“No, thank you,” I said before taking another sip.
“Come on, Faline, let her help,” Celeste urged.
I shot my sister a look from above the rim of the mug. I didn’t need Marie messing with my energy. To be honest, at this point, the only other Wilds I trusted, besides my coterie, was the rusalki, and I hadn’t heard from them since we attacked the Washington Hunter complex. They lived completely off the grid—no cell phones or even email addresses. Although, a couple of times, I could have sworn I’d seen them out of the corner of my eye in my room at night. But no one was ever there. To me, the rusalki seemed like ancient women in the bodies of young women. There was a reverence to them I respected.
The mermaids kept secrets. The harpies were jumpy and usually assumed the worst. And the succubi were…what were the succubi? I couldn’t place my thoughts.
“Have you talked to Marcus yet?” Olivia changed the subject. “About the incubi?”
I regarded my sister with a smile. A little piece of me felt like all this Wild Women reunion stuff was pushing our coterie apart, not pulling us together. But then again, maybe the presence of Marcus in my tree home most nights was doing the job just fine.
“No,” I answered. “Not yet. I was waiting ’til he got up and ’til I had a cup or two of coffee.”
Marie scoffed. “She’s afraid.”
I shot her a glare. “Not today, Marie. I’m not in the mood.”
“No,” she answered. “You’re in fear. A great amount of fear. And I’m sorry, but your energy is too draining for me to just sit here and ignore.”
“Well, Marie.” I set my mug down. “If you’re so keen on hashing things out, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to walk in on you screwing my sister when we’re supposed to be here on business.” I regretted the words the moment my sister’s face twisted from hurt to disbelief.
Celeste gasped. “I cannot believe—”
Marie placed her hand on my sister’s to gently quiet her, and then she spoke to me. “Technically, I wasn’t screwing your sister.” She smiled and it even reached her eyes. “And who said business and pleasure do not mix well?”
I replayed the old saying about just that in my mind, but based on Celeste’s pissed-off expression, I knew not to actually verbalize it. I shook my head.
“But seriously,” Marie said. Her smiled dropped and she let go of my sister’s hand. She turned her body to face me fully. “I will not allow you to go into the incubi lair with your current energy. In fact, I refuse to take you; I will not be responsible for your safety, and I do not wish to start another war with another group of males once they feel your fear and assume it’s caused by them. They would enjoy the power too much.”
She and I just stared at one another.
“For Freyja’s sake, Faline!” Celeste stood and walked over behind me. She placed her hands on my shoulders where I sat. “Go ahead, Marie. We need to leave soon; being late is not a great first impression to a whole species we’re trying to keep peace with.”
I fought the urge to shove her off and jump up. She was right. The succubi were our allies and this interaction with these incubi had to go smoothly. The faster we were in, the faster we could convince Marie’s sister to leave with us and show up to the next Hunter check-in as if the whole succubi galere were innocent Wild Women with no clue as to what the evil huldra did to their own Washington Hunters.
Still, Marie waited for my permission. And I couldn’t exactly level with Celeste that the Wild she held a proverbial candle for had instructed that her sisters energetically detain me against my will. The desperate feeling of helplessness wasn’t one I wanted to risk reliving.
“Fine," I said. "Go ahead and zap me.”
Marie didn’t bother to correct me. She scooted forward in her chair until her knees almost touched my own. Her hands slowly descended onto my thighs. She closed her eyes. I felt the urge to do the same as I exhaled. Warm tingles started in my thighs and spread throughout my body. My shoulders rolled back and down. My jaw unclenched. My arms fell away from my side.
I wasn’t sure why Marie chose to use touch this time in performing her energy work, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t noticed how tightly wound I’d been until I was unwound. I let out another exhale as Marie pulled away.
“You have a lot to think about, to weigh you down. Don’t let your sister’s and my relationship be another weight,” she said softly.
My eyes fluttered open.
She answered my gaze. “Her energy attracts me like none other in a way I am still trying to explore. But know that what you’ve seen from me in the past was a desire for pleasure. I realize I joked earlier about business and pleasure, but with your sister, it is neither. It’s so much more.” Marie stood and made her way toward the door of the apartment. “I’ll call and let them know we’re on our way. Meet me out front in ten minutes. And Faline?”
I looked at her in a bit of a daze, still relishing in the energy bath she’d doused me in.
"Stop putting off calling Marcus. We may not agree with his assistance, but when it comes to getting my sister back, I’d like all the information I can ascertain."
Marie closed the door behind her. Celeste sat back down and started up an unrelated conversation with Olivia. I stood with a groan and made my way to my temporary room to make a phone call that for some reason caused the pit in my stomach to drop out once again.
Eight
Marcus picked up on the first ring. “Faline?” he asked right away.
I nodded and realized he couldn’t see me. I blamed exhaustion. “Yes.”
His voice changed, laced with concern. “Everything okay?”
I answered on auto-pilot, “Yeah.”
Before I had the chance to correct myself, he filled the silence. “Good, because we have a new development over here.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Another Washington Hunter approached me at my apartment when I stopped by to pick up my mail and grab a few things,” he said. “He was waiting outside my door.”
“Is he going to tell the others that you’re fine and well? Did he tell you that you have to go back?” I asked, a little more awake than moments earlier.
“No, that’s the thing,” Marcus explained. “He left the brotherhood and needed a place to crash, to get away from everything and think. Said he came to me because I’ve left before.”
“Why did he leave?” I asked because inquiring minds and all.
“He said he’s tired of pretending he’s not gay.”
“What?” I said, shocked. “What’s wrong with being gay?”
“Nothing in my book,” he said. “Everything in the Hunter’s book. But hey, I told him I was going out of town for a much-needed vacation and that he could stay at my place. I did a quick sweep before I left, made sure he couldn’t find anything incriminating.”
“Why? Is he snoopy or something?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“He could be a spy,” Marcus answered mater-of-factly.
Damn, this exhaustion crippled my bounty-hunter brain.
He paused on the other line. “You don’t sound like you’re firing on all cylinders.”
“I need some information,” I blurted.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked a second time.
I let out a sigh and mulled over the best way to explain my thoughts. “Yes and no.”
“You know how the missing succubus is with males of the un-human persuasion.” He kept quiet, so I continued. “Males that I have no experience with and was hoping maybe you would know a thing or two about them. Because I have to leave in a couple minutes to meet them in what Marie is calling their lair, whatever that means. She’s being secretive about them.”
“Okay,” Marcus responded. “You going to tell me what kind of beings we’re talking about?”
I just spat out the word. “Incubus.”
I pictured Marcus shaking his head and rubbing his chin stubble as he exhaled and said, “Shit.”
&nbs
p; “Is that a good ‘shit’ or a bad ‘shit’?” I asked.
“It’s a don’t-go-within-a-mile-of-these-guys shit,” he said.
“Well, that’s not an option.” I stopped pacing and stood in front of the dresser, examining myself in the mirror on top, leaning against the wall. I ran my fingers through my red hair to straighten the wavy fly-aways. “If every succubus doesn’t show up for check-in in two days, the Oregon Hunters will have enough reason to think they were involved in the Washington Hunter complex being destroyed and they could detain them. They’re probably on edge as it is. They don’t need something like a missing succubus to push them over.”
“My dad called while we were at one of the wineries. I returned his call when I got back to Washington and stopped by my apartment to grab a few things and listen to my voice mail,” Marcus said.
He carried a throw-away cell phone for him and me to get ahold of each other, but he gave the number to nobody else. He didn’t want his phone tracked to us Wilds. His excuse to the others was that his phone must have burned when the complex burned down, seeing as they always kept their personal phones in a locked box while on Hunter duty. In reality he took the battery out and canceled his service. “He said it was to check up on me; he knew I’d been hurt in the battle with the Wild Women at the complex and stopped by my place, but I hadn’t been home. He said he was worried.” Marcus scoffed. “I call bullshit.”
I paused from my self-grooming. “What do you think he wanted?”
“To sniff around.”
“Do you think he suspects anything?” I asked.
“He’s a Hunter official; he suspects everyone and everything.” Marcus paused. “But no, he’s not on to me. I asked if I needed to report to him or anyone else and he said they were still sorting things out. That they were calling in what’s left of the Hunters, but not the new recruits, which, since I’d left and then re-joined, they see me as new. They’ll call in the new recruits last.”
I sighed in relief. What little plan we’d created before storming into the Washington Hunter complex, Wild Women fighting, did not include the aftermath for Marcus—if he’d stay a member or not and what that’d look like either way. So far, he thought it best to stay, to keep his ear to the ground, so to speak. He didn’t think the Hunters knew where us huldra resided, but it wouldn’t be too hard to find out, even with most of their files burned in the fire. He figured if there was an effort to storm our homes, they’d call him up to do the storming. But in my mind, and his heart, he was an ex-Hunter. I just wished my coterie could see it that way.
So far though, he’d been given a leave of absence from his police job for the time being—Hunters in high places and all. I suspected the higher-ups wanted to make sure the surviving Washington Hunters who were present during the attack didn’t turn tail and run. They’d eventually need all the man-power they could get with so few remaining, so treating them like war heroes made sense. We just weren’t sure how long that’d last.
“You can’t go meet with the incubi, Faline,” Marcus said, circling back to our discussion. “What if there’s Hunters watching them?”
“Is that why you’re so against it?” I asked. “We’ll be careful. I won’t be seen.” I didn’t know where we were going exactly, not enough to make such a promise, but I trusted Marie in her skills to go unnoticed. The first day I’d met her, before I’d even entered the succubi apartment complex, Marie was there without me knowing. Even spoke to me and I couldn’t find her.
“They’re males with the ability to entice women and manipulate energy to their will,” Marcus said. “Manipulate you to their will. And they don’t have the history of allegiance you Wild Women have. There’s nothing to keep them from trapping you like they’ve trapped Marie’s sister.”
I almost laughed. “They won’t trap me. And when I’d first met Marie, she had no reason to treat me fairly either.” I peered at the door and wondered if Celeste was listening from the dining table. “And she didn’t…treat me fairly. She had her sisters hold me in place against my will, use my energy against me. But I made it fine through that.” I didn’t mention I’d already gone over this scenario in my mind, that I’d already considered the risk of being taken out of the game much too early. The other Wilds were counting on me to save their sisters and mothers. And not because I was special or anything. But because so far, the only Wilds who were on the Hunter’s radars and able to miss check-ins were the huldras. And of the huldras, I was the only bounty hunter, well-versed in tracking folks, thinking battle strategy, and kicking ass.
But none of us would be able to take down another Hunter complex without the succubi galere. And none of them would be able to help us if they were all detained because one of their sisters missed the check-in. “I’ll be fine,” I assured him.
“Damn it,” Marcus ground the words through clenched teeth. “Why don’t you trust me? Just this once, can you listen and trust me?”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I countered. “Do you realize you’re telling me that by me not doing what you want, I’m not trusting you?” Before he could answer I answered for him. “Of course I trust you. I wouldn’t share a bed with you night after night if I didn’t trust you. I wouldn’t let you anywhere near my sisters if I didn’t trust you. But I trust me too, Marcus. And seeing that at the end of the day I am all I’m left with, my own gut instincts on this far outweigh your advice, trust or not.”
“You’re all you’re left with? What’s what supposed to mean?” he asked the moment I took a breath.
I stared at the ceiling for a moment before leveling a gaze at myself back in the mirror. I shouldn’t have said that. It was just, after the whole battle with the Hunters, watching my Wild sisters fall in combat, almost losing Shawna, death had been on my mind. If they all died in the next battle, I was all I had left. I could only protect those I love so much. They were dark thoughts, but they were my thoughts. I couldn’t tell him that, though. I didn’t need him worrying any more than he already was. I’d just told him I’d be fine. He couldn’t know how unsure I was of that.
“It means…” I couldn’t come up with an answer for the life of me. “I don’t know what it means.”
“Well, it’s a pretty strong statement to have no basis,” Marcus retorted.
I said the first answer that popped into my mind. “It means I need to be responsible for my own wellbeing. It’s not like we’re married or in a committed relationship or anything.” Clearly the wrong thing to say.
Marcus’s voice deepened, but somehow grew louder at the same time. “You don’t see our relationship as a committed one?” I pictured his eyes lit with anger.
That hadn’t at all been what I’d meant. But I only made it worse by trying to explain myself. “Huldras don’t do committed relationships,” I stammered out, trying to get my brain to catch up with my mouth. I was trying to lay out the facts of my kind and that relationships and sharing didn’t come natural to me. It’d take lots of work and practice. But damn if my lips refused to express this truth.
“Wow,” he said sarcastically. “Well, I guess I’ve got a lot to think about then. What with me putting my life on the line to act as an undercover agent for a woman who’s not in a committed relationship with me and never plans on changing that.”
“Hold on.” Now I was pissed. “Are you saying you’re only doing this because of me? Because that’s not at all what you told me that night at the hotel in North Carolina and the next morning, when we discussed aligning. You said it was because you knew what the Hunters were doing was wrong. You said you weren’t doing it for me.” I remembered that conversation vividly.
“I’ve got to go,” was all he said before the line went dead.
“Damn it!” I stopped myself mid-swing before plowing my fist into the dresser top.
“Everything all right?” Olivia asked, her voice muffled through the door.
No, everything was not all right. Not that it mattered. I pulled my long hair into a pony
tail at the back of my head and wiped bits of mascara, smudged from sleeping, from under my eyes. “Yup.”
I swung the bedroom door open to see my two sisters ready and waiting. “Let’s go,” I said, walking from the apartment to meet Marie out front.
Nine
I’d seen shows about the Portland Shanghai Tunnels, the underground that once operated on vice with no room for virtue. It is said that from the late 1800s to the early 1900s men were kidnapped from bars in the area and taken to the underground where they’d be sold off to ship captains to work as crew with no pay. Of course, prostitution ran rampant in the tunnels as well. Visiting the Forbidden City of the Wests underground had always interested me, but seeing as leaving the state would require more than a little difficulty concerning the Hunters, and Portland was my prior enemies’ territory, I’d figured watching it on TV was as close as I’d get.
Those worries and prior restraints seemed like a lifetime ago.
Now I stood in the damp tunnel, the scent of mildew and rot all around me, with the addition of rats and mice scurrying about and cobwebs covering the top corners like draped curtains. Only, we didn’t enter the tunnels like I’d seen in the shows, or like basically any human tourists had. At least, I assumed as much. With a black fabric bag over my head it was hard to tell, exactly.
A human man had met Olivia, Celeste, Marie, and me in an alley, carrying the head covers. A transient man slept under a wet cardboard box and when our guide told the man to leave in a particularly gruff manner, I had pulled a Subway gift card from my back pocket to give to the homeless man for his troubles. The man with the head covers gave me a strange look, but I didn’t care. Homeless or not, people were people and they deserved to be treated with decency. The fact that his man clearly didn’t agree ticked me off right off the bat.
We’d taken the black bags freely, as the man promised it was for our own protection. If we wore them, we would be guided back out of the incubi’s lair once our business was done, no questions asked. I opted to do it. No fabric bag could stop my vines from growing and choking a guy out if he made a wrong move against my sisters or me. Still, as I’d placed the bag over my head, Marcus’s words of caution rang through my mind.
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