“No they’re not,” I responded to John, before I shoved my hand to his pec, right over his heart, and grew the sharpest, most rigid branches I could muster from my palm.
His look of shock didn’t last long before he pulled backwards, knocking two kelpies out of the way to take refuge along a wall. He moved slow enough that I followed him, still attached to his heart as it beat faster and faster under the pressure of my branches wrapped around and squeezing it.
Words filled my mind, statements I’d wanted to blast him with since he’d shown his true colors outside the Washington Hunter complex the day I went to him, asking for help. How he’d betrayed us. How we’d trusted him and he’d thrown that loyalty away as though it meant nothing, as though our existence meant nothing. But in this moment, I didn’t care enough about him to say one word. He didn’t deserve to know my thoughts and feelings. He hadn’t earned the right to know my mind. So I kept quiet and stared at him, waiting to see the light in his eyes extinguish for the good of all.
Whether Clarisse had been his biological daughter or just his pawn, he’d soon meet her wherever her soul had gone to.
I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a kelpie move toward me. Marcus stepped between us, his back to mine as I kept watch on John, now sagging against the wall, a line of blood smeared on it where his back had been. Huh, guess a few of my branches went all the way through.
“I’m not going to do anything,” the kelpie said to Marcus, his voice deep and smooth. “We’re not here to kill the Wild Women.”
Avera only watched the exchange quietly.
“Then what are you here for?” Marcus asked, his own voice demanding and mistrusting.
Another kelpie answered, “We were sent here to help her.” He pointed to me. “But from the looks of it, she’s got things handled.”
John’s eyes widened as he glared at the kelpie, then his heart beat one last time against my branches. His head fell to the side of his lifeless body. I retracted my branches and let his form slump down the wall to the floor. I’d thought maybe I’d feel a sense of satisfaction after killing the man who’d controlled my adult existence, who’d made sure I didn’t join the police force and who watched as his peons tattooed an identification number on my teenage thigh. But I felt nothing. I wanted to be done…with all of this. And I wanted to find my coterie.
I sighed and turned to view the kelpie straight on. “You were sent to help me?”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod.
“By whom?” I asked. “The incubi leader?”
He shook his blond head. “We don’t know any incubi. No, the sirens sent us.”
“Faline!” Shawna yelled from upstairs. “Faline!”
“We’ll pick this back up later,” I told the kelpie before racing to my sister.
“I’m coming, Shawna!” I ran down the hall, back toward the entry, to the wide set of stairs leading to the second floor. I made it halfway up the stairs when a portion of the roof caved in and landed in front of me, blocking the stairs in flames.
“Shit!” I ran back down the stairs and through the hallway past Marcus, Avera, and the four kelpies, toward the door to the courtyard where the back set of stairs led up. “The house is on fire!” I yelled to them as I passed. “Get out!”
They ran after me, and all but Marcus left the building out the back. Marcus followed me upstairs, shouting for Shawna. Smoked filled the upstairs hallway. I pulled my shirt collar up over my nose and mouth and called for my partner sister.
“Faline!” she shouted amidst coughs that had her doubled over. “There you are! I went looking for you and found your scent strongest up here. Then the roof caved in.”
I grabbed her hand. “You found me. Let’s go!”
She stood in front of my room, her eyes filled with tears, probably due to the smoke, but her raised eyebrows told me her heart broke for me too. “Did they do the same to you that they did to me?” she asked.
I stopped trying to pull her away long enough to relieve her worries. “No, they didn’t. And Shawna, I killed John. He’s dead. We don’t have to worry about him ever again.”
Marcus touched her arm. “My father is gone too,” he said solemnly.
“You killed my captors?” she asked both of us.
“We did,” I said, sparing Marcus from having to relive the hurt he no doubt felt. “Can we go now?”
“Thank you,” she offered before clutching Marcus’s hand and pulling us both with her toward the back of the building.
We burst through the thick, wooden door to the courtyard, gasping for clean air. I blinked to clear my vision from the burning smoke and froze as I took in the war scene in front of me. The kelpies fought nearest to the door and probably hit the battle the moment they exited the building. I couldn’t differentiate their supernatural abilities by their fighting styles, but strength had to be a component of their talents.
Avera fought farther away, using her hands to pull out water from the Hunter she attacked by placing her hands on his skin and easing them away, taking a stream of blood with her.
The alae pummeled their foes with handfuls of fire, sending men screaming and running in agony. The shé, covered in snake scales, strummed their instruments as though they were playing in a concert while the chaotic audience burned around them. Hunters within earshot stilled, swaying to their music, until the echidnas picked them off, slithering over and using their long snake tails to squeeze the men to death. The nagin worked beside most of the succubi, standing in a large circle with their backs to one another, harnessing each other’s energy to push out toward the Hunters closing in with daggers drawn. Daggers dropped to the dirt and the Hunters soon followed, twisting in excruciating pain.
“Are those the rogue Hunters?” I asked Marcus, eyeing the small group of men who stood as tall and broad-shouldered as a Hunter, but wore colors other than black. They fought alongside Aleksander, who I noticed had been staring at me, analyzing my health, probably, as he scanned from my bare feet to the top of my head. He gave a nod and returned to fighting.
My coterie worked with a handful of fish-scale-covered mermaids I hadn’t seen since the first time we took out a Hunter complex. My aunts and sisters shielded their skin with bark, their vines twisting like tiny snakes from their fingertips. Marie kept Celeste close—the two fought beside one another between our coterie and Marie’s succubi galere.
I looked for my mother. She stood bent over, catching her breath, behind her partner sister, Abigale, who protected her.
The Hunters hadn’t anticipated such a quick retaliation from the Wild Women. If they had, there would have been bloodstone hanging on the walls, and the Hunters would be covered in it. As it was, only a few had the foresight to throw a few pieces on them. Two had draped my mother’s and my red shawls over their shoulders and tied the connecting portion around their necks to hold them on. Those two seemed to be fairing the best, the added bloodstone automatically weakening any Wild of menstruating age within arm’s reach to challenge them.
Shawna, Marcus, and I ran to join my coterie beside the maple tree, when I caught the faint sound of sirens. I tightened my vines around a random Hunter’s neck and paused as he fell to the ground, his dagger half through my vines before his body expired. The other Wilds, those with the ability to hear from long distances, paused and looked toward the driveway and the front of the house, out of our vision.
Celeste and Marie were among those who paused for a half second. Their Hunter foe, who wore a bloodstone shawl, used his opportunity and lunged forward just quick enough to catch Celeste off guard. She noticed too late, pushing her branches out and missing his chest as he crouched low and slid his dagger into her inner thigh.
“Celeste!” I screamed. Before I had a chance to run to her, Marie squared her monstrous gaze at her lover’s offender. He froze, clearly under her energy manipulation, for only one breath before a chunk of cobblestone flew through the air and hit Marie in the head, knocking her to the ground an
d forcing her to lose her power over Celeste’s attacker.
In the blink of an eye, Heather stepped from her circle of succubi and shoved her hands in the direction of the Hunter as he dragged his blade deeper into my sister’s thigh. I rushed to her, to knock the Hunter off her, but the nearness of his shawl weakened my attempts. His blade neared my sister’s femoral artery and she screeched. Marcus ran up behind me and used the hilt of his dagger to hit the Hunter over the head. The Hunter wasted no time by turning to see who his attackers were. He moved to finish the job, when Marcus fell to the ground and clutched his chest.
Heather walked closer, her arms still raised. My head pulsated with a sudden headache and my legs began to wobble beneath me. The closer she came, the stronger my symptoms became. To get past the Hunter’s bloodstone shawl, Heather pulled energy from me and Marcus—another Hunter whose energy only strengthened with bloodstone. I felt it in my bones, an ache of fatigue. Apparently, Marcus felt it in his chest. The Hunter trying to kill my sister froze, mid-strike. Heather moved two more steps toward us and the Hunter fought his muscles, his whole body shaking, as his right hand opened and dropped his dagger.
The Hunter slurred out something indistinguishable before falling to the earth and pulling himself into a fetal position.
“You will not touch my leader’s reason for living,” Heather breathed out, her hands nearing the Hunter’s heart to give the final heart-stopping blow. If she needed me and Marcus’s energy for that, she could have it.
She bent down to crush her palms into the Hunter’s chest, when another Hunter cloaked in bloodstone rushed up behind her. I tried to open my mouth, to yell a warning, but I hadn’t the energy to push words from my lips.
In an instant a Hunter’s blade plunged into her back. Red patches spread quickly through the front of her green cotton shirt. She didn’t cough or cry out. Her gaze caught mine as her eyes registered shock, pain, and what looked like sadness. She fell forward, her face in the dirt.
The moment she no longer used my energy, I jumped up, as did Marcus.
The twisted roar of love lost rumbled through the courtyard. Mason. If incubi developed mate bonds, and their mate died…
Marcus snatched up the dropped dagger and pulled his own from its sheath. With a dagger in each hand, he crouched to finish off the Hunter on the ground, spun in a circle, to pop up and surprise the standing Hunter with a blade to the throat, finishing both enemies in under thirty seconds.
Mason found the body of his mate, Heather, on the ground and careened to a halt. He kneeled down and picked her up, cradling her in his arms. He shouted his breaking heart to the heavens and the earth, his emotions of torment pulsing out to those of us closest to him.
Celeste stroked Marie’s forehead, crying over the succubi leader, begging her to be okay.
Marie sat up with a sudden jolt to see Mason wailing over Heather. Shock and hurt twisted her face as she fought back tears. “Take her to the woods,” she commanded the incubus softly. “Take her away from here.”
Mason turned from us to run over the broken fencing and into the forest, holding his dead love close to his heart.
“Go!” Marie yelled to her sisters, probably sensing the incoming humans. Like a hoard of battered warrior women, the succubi galere followed Mason, crying out for their fallen sister.
Aleksander hung back, watching. He and Marcus shared a tense second of staring, before Aleksander shook his head and followed his cousins.
Wilds were dying and human law enforcement were too close for comfort. We had to finish this once and for all.
“Avera!” I yelled. “Can you end this?”
The Wild Women, the kelpies, and the incubi needed to leave before the police arrived. I figured some of the cop cars would stop to help the human women who had to be down the road by now. But others would pass on by to get to the scene of the fire, where Marcus had tipped them off they’d find the key players of the whole human trafficking ring.
“Retreat!” I yelled to all those fighting for our cause. “Retreat!”
Before Avera began her song and lulled me to a relaxed state I couldn’t afford, I called for the leader of the alae. “Ailani!”
She jogged over to me, flames licking her fingers as she moved through the crowds, her palms out in warning. She pushed her long black hair from her face, her tresses impervious to the fire.
“How are you with technology?” I asked.
“Proficient. Why?” she responded with a smile that made me think this fire warrior enjoyed battle. “Is this the part Marcus mentioned?”
“I need someone who’s immune to fire to go into the house and gather as much information from a particular office computer as possible.” I peered at the house, flames covered the roof and corners. “It could collapse any minute, and take all the proof we need with it.”
She nodded. “Yeah, but you want me to grab a whole motherboard?”
Marcus pulled a lanyard from beneath his shirt and over his head. “Here.” He placed the lanyard with the attached thumb drive in Ailani’s hand. “It’s in the office I showed you on the building’s layout schematic we got from the rogue Hunter,” he reminded.
She snickered. “Who uses thumb drives anymore?”
“It was a last-minute purchase,” Marcus said defensively amidst the chaos of a stampede of women running for their lives, a spitting house fire, and Hunters yelling for help.
The alae leader placed the lanyard over her neck and skipped into the burning building as the sirens grew louder and closer.
Avera belted out her song. Another, woman, who looked similar, stood beside her and began singing along. As though a choir of heavenly angles blessed us with their presence, the chaos-filled courtyard slowed and then stilled to listen to the entrancing melody. The last of the Wild Women who hadn’t left yet began slowly swaying with the music, their eyes closing and smiles lifting their lips, yet the Hunters screamed and fell to the ground, covering their bleeding ears.
I looked to Aleksander who watched me from the forest’s tree line. He swayed, with eyes open. He caught me watching him and winked. I jumped my gaze to the kelpies, who covered their bleeding ears, but still stood with eyes closed. The rogue Hunters faired about as well as their Hunter brothers, and I hoped a succubus or a xana would be able to reverse whatever damage had been done out of necessity.
When the wailing car sirens were loud enough to be in the driveway, the two xana—I assumed the woman singing beside Avera was also xana—quieted long enough to instruct their allies to run, get away. Like a stampede, those of our allies left made for the forest, trampling the already felled chain link fence that had held in my mother and I earlier in the day. Wilds even helped the few ex-Hunters unable to get up on their own.
Marcus and I hung back, watching the others run, fly, and slither away. My coterie didn’t budge.
“Let’s go,” my mother said, grabbing ahold of both my hands and tugging. “It’s over. We can go home, be together again, daughter.”
Goddess, it broke my heart to tell my mother the next part of my plan. “I can’t,” I said. “Not every Hunter is here to be taken in and seen for what they really are. There’s Hunters in high places in our government that need to be outed, or else nothing will change. And Marcus and I are going to be the ones to do it. To out them. It has to be done.”
Tears filled my mother’s eyes, and Abigale wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“Be proud of the leader your daughter has become,” Abigale told her sister. “She is capable and willing. She is strong, Naomi.”
My mother released my hand to wipe a tear from her face. “Please come home to me. There’s so much I need to make up for.” She gave my hand a squeeze and let go. With one last look, she turned and ran toward the woods with the rest of my coterie.
Please, Freyja, let me see my mother again.
Thirty-Three
Three firetrucks blared toward the Hunters’ building, following more than five police
cars. I couldn’t see how many from the courtyard, but from the sound of it, Marcus’s call before storming the building had been effective. Unlike the other Hunter locations in the United States, the monastery building encompassed the whole complex, except for a couple smaller outlying mobiles acting as extra bunk houses for the recent influx of Hunters.
The Wild Women, rogue Hunters, incubi, and kelpies escaped into the woods outlying the complex property, leaving Marcus and I alone, among dead Hunter bodies, holding hands and waiting for the next step of our journey.
The Wilds had removed all Wild bodies: one echidna, one mermaid, and two succubi who’d lost their lives in the fight. If the Hunters had been prepared for our takeover, our death toll would have been much higher. Thank Freyja for the strategic planning of my coterie and the others.
Still, my heart beat wildly as Marcus and I waited for our fate to be determined. Growing up, a Wild’s biggest fear was to be caught by humans and forced to undergo painful tests, possibly to the point of death. From childhood, our mothers and aunts spoke of the real threat. After coming of age and being forced to attend Hunter check-ins, the fear grew exponentially, as the Hunters taught us, in great detail, what would happen to us if we were ever found out to be non-human. They’d taught us we needed them to protect us from the humans, to keep us from being outed or exposing ourselves.
And here Marcus and I stood, knowing full well that one of my biggest and most instilled fears had a huge chance at becoming my reality by the end of the day. Would they torture me, cut me open, experiment on me?
If it meant freedom for my sisters and mother and aunts, and Wild friends, and all their daughters and their daughter’s daughters, then being detained would be worth it.
“If they ask,” I thought to tell Marcus as the sound of boots running in our direction grew louder, “I’m the only one of my kind.”
“If there’s only one Wild Woman, it makes no sense for Hunters to have complexes,” he responded.
“The humans don’t need to know why the Hunters think they were created, what they believe their life purpose to be,” I said. “We don’t even need to out Hunters as a supernatural community. All the humans need to know is that the Hunters used their secret organization and its high-reaching members to traffic human women.”
Wild Women Collection Page 72
