One Hunter stared forward as if I hadn’t made a peep. The other gave me the death glare and shook his head.
All right, then.
I concentrated on pretending my thigh didn’t burn each time the scabs pulled to reach the next step as we headed down the stairs. To keep them from noticing the real reason behind my stiffness, I accentuated the soreness of my abdomen, grabbing it whenever I accidently moved wrong or sucked in a breath to keep from cussing.
The Hunters didn’t seem to care either way, and didn’t slow down for me either. Heartless bastards.
With little care for my physical state, the Hunter on my right opened the door to the
courtyard and shoved me out of it. It slammed behind me with finality. I nearly fell onto the dirty cobblestone, but righted myself just in time, which my abdomen did not like at all.
“You okay?” Rose whispered.
I glanced at the harpy in her cage. Her brownish-blonde hair sat bone-straight atop her shoulders.
“They took my eggs,” I said, nonchalantly, as I hobbled over to her.
Her green eyes softened in a way I’d never seen on a harpy. “I’m sorry. I know how much that hurts…and it’s more than physical pain.”
“It is,” I agreed. But I couldn’t think on that right now; it would get me down in a way I couldn’t afford at the moment.
“And then I took my tattoo,” I added in a whisper, cautious of any cameras or listening devices.
Rose gave one nod, returning to her distant, harpy self. “That will help.”
I neared her cage and leaned in. “Did they give you a bloodstone tattoo, too?”
She shook her head.
“Then why do you stay in that cage? Why don’t you bust out of there and fly away?”
She sighed. “They have cameras. I tried once, when I first arrived. They came out before I could untangle myself from the cage wires I’d ripped.” She pointed her nose to the top left portion of the cage where a quick repair job was made obvious by the contrast of new silver wire against the slightly rusty-looking chain link wiring of the rest of the cage. “After that, they broke my wings and ensured that they didn’t heal correctly. I cannot fly. And they began using the bloodstone shackles. I believe their use of bloodstone ink in tattoos is relatively new.”
It occurred to me that since the bloodstone worked on Rose, she had yet to reach menopause. I wondered if they still took her eggs, but my curiosity wasn’t worth bringing up a possibly painful subject for her, not after finding out about her wings. “I’m sorry they broke your wings,” I said, truly sorry for her. I couldn’t imagine losing the ability to jump through trees. I’d only been forced to go a couple days without my huldra and I thought I’d lose my mind.
“We each pay our price,” she uttered.
Unfortunately, I knew exactly what she meant. Whether we kept our heads down in obedience, like the Hunters’ women had when undressing and dressing me, or whether we rebelled, we each carried scars forged by the Hunters. Some lived with deeper scars, burned into their minds. Others could point them out along their skin. Oppression is like a box of bricks placed on the backs of the oppressed as they’re forced to continue on with their lives despite the box cutting into their flesh, breaking their backs, and making them believe they’re weak for not being able to match pace to those who aren’t carrying a box of bricks.
“Drosera didn’t tell me when—”
“Shh!” Rose commanded and shot a glance at the camera perched at the edge of the roof, pointed down at her cage.
Goddess, could I have felt any stupider? Yesterday my mother had insisted we talk behind the one tree in the courtyard because we were being watched and our lips were probably being read, if they didn’t already have another device catching the sounds of the yard. Nerves and pain skewed my ability to think straight.
Rose faced away from the camera and whispered under her breath, “You will know when.”
I strode away from her cage, to keep from looking too suspicious, and sat with my back to the maple tree living in the middle of the courtyard, out of view of the camera, facing the forest beyond the fence. I ran my fingers along the dark ridges of its bark and wished I could reach my roots into the ground and connect, ask the tree what it had been like having to live among Hunters who had no appreciation for nature, who saw nature as a thing to dominate and subdue. I discretely removed my boots. The soles of my feet ached to press into the moist dirt, to communicate with the earth. I tried, too, but only received a headache for my troubles. Damn bloodstone shawl.
An odd echo, one that didn’t sound like it naturally came from the woods, resonated from deep from within the forest. I squinted to see if any Wilds waited past the tree line and hoped to spot my coterie and Marcus. I saw nothing outside the ordinary.
The door to the building swung open with a creak and I peeked around the trunk of the tree. My mother, a bloodstone shawl wrapped around her shoulders, ambled into the courtyard and paused to take it all in.
I hated not knowing the details of today’s attack. I liked to have exit strategies in place, layers of what-ifs at my disposal, ready to switch plans up at any time. I couldn’t be sure why Drosera chose not to fill me in, but I hoped it was to keep the strategy safe and not because there was no definite plan. No, that didn’t make sense. My tired mind played tricks on me, gave me a defeatist attitude. I couldn’t let it.
I stood and met my mother halfway between the building and the tree. Rose watched us like a hawk, her unblinking eyes taking everything in. My mother gave me a half-smile and walked right past me, toward Rose. I followed, thoroughly confused. My huldra shook with anticipation; she too hated not knowing our next move.
“Faline,” my mother said when we reached the cage. Rose looked away and watched the monastery door. “You are the one, you’ve always been the one.”
I opened my mouth to respond, to ask for clarification, but my mother’s raised eyebrows and sharp eyes told me to stay quiet. All these years away from her and I still knew that look.
“I’d tried to tell you through my stories to you, in a way that would keep you from being a target. I’d first connected with an ancestor when I was pregnant with you. Your father was a forest ranger, and we’d take long hikes through the Washington woods. We’d fallen in love quickly, and I’d told him of my huldra ancestry.” Her smile reached her eyes as they softened. “He’d been studying the secrets of trees, their root systems and how they communicated. It’s why he visited our state. He was ahead of his time.” She brushed her tender memories away with a wave of her hand. “It had been his idea for me to try to connect with the tree roots, to learn more about them. And I was fairly successful, but the day I found an ancestor, I’ll never forget. She felt you within me and gave me a promise: If I agreed to pass our truths along to you, she would reveal them to me. It was risky and would endanger my life, but I could break the cycle of oppression by raising my daughter to stand in her truth, to embrace her power. It’s why the Hunters chose to take me over my sisters, why they’d tried to take you over your sisters. Somehow they’d figured it out and they sought the strength we carried in our knowing.”
I looked down at my clenched fists and relaxed my shaking hands. The mermaids had told me a tree woman would save the American Wild Women. Even the Hunters had a prophesy of a Wild who would rise up against them. “Why me, though?” I whispered. “What’s different about me?”
My mother released a breath of laughter. She held my shaking hands in her still ones. “You were not born in chains the way the others were, yet you believed you had been. Because of this, your mind was able to break free from the Hunters’ brainwashing, and yet you still had the oppressive experiences to fuel your fire.”
She released my hands and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “I love you,” she whispered into my ear before shoving my back into the harpy’s cage. “Now burn bright, my daughter, burn!”
A sharp talon reached through a square in the chain li
nk cage and ripped at the neckline of my blood stone shawl, tearing skin from my neck in the process. The shawl fell to my feet and I kicked it away from us both. Suddenly the full capacity of my huldra abilities careened into me.
Vines grew from my fingertips and branches pierced outward, through the flesh of my palms.
An ear-piercing alarm blared from the Hunters’ complex.
Shouts and screams from the forest rang through the trees.
Rose tore my mother’s shawl from her shoulders and she sprang onto the top of Rose’s cage, pulling back the wiring at the weak spot where new wire had been spiraled in to the old.
An army of Wild Women ran, flew, and slithered from the forest, toward the courtyard. Hunters burst through the door behind me in droves, their daggers drawn, and muscles twitching and growing. I stood between the two groups, unsure which to head for.
I spun on the ball of my foot toward the Hunters. With a blood curdling warrior cry, and my hands out in front of me, branches at the ready, I ran toward my enemies.
Thirty
Two harpies, Lapis and Azul, arrived first, landing near their mother’s cage and pulling her out from the top. Lapis left with Rose, clinging to her mother as she soared toward the woods. Azul grabbed my mother and flew them both toward the building, gaining speed on me. The two Wilds dropped from the sky. We attacked at the same time, three Wilds amidst a blur of black cargos and swiping daggers.
With my mother and Rose free from their confines, I shouted to Lapis and Azul, “I’m going in to get the women!”
My mother’s greenish yellow vines shot from her fingers. She flicked her wrists so quickly, I barely saw her hands clearly. She choked out two Hunters who’d made it their mission to block me from the wooden door.
The fencing behind us crashed to the ground as Wilds and what had to be ex-Hunters and incubi tromped the chain link fencing and barbed wire into the moist dirt. A ball of fire flew over my head and landed to the right of the door seconds before I’d reached to open it. I turned to see where it came from. There were still innocent lives inside; we couldn’t burn the place down yet! The group of alae we’d met in the rusalki’s woods ran toward the building, each holding handfuls of fire and taking turns throwing their flames at the Hunters and the building. I looked up and noticed a portion of the roof in flames.
“Faline!” His voice rang out over the others, over the shouting and cursing and screaming. I searched the crowd for Marcus, turning away from the building and toward the battlegrounds that had been a quiet unkempt courtyard moments before.
“Marcus?” I yelled, zig-zagging through the fighting and the killing. “Marcus?”
“Faline!”
“I’m here, Marcus! I’m here!” I scanned the crowd in search of my ex-Hunter like my life depended on it.
He broke free from a pocket of men who looked to be Hunters, but without the black uniforms. Marcus ran for me, shoving his enemies out of his way. He caught me up in his arms and lifted me from the ground, wrapping his hands around my back and squeezing. “Thank God,” he said on a whispered prayer. “Thank God.”
With my feet off the ground, my lips reached his face and I planted a long-awaited kiss on his mouth. My vine-covered fingers wove through his dark hair. I pulled away and kissed his cheeks, his forehead, his lips again. His nearness lessened the ache in my abs and thigh.
Another ball of flames hit the building.
“I know where the women are. We have to get them before the house burns down,” I pleaded.
He gave a nod and ran, with me still in his arms, toward the monastery. I didn’t push off of him, and the other Hunters didn’t seem to think it was worth stopping a Hunter, out of uniform, carrying a Wild Woman back into the complex. He flung open the door and ran through the first level hallway, past the stairs leading to my upstairs bedroom cell.
“Let me down,” I finally shrieked with a laugh. “It’ll be faster.”
He gently dropped me and I grabbed his hand. “This way!”
We ran through the entry, across the tiled floor, and to the elevator. I slammed my hand onto the basement level button beside the elevator, but nothing happened.
“Lockdown,” Marcus said. “Elevators won’t work.”
Clinging to my hand, he pulled me—neither of us wanted to let go of the other—to a door twenty feet away from the elevator on the left side, toward another hallway out of the entry. He swung the door open and led me through to a set of stairs leading both down and up. We descended the steps, two at a time.
“Is the basement level locked?” he asked past his panting.
“I don’t know,” I responded, a little fear-stricken. What if we’d done all of this and couldn’t get the women out safely? Parts of this building were already on fire. Soon all of it would be, and I highly doubted Hunters would rush back into a flaming building to save women they believed were going to burn in hell anyway.
We reached the bottom level and Marcus tried the push handle on the white metal door. We breathed a sigh of relief when it opened without a problem.
“This way!” I led him through the white basement hall, sterile and uninviting, along the path I’d taken only the night before.
We turned a corner to stare into the eyes of a huge Hunter guarding the corridor, who I hadn’t seen last time I was here.
Doors hiding trapped women lined the walls and my stomach tightened.
“Hello?” the shaking voice of a woman called. “Is there anybody out there?”
Another voice cried from the door on the opposite side. “Please, help us. We’ve been taken. Help us.”
The Hunter stood in the middle of the hall and widened his legs as though challenging us. Marcus and I shared a quick glance before running, full speed, at the Hunter. The male in all black brandished his dagger, but didn’t move from his place. Marcus got to him before me and barreled into him, shoving him farther back down the hall, away from the doors where the women’s shouts came from.
I tried to turn the knob on both doors; neither would work. “The doors are locked,” I told the women now frantically trying to turn the knobs from the inside.
I looked to Marcus who took a fist to the face before returning a punch to the Hunter’s gut and then a swift heel to the Hunter’s shin. The Hunter tripped backwards and Marcus took that opportunity to brandish his own dagger and finish the job.
“Move,” Marcus told me, wiping his blade on the dead Hunter’s shirt before standing. I backed up. He repeated himself, louder, to the women in the room. He positioned his right forearm out in front of him as a barrier. “One, two, three!” On three he ran and shoved his weight into the metal door. The thing popped off its hinges and fell to the cement ground with a loud clang.
I ran in to assist the women and he turned to knock down the other door.
“Are there any more of you here, other than these two rooms?” I asked the women, peering around the cell to take in their living conditions of squalor. A bucket wedged into a corner for waste, and sleeping pads and blankets covered the hard floor. I fought from shielding my nose to block the intense stench.
“I don’t know,” a young woman said. She clung to the black sweater wrapped tightly around her. “We came for a special moon ritual, and when the girl invited us in, a bunch of men grabbed us and threw us down here, said witches shouldn’t be suffered to live, so they were doing us a favor by not burning us at the stake.”
A new anger raged in my gut and sped my pulse. “No,” I seethed. “You won’t be the ones burning today.”
I ran out to the hallway where Marcus escorted women from the other cell. “They don’t know if there’s anymore down here,” I told him.
“These women don’t either. They just came for a ritual,” he said.
We went to work, checked the rest of the doors lining the hallway, the locked ones without windows. Only one other held women. Those females looked to have been here the longest, their clothes torn and dirty, their waste bucket full
to brimming. I couldn’t enter the space without gagging.
“Follow me!” I instructed the group. Marcus hung back to protect them from behind. I led them through the hall and toward the stairs. One limped and I grabbed her, throwing my arm under her side and hoisting her up enough to walk with me.
We made it up the stairs to the main level of the huge house and I held the stairwell door open for the women to pass through. “Down the hall, to the front door,” I repeated to every new group of women that passed.
Marcus held the door for me and we walked through together, behind the women quietly trying to escape the house of hell.
Without the bloodstone tattoo or shawl to inhibit my huldra abilities, the scent of seaweed and saltwater hung much heavier in the house, especially the entryway. I almost asked the human women if they smelled it too.
“Here,” Marcus told them as he opened the great front double doors and stuck his head out to look around. “It’s clear. For now.” He pulled his head back in and addressed the women. “I’ll open this door again and I want you all to run. Those of you who can, help those who can’t. Run straight down the driveway. You’ll see an iron gate. Either open it or climb over it, but keep going until you’re met by cops. They’re on their way.”
I hadn’t thought of the gate, but as long as the women weren’t in the house, they’d be safe. The Hunters had supernatural women to deal with; I doubted they’d go chasing after twenty or so human women.
“Ready?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob.
The women nodded.
A woman nearest me, the one in the black sweater, touched my arm. “Thank you so much,” she said, her gaze bouncing from me to the door, to her freedom.
“You’re very welcome,” I said. “Tell the police everything. Don’t leave out anything, even if they try to convince you some of these things never happened.”
“I will,” she assured me.
Marcus flung the door open and urged the women, “Go now! Run!”
In a mad dash, the women left the house, through the paved circular driveway and past the perfectly trimmed hedges. A fire ball hit one of the hedges and the women passing it jumped and ran faster, down the driveway, escaping through a wall of smoke.
Wild Women Collection Page 70
