Goddess, I wished I could see the Hunter’s expression.
“Okay,” I said as a signal that he’d passed that part. “You know who I am, but I don’t know who you are.”
“I’d rather not say,” he whispered, shifting in place. “They don’t know I’m a rogue.”
“A what?” I asked, trying to remember where I’d heard that term recently before.
“A rogue. That’s what we call ourselves, Hunters doing what we can on our way out of the brotherhood. Some are already out.”
I wanted to ask more about Marcus and Shawna, but I’d been needing a saving grace to get out of this place and I figured I may have found one. I had to learn more about the current Hunter situation. Marcus would have expected me to dig, anyhow.
“So then he was right,” I said more to myself than the man in my room. “Are there a lot of rogues?”
“Our numbers are growing every day.” He paused. “Rod is helping me and a few others get out. He told Marcus about me, that he had a guy in the North Carolina complex, and Marcus had me ask about you, to see if you were brought here.”
“And someone here told you?” I asked.
“Nah, only the leading officers know about you; the leader of the revolution, they’re calling you. They’re keeping your stay with us top secret. The harpy made sure I found out. Told a guy who told a guy.”
Thank Goddess for Rose.
“Are they coming for me?” I asked and then clarified. “Marcus and the rest of them?” I made sure to not mention any other Wilds. Obviously, he knew about some of them, but I didn’t want to give anything away either.
“I’ll send a message to Rod to let Marcus know I’ve confirmed that you’re here.” He turned on his heel to leave. Before he opened the door, he said, “I’ll try to let you know what he says. If I can get back here.”
He silently opened the door to reveal a dimly lit hallway.
“Wait,” I whispered harshly, only to grab his attention.
He paused.
“Where is the other huldra? I know she’s here,” I said.
“Are you of the same coterie?” he asked, clearly uneducated in the existence of American huldra. We only had one coterie to speak of.
I didn’t know how to answer in a way that wasn’t too revealing.
He took my omission as an answer unto itself.
“Ah, yeah. Okay. I’ll let her know you’re here.” He left my room and secured the door behind him.
My mother. A nervous excitement rolled through me. Would she be proud of my efforts? Would she be disappointed that I’d gotten caught and put the whole Wild revolution at a blatant disadvantage? Or a complete halt altogether.
Since learning she lived, I’d imagined meeting her for the first time, as an adult, by rescuing her. Here I lay in a room that might as well be a prison cell, praying a rogue Hunter would honor his word and send a message to my mother. Not quite the image I’d created in my head.
I hadn’t thought to ask the rogue Hunter how he got the key to my room. But some questions were better left for later. And plus, the moment Marcus found out I was here, the rusalki would know. I rested my head on the single pillow in the room and went back to staring out the window.
It was only a matter of time before I’d be receiving a visitor, one in animal skins who spoke in parables and had a propensity to use orgasmic energy.
Sixteen
The next morning, the boot steps of the Hunters woke me before the keys jingled against the door and two men dressed in black walked in my room. Clarisse squeezed past the two pillars of strength and rigidity, carrying the red shawl.
“Good morning,” she chirped, as though I were a guest and she had come to fetch me for tea or a leisurely stroll through the gardens.
I’d made it a point to be standing, waiting by my bed before any of them entered the room. I only looked at Clarisse with daggers for eyes.
“Well,” she huffed, “if you don’t want to make the most of your stay here.”
Whatever that meant. Not that I put much stock in the ramblings of a deeply confused human.
By the time we made our way to the nearly empty courtyard, the harpy’s mother, Rose, was already in her cage using a talon to pick at the pink feathers along her right wing. She’d been turned away when I stepped foot onto the barren dirt, but quickly twisted in a sharp movement to eye the newcomers in silence. She studied me as though we’d not just had a conversation the day before.
I played along, hoping she meant to act like we were long lost enemies rather than comrades, hoping she hadn’t forgotten about me due to whatever the Hunters had done to her and any types of pharmaceuticals they’d pumped into her. I moseyed toward the single tree in the courtyard, pretending to have no set goal for my time outside and no idea how to spend the minutes or more.
The Hunters and Clarisse watched for less than five minutes before deeming us harmless and leaving us alone. I wasn’t so naive to think there weren’t cameras recording every square inch of the courtyard, but it wasn’t like I had better options for the taking.
I rushed to Rose’s cage, but not close enough for her to reach out and swipe at me with a talon. I had to make sure she remembered me.
“One came to me last night,” I said, to see how coherent she was and how much she knew.
“A rogue?” she whispered under her breath, turning her face away from the building and toward the chain link fence.
True to harpy form: whip smart.
I nodded and followed suit, speaking away from the building. “He’s going to get word to my mother that I’m here.”
“Did he mention a plan to escape?” she asked, getting straight to the point. Also a harpy quality.
“No,” I said. “He wasn’t very forthcoming with any details.”
“Oh,” she said somewhat sadly. “I was hoping he’d have a tip or two on getting that thing off you.” She motioned to my shawl of doom. “You can’t escape with that thing hanging around your shoulders.”
The back door opened with a loud bang, as though someone had shoved the thing open hard enough for it to smack the outer wall. Rose and I swung around to see what all the commotion was about. I jumped away from the cage. One Hunter escorted a woman out. She wore a red shawl like mine that seemed to weigh heavily on her back, causing her shoulders to slouch. Her red hair hung long and scraggly, with a thin braid on each side to keep strands out of her face I figured. The Hunter whispered something into the woman’s ear and backed into the building, quietly shutting the door.
The woman’s face lifted. Her gaze bore into mine.
My throat tightened. My breath stopped. Tears filled my eyes. I began to shake and fought against weak knees to stay standing. “Mother,” I whispered.
“Meet her at the tree,” the harpy commanded. “On the back side, facing the fence. There’s a sliver of a blind spot for the cameras, so they won’t be able to read your lips.”
I gave an absent nod and walked to the tree without recognizing the ground beneath my bare feet or basically anything else around me, only the one other huldra in the courtyard.
The woman, my mother, held my gaze as she neared the tree, her steps strong and deliberate despite her hunched shoulders. I remembered those eyes, only now crow’s feet played at the edges. I remembered those lips, only now they were thin and chapped. A tear escaped my eye and I swallowed to keep more from revealing my emotions in view of the cameras.
I found myself behind the tree, my hand pressed against the bark for support, staring into my mother’s eyes. With a gasp she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled me to her chest, as though I were still her little girl, the little girl she’d been stolen away from. I leaned down, happy to be held, unaware of how much I needed to be held in such a way by my mother until my face pressed to her shoulder and my tears dampened the fabric of her red shawl.
My head spun, so I pulled away from her bloodstone shawl. The fabric so close to my face was too much to handle.
My mother placed her palms on each of my cheeks.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in all my life,” she whispered through sobs. “I always knew I’d get to see you again. I always knew.”
“But I was captured,” I heard myself whine, as only a child would say to her mother, presenting her most vulnerable side full of insecurities.
“Yes,” she said, releasing my cheeks to push hair from my face and hold my hands. “So that we can escape together.”
“I got word to the others,” I remembered to tell her. I cleared my throat and stood straight, still holding my mother’s hands. “I’m awaiting their response. Probably by way of a rusalka visit.”
“So you were successful then?” she asked, her expression beaming. “In uniting the American Wild Women?”
I nodded. “For the most part, yes.” I wasn’t sure how she’d take the whole truth, but pleasant or not, she deserved to know it. “We’ve also attracted the attention of snake Wilds and a few others. As well as males.”
“Which males?” she asked, her dark reddish-brown eyebrows raised.
“Incubi and ex-Hunters,” I said, studying her expression before I told her the bigger revelation.
She only smiled. “Yes, the Hunters are losing their ranks these days. The young men of this generation are not like those of earlier generations. There’s a difference in the way they see the world.”
I’d meant to ease the topic, but I blurted, “I’m with an ex-Hunter…romantically.”
My mother inhaled.
“We liked each other before we knew what the other person was,” I added. “And then he helped us take down the Washington Hunter complex, and he saved Shawna when my huldra was too erratic to do it.”
“So you’ve released your huldra then?” she asked. Her eyes dropped to my waist area.
I nodded and turned, lifting my shirt to reveal the deep russet bark on my lower back.
My mother gasped. “It’s gorgeous, truly gorgeous.”
The harpy coughed and my mother eyed her cage for a quick second. “We don’t have much time left,” she uttered. “Does your thigh ache?”
I rubbed the area of my thigh where my tattooed identification number lived. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
“They’ve tattooed you with bloodstone. It’s a relatively new procedure they’ve started doing; they ground it into a powder to make ink with. It’s why you feel weak even when they take the shawl off.” Her eyes bored into mine with all the seriousness in the world. “You’ll need to carve it out before you try to escape. Find something to do it with, something sharp. I’ll do the same. But only shortly before. They can’t have enough time to realize it’s gone.”
The harpy coughed twice, clearly signaling us to finish up.
“How will I know when to do it?” I asked. “Will they let you out with me again?”
She pursed her lips, holding tightly to whatever she wanted to say. She shook her head. “This was a payment for a favor owed to me. They’ll be back any second to get me.” She pressed her hand to the tree. “The harpy will relay our messages to one another.”
The sound of the door from the building to the courtyard opening cut through my thoughts. I didn’t want to tell her goodbye, didn’t want to let her go.
She peeked around the tree. “They’re here.” She kissed my cheek and held her face only inches from mine. “According to the Hunters, they’re winning. They are creating a warrior race, mixing our two kinds. They may think they’ve hit the jackpot with you. They plan to collect your DNA to create offspring with.”
“You think?” I said. “They’ve been doing this for decades and haven’t been successful yet.”
Her expression darkened. “They have been. They’ve created a male in Europe. Spain, I believe.”
“When?” I whispered.
She squeezed my hand one last time before releasing it and turning to walk toward the Hunter waiting anxiously for her at the door.
“Between twenty and thirty years ago,” she answered. “The product of a powerful Wild Woman leader and a commanding Hunter. I’ve heard complaints about the last warrior they created; he may be dead. I believe you are the powerful Wild Woman they’re looking to repeat the experiment with. The leader who’s released her inner Wild.”
She walked away, not turning back to look at me as I leaned against the tree and held back tears. If they were planning on using me to create their warrior species, what were they waiting for?
I clung to the maple tree and watched my mother walk into the building. I peered at the harpy. She paused from her preening to glance at me. These two older Wilds knew things I didn’t. Perhaps they also knew what was in store for me at the hands of my Hunter captors.
Seventeen
My phone vibrated in my pocket. The Wild Women lingering around the fridge didn’t even look my way when I left the kitchen and walked out to the front yard. The grounds looked more like a park than someone’s yard, with tall hedge-type trees blocking the view of the road and absorbing the sounds of car engines along with it. I waited until the front door closed and was at least ten feet behind me before digging the phone out of my pocket. These Wild Women had super hearing and I didn’t need them listening in on my conversation. Since Faline’s capture, her coterie reached a tension level I’d never seen before, which didn’t bode well for my Hunter side.
“Marcus?” the Hunter on the other end of the line whispered, his voice echoing enough to make me think he called from a bathroom.
“Who is this?” I asked the person on the other end of the line, just to be sure. The number was one I recognized, a rogue Hunter from the North Carolina complex who’d been talking to Rod. Rod had given me the guy’s number and instructed me to wait for his call of confirmation.
“You were right. She understood the code question,” the man said, his voice low and deep.
I’d never spoken to him personally before. We’d gone through Rod. But if his size matched his voice, Faline was in good hands, because size mattered when it came to Hunters.
“So then it’s confirmed. She’s at your complex,” I stated. I exhaled and closed my eyes. Fuck.
While I’d left the beliefs of Hunters behind, especially those involving a woman’s place in the world and in a relationship, my DNA couldn’t help but hold an unbreakable claim on the woman I loved. According to the most basic instincts pulsing within me, Faline Frey was my partner, my female, and the one life I was compelled to protect at all costs. Nearly everything in me demanded that I hunt down and torture each and every being involved with her absence.
Couple the huldra’s anxiety levels with my need to hunt my enemies, and each second was a match waiting to be lit in a room full of gasoline.
“She is,” he started. “We were able to connect her to her mother this morning. She’ll have to take it from there.”
My eyes flung open. “Her mother’s there?”
“Yes, and a harpy.”
“Well, shit.” I paced to the line of tree hedges, thinking. I rubbed at a bruise on my forearm, courtesy of Aleksander. The incubi leader and I couldn’t be in the same room since Faline had been taken. We’d tried once and almost killed each other. While I couldn’t rely on that guy, I also couldn’t deny I needed backup. “Rod tells me you’ve got your own army.”
“I’d hardly call it an army, but our ranks are growing,” the Hunter responded. I hadn’t asked his name and I didn’t plan on it either. Not until we met in person. He needed to feel safe in helping my Faline. The safer he felt, the more likely he was to keep an eye out for her and report back to me.
“Are your men willing to fight with the Wild Women when the time comes?” I asked. I made it to the trees and back to the brick porch a third time. If my hard-working logical side waned just a little, I’d run through those trees and wouldn’t stop until I broke down whichever door Faline was trapped behind.
“Fight alongside them?” the man asked, skepticism dripping from his
words. “Rod never mentioned that.”
“Alongside them, for them, whichever is necessary,” I clarified. If Rod hadn’t mentioned that fact, what had he said? “What exactly did Rod say?”
“That the leader of the Wild Women revolution may have been taken to my complex and he needed confirmation on her whereabouts.” The man paused. “I tried to call him before you, and he didn’t answer. He never not answers.”
“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to spend time on the topic of Rod when the topic of Faline was all I could think about. “He hasn’t contacted me since he said he’d talk to you.”
The man at the other end cleared his throat. “Listen. I have nothing against the Wild Women, but I can’t speak for all the men. Yeah, some think what’s happened to them is a shame, but others are only joining our rogue ranks after seeing what their leaders are doing to the human women. It’s wrong. I don’t care what religion the human women are. It’s wrong.”
I scratched my head and stifled a guttural noise akin to a growl. It took a few seconds before I could speak again without reaming this man through the phone. I pushed the words out through clenched teeth. “Fine.” I took another breath, forcing myself to continue. “Then you’ll not fight against the Wild Women at least? If they show up at your complex?”
Now the man took a while to answer. Finally he said, “I’ll have to take a vote. I can’t know for sure.”
I pulled the phone away from my face, to hang up on the asshole, but his next words stopped me.
“We’ll focus on helping the human women and you can focus on helping the Wild Women.”
I hated his lack of commitment to the Wild Women, but it was important to Faline that the human trafficking victims be rescued and the ones in charge be taken down. My cop side saw the importance too. But the cop in me took a back seat to my need for a certain huldra who’d turned my world upside down in the best possible way. My focus was to get Faline back. Everything else came second. If the rogue Hunters agreed to deal with the human women, that was one less thing on my plate to make sure got done.
Wild Women Collection Page 63
