Freyja's Daughter

by Rachel Pudelek

  Two

  I performed a quick bark check after I parked in the unloading area behind the jail. It was a precaution I took after each hunt. Huldra are connected to nature, the forest, the trees. Our original Scandinavian foremothers could change their skin to mimic the bark of a tree to blend in and keep from being detected. But they were wild and powerful, and I was not. None of us were anymore. Rigid self-control came at a cost. My coterie believed that cost to be worthy. I wasn’t so sure.

  A small bark patch whispered of my ancestors along my lower back. If it ever became more than a whisper—a dark, raised declaration of my huldra lineage—I’d have more pressing matters than the perverted bail-jumper sitting behind me in a daze. I swept my hand over the barely there patch and sighed with relief. Now on to more…enjoyable matters.

  Police Officer Marcus Garcia. My newest eye candy and the reason I preferred to take only the cases that required a visit to the Snohomish County Jail. All six-foot, two-inches of him were hot as hell, with dark hair cut short on the sides and left a little longer up top. Long enough to pull, I imagined.

  “Officer Marcus,” I said, trying to appear professional, but still using his first name to show a personal connection. Yes, I was flirting.

  He stood and smiled. “Bail Enforcement Agent Faline,” he responded, mocking my semi-professional salutation with one of his own. “I heard you were bringing in a bail skipper.”

  “Yup. I’ve got a kidnapper here for you this evening,” I said. I shoved Samuel forward. He hit the front desk, folding over it, landing on a stack of community service flyers. I handed Samuel’s bail piece—paperwork indicating that he was a fugitive—to Marcus.

  “Those are your favorites,” Marcus joked.

  “He’s Samuel Woodry—jumped bail a month ago and has been hiding out in Seattle ever since,” I continued.

  He typed a few things into the computer and then made a quick phone call, ordering a guard to bring out a wheelchair. “Looks like he’ll need a doctor, too.”

  “Really?” I feigned surprise.

  “Do you wait ’til they’re near death before you decide to bring them in?” he asked. His brown eyes sparkled. Yeah, Officer Marcus was flirting with me too.

  “No, they just put up a fight and get all tuckered out.” I flashed an innocent smile.

  “You always choose the fighters,” Marcus said.

  So he’d been keeping tabs on me, huh?

  Marcus made his way from the desk to the steel door separating civilians like me from “official police business.” I couldn’t see him for a second as he pinned in the key code to open the door.

  “I’d like to think that they choose me,” I said.

  Marcus propped the door open and I pulled Samuel from resting on the front desk and shuffled him toward the younger officer behind the door, waiting with the wheelchair. “Either way,” he said. “The people of Snohomish County thank you. You’ve removed one more bad guy from the streets.”

  I scoffed. “Yeah, but each time I remove one, ten more animals are let out on bail when they should be locked up in keyless cells.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty,” he reminded.

  “I’m not a cop; I don’t have to toe the party line like some people.” When did the conversation take a turn from the direction of hey-let’s-maybe-get-naked-sometime to criminal justice policies? For all the skips I catch, many more are let out, or aren’t caught in the first place. But I continued hunting them down because someone needed to make sure the victims got their chance at justice, and because I had bills that couldn’t pay themselves.

  “Our list of legal obligations runs a lot longer than yours,” Marcus said.

  “We’re on the same side.” I tried to smooth the little wave of building tension between us.

  “Very true.” When the younger officer wheeled Samuel through a set of doors and out of view, Marcus spoke. “I’d like to be on the opposite side of you.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “With a table for two in between us,” he continued. “Maybe some wine and your favorite dinner, a juicy rare steak.”

  Okay, so we talked a lot when I dropped off skips. It was hard not to; he was so damn hot and he asked questions like he’d actually listen and remember the answers. My kind didn’t have romantic relationships. For huldra, falling in love and exposing a human to our kind was too risky. But relationships and amazing sex were two very different things. And I’d found that a man who could listen tended to be pretty great in bed.

  “Officer Marcus, are you asking me out on a date?” I tilted my head and gave a half-smile.

  He gave one nod. “Officer Marcus isn’t, because he’s on the clock, but civilian Marcus definitely is asking you out on a date. At Emory’s on Silver Lake, at eight o’clock tonight?”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and glanced at the time. The screen reminded me that I had a check-in at the Hunters’ complex tonight. And I was running late.

  “I have somewhere to be; it’s a personal thing that I shouldn’t miss. But I can meet you at Emory’s a little after eight o’clock, if that works.” I hadn’t been with a man in over a year, and more than anything, I wanted Marcus to be the one to break my dry spell.

  “Sure. Meet you there at 8:15?” Marcus asked.

  “Works for me.”

  I went over the logistics in my head as I unlocked my car. Check-in was in Arlington, I lived in Granite Falls, and my date with Marcus would be in Everett. I didn’t have time to attend check-in and then run home and back to Everett. And I didn’t want to wear my work clothes tonight. I needed something more feminine, more enticing. A short black skirt and high heels, perhaps. I sent my sister Shawna a text, and asked her to bring me a change of clothes.

  From Everett, I took Interstate Five to Arlington where the Hunter compound nestled deep into a wooded plot of land. I turned down a gravel road, passed an open iron fence, and parked in front of the training building in a “Reserved” spot beside Shawna’s empty Subaru. I was late. Again. I emptied my gun holster and sprang from my car making a mental note to add “buy leather cleaner” to my list of things to do tomorrow.

  The Hunter complex consisted of multiple buildings sprawled across private acreage, but the large training building interrupted my view of any other structures behind it. The moment I stepped through the open double doors of the oversized one-story pole barn, a Hunter in all black closed the doors to shut out the rain. The entrance had been made narrow by gates leading me through a metal detector. In a hurry to join my coterie, I walked through the arch and was repaid by a blaring mechanical screech. I backed up and shot my arms in the air before four Hunters ran to my front and back and patted me down.

  “In my boots,” I yelled over the hustle. “I just came from work and forgot. They’re in my boots.”

  A large Hunter (they were all large to varying degrees) in black cargo pants and a long sleeved black shirt elbowed my stomach, knocking me onto my butt. He and another went to work yanking my boots off. Two daggers clanged onto the cement floor.

  “Sorry,” I added. “I was in a hurry and forgot they were there.”

  The elbowing Hunter met my eyes with the frigidness of the North Pole. “No. Weapons. Allowed.”

  My gaze shot to his own crossbones-decorated dagger holstered at his right hip and then bounced back to look him in the face. “It won’t happen again,” I said coldly.

  “It’d better not,” he grumbled under his breath as he stood and placed my daggers into a plastic container and secured the container in a locked cabinet.

  I didn’t need to be escorted to the small room off to the right of the training area, but two Hunters took it upon themselves to make sure I made it there nonetheless. Aunt Renee paced one side of the wall while my other two aunts and three sisters each sat behind a long table, staring forward at a blank white board. The Hunters called this the school room. I called it the huldra indoctrination room, a phrase my mother had coined during her post-
check-in rants, which usually took place while she scrubbed dishes and grumbled under her breath.

  Hunters and huldra went way back, though huldra weren’t always the ones being schooled. Hunters thought of themselves as a “religious” group, but not even the pope was privy to their existence. They used to be called The Blessed Ones. The males had been born with supernatural strength that they claimed was a gift from God to his favorite believer—one of the chosen at the Council of Nicaea—their forefather. The Hunters’ emblem, found on their daggers, their jewelry, and all over their complex, was a cross made from bones with a ruby at its center. But don’t ask me the meaning behind anything they do or say. When it came to Hunters, explanations were few and far between. I only knew bits and pieces of their history and abilities through stories passed down from elder huldra.

  My ancestors saw the crossed bones of Hunters’ dagger hilts often, I’d imagine. According to my mother, back then Hunters deemed huldra—and others like us—evil, and as such, a threat to humanity and to ourselves. My kind held strong until the many long years of Inquisitions. In those days, Hunters posed as human men—as judges, knights, and priests. And as such they profited with money and prestige, setting their secret group in a place of power. After that, it all went downhill for my ancestors. Hunters maneuvered politically, and before long the different groups turned on one another. The harpies hated the succubi who hated the mermaids, and so on. To bring order to the chaos they’d created, Hunters governed all the groups—kept us a secret to the world and safe from each other. Of course, that’s not exactly how they tell it. They insist on a rendition in which they’re our saviors.

  Aunt Renee paused her pacing when I entered the school room. The Hunter shut the door behind me, leaving me alone with my coterie. “You can’t just bring weapons here,” Aunt Renee said through gritted teeth.

  “Like I’m sure you heard me tell them, I forgot.”

  “Forgetfulness is not an excuse. If we want to get respect from them, we need to give it.” Aunt Renee’s black ponytail covered the bottom half of the poster tacked to the wall behind her. There were a few “educational” posters sprinkled throughout the room, warnings of how to spot a succubus and what made them so dangerous—they stole their enemy’s life force and saw everyone as their enemy. Succubi were the closest supernatural group to us. They lived in Portland, Oregon. But huldras had a fantastic sense of smell. I was sure my nose would tip me off to a nearby succubus long before my eyes.

  I ignored my anxious aunt and sat in the empty chair beside Shawna. My partner sister greeted me with a warm smile and a head shake.

  Huldra prefer an even number of coterie members, since we don’t marry or have long-term relationships. The even number gives us each a same-age life partner in our sister. It’s not as difficult an aspiration as one might think. When my aunts and mother were ready to bring the next generation of huldra into the world, they timed their daughters’ conception to make sure two of us were born in the same year. Celeste and Olivia were born twenty-five years ago, and Shawna and I are twenty-four. Aunt Renee is a nurse and Aunt Patricia is an acupuncturist. Between the two of them, they planned conceptions based on menses, body temperatures, and moon cycles with the help of herbal tinctures.

  I opened my mouth to ask Shawna if she’d brought me a date outfit, when a Hunter entered the room.

  “Good evening, ladies.” All six feet, seven inches of John stood in front of the white board. His newly shaven face held a grin. His grey hair, cut into a high and tight, didn’t fool me. As the leader of Washington’s Hunter complex, John was strong.

  Unlike my sisters and aunts, I didn’t trust the Hunters. They stank of contempt for my kind. John just stank a little less.

  John wrote a list on the whiteboard, adhering to this month’s topic of proper human interaction. Our check-ins were monthly and the training topics were cyclical. They consisted of a handful of lessons—how to fit in among humans, huldra history, huldra medicine, and ways to avoid and detect our enemies: mermaids, succubi, harpies, and rusalki.

  Once John finished his little lecture, complete with tips to prevent physical interaction with injured humans—a possible huldra trigger—he motioned toward the back corner of the room. On his signal, the four Hunters standing outside the door entered the room and switched on the ultra-bright lamp that reminded me of a surgical lamp you’d see in an OR.

  John never conducted the screenings; he only stood back with his arms folded over his chest. I liked to think he stayed to make sure the younger Hunters weren’t too rough with their screening process.

  My aunts, sisters, and I stood in a line, with my Aunt Patricia first up. A blond Hunter wearing latex gloves motioned to Aunt Patricia. She pulled the right side of her long skirt high enough to expose the number tattooed on her upper thigh. The blond Hunter positioned the lamp to illuminate the numbers, read them off to the brunette Hunter, who typed the code into a laptop attached to a cart.

  “Nine. Two. Zero. Five. One,” the brunette announced and he pressed the mouse pad. “Present and accounted for.” In their database we didn’t have names, but rather numbers given to us at birth. It helped to maintain a shred of privacy and squashed any risk of our names being leaked and our existence being known to the humans.

  “Thank you,” the blond said to the brunette. They never wore name tags and rarely used their names in front of us. Possibly for the same reason.

  He motioned to my aunt’s shirt. She let the hem of her skirt fall to her feet and turned so that her back faced the blond Hunter. She pulled up her flowy shirt and shifted to aim her back into the bright light. The blond ran a gloved finger over my aunt’s small bark patch and nodded. “She’s clear.” He looked up. “Next.”

  I was last in line, a position I took every month. I had a tendency of leaving the screening Hunter irritated and chose not to allow another member of my coterie to be on the receiving end of that irritation. The blond repositioned the lamp three times after I pulled down the right side of my black fitted jeans. I knew I’d pass. I hadn’t killed a guy in the last hour since I’d checked my bark. Not that I’d ever killed anyone.

  “Every fucking time we have to play Where’s Waldo to find her identification number,” the blond grumbled under his breath as he scooted closer to my thigh in an effort to locate my numbers.

  “Language,” John chastised.

  The blond studied the center of the tattoo, filled with vines and trees and branches, and muttered something under his breath. The first time I showed up for a screening with my new tattoo the Hunter threatened to force me to undergo laser removal. But he couldn’t do much more than threaten because, according to the original pact between the Wilds and the Hunters, adorning our bodies with art was a Wild right. After all, our priestess foremothers covered themselves with sacred tattoos. I loved trees; they were sacred to me. I liked tattoos. And I hated screenings. The math was simple.

  “Okay, I think I’ve got it,” he said in record time. Normally it took him longer. “Eight. Two. Zero. One. And I think that looks like a three.”

  Damn, it might be time to add another couple branches to that tattoo. I buttoned my jeans and turned, raising my cami to expose my bark.

  Three

  Shawna ran to grab the bag of clothing from her car after the double doors to the training complex were shut and locked behind us. The rest of our coterie filed into my aunt’s crossover and drove for their homes as I stuffed the reminder card for next month’s screening into my back pocket and unlocked my car for my partner sister and me. Each mother and daughter pair in our coterie occupied a modest little house built high in a tree—where huldra felt more comfortable and safe. But the homes were located on the same property, so carpooling was a convenient form of transportation.

  I tidied up the files filled with police records, credit card receipts, and photos strewn across my front passenger seat. While staking out Samuel the bondsman I work for, Dale, sent me information for my next hunt, a
woman with a knack for hiding.

  Shawna’s deep brown dreads barely moved as she closed the door to her Subaru and rushed to slide into my front passenger seat. “This bag contains the magic potion to break your dry spell,” she said with a dead-serious voice. She couldn’t keep a straight face and laughed.

  Her smile fell when she spotted a mugshot atop the pile of bail-jumper paperwork that I’d set on my dashboard. “You don’t usually go after women.”

  “I do if they’ve skipped bail after being charged with human trafficking.” I’d been watching this case since newspaper headlines first announced the success of Seattle PD’s sting operation in unearthing the city’s underground trafficking ring. Dale’s call assigning me to the skip was a welcomed one.

  “You sure you should take this one?” Shawna was asking if a case involving the disappearance of grown women would stir up old hurts. She hadn’t been the one to lose her mother, so I didn’t blame her for not knowing that the hurt never feels old; it lingers at the surface fresh as the day it was made. Before my mother’s murder, four huldra ran our little coterie—my mother and my three aunts, though my aunts and I aren’t related by blood. Almost twenty years later, it was just my aunts. Thinking about it tore the wounds back open.

  Some part of me welcomed the pain. It made me a better bounty hunter and ensured my mother’s memory would never dull. Plus, this case was no different than the others I’d taken involving abducted victims.

  I flipped the photo over—out of sight, out of mind—and reached for the bag she held. “Little black dress and black heels?” I peeked inside.

  She nodded. “Unlike your car, your closet is incredibly disorganized,” she said. “A pile here, a pile there. If that dress wasn’t hanging up, I wouldn’t have known if it was dirty or clean.”