“No,” the woman answered. “Talk of this man has brought me here. My sister, Conchita, believes there to be a strong resemblance between him and me. I had to come see for myself.”
“Who is this man to you?” Ailani said. “Surely, you do not wish to create another daughter with him.”
Something about her statement brushed me the wrong way.
The woman gave a short laugh. She turned to me. Her smile fell from her brown eyes and a sense of depth, of wanting, replaced it. “There has been talk from the Wild Women who’ve recently traveled to aid in this cause,” she started, her cracking voice barely noticeable, “that my son lives.”
“Your son?” Ailani asked in shock.
“Your son?” I repeated.
“You were born in Spain to a mother you no longer have?” the woman asked.
I nodded absently before finding the words to answer. “I was, and then brought to the States by my father.”
“I gave birth to a son, in Spain, with a man I loved, who I’d believed loved me in return. I was sadly mistaken shortly after passing my second trimester, when he revealed his affiliation with the Hunters. It had all been a ruse, our love a sham, perpetrated by a Hunter seeking to gain rank and notoriety through bringing the first Hunter/Wild Woman hybrid into this world.” She reached to touch my cheek and I flinched back. “The moment my son was born, I knew he was lost to me, that Paul Garcia had succeeded. For Wild Women are unable to birth males with the weak Y chromosome sperm of human men.”
Now, more than ever, I relied on my legs to keep me upright, because what this woman said just about bowled me over. Could it be true? My eyes retraced the woman’s face, the familiarity of it. But how could I have remembered her face as just a baby? Or was the familiarity from looking at myself in the mirror all these years? The wide forehead. The thick brows. The tan skin.
“I cannot know, though,” she went on, as though she were partly talking to me and partly to Ailani, but mostly speaking to herself. “I have not seen my son since he was only a little one. He would be a man now, having lost all of his childish features.”
The cloaked woman exhaled and nodded, looking me straight in the eyes. She held out her hand to shake mine. “Hello, my name is Avera and I am a xana, Wild Women of pure water, our hearts flowing with pure love. We were created by the Goddess Danu, and the only way for me to test whether or not you are of my blood is to test the purity of your heart. I must sing for you.”
The fire wielders gasped.
“Okay,” I said, stealing a glace to see what the other women gasped at. “Is that a bad thing, you singing?”
She sighed. “The song of a xana can only be heard by a pure heart, otherwise it has the power to drive the listener mad, or worse.”
“Oh,” I said. Well, that changed things. “I guess it depends how you define pure as to whether or not I’ll pass the test.”
I’d waited years to meet my mother, to look into her face and realize the other half of myself. To, on top of it, know I wasn’t full Hunter, that I belonged to another family, would fill me with more gratitude than I had the power to express. But Faline needed me to be battle ready by tomorrow morning. And if somehow I wasn’t found pure, by some undefined and possibly outdated concept, I could lose my mind and my fighting capabilities along with it.
She asked my birthdate and the exact town I was born in. I told her, and she responded with a nod. “I believe you to be my son,” she finally said after some contemplation. “And if you are my son, I would very much like to fight for you, help you to finish strong, as the opportunity to do such things for you over the years has been stolen from me.”
I swallowed hard. Could she really be my mother? I ached to allow her to sing to me, but… “I cannot lose my mind,” I said. “Faline needs me. I need Faline.”
She gave a comforting smile. “A xana can feel a pure heart, one that pulses along the same vibration as her own. I feel this from you.”
“Then why do you need to sing to prove it?” I asked. My desire for confirmation gnawed at me too, but considering the risk I had to ask.
“Because I have never wanted anything more in my life than this to be true,” she said, her words full of strength and softness.
I took a deep breath. If Faline were here she’d already have agreed to the xana woman. Having grown up without her own mother, she’d understand my heart’s desire and she’d insist I take the test for nothing if not confirmation. She’d tell me between the succubi, incubi, and rusalki, we’d be able to reverse any mental or emotional confusion failing the song’s test could bring. My resourceful lover, watching out for me even when she wasn’t here.
“Then I’ll hear you sing,” I said. “But promise me first, if I fail, you will take me to the huldra coterie and ask them to bring the others to help heal me. If they fail, you will fight in my place.”
“Very well then,” Avera agreed.
“And perform the test in a place that doesn’t put others at risk, so not out here,” I added, glancing back to see the worried expressions on the rogue’s faces.
She grunted, probably just as frustrated to wait as I was. “Then where?”
“Come back with me to the house I’m staying in, when I’m done here. There’s a basement, hidden, under the house. I think that’ll be a safe enough spot.”
For the first time, she noticed the men behind me. “They fight for you?” she asked.
“No, more like with me,” I answered. “And I’ve promised them an in-depth lesson in fighting alongside Wild Women that I need to get started with.” These men had pledged to help us, to stand up against the establishment that excluded their romantic lifestyles. I owed it to them to show them how. “If you don’t mind, I’ll need you to wait ’til we’re done.”
“Then I will help the alae in their training endeavors tonight.” The xana winked. “I do not sit by and wait for any man. Not even my son.”
Twenty-Four
“Okay, it should be safe now,” I told the cloaked woman before me. I couldn’t figure out whether I should call her mom or Avera. So, I called her nothing. I’d decide after she sang, if I had my wits about me enough to still talk.
The look on Shawna’s face when I’d brought the woman through the front door and into the living room where the huldra coterie sat with a map of the area strewn across a coffee table, was priceless. I made a mental note to let Faline know her sister was incredibly loyal, if she had any doubts.
Introducing my new guest calmed Shawna’s icy glares enough for us to make our way to the hidden door behind the empty hutch without Shawna feeling the need to follow us. I’d warned the coterie that with their sensitive hearing they may want to leave the house for a few minutes, but Olivia assured me she’d done some research on the house and the basement had been insulated to be sound proof. It kept the sounds of alcohol production from visitors or nosy officials.
Avera and I stood alone in the dank, cold basement. The flames of two candles danced along the brick walls, casting shadows across the floor and offering not much in the way of light or warmth. The woman opened her mouth to begin singing and I threw a hand up to stop her.
“What should I expect to experience?” I asked. “In either scenario.” Guilt tugged at me. I had important duties that needed to be done tonight.
Each time I wondered why the hell I had to do this now, rather than wait until Faline was safely in my arms again, I swore I heard her voice chastising me for my thoughts. And plus, Avera offered to help us if I proved to be her son. We could use all the help we could get.
“It is different for everyone,” she answered, her accent and voice playing along the words as though she told a story. “But, for me, when a xana sings, I am filled with an overwhelming sense of love. The kind that brims over and splatters with giddiness.”
“And if I’m not your son?”
She considered me a moment.
“Others—not only our xana children—can hear our songs and be fi
lled with peace. This is not why I suggested the trial,” she started. “Others, of pure heart, pass the test fine. Hunters do not. If you are full Hunter and not xana, your ears will bleed; my voice will split your head with a migraine, and the voices my song places in your mind will draw you to madness.”
I shifted in place, eager to be done with this and yet not wanting to start.
“You offered to give this test in front of Hunters,” I reminded, irritated that I’d nearly put their lives in jeopardy. “Why, if you knew what it’d do to them?”
She tossed back her black and silver hair from her shoulder. “I do not care for the lives of Hunters.”
I chewed on that a second, letting the first wave of offense wash over me. The men in the clearing were Hunters who had left the brotherhood—same as me. If she didn’t care for them or how she could have hurt their lives, even if she was my mother, that meant she didn’t care for half of me. Because whether she or I or Faline liked it, I still had Hunter blood running through my veins.
But, then again, I could only imagine the hell my father had put her through. I guessed she had more of a hate for his kind, his way of thinking and being, than my actual Hunter blood.
“I have questions,” I said, thinking of her and my father. Questions I’d held on to, never speaking out loud, for as long as I could remember.
“I will give you answers once we are done,” she responded.
I shook my head. “No. If I fail, I won’t be able to comprehend them.” The angry little boy in me bubbled to the surface.
“If you fail,” she said slowly, “I won’t give you any answers. I will leave and you will never see me again.”
Before the little boy in me had time to feel hurt and open that scabbed wound of abandonment, the woman tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and sang.
The most beautiful melody exited her throat, as though it completely bypassed her lips and came from somewhere deep and dark and magical. Her lips began to move, to form words I didn’t understand in a language I’d never heard. Glowing symbols danced from her mouth and floated toward my ears.
They struck my eardrums with a vibrating sensation, before entering my mind. I closed my eyes and heard myself groan as my shoulders slumped and I leaned against a cold brick wall. I’d never heard anything so beautiful. I leaned my head to the side, nearly touching my chin to my shoulder, and relished in the warmth flowing through my body. Tingles rolled up and down, from my feet to my skull and back down again. I had to remember to breath and in that moment, it felt as though I breathed in pure acceptance and the feeling of truly being known.
The song abruptly stopped and sounds of dripping and the creaking floor boards above jolted me out of the trance. I straightened my shoulders and blinked.
The woman huffed and turned on her heel to climb the basement steps back to the main level of the house.
I followed behind. “Wait, why’d you stop?”
She didn’t turn to respond. “You are not my son.”
“I felt it, though. I felt the love and the vibration,” I explained.
She reached the top of the stairs and shoved the door open. “You lie. You are only repeating back to me what I told you you’d feel.”
This woman had come to me, not the other way around. I had enough to do and worry about before she showed up, claiming to be my mother. And now she acted like I’d put her out?
“You know what?” I said, moving quickly to get in front of her and open the door to the walkway for her to get out of our way. We had shit to do. “That’s fine. You can make up whatever excuse you want for hating me because of my Hunter blood. I’m not the one who decided to get involved with a Hunter; I’m only the result of it.”
She scoffed and shook her head, her eyes narrow and seething. “I made up nothing. The blood dripping from your ears tells me everything I need to know.” She swept the hood on her cloak up over her head and hurried away from the house and away from me.
I looked to the shoulder I’d rested my head on in the basement when the woman’s song had me so relaxed I wanted to curl into a ball and fall asleep. A smattering of blood stained my shirt. I turned and closed the door, standing in the entry.
Shawna stood beside me, her concerned expression asked wordless questions.
“It didn’t go well,” I grumbled.
“Because of your lineage?” she asked.
“Who the fuck knows,” I growled. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. My mother had kept hidden for a reason. She didn’t want to be found. I needed to be okay with that and move on. There was a woman, Faline, who loved me, who accepted me, whose touch made me feel those things the woman’s song gave me and more.
This was for the better. My focus needed to be on Faline and getting her out safely.
I started to walk past Shawna, toward the room Faline and I had shared, when she reached a hand out to stop me. Softly, she said, “Why is blood draining from your ears?”
I reached up to touch both of my ears and viewed fresh blood on my fingers.
“Because,” I answered sarcastically, “it turns out I’m a Hunter.”
Twenty-Five
John walked briskly into an operating room as the two Hunters held me by my biceps and basically dragged me into the room after him. A circular light lit an operating table directly beneath it like the sun itself. I squinted at the harsh light.
“Go behind there,” a grumpy John demanded, pointing to a panel of white curtains creating a makeshift wall. “Get undressed and put the gown on. It’s back there on a stool.”
The two Hunters released their hold of me. I peered at my shawl. “But what about—”
He cut me off and rushed toward me, raising his arm to threaten a beating if I didn’t obey. “Just go behind the damn curtain,” he said between tight lips and a clenched jaw.
I shuffled, already feeling weak and fatigued from the bloodstone shawl, past the curtains. Two women met me. Neither smiled, which shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I missed seeing smiling women. I missed my sisters and aunts and the other Wild Women. I stopped in front of the two women and unbuttoned my jeans, pushing them down to my ankles and stepping out of them. One woman quickly grabbed them up and folded them neatly to set on the stool, replacing the paper gown she’d pulled from the surface. I couldn’t remove my shirt with the shawl still tied around my neck.
“My shawl,” I muttered.
“First your panties,” the woman holding the gown said. She wore a sour face and an ankle-length jean skirt.
I was a Wild Woman. Nakedness felt more comfortable to me than clothing. Yet in this moment, removing my panties felt like baring a piece of my soul to soul-eaters. I could only imagine what these women believed about me, how they found disgust in my existence. To bare myself completely to their harsh scrutiny turned my stomach. We stared at each other for a couple breaths before John ordered the women to move things along and fear flashed through their eyes. They were grown adults who had chosen to remain in this situation, living in this culture. But they also probably didn’t know anything better existed, anything just as holy. I wiggled my cotton panties down my legs and handed them to the woman holding the paper gown.
She gave a curt nod and the other woman went to work unlocking and unfastening the bloodstone shawl. As she struggled to unlatch the thing without actually touching my evil skin, I considered my options. I could make a run for it once the heavy thing no longer held me down, but the bloodstone tattoo still kept me from using my huldra abilities. And how far would I get without my vines and branches?
I could still try to at least make it outside. I’d noticed surgical instruments on a metal stand beside the operating table. If I turned and ran, stabbed the Hunters on my way out of the OR and made my way upstairs, there was a possibility I’d get off the grounds alive. I hadn’t seen many other people lurking around the main floor when we’d passed through.
But if I left, I’d have to leave without my mother and the harp
ies’ mother. And if I wasn’t successful, it would jeopardize my rescuers’ plan to attack tomorrow morning.
The distinct heaviness of reality sunk in. I’d have to do this. I’d have to allow them to essentially torture me, steel my eggs, my daughters, to save my mother and other mothers.
The woman in a black ankle-length skirt who wore her long hair in a braid removed the shawl from my shoulders and carefully folded it, placing it on my jeans and panties. I breathed deeper, thankful for the lifted weight, the absence of the shawl. I pulled my shirt over my head and handed it off when both women gasped. I looked down to see what they saw. Were they shocked I didn’t wear a bra?
And then I noticed it. I peered up at their faces, the disdain. One even curled her lip up at the sight. The sight of my bark, how it creeped from my lower back onto my sides. I felt the sudden urge to cover myself, to wrap my arms around my side and back away. The mermaids, Elaine and Sarah, popped into my mind, their expressions of awe drowning out these women’s expressions of disgust.
I had nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of. These women’s ignorance would not determine my worthiness. I stood taller and turned on the ball of my foot to walk, stark naked, out from behind the curtain and right toward the operating table. They could find revulsion in the Wild form all they wanted; I wore my skin like the priceless heirloom it was.
John stood glaring at my act of insolence while the other Hunters shielded their eyes and turned away. I couldn’t help but giggle. The two women quickly caught up to me and went to work dressing me in the paper robe like a child.
“Go ahead,” John scoffed. “Laugh it up now. Soon you’ll be begging for mercy.”
I stiffened and swallowed. Once I was dressed, a Hunter moved to force me onto the table. I swatted his hands away and stared John in the eyes as I climbed onto the table myself, lay down, and closed my eyes.
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