The Hunter establishment clung to the popular term “sanctity of marriage,” but those few of us on the inside, who thought for ourselves, knew their exclusion of homosexual rights within the brotherhood had nothing to do with sanctity and everything to do with their thoughts on women and the roles of women. To them, women were lesser than men and each romantic and sexual relationship needed to have the controller and the controlee. The idea of a same-sex relationship upset this ideal balance of theirs. Plus, in their finite thinking of gender roles, they couldn’t wrap their heads around why on earth a male would want to lower himself to a female’s status by taking the controlee position of a coupledom.
I withheld my grumblings of how fucked up it all was and shook my head to show my thoughts on the subject before moving on. “Okay, so then each and every one of you is comfortable with fighting alongside Wild Women?”
They nodded.
“Have you had much experience around them?” I asked. “Outside of check-ins?”
They shook their heads.
“All right,” I said. “Well, for starters, they will release their inner Wild Women in your presence, and your inner Hunter will feel it. As in, your muscles will grow rapidly, causing soreness. And you’ll feel like you’ve just been given a steroid shot full of testosterone.” I caught their eyes. “You’ll have the inescapable urge to either fight or fuck with no particular preference. I suggest you fight and then fuck.”
A few men laughed and I quickly pushed all thoughts of a naked Faline from my mind. “If you go into it knowing these will be your triggers, you’ll be better able to channel them effectively. Except for you, Rod. You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” I said jokingly to decrease any fear of the unknown I may have planted in the men.
“As long as I still get to fuck after I fight,” Rod joked back.
The other men laughed louder, certainly on board with Rod’s plan.
“Now that we have that taken care of,” I said more seriously. “Let’s talk tactics.”
When their laughter died down, I continued. “We have multiple Wild Women groups here from other countries, as well as our own. They are gearing up to attack the North Carolina Hunter complex tomorrow morning.” The men exchanged glances. I raised my hands. “I know that’s short notice, and I apologize. But the sooner the better. Not only do they have three Wild Women against their will, but every day we wait more innocent human women are taken and prepared to be sold and deported like livestock. None of this is acceptable.”
I nodded to a few of the rogues’ waists. “I see you all brought your daggers. I know each of you has been extensively trained in hand-to-hand combat with the types of Wild Women from your region. Today I’ll quickly give you an overview of how these and the other Wild Women will fight, so you may better fight alongside them. And a reminder that tomorrow morning you won’t be fighting folkloric women. You’ll be fighting your brothers…men who are as thoroughly trained as yourself.”
I pulled my dagger from its sheath and raised it in front of my chest, at the ready.
The rogue Hunters, including Rod, did the same.
I advanced on the group. “Then let’s begin.”
Twenty
My arm ached where the Hunter had plunged the needle and stolen my blood. I lay on my right side, away from the window, to keep it from aching. I stared at the empty wall, cursing its existence. I wanted to see my mother again, hoped the rogue Hunter would enter my room tonight with more information, and wished I were lying with Marcus in my bed at home in my tree house, alone, and safe. I tried to cling to hope, but my reserves were about as full as the wall I stared at.
“You mourn an experience you are not having.”
I knew the voice well. I took a breath and slowly turned to my left side, toward the window. My arm pulsated with the movement, so I used my right arm to heave myself up to sitting.
“Drosera,” I said on an exhale. “They took my blood. They’re preparing to remove my eggs and inseminate them with Hunter sperm. So don’t tell me I’m not having an experience that I most clearly am having.”
The rusalka didn’t even blink. “They have not yet taken your eggs. They have not yet created offspring with them. The experience has not happened.”
She had a point, but I heaved out a sigh anyway. “My mother is here and so is the harpy flock’s mother.”
Drosera gave one quick nod. It appeared as though she’d run a few fingers through her hair since I saw her last, in the hotel after her forest had burned down. She’d changed too, into a less bloody animal skin skirt and no top. She brought with her the scent of dirt and pine needles.
One thought led to another, sisters and mothers in captivity, and I remembered to ask the rusalka about her own sisters. “Did your sisters make it out okay? Are they all right after the whole Maine complex shitshow?”
“Oleander and Aconitum are well, thank you,” she answered. “Their connection to Mokosh has been reestablished and they have been working on healing themselves.”
“How did they take the news about Azalea?” I wondered aloud.
Drosera closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and responding. “Telling them was to experience the loss anew.”
My heart ached for them all. What awful news to come home to.
“Your Wild sisters hurt for you,” I added, not as consolation, but as affirmation.
“We know,” she said. “It is appreciated.”
She stood in silence and I watched as though we both contemplated what this path to freedom had taken from us. I wondered what else it aimed to steal.
“So,” I started, to rescue us both from unhelpful thoughts, “is there a plan to get us all out, my mother, the harpy Rose, and me? Sooner rather than later?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Tomorrow morning, during your courtyard time.”
I sat up a little taller with a new sense of energy. Hope did strange things to a person.
“Wait,” I said, only now realizing what her words meant. “You’ve been here before? While I was here?” How else would she know I spent my mornings in the courtyard?
“Azalea,” she answered, which was enough for me. Her sister in spirit, lost by Clarisse’s hand to save my sister.
Which brought up another memory. I’d warned Clarisse that the rusalki would avenge their sister, and I never went back on my word. “Clarisse is here,” I said.
“Yes,” Drosera answered with a smile and eyes full of malicious plans. “Azalea has been watching the Hunter woman as well, waiting for when her usefulness to our sisters, to you, has worn out.”
Oh, how I wished I could be there to witness their deadly birch scissors—one snip of the hair to cut a life short—and Clarisse’s terrified pleading for her own life.
“We cannot guarantee your desire will be met, but we will try,” Drosera said.
So the rusalki were still reading minds. Good. I wondered if having to bring up old wounds, telling their newly rescued sisters about Azalea, had stolen some of the energy needed to not only transport themselves, but read minds as well. Although, the incubi and succubi could have helped too.
Come to think of it, I did feel a bit of tingling deep beneath my skull. I’d initially passed it off as the bud of a headache caused by the damn blood stone tattoo. It’d been a couple weeks or so since a rusalka had spoken into my mind. With all that’d happened in that time—my visit to the rusalki’s underwater funeral home, my visit to the incubi’s Portland underground lair, my visit to the Airbnb and then the Oregon Hunter complex and the city of Atlanta and the Maine Hunters’ complex, and now here—it felt like an eternity. But I’d forgotten about my telepathic conversation with Drosera the night I met the alae in the burning Maine forest.
When this was all over with…if this ever ended, I wanted to take a break from visiting anywhere and anyone. Traveling no longer held the same wide-eyed wonderment it once did.
“Ha.” I laughed and Drosera’s eyes twinkled with kno
wing at what I was laughing at.
Before I was attacked at the Westin in Bellevue, before Shawna was taken and I went on my multi-state hunt to find her, I wasn’t allowed to leave Washington State, by order of the Washington State Hunter organization. Before I’d released my inner huldra and basically killed my ability to ever pass a Hunter check-in again, I’d never left the state. I’d accepted the rule, but secretly wondered what it’d be like to cross borders from one state to another, from one country to another. If we took down the last Hunter complex, we’d have complete freedom to travel. But because of all the traveling I’d have done to get to that point, I’d likely never want to travel again.
Life is full of the kind of irony that makes you shake your head and want to give life itself the finger.
“They will come soon, so I must go,” Drosera said, eyeing the bedroom door. “Be brave in the knowledge that this will soon come to an end.”
I thought to ask her exactly what she meant, what was going to happen between now and tomorrow morning that I needed extra bravery for. But I worried her answer would have the opposite effect of bravery.
“Can you see the future?” I asked. I had asked this question before, and the answer they gave was less clear than a dirty snow globe. Now more than ever, I needed to know the end results—if all of this was actually for something rather than a slow and painful descent into death.
If the answer was yes, and the future for American Wild Women looked dim, for all Wild Women, would I have wished I’d never started this thing in the first place? Knowing the future, would I have preferred a caged life over a free death?
Drosera cocked her head and studied me, the sense of tingles rummaging through my brain clearly explaining her focus.
“Do you understand your own answer?” she asked.
As I lay in captivity in the second oldest Hunter complex in America, my inner self felt accomplished, fulfilled, like I’d lived a life of purpose and meaning. A life that touched others. Whether or not my path in life would soon end, it was a path I was proud of and glad I’d stepped onto. Yes, I would have chosen a death of freedom over a life in which I lived by the lies of an oppressor. Connecting with my inner huldra, helping other Wilds to connect with their inner Wild Women, was worth anything the Hunters threw at me as punishment.
“I do understand,” I said, even though Drosera’s soft smile told me she already knew my answer.
“My sisters and I, Azalea included, will come to your aid tomorrow,” Drosera said as she faded from existence. Her last statement, she spoke into my mind. Until then, be well.
The tingling sensation of a rusalka sorting through my mind filled my body with a state of euphoria, to the point of feeling as though I floated above the bed.
“Freyja,” I whispered, the name of my Goddess, a sweet tingle on my lips.
Four sets of Hunter boots tromped down the hall and grew louder as they neared my door. The cadence halted at once and the lock rustled before the door knob turned.
“Freyja,” I said again, stronger, louder. “Strengthen me for what they’re about to do.”
Twenty-One
Shawna, Olivia, and I waited at the half-way point in the dark bootlegger tunnel under the harpies’ home we currently stayed in. I held a steel flashlight, on its lowest setting. I turned the stream of light away from the huldra, who could see well enough in the dark and preferred that I not shine the thing in their eyes, temporarily blinding them.
“They’re coming,” Shawna whispered, just loud enough for me to hear.
I pulled the beam of light from the tunnel wall to the center of the ground in the distance, the place our guests were to come from.
While Aleksander and I had been meeting with the small group of rogue Hunters in the woods, Shawna and Olivia had made their way through the secret hutch door, into the basement of the house, and further into the tunnel, in search of a mermaid. They’d found two who’d been on their way to the harpies’ home. Despite what the Hunter teachers taught me growing up, and even my more in-depth trainings as a man, Wild Women seemed to have an unseen connection, one that I doubted even some of them realized.
From the outside looking in, I noticed the more they worked together as a team, the more they seemed able to move forward when the other moved back, to anticipate the needs of another Wild Woman outside their group. This morning’s chance meeting between the two huldra and the mermaids only served as proof of my theory.
Rock curved around us, leaving a semi-flat floor for the flashlight beam to bounce off of, hitting pebbles and dirt. No one had gone through the trouble of smoothing the walls or rounding the ceiling. Jagged edges of sharp stone still held the lined marks of rock cutters. This tunnel had a specific function and ease of use or safety were not priorities. I considered removing my boots to widen the gap between the top of my head and the protruding rock edges, but two mermaids rounded the bend in the tunnel before I bent to untie my laces.
The mermaids, holding hands, walked into the beam of my flashlight, their feet bare and jeans dirty. I raised the light to point just beside the one on the right, to view them without shining the thing in their eyes. They were of similar height and build. One had red hair and the other was a brunette. Both wore serious expressions as they clasped Olivia and Shawna’s hands in greeting.
“We came as soon as we found out about Faline,” the red-head said, concern lacing her tone.
Shawna thanked her and turned to address me. “I’d like to formally introduce you to a couple friends Faline made during her travels to the mermaids’ island. Marcus, this is Sarah.” Shawna motioned to the red-head. “And her partner, Elaine.” She motioned to the brunette.
I remembered Elaine, but not Sarah. I looked between Elaine and Olivia and wondered what a succubus or incubus would feel in this moment, between the two Wild Women who, when they first met, began a physical altercation in the huldra’s common house kitchen. Understandably, Elaine hadn’t taken the news of Gabrielle’s death sitting down. She’d wanted to pull out of the whole mission and go home.
“We’re wife and wife now,” Elaine said with a smile in her eyes as she looked to Sarah.
“Congratulations,” Olivia offered. “That’s actually really positive news in such a negative time.”
“Thank you,” the two mermaids responded. “With everything going on, we just felt we needed to declare who we were and our love and devotion for one another, who and what we’re fighting for.”
Either my officer mind or my Hunter mind kicked in, making me ask, “Was this through the traditional government system? Because Hunters keep a close eye on government documents submitted by females in areas where Wild Women reside.” I added my intention behind the question after I realized my query had the components of a douchy remark. “I don’t want you two separated so soon after celebrating such a commitment.”
God, I had a way with words. Not really.
Sarah spoke up, assertive, but not offended, as far as I could tell. “We don’t respect or adhere to human systems of government. We decided to pledge ourselves in a more traditional way for our kind, officiated by the leader of a council that governs beings much like us, but who aren’t Wilds.”
There were no non-Wild Women supernatural females in America, as far as I knew. I wasn’t going to ask, though, having already reached my douchy comment quota for this meeting. Knowing me, the question would come out as a know-it-all statement or an accusation, neither of which would do me any good in earning their trust.
Apparently Shawna and I were on the same wavelength because she asked, “Wait, others here in the states?”
The two mermaids shared a look.
“Yes, our two kinds broke the connection many years ago due to differences of opinion about the humans,” Sarah answered. “When our shoal fragmented, Elaine, our daughter, and I sought them out.”
Elaine nearly interrupted her wife. “Yes, but we prefer not to share much more about them.” She gently touched Sarah’s
arm. “If they want to be known about, they’ll make it happen.”
Sarah nodded her agreement. “So,” she said to Shawna, Olivia, and me. “What’s the plan to get Faline back? I know there’s got to be a plan.”
“She’s done so much for the Wild Women,” Elaine agreed.
Shawna tensed and lifted her chin.
I held back the urge to press a hand to her back in show of support and safety. Faline’s partner sister had been through nothing short of trauma at the hands of my brothers in a building, on a property, where I was raised and played as a kid. Entering that cabin where my father used to sit with a cigar and tell me the stories of his father and his father’s father, and seeing an innocent woman drugged, held against her will…it turned my stomach and solidified any disdain I held for the brotherhood. I took it as my duty to support Shawna in any way needed. Now, though, what she needed was to be given space to flex her strength and power.
“Tomorrow morning,” she answered the mermaids. “Are your sisters going to take part as well? We haven’t told them the strategy, that there is one, but they knew we were planning on taking down the North Carolina complex before Faline was taken. That’s still what’s going to happen, but with an added rescue. Last they told us, when they called they were deciding how it all worked with their current arrangements.”
“And I bet they didn’t share what their current arrangements happened to be? I’m sorry they’re so secretive,” Sarah interjected. “It’s an old habit.”
“One that’s kept our kind safe, for the most part,” Elaine added. “Until recently.”
“It’s okay,” Olivia said. “Trust is earned over time, not something that should always be freely given. It makes sense, seeing we’ve only known each other for a few weeks.”
“They are planning on helping,” Sarah continued. “Those that are here, at least. They’re actually searching the area around the complex as we speak, looking for water access.”
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