alae sisters grinned wickedly. “Old wood burns the brightest,” one of them said to another.
“And quickest,” another alae added.
Vernonia finished answering my question. “My captured sisters are highly sedated. They will not be able to help themselves to freedom. They will not be able to recognize us when we enter their minds.” Pain flickered across her expression. I wondered how many times she and her coven had tried to make contact with their missing sisters since learning of their whereabouts last night.
“Are they being held in a cabin attic?” Shawna asked, her voice filled with empathy.
Vernonia’s hard eyes softened when she regarded my partner sister. “They are not.” She paused before continuing. “The Hunters are holding them in an above ground prison cell made of cement.”
My breath hitched. I didn’t know if the alae and Conchita understood how closely connected the rusalki were to Mother Nature, their Goddess Mokosh. It’s why they slept in burrowed out holes in the dirt, why they mourned under water. It’s why they only wore animal skins and covers offered by their plant friends, why they killed with birch scissors and ate only what their Great Mother gifted them. Once, when she was alive, Azalea had told me that these things are the umbilical cord connecting them to Mokosh, the one who gives us all life and is the source of their abilities. I suspected they were able to pop in and out of a place with simply a thought due to that strong connection. They were of nature. And the Hunters had gone to extra efforts to make sure two rusalki’s umbilical cords were severed by essentially placing them in a cement box. I doubted they’d even put a plant in their confinement.
“What?” Ailani asked after my breath hitched.
“What the Hunters are doing to their sisters is nothing short of torture,” I responded. “I’m sorry,” I said to the rusalki coven.
“Well,” the alae chief said. “We’ll just have to torture them back.”
“With fire,” Renee added blandly, clearly unimpressed with the fiery direction of our planning.
“Don’t worry,” Conchita, the xana, spoke up to reassure my aunt and anyone else who failed to vocalize their trepidations. “The alae are highly tactical.”
My mind whirled with that one statement. If the alae were American Wild Women and highly tactical and free, why didn’t they try to help us? The foreign Wilds had mentioned not knowing we were here, or that we were oppressed. But surely the alae knew something about our situation.
They operate on a different thought process, Drosera said into my mind. A tingling sensation across my scalp accompanied her words.
I gazed at the rusalka. And what’s that? I responded wordlessly. They can’t be bothered with outsiders?
No, Drosera answered. They prefer to keep alae dealings to themselves; island happenings belong to the islanders and nobody else. As a people, they’ve had enough of others who think they know better coming in and trying to erase their ways, their sacred things. They do not wish to do the same to others.
Suddenly, I felt like an ass.
Conchita looked to the alae chief, Ailani. “How are you thinking of attacking?”
Ailani took turns making eye contact with everyone listening before she spoke. “We’ll use the smoke screen tactic, I think.” She looked to her sisters who excitedly nodded in agreement. “Are there woods around this complex?”
“Yes,” Drosera said. “The complex sits on twenty acres of land. They use much of it for outdoor training and initiations. The main building is smaller than the others we’ve seen. The cement block holding our sisters is behind the main building.”
“Perfect,” Ailani said.
Drosera seemed to know Ailani meant no offense in her delight.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Ailani continued. She rested her hands on her knees and looked off up to the right before her gaze found mine. “Our limited resources won’t be a hindrance. We’ll collect tires and gasoline. That shouldn’t take too long. Wait. How far away is their complex?”
Drosera answered, “We never drive there. We do not know.”
She tilted her head in question, so I stepped in. “The rusalki don’t need to drive; they transport themselves in a more…unique way.”
“You would call it teleportation,” Drosera admitted.
“Wow,” Ailani exclaimed. “Okay then. Can someone figure out how long it’ll take us to drive there?”
An alae got up to approach the front desk person, her linen pants, short-sleeved shirt, and sandals a stark contrast to the human’s winter layers. I heard her ask about using their business center, and he showed her around the corner.
“So we’ll try to make it there by sunrise,” Ailani went on, talking as though this was absolutely in her wheelhouse. “When first light dawns, we’ll fill the insides of rubber car tires with gas-soaked cloths and light the fabric, letting the tires roll between their main building and the woods. First, though, we’ll start a small, contained fire in their woods.” She paused to add a commentary to her own plan. “I know it’s not the best thing for the environment, to burn gasoline and rubber, but desperate times call for us to be even more desperate. So when they see the smoke from the tires, they’ll think it’s from the fire and run to stop it. We’ll be waiting between the smoke screen and the flames. Hopefully, they’ll send most of their Hunters to combat the fires and out to the woods to search for the rusalki, who they’ll assume started it as retaliation.”
Celeste finished voicing Ailani’s plan with a smile. “But instead, they’ll find us.”
Twelve
It took us twenty minutes to procure tires and gasoline. It took us another thirty minutes to drive from the hotel to the woods outside the Maine Hunters’ complex. So, our desire to attack as dawn broke wasn’t exactly staying on schedule.
In the early morning hours, as the sun peeked over the mountains, huldra, alae, a succubus, a xana, an ex-Hunter, an incubus, and rusalki tromped through the wet forest littered with orange and brown fallen leaves decomposing into the dirt floor. The small complex sat nestled on a clearing in the center of a forest. We positioned ourselves at six different points, each with a gas-filled tire and an alae to lite that tire. To Marcus’s great irritation, Aleksander refused to not be in my group. I refused to not be in Shawna’s group, so together, Shawna, Marcus, Alexsander, an alae named Laia, and I stood, waiting for the signal. A light drizzle fell from the sky and I hoped it wouldn’t ruin our smoke screens before we had a chance to take advantage of them.
My scalp tingled and I instinctively reached up to itch it as my gaze bounced to Drosera, who stared intently at me.
The succubus has a message for you, Drosera spoke in my head.
I looked to where Marie stood, waiting, with Celeste and Olivia.
Oh, I answered in my thoughts. Heather?
My gaze turned to Drosera who gave a nod. Her joining a Wiccan forum proved successful. She has been invited to take part in a private ritual. Tonight.
I gave a nod back. Good. Thank you. So you’ve established a line of communication with her, then, to keep track of her just in case?
I didn’t know exactly how the rusalka mind-reading thing worked, and I doubted I’d understand fully if one tried to explain it to me. But not having had time to pick up a new batch of burner phones, knowing we had a connection to our sisters back in North Carolina eased some of my burden.
Drosera gave a quick, tight smile. We have been keeping watch on those we left behind. She turned to face the cement block holding her captured sisters and the feeling of rusalki fingers kneading through my thoughts disappeared.
Good. So things were going according to plan. With any luck we’d be home tonight in time to be Heather’s back-up and expose the human trafficking ring in North Carolina. I made a mental note to call in some sort of tip-off to the local police station before heading out to the woods where Heather was told the ritual would take place. If the cops arrested those there hoping to kidnap Heather, there’d be fewer Hunters at the North Carolina complex for us to fight when we rescued the harpies and my mothers and burned the place to the ground.
For now, though, I needed to focus on the task at hand: burning the Maine Hunter complex to the ground.
I stood barefoot, my feet apart just enough to hold a firm stance. I held my hands out in front of me, my fingertips buzzing with the need to sprout vines, my palms eager to push branches from my bones. Shawna stood to my right, in a similar position, and Marcus to my left. Aleksander insisted on standing in front of me, for protection he’d explained, but neither Marcus nor I would have it. So after some debate, the incubi leader stood in front of the space between Shawna and me.
A breeze ruffled my hair from behind and brought with it the scent of a dead buckthorn bush up in flames. I flexed my fingers in anticipation.
“You ready?” Marcus whispered to me.
I nodded, still staring forward, before I spoke. “I am.”
“Faline,” he said, his voice strong, gentle, and full of requests that I be safe.
I looked at him. His eyes held worry for me and I knew it wasn’t because he thought I was incapable. He’d told me the opposite on more than one occasion. But, each time we fought, each time we went into battle and came out alive and together, we knew that odds were mounting up against such an ending for our next battle.
“We’ll end up together,” I whispered back, the statement playing on repeat in my mind as a source of comfort. We’ll always end up together.
I wanted to kiss away the creases between his brows, assure him that we’d both be fine.
But Conchita’s bird call rang through the woods and everything happened so quickly.
Laia touched her fiery palm to the gasoline inside the tire and the thing pummeled out thick, rubber-scented smoke. With precision and force, she shoved the smoldering tire to our left and jumped back as another smoking tire came at us from the right, creating a wall thick with dark smoke.
I coughed and almost turned my head to gasp a gulp of cleaner air when the calls of Hunters rang out from the complex and their emergency siren screeched through the morning.
“Here they come, here they come, here they come,” Shawna said, just loud enough for me to hear.
My huldra shook within me at the ready, excited more so by my partner sister’s excitement.
Shouted directives from the Hunters in charge to their men grew closer until only smoke separated them from us.
We shouted no battle cries this time. We did not yell or even speak loudly. With stealth, we quickly took down the first two Hunters who entered our domain and waited for more.
And more did come.
The Maine Hunter complex may have been the smallest in the United States, but they definitely had a surplus of Hunters. Man after man, dressed in black cargo pants and a black long sleeve shirt, came running into the woods and was met by one of us, wielding our goddess-given abilities to our advantage.
The silence of our sneak attack gave way to Hunters radioing for backup and yelling at those behind them that it was a trap. We took that as our cue to move forward, outside of the dissipating smoke screen and onto the complex property. But when we moved past the smoke and into the clearing, all I saw was chaos. We weren’t fighting in an enclosed building like the main building of Washington’s Hunter complex or the Airbnb house we’d stayed at in Oregon. Pockets of battles spread out in the large clearing, against the main building, in the woods, outside a small cabin.
It felt wrong. It all felt wrong.
“Marcus!” I shouted. “Something isn’t right. We’re too spread out.”
In the distance, I noticed Conchita pulling a stream of water from the morning dew on the plants below her and pressing her right hand to the lock on the door to the cement block, holding it there. The rusalki stood guard around her. One Hunter took notice and ran at them, his dagger drawn. Drosera pulled her birch scissors from her hair, up in a knot atop her head, and shoved them out in front of her. The Hunter stopped short and waved his dagger at her scissors, clearly afraid to get within snipping distance. Suddenly, he stood rigidly still and opened his hand, allowing his dagger to drop to the dirt. With soldier-like steps he walked to Drosera and leaned forward, presenting her with his blond high-and-tight head. Calmly, she pressed the birch scissors to his scalp and snipped. The Hunter dropped dead at her feet.
Conchita got the door open and they rushed into the cement box.
“They’re in!” I yelled to anyone who could hear.
“Awesome!” Shawna yelled back while thrusting her branches through a Hunter’s chest. She gave me an evil grin as she helped him to the ground.
Three Hunters came out the side of the main building and set their sights on me. In addition to their regular black uniforms, each wore a black sleeveless vest on top of their long sleeve shirts. Pins and medals decorated their vests, catching the light and glimmering when they walked.
“I think we’ve got some top brass coming our way at two o’clock,” I yelled.
Laia was busy torching a Hunter, but Aleksander, Marcus, and Shawna huddled in with me, our backs to each other.
“I’ve never seen them before,” Marcus said as the men got closer.
“They’re coming this way, for us,” Shawna exclaimed to our little group.
“Not for much longer,” Aleksander said. “I’ll take care of them.”
The incubus lowered his head slightly to focus his energy on the group of three higher ranking Hunters. The Hunter in the middle tripped over his own foot as though it had gone to sleep. The Hunter to his right lifted his hand.
Two shots fired and Aleksander’s back hit mine with a hurtling force as he fell backwards, shoving me forward. His body landed on me, trapping me between him and the ground. Shawna closed the gap and vines burst from her fingertips, long and leafy, moving sporadically as though she were trying to confuse the shooter as to where to shoot next.
The Hunter in the middle of the three-man group regained his gait and they picked up their pace.
I worked to carefully push the tall, muscular incubus off of me without hurting him further and pushing him closer to death. When I finally rolled him to his back, I crouched over him and checked his pulse in his neck. Aleksander’s lips lifted only slightly as he gave a half grin.
“It feels good,” he said on a scratchy voice. “To have you this close to my lips, touching me.”
“I don’t know how this works,” I said hurriedly, looking him over. Blood pooled on the right side of his stomach, drenching his button-up. “Do you need to take energy from me to heal? To live?”
He coughed a laugh. “You want to have sex with me right here and now?
” He cleared his throat and pressed a hand over his gunshot wound. “Agh.” He inhaled deeply. “I suppose it makes sense, you being a huldra, that you’d want to seal our mate bond in the forest.” He coughed again. “Timing stinks, though.”
“I’m being serious, Alek.” I wiped his hair off his forehead. “What do you need?”
“Faline! Look out!” Marcus yelled, caught on the winning end of hand-to-hand combat with a Hunter.
I looked up just in time to see the middle Hunter pointing his handgun at me. I tucked and rolled to the right and heard a bullet whizzing past my head.
“Not her!” the Hunter on the right commanded.
I didn’t have time. If I wanted any of us to live, I’d have to help Aleksander later. I spun up onto my feet and ran to stand with Shawna and Marcus as the high-ranking Hunters neared us and the tree line. The three of us took our stances, Shawna and I with thick, deadly branches growing and Marcus with his dagger ready, his most recent foe dead at his feet.
When the three high-ranking Hunters got within six feet of us, the one on the right gave another command. “Leave the leader alive. Kill the rest.”
Without warning, Marcus ran at the men, swiping his dagger through the air. He plummeted it into the chest of the center Hunter. The Hunter engaged his ex-brother in hand-to-hand combat. Shawna and I ran forward to fight the other two. She reached them before me and wrapped the vines from her left hand around the Hunter’s neck while shoving vines from her right hand into his throat with a warrior’s scream. I reached the Hunter with the gun and tried to pull the weapon from him with my vines. He slashed through them with his dagger, sending burning pain through my hands and arms. The vines growing from my feet wrapped around his ankles and I kicked my right foot backwards, sending him off kilter. He fell backwards and shot his gun as he went down.
Shawna’s agonizing scream pierced my huldra’s rage. I stopped and turned to my partner sister. It all happened so slowly, as though someone had pressed a slow-motion button and I could do nothing to move faster, to get to my sister any quicker. The shooter scrambled to his feet as Marcus gave a hefty shove to his attacker and ran to Shawna.
Wild Women Collection Page 60
