I pressed the red button on the speaker box. “Um, I’m here to see John.” I didn’t know his last name and I didn’t care, truth be told. He may be the kindest Hunter I’d encountered, but he was still a Hunter.
“Who is this?” asked a man over the speaker. The security camera shifted to point at my driver’s side window.
“My name is Fa—” They knew my identification number, not my name. I rattled off my number. A mistake like that wasn’t like me. I couldn’t help it. I was barely holding it together.
I waited five long minutes for a response, getting antsier by the second. By the time the iron doors opened and I parked in my regular “Reserved” spot, I was ready to explode. I hopped from my car and almost ran into John’s barrel chest.
“How can I help?” he asked. His scent did not match his relaxed appearance, but the strong cologne he wore kept me from identifying what exactly he was feeling.
“My sister has been abducted. I saw the car of the person who took her.” I kept to the side of my car, allowing John to tower over me from the curb.
John nodded, a little too unconcerned. “Did you get the plates?” he asked.
“No, but I know who took her. The succubi.” I spoke quickly. Time was of the essence.
John, however, did not seem so rushed. “It’s not uncommon for different Wild Women groups to reach out and remind the others who’s top dog every so often.”
I wondered if he referred to my mother’s disappearance. If he knew that it was likely caused by a dispute over succubi territory—a man visiting from Oregon who’d shared his bed with my mother. Unbeknownst to my mother, the man had already been claimed by a succubus.
He continued, “And I have a hard time believing a human could overpower a huldra in such a way as to abduct her. Hmm, well that poses a few problems for us.”
“Okay?” I asked to get him to speed it along.
“First, the complex in Oregon would have forewarned us if they’d given sanction for any succubus to travel across state lines into our territory.”
“They could have enthralled human males to come up here to do their bidding,” I reminded. If that were the case, it still wouldn’t account for my blackout, but I couldn’t tell that to a Hunter.
“Still,” he said, kicking a pebble. “The succubi aren’t charges of the Washington complex.”
“They’re dangerous!” Anger flashed through John’s eyes, so I lowered my tone. “You’ve taught us about them plenty of times. Warned us. And they have my sister.”
John’s words were short and crisp with a hard edge, unlike any I’d ever heard from his mouth. “Look, I understand why you’d think they’re the reason your sister is missing. I tend to agree with you; in terms of location, they’re the nearest group of Wild Women, not to mention they’re highly temperamental. I also know they’re dangerous, and that’s why I’m not sending my men after them.” He gave me a long, hard look, clearly trying to get me to look away, to back down. I didn’t.
Finally, he went on. “My men are trained to handle huldra, not succubi. I will not send them into a succubi lair, which in Oregon happens to be an apartment building full of life-sucking creatures. They’re probably halfway to Portland right now, anyway. I’ll make a call to the Oregon complex and have them summon the succubi’s leader.” He turned to head back into the training building. “That’s all I can do.”
My huldra seethed inside me. I closed my eyes to calm her. “You’re supposed to protect us,” I said, unable to believe what was happening.
He didn’t turn around or stop walking to respond. “And we do. We protect you from yourselves.”
Three long hours into the drive, locked in my confining car with nothing but my racing thoughts of what-ifs regarding Shawna, my phone rang. I jumped at the sound and hastily searched the front passenger seat for my cell. My eyes glued to the freeway, my hand patted and shoved aside the reusable grocery bag of snacks Celeste had packed for me. Eating hadn’t entered my mind. I remembered my new car possessed Bluetooth and pressed the button on my steering wheel to answer the call.
“What did you get?” I asked. Shortly after pulling myself away from the complex—when I wanted to chase after John and force him to do his job—I’d called Olivia with bits of information John hadn’t realized he’d given me. The succubi group lived in Portland, filling a whole apartment building. Being that Olivia was a research guru, she got right on it.
“Okay, so I searched through county records to find any apartment buildings sold to a private organization or person and not rented to the public after the sale of the property. It was a bitch cross referencing everything, but I found one, built in the twenties, bought in the forties, and never rented out. I looked it up on Google Earth. I don’t know what a succubi lair is supposed to look like, but this is white brick in the heart of downtown Portland. Didn’t they say succubi need to live near lots of people like an overly extroverted person, but one who’s demented?”
By “they” she meant the Hunters. Not a group I trusted at the moment. But telling her what John said about protecting us from ourselves was another conversation for another time.
“Yes,” I answered, flipping through the “facts” the Hunters had taught us over the years about succubi. “They absorb the energy of humans, so they have to live near them.”
“I wonder why the Hunters let them live,” Olivia said.
“Maybe they’re only allowed to absorb a certain amount.” I got back on track. “Text me the address so I can copy it into my GPS.”
“Doing that right now.”
My cell vibrated with a new text.
“And Faline?”
“Yeah?”
“Try not to get your life sucked out of you,” Olivia said. “Who knows what they could do with a huldra’s energy.”
I shuddered at the thought. But right now, I was more worried about what I was going to do to them.
A few hours later I parked my car across the street from a three-story white brick building with black trim in the heart of downtown Portland. Shockingly, no vandalism or trash littered the exterior. The whole drive here I’d thought of the best way to approach their lair. Going over it again and again was all that had kept me sane and able to drive slowly enough to stay off police radar. Parking down the street and hiding in the shadows wouldn’t work if they were anything like huldra. They’d sense my presence on their property—either my energy, my scent, or both. And if they did have Shawna, I’d need my car close by in case she wasn’t up to running. Plus, she was only the bait, right? I was who they wanted. So I’d give myself over, whether it be just a way to get in the door and grab my sister, or in exchange for her.
I turned off my engine and finished the apple I’d forced myself to eat. The food sat heavy in my stomach, but I figured I’d need the energy it provided. My car’s interior light beamed bright, threating to give me away, so I quickly locked my doors and it faded into darkness.
It was three o’clock in the morning. The sun would be up, with humans walking the street, in three or four hours. The street was empty, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t being watched. I tapped each boot leg, making sure my daggers were in position, and opened my jacket to unlatch the safety from my holster.
I eased the car door shut behind me and ran to the right front corner of the building. I sniffed the air and didn’t smell urine, which surprised me seeing that I was standing in an alley in the downtown area of a city. A single streetlight glowed yellow and lit the early morning mist.
“You shouldn’t be scared,” said a female voice from behind me.
I turned and spoke into the night. “I’m not scared.”
“Fine. If you want to split hairs. You shouldn’t be anxious.”
I spun around. I was alone. But clearly I wasn’t.
“We’ll talk to you if that’s what you want, as long as you refrain from flipping your shit when they come to escort you in.”
“What the hell?” I said under my
breath. “When who escorts me?” I hadn’t even made it to their front stoop.
“This is a limited time offer. The answer is yes or no,” she said. It sounded like a threat except her words were void of any emotion.
I listened closer, closing my eyes to feel from which direction the words came. I jerked my head up and to the right and saw a window slam shut.
Crap. Had I just ruined my chances for a negotiation?
“Yes!” I yelled up toward the window in the most confident voice I could muster, considering what I was agreeing to. I wasn’t sure if succubi had super hearing or not, so I erred on the side of caution.
“Come with us, huldra.” Two succubi stood at the corner of the building; no human had the capacity to appear out of the blue without my knowing they were coming. They looked me up and down for all of one second before turning to walk in step toward the stoop. I figured they’d come out of the building while I yelled and hadn’t just appeared out of thin air. At least I hoped as much.
I kept their pace, walking behind them. The one on the right had short, dark spiky hair and wore a fitted t-shirt and ripped jeans. The female on my left also wore ripped jeans and a fitted t-shirt, but she wore her hair in a bob cut, right below her ears.
“So, how many of your kind live here?” I asked, when all I wanted to do was scream for them to hand over my sister.
Neither female answered. In fact, they showed no indication that they’d heard me.
We stood on the front stoop until someone buzzed us in. The door shut behind us and we waited in the tiled entryway. Stairs with an ornate dark wooden banister stretched up, then twisted, and then stretched again before us.
I followed them up to the first level and passed a line of three doors. A succubus with dark brown skin leaned on the banister. A lollipop stick protruded from between her lips. Only her eyes moved on her blank face as she watched us pass. She brushed her many beautiful braids to the side, revealing a snake tattoo extending from her ear, down her neck, and hiding under her shirt. She pushed herself from the railing and trailed us, still sucking on her lollipop.
When we reached the third floor, another row of doors greeted us, along with a blonde, pale-skinned succubus. Golden hair spilled over her left shoulder. The right side of her head had been shaved with only the fuzz of blonde remaining. A snake tattoo wound from her forehead hairline, around her ear, and down her neck.
John’s concern for his men played through my mind.
The blonde joined the lollipop-sucking female, following behind us. When we reached the last door, on the last floor, the spiky-haired succubus knocked. A tongue-clicking sound responded from the other side, and she pushed the door open.
If I thought I had an entourage behind and around me, I had been mistaken. Nine succubi, sitting and standing, dwarfed the apartment’s living room. And they all focused on me.
As I’d done on every floor, I sniffed the air for Shawna’s scent but only smelled succubi and human.
“Your need emanates from you, huldra,” said a Filipino-looking woman lying on a red velvet couch. Hers had been the voice I’d heard from the alley. A man in only a pair of navy blue silk boxers lay on the other side of the couch, resting his head on the armrest. “What is your name?” she asked me.
The female’s red silk thigh-length robe hung open, exposing her naked body. Long inky black hair cascaded down her full breasts. A tribal tattoo wrapped around each of her thighs like belts. A pink lotus flower tattoo acted as the buckle on her left thigh. Another belt-type tattoo wrapped around her rib cage, outlining the lower portion of her breasts, with an image of the goddess Lilith in its center.
“My name is Faline and I come on behalf of my coterie.” My hand hovered over my gun, hiding behind the front of my jacket. “We also reside in the Pacific Northwest.” I pulled from my bounty hunting skillset. I’d negotiated with family members of skips to turn their loved one over to me. This time it was my loved one that I wanted, which upped my anxiety and the ante.
“Ah,” she said, brushing aside her hair to reveal a breast. “The Washington coterie.”
“The only huldra coterie in the country,” I said. Did she not know, or was she playing mind games with me?
“Fascinating,” she said, tilting her chin up and narrowing her dark brown eyes. “You are not ugly.”
“Thank you?”
The mostly naked man lying on the other side of the couch stirred and let out a moan.
She laughed. “I don’t mean to offend. It’s just, I’ve heard your skin is covered in bark and your eyebrows hang like moss from its host tree.”
Now I knew she was playing games. Human folklore spoke of the huldra’s beauty…except for the rare stories of huldra becoming grotesquely ugly after marriage which, since we never married, was absurd. I assumed the Oregon Hunters taught about huldra in the same way the Washington Hunters taught us about succubi—using human folklore as though much of it were fact. I clenched my fists.
“Oh.” The woman giggled and leaned back. “I’ve made the huldra angry. Maybe now we’ll get to see her bark.”
“Why are you discussing these things in front of a human male?” I said through clenched teeth, no longer able to suppress the question. Humans should not know the existence of our kind.
“Did you know your anger floats from you, red as blood and fire?” She licked her lips. “I would love to taste it, let it sizzle within my muscles. I’ve never tasted huldra energy.” Her smile grew. “Oh, wait. Yes, I have. She’s beautiful, isn’t she, darling?” The woman slid over to sit on the man’s lap as he woke. She brushed her hand along his five o’clock shadow.
He stared at me and nodded.
“Would you like to share both of us? Would that be fun for you?” the woman asked the man.
His grin grew.
“Well you can’t have her! You’re mine, not hers. Do you understand me? Mine!”
The man shrank into the couch and said, “I’m sorry, Marie. I only agreed because I thought it was what you wanted.”
Marie lowered her voice to barely audible so that the human couldn’t hear her. “He’s full of shit.”
“Are you the leader?” I asked, ready to move this along and get my sister back.
“I am.” Marie stood to tie her robe.
“As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve come to discuss a possible trade.” My gaze flickered to the man. “Is there somewhere we can talk without your…partner?” She may be comfortable exposing her sisters to a human, but I wasn’t.
She laughed and brushed her hair behind her ear. “Him? My partner? No, when he wakes up in his bed tomorrow morning, he’ll think this was all a faded wet dream. He’ll have no idea where he’s been all night or who he’s been with. He’ll just know it was the best fucking dream of his life. Literally and figuratively.”
Just like I’d woken on the hotel floor with no memory of releasing my huldra. Except I knew my nightmare had been real. My jaw clenched.
Marie snapped her finger and the succubus with dreadlocks placed her hand on the man’s forehead. He closed his eyes and slumped back, laying his head on the armrest.
“Enough pleasantries.” Marie shot me an ice cold glare. “You are a Wild Woman, a huldra no less, in the home of my sisters and me. I should drain you of every emotion skittering through that wooden body of yours.”
I hitched in a sharp breath and gritted my teeth.
“You’d better watch where you direct that anger of yours,” she seethed. “You flesh eaters don’t belong here, and I can make it like you never came.”
“And I can throw you out the window so quickly you wouldn’t see it coming,” I said, unable to hold my tongue any longer. “I. Want. My. Sister!”
Five succubi turned to face me, like a military unit changing marching directions. Without so much as a finger placed on me, my muscles gave in to absolute exhaustion. My legs felt like fern leaves, bending outward, threatening to collapse. I searched deep within myself, beggin
g my huldra to fight them off, to hold me up, to keep me standing.
And I did stand…for all of two seconds.
Like the heavy burden of hail on a fern leaf, my legs gave in and I crumbled to the floor.
Ten
My muscles ached with heaviness. A red sheer swath of fabric hung above me, pinned to the ceiling. Something invisible held my arms and legs, stretched out across a bed as though they’d each been tied to a post. Only, they hadn’t.
Five succubi stood at the foot of the bed, expressionless, staring at me, no doubt concentrating on keeping me restrained. My knees throbbed from the fall.
It looked as though I’d stepped from a regular apartment living room in downtown Portland to a mini version of an ancient sex temple. Orange and red sheer scarves hung over lamps. Red wallpaper with gold embossing covered the walls. A carved shelf took up one wall and was filled with incense, crystals, smudging sticks, a vined plant, and statues of Lilith. Lilith created the first succubi from her most trusted temple priestesses thousands of years ago, according to my mother’s bedtime stories.
“You, a huldra, enter my home, the home of my sisters, claiming that I took your huldra?” Marie spat the words.
I jolted in place, unable to move.
She sat on a lounge chair in the corner.
“I—”
“Silence!” she demanded.
My lips stilled against my will.
“A huldra cannot be trusted. Your kind is sneaky. You hide in the forests and pretend not to exist, blending in with the trees, growing your vines to snatch humans for dinner like a spider plants her web. How do I know you haven’t also learned to blend in with your lies, learned to omit the energy of truth as lies spew from your mouth?” She stood and paced the bedroom.
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