Freyja's Daughter

by Rachel Pudelek

  “We don’t have time for this, Marie. I need to go and he needs to come with me,” I said.

  Wilds shook their heads in disgust.

  The auburn-haired rusalka, Drosera, placed a hand on my shoulder and spoke. It was as if she came out of nowhere. “We have seen her interaction with this male from the moment we met her. And it is noble. We see into his mind as well, and he too is of noble intentions. He has good reason to fight the Hunters, equal to the reasons we all hold for our own uprising. Release him succubus, so that we may finish our task and return home to celebrate.”

  “What if I don’t trust you, rusalka?” Marie said with a sneer.

  “But you do trust me. You also fear me, that I will expose the secret you’ve kept shrouded from all but yourself. No, you are unable to keep it all from yourself,” Drosera announced, as though she were merely talking about the lunar cycles of the moon.

  If Marie was scared—and I believed Drosera—then she was a master at disguising it.

  Marie eyed Drosera, probably trying to decide if she could take on the odd rusalka or not. The answer was no. Two more rusalki circled our little huddle around Marcus. It would only take a quick grab of a strand of Marie’s hair for her life to be over. And she knew it.

  Marie rolled her eyes and let out a groan. “Fine,” she said. She turned on her heel to join her sisters, who’d been watching the interaction, preparing to pounce on the rusalki if needed.

  Marcus gasped for air and shot up to stand beside me. In a winded voice, he proclaimed the one thing I’d been longing to hear. “Let’s get Shawna.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Marcus grabbed my arm and I led us to the side door, past the Hunters who’d either been knocked unconscious, lay dead, or had been forced to their knees with hands above their heads. Only two lay bleeding out across the floor. Five were unconscious. They were probably the lucky ones in the bunch. Thirteen Hunters were herded into a line, forced to move while still on their knees with elbows out and hands on their heads toward the classroom to be locked up. The succubi could have willed the males to move, but forcing them to shuffle on their knees was more demeaning.

  Marcus’s maneuver to cut the power had worked; the Hunters weren’t able to call for reinforcements in time. That didn’t mean there weren’t Hunters outside of the main building, somewhere else on the property. Once the Wilds were done here, they would scour the rest of the complex and take it down, one building at a time.

  “Abigale should go,” Aunt Renee said with a low and serious voice right before I pushed the door open and left.

  I made the mistake of looking over at Renee. Fire blazed in her eyes. She gave a short head shake, as though she were daring me to speak to her.

  “No,” Drosera said, though she didn’t turn away from the males to speak to my aunt.

  The other Wilds stood in a line in front of the stoic Hunters shuffling toward the classroom, but my coterie kept to the side of the room in their own cluster, anxious to be rejoined with their missing member.

  “She’s her mother!” Aunt Renee reminded.

  Drosera turned toward my aunt. “And she is also a liability, emotionally frail at this current time. But I do agree that they will need another, one who is not emotionally involved. Any more than that would be too much. My sister volunteers.”

  Aunt Renee took one step forward and then paused. “To do what? Watch?”

  Azalea joined Marcus and me. Her ice blue eyes stared ahead as though she were talking with someone else telepathically, probably Drosera. She gave a tiny nod and as she walked past Drosera, she pulled birch wood scissors from her long black hair and placed them in her sister’s hand.

  Drosera stood before a Hunter who hadn’t yet been forced into the makeshift jail of the classroom, stared into his eyes, cocked her head for only a moment, and with a blurring swiftness, she plucked a strand of blond hair from his head and snipped it in half. His body slumped to the side and hit the cement before his hair finished floating to the ground.

  A young Hunter, two males down, gasped and grit his teeth. The others stared ahead with blank expressions.

  Marcus rushed to leave. “I can’t watch this.”

  As we left the building, I heard the muffled thump of another male falling to the floor.

  “What did you expect?” I asked, catching up to him as he hurried to a footpath.

  “That you’d have to do what was necessary to get your sister, but lining them up and killing them like that? Who knows. Maybe in a month they’ll decide, like I did, that this life isn’t for them. Your woman in there is taking that opportunity away.” He headed deeper into the property.

  “My sister knows their thoughts and intentions,” Azalea reminded. “She will only end those who wish to end us.”

  It didn’t help that Azalea, like her sisters, showed absolutely no emotion—not a hint as to her motives. Being privy to the rusalki ways gave me the strangest mixed feelings of love and an eerie unknowing. Like I don’t know as much as I think I do. This only added to the anxiety swirling like a tornado in my gut.

  Marcus stormed ahead. “Years ago, that could have been me in there! Where do you draw the line?”

  “I don’t know, Marcus. I’m not the one who made the rules; I’m only playing by them.” I huffed and peered at the spattering of cabins around us. “Where is she?”

  “The big house is straight through these trees. They like to keep it hidden,” Marcus said, pointing toward a clump of evergreens that Azalea walked toward. The top of a roof barely peeked out above the trees from my vantage point.

  I quickened my pace to catch up to Azalea.

  “She is in the building,” the blonde rusalka said with a glassy gaze. “Top floor…attic?” She cocked her head as she walked quickly. “Yes. Attic. She does not know how to think.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  We zigzagged through tree trunks. The grounds had been kept pretty clear for foot traffic, free of bushes or ferns. There wasn’t a constructed foot path to the house, but it was easy to see the worn patch of dirt stretching from the main building to the home.

  “Who lives in there?” I asked Marcus.

  He walked beside me, opposite Azalea, taking one stride for every two of mine. His warm breath created a tiny cloud when his words hit the frigid air. Except, Marcus didn’t seem chilly in his black long sleeve shirt and cargo pants.

  “The second in command,” he said, not looking at me. He trudged forward. “John.”

  “John’s not the leader?” I asked.

  “Their leader lives in a secret location,” Azalea offered, though no one had asked. “It is not secret to me.”

  “The second in command carries out the wishes of the leader.” I noticed Marcus had said “the” rather than “our” when referring to Hunter hierarchy.

  As the house came into view more clearly, I realized I didn’t know as much about the Hunters as I should. Once today was over, I’d pick Marcus’s brain about everything Hunter. I had to be more prepared next time.

  If the Wilds didn’t try to kill Marcus first.

  Or punish me for aligning with a Hunter.

  We reached the front porch steps of the two-story home’s wraparound deck. Long, narrow windows framed the carved wooden door. A huge etched cross made of bones sat front and center, separating the four sections of the door.

  Symbols carved into the wood made up each section. One portion had what looked like an intricate vine woven around waves and trees and clouds. Growing from the vine was fins, wings, demon-like horns, scissors, teeth, and other symbols I didn’t recognize.

  I tugged on Marcus’s sleeve. He turned with raised eyebrows as if to say “What now?”

  I pointed to the carving on the lower left portion of the door. “Werewolves?” I barely whispered and mostly mouthed.

  He nodded.

  Holy shit. I’d never met a werewolf, figured they were the stuff of fairy tales. But then again, so were mermai
ds and huldra. Though, huldra were less fairy tale and more horror story.

  Marcus peeked through the narrow window on the right side of the door.

  “She is in the attic,” Azalea whispered.

  “I’ll burst through first,” Marcus instructed. “You two run up the stairs, they’re a straight shot when you open the door. When you get to the second floor—”

  “I know, Hunter. No need to explain.” Azalea looked past Marcus, through the window, though I doubted she needed to. “They are aware of what just occurred. A Hunter escaped to warn them, but they did not have the numbers to engage such a group of Wilds in warfare, so they wait for you here, where they feel they have more of an advantage. The female is inside, pretending to read in the front room. She is protected by males,” she said dryly. “They stand on each side of the door, out of view, and upstairs. She is bait.”

  Okay, now I was confused. I turned to eye her. “Shawna is bait?”

  Azalea shook her head again and I thought I caught her roll her eyes. “The Hunter’s female. They do not believe we will make it to your sister.”

  “Enough talking,” Marcus said as he pressed down the bronzed iron latch on the front door and pushed it open. A gush of testosterone flooded through his body and the alluring scent of it caught my senses off guard.

  I quickly shoved his tempting scent away from my mind and darted into the large cabin-style home, straight up the green-carpeted stairs. With each foot fall moving me up toward my sister, voices raised from down on the first level: males threatened to kill Marcus for betraying the brotherhood, Marcus agreed to their challenges.

  At least until the talking stopped and the punching started. The scent of blood filled the air as I landed on the second floor and caught the attention of two Hunters guarding the door at the end of the hallway. I hoped it wasn’t Marcus’s blood.

  Faint traces of Shawna’s scent lingered in the space. Rage filled me and a growl ripped through my lips. These Hunters were blocking me from my sister.

  Like a bull teased one too many times, I broke into a run, seeing only red

  My one-woman stampede ended in a crash into the narrow door with outstretched arms grabbing both Hunters in a choking embrace. The blond male twisted out of my grasp, but the other wasn’t so lucky. I wrapped my fingers around his neck and pushed him up the wall until his feet dangled above the ground. Terror filled his wide eyes as one of his hands struggled to push me away and the other patted at his many pockets, probably searching for a weapon, seeing as he dropped the one he’d been holding. With my free hand I punched his right thigh. It made a cracking sound. He let out a muffled, closed-mouth scream.

  Something hard slammed into my back and I dropped the brunette. He fell in a crumpled mess, but quickly dragged himself away from the wall and toward his dagger lying on the floor about ten feet away.

  I turned on my heel to see the blond Hunter swinging an iron staff in my direction. I jumped out of the way and the force of his missed strike knocked him off balance.

  He reached his arms to catch his fall, leaving his iron staff ripe for the taking. Before the thing hit the floor, it was in my tight grip. The blond pulled a dagger from his belt and smiled at me with perfectly straight teeth.

  He must have been a lefty because his left hand wrapped around the hilt of the dagger. It held no wedding band.

  “Single, good. I won’t be widowing your lawfully wedded slave,” I taunted, hoping for a reaction of anger rather than of calculated control. “On second thought, it would be a mercy to any woman.”

  He sneered, not taking the bait. “Like you could. And I’m engaged, so, soon.” He gave a quick glance to my abdomen. “You’re not pregnant with demon spawn, and your stomach filled with the remains of its poor idiot father. Shame, I could have got a twofer.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  “Well, I’m secretly fucking someone in your brotherhood, so…soon.” I didn’t have the time or the will to stand around and play with my prey. I wanted to see my sister.

  Before the blond Hunter’s smile could drop, I lunged forward and sunk the iron staff into the center of his chest. His thin lips moved, but only gurgling sounds escaped his mouth. I released my hold of the staff and backed up. His fingers wrapped around the iron as he tried desperately to pull it from his body. It moved maybe an inch as he worked with every last bit of strength he had in that muscular Hunter body of his.

  I reached my hand toward the staff, but didn’t touch it. Vines grew from my fingertips and wrapped around the iron, encasing it in green. The blond Hunter’s eyes widened, but the scent of fear didn’t emanate from his skin, only disgust. The vines grew up his chest and over his shoulders, gripping him to hold the staff tightly in place. Panic set in and he dropped the staff to tear my vines from his body.

  Each tear stung.

  “Ah!” A burning pain pulsated up through my legs. My body faced the blond, but I turned my head to see the brunette Hunter swinging his dagger to hack off another thick woody vine growing from my heel.

  Pain blazed up my body again, but this time I didn’t scream out. I lashed out.

  I pulled my vines from the bleeding out Hunter and focused on the soon-to-be-dead Hunter.

  He swung the blade at the vines growing from my heels. The vines growing from my fingers danced around his hand in a flurry of confusing commotion and he swat at them like they were flies. One vine wrapped around the hilt of his dagger. Within seconds the metal burned through my vine and left the vibrant green a black crisp. The dagger dropped to the floor with a thud.

  The brunette laughed. “You can’t touch righteousness, it burns you with the fiery pits of hell—where you belong.”

  That’s when I laughed. Maybe my vines couldn’t touch it—which was news to me—but my fingers did quite fine against the metal. I reached down and gripped the dagger tightly in my right hand. As shock painted the young Hunter’s expression a smile grew on my face.

  “Let’s see what it does to you,” I said. I plummeted the blade into his left thigh.

  His scream resembled a howl.

  It excited the huldra in me and without thinking I allowed my vines to braid together into a thick rope and squeeze his neck, crushing his windpipe and cracking his spine. He went limp and fell to the floor.

  I reached for the door. Locked. That’s okay. I turned it a little harder until the knob snapped and the door swung open. A narrow staircase loomed before me, boxed in by walls decorated with red stones hanging from hooks. I pivoted on my heel to invite Azalea to follow me, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  I rushed forward, unfazed, taking the steps up to the attic two at a time. “Shawna?” I whispered in case she wasn’t alone upstairs. “You’re here, right? I can barely smell you.”

  She is, Azalea’s voice spoke into my mind. Weird, I couldn’t smell Azalea’s scent. But so is he.

  Red rubies hung on both sides of the stairwell walls like framed photos. I didn’t smell a Hunter, only traces of my sister. “Who’s he?” I asked as the stairwell walls ended and my right foot hit the attic floor.

  “Shit,” I said as I stared at the biggest damn Hunter I’d ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on. He was close to seven feet tall. Not even his white lab jacket could hide his bulging muscles. He stood beside a queen-sized bed where my sister lay in a daze amidst rumpled sheets. An IV pole held a bag of green liquid that dripped into my sister’s arm.

  How did I not smell this?

  Azalea answered, from who knows where. The Hunter used rubies to block your abilities in the stairwell. They’ve have had a spell placed on them by their secret sect of monks, not known by others of the cloth.

  My eyes bounced from my sister to the Hunter, to my sister. Bruises littered parts of her skin that weren’t covered by a black t-shirt. We heal fairly quickly, so whatever was in the IV bag must have kept her mind from focusing and her body from repairing itself. Can she walk on her own?

  No. She is not well.
Your male cannot outfight this Hunter. He has been trained to fight, more so than the others, but not more than this one. You must fight. Your male can carry your sister to safety.

  I didn’t like that idea. I wanted to carry Shawna. She didn’t know Marcus from another Hunter. I didn’t want to cause my sister more fear, more trauma.

  I cannot carry her. I must remain hidden, Azalea answered my thoughts telepathically.

  I heard Marcus racing up the stairs from his fight on the first floor.

  “Fine,” I said out loud and sized up my smiling opponent. I took a wary step toward him and lifted my nose into the air to get a whiff of his emotions.

  I coughed on the stench.

  “Hand delivered,” the huge Hunter said with a deep and hungry voice.

  “She’s not for you,” Marcus growled as he stepped from the attic stairwell.

  “For him?” I asked without turning from my newest foe.

  “Yeah,” Marcus said, walking to the other side of the bed to check on Shawna “You were their original target.”

  Marcus gently leaned a knee onto the bed to get a closer look at Shawna. She blinked her eyes sluggishly and unsuccessfully tried to roll away from him. I kept my gaze on the big Hunter, but watched my sister in my peripheral vision.

  “The hotel,” I said.

  “We would have made powerful hybrids together,” the large Hunter said with a smile. “And unlike this one,” he motioned to Shawna, “I wouldn’t have used artificial insemination with you.”

  My breath hitched and I bit my lip to keep from showing anything but anger and assertiveness. But inside, my heart crumbled. My sister. My Shawna. They were trying to… Using her body as though she were nothing more than her womb.

  I morphed from seeing red, to seeing nothing.

  The last thing I remembered, I was shoving my hands out in front of me as vines grew from every spot possible, charging the huge Hunter with tears of anger rolling from my eyes. And then everything went black.

  Thirty