Wild Women Collection

by Rachel Sullivan

  It’d only been a week since we rescued Shawna from the Washington Hunter complex and soon after the strongest drugs they’d given her had worn off we noticed her huldra abilities were lacking. Somehow the Hunters had muted them. Either that or her fear was muting them.

  I smiled, happy to play this male’s game as he lifted me from the floor by my hair.

  I let out a screech and kicked my feet, pretending my toes searched for purchase on the cement floor. And I could be mistaken, but I was pretty sure the Hunter smiled too, which only made the moment sweeter. Nice of him to do that for me.

  The Oregon Hunter complex had only sent five Hunters to ruin our wine-tasting excursion. Clearly, they were just responding to a suspicion of Wilds and had no idea they’d find the notorious Hunter-burning huldra. Not that they’d given us that name. In fact, there’d been an eerie silence surrounding it all—nothing in the newspapers about a burnt complex and no emails or summons from the Hunters.

  Marcus, my ex-Hunter boyfriend, took on the biggest Hunter of the bunch, and my sisters and aunts shared the other three, while my sister, Celeste, escorted the winery owner and his son into the back offices to distract them and keep them from calling the cops. I took in the sight of Marcus fighting for a few moments. How could I not? He looked oh-so-sexy, with muscles bulging the seams of his blue shirt, a color that set off his tanned skin and dark hair quite nicely. These males had no chance, but it was awfully cute how hard they were trying. Well, maybe not cute. Just awful.

  When the blond Hunter was confident enough of my impending death to emanate the scent of vanilla and cherry, I stopped pretending to flail my legs and swiped at him. I shot my right hand up and wrapped my fingers around his arm, above his fist clenched in my hair. With my left hand I wiggled my fingers as though I were cursing him with a spell. Vines discharged from the tips of my fingers and wrapped around his neck. Thin branches poked into his wrist from my right hand, and he shook, struggling to hold on despite his new puncture wounds.

  He hadn’t been trained to tense his neck muscles. Rooky mistake. Right as Blond Hunter’s face turned a light and lovely shade of blue, and his scent took on the musty iron tone of fear, Huge Hunter sliced through my vines and set his brother free. I retracted the burning vines into my hand and crouched to spring onto my newest foe. Blond Hunter fell to the floor, breaking free of my branches and gasping for air.

  “Shit,” Marcus yelled as his right shoulder slammed into Huge Hunter’s back, linebacker style.

  Huge Hunter turned to swing a fist at Marcus, who ducked in time to avoid the blow. The missed calculation caused Huge Hunter to stumble forward where my coterie members were willing and waiting to finish him off.

  We encircled the last living Hunter in the winery warehouse. He puffed out his chest and tried to force an intimidating growl.

  “Leave the growling to the Wild Women,” I suggested. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  Huge Hunter saved a special scowl for me, one that barely showed the blue of his eyes, and yet overemphasized his stained teeth.

  “Let me have him,” Marcus seethed.

  I answered Marcus by calling the name of my partner sister. “Shawna,” I said in an almost sing-song voice. Gentle enough to pull her from her probable fetal position in the corner. “You can come out now, it’s safe.”

  Marcus caught my gaze and nodded his approval of my plan.

  Shawna, cat in tow, eased out from behind the row that stretched the length of the warehouse, stacked three barrels high. A compressor hummed outside the roll-up door, ready to do whatever wine makers did with compressors.

  Shawna neared us with slow footsteps. She watched the Hunter, and I couldn’t tell if I saw fear or fury in her brown eyes. She tilted her chin toward her chest, still eyeing the Hunter.

  “Your brothers drugged me,” Shawna said under her breath as she moved closer to our circle. “They beat me. Called me awful things. Threatened to rape me.” Her voice shook on that last part.

  I shook, too. All of me. It was a heinous thing, using a body to dominate another’s.

  Shawna had refused to tell us what’d happened to her at the Hunters’ hands. Refused to give us details, other than to tell us they were awful.

  She stood within an arm’s length of Marcus, outside the circle. “Threatened to rape me,” she repeated. “To shatter my temple and leave me to pick up the pieces.”

  A guttural growl rose from my partner sister’s throat like nothing I’d ever heard before. Cold shivers covered the back of my neck. The cat she carried hissed and flung itself from her arms. She didn’t notice. She took another step and Marcus moved aside for her to enter the outer circle made mostly of her fellow huldra.

  Marcus swallowed loudly and clenched his fists—tell-tell signs that Shawna was setting off Marcus’s Hunter red flags. You could take the Hunter out of the complex, but you couldn’t take the Hunter out of the man. While he was on our side, he still had his instincts—instincts that reacted to our kind in a negative way. Huge Hunter twitched and clenched and opened his hands. Whatever my sister was putting down, these two Hunters were picking up.

  Shawna’s timid steps morphed into those of a lioness seconds before the deadly pounce. She drew up close to the Hunter and my coterie quickly moved behind him to restrain his arms. I stood to one side of Shawna, and Marcus covered her from the other.

  “It’s not like in the movies, you know,” Shawna said lightly. “They show the captured woman scared. But fear isn’t a big enough emotion for it.”

  She leaned forward and sniffed him. “You don’t wear powerful cologne like the Washington Hunters. Can succubi not smell your emotions?”

  I watched my sister in awe. We all did. She hadn’t woken this morning as the same woman we’d rescued a week ago, no, but she’d still been timid and reserved. That’s why I’d planned the coterie trip to go wine tasting. What better way to loosen up and remember what matters? Apparently, a tall glass of Hunter was what my sister needed, not a red blend.

  Huge Hunter gave one response to my sister’s question. He spit in her face.

  Wrong answer.

  Shawna sprang at him. “I’ll kill you!” she shouted in a voice I’d never heard before. Her legs wrapped around his waist. Her hands pushed his head sideways, toward his left shoulder. And then my sister did the thing I’d never thought possible of her.

  Shawna sank her mouth into the Hunter’s exposed trapezius, bit down, and pulled away with a mouthful of flesh. Her mother, Abigale, screeched and leaned away. Standing behind the Hunter’s right side, she’d gotten the best view of her daughter’s retribution.

  Huge Hunter knocked his head into my sister’s and fought to be free. Marcus punched him in the face, leaving him bleary between the impact and the blood loss. My coterie members released the male and stepped back, allowing Shawna the freedom to do as she willed.

  “Finish him,” Marcus commanded through gritted teeth.

  I shot him a look, but he was too focused on my sister to notice.

  Tears streamed down Abigale’s face.

  Blood dripped from Shawna’s jaw.

  “Do you think he would have helped you?” Marcus asked Shawna. “Do you think, if he were there at that cabin, holding you against your will, he would have been kind?”

  I thought back to the day we rescued my sister, to the large Hunter at my sister’s bedside, in control of the IV drip attached to her arm, the one in the white lab coat who made jokes about growing a Hunter/huldra hybrid within my sister, about personally inseminating me with one.

  The Hunter I bit. Repeatedly.

  “No,” I warned. “Don’t Shawna, it’ll only make your huldra harder to control.” I spoke from experience. I couldn’t tell if my sister had blacked out the way I had, but it didn’t matter.

  “What huldra?” she screeched. “They took her from me. They stole my wildness!” She zeroed in on the Hunter whose body she clung to. “You took my wildness.” She shoved his head to
the side again. “I’m taking it back!”

  I didn’t know whether to stop my sister from making a huge mistake, or to join her. She ravaged the huge Hunter like the Washington Hunters had no doubt threatened to ravage her. In a second of clarity I peered around the warehouse in search for the winemaker and his son. They were gone, thankfully.

  The Hunter’s tirade of obscenities toward my sister and our kind lessened as my sister’s light green shirt turned a deep red. The scent of blood filled the warehouse and my huldra yearned to be let loose.

  But this was Shawna’s battle, a war I’d witnessed her fight since the day she came home from the Hunter’s complex with ash on her face and the seed of revenge in her heart.

  Seeds are funny things. You never know, just by looking at the seed, what it’ll grow into. If it’ll even take root, or wither and die. Shawna’s seed was sprouting in a hurry. And despite its inability to cause vines to grow from her fingertips, I had no doubt it took root and pulled her huldra from wherever she hid deep inside my sister.

  Shawna clung to the Hunter’s back as he hit the floor with a thud. Marcus distanced himself. Smart.

  I, on the other hand, moved closer to my sister. Maybe not so smart.

  A low growl vibrated in her throat and she paused, not taking her eyes off her prey.

  “I’m not trying to take him from you, Shawna. He’s dead. You did it.”

  She pulled her head away from his chest and turned to look at me.

  I’m not easily scared. But the huldra who looked back at me through Shawna’s eyes scared the shit out of me. My huldra tried to rise to the surface, to meet the one staring at me, but I urged her to let me handle things my own way.

  “You stopped him,” I said in an even and firm tone. “He’ll never hurt another Wild again. You did that.”

  She looked back down at her prey, measuring her accomplishment.

  I wished desperately that she’d blacked out, that I were shaking her into consciousness rather than placating her huldra. I shoved every worry of how this would impact my sister into the crowded “future problems” portion of my mind and called my sister’s name.

  “Shawna, I know what you’re feeling.” Except I didn’t. Yeah, I’d experienced attacking a man and a Hunter, and each time coming to with blood on my lips. But that was as far as our shared experience extended. “Slow, deep breaths will help you control yourself. Once you’ve got your breathing down, imagine roots growing from the soles of your feet, anchoring you to the earth.”

  She didn’t nod or say anything to confirm she’d followed my directions, but her chest rose and fell a little slower.

  “Good,” I said. “Keep going.”

  Her fingers unhinged from his neck and shoulder.

  She took a few more slow breaths.

  Her legs straightened and she stood over the dead Hunter.

  Abigale ran to her daughter, sobbing, and before I could warn her against it, she wrapped her arms around Shawna and squeezed.

  Shawna released the longest exhale. Her eyes closed and she leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder. Abigale’s crying quieted. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay now.”

  Olivia leaned back against a barrel and Patricia bent forward to rest her hands on her knees. Seeing as none of us had experience in subduing a rogue huldra, we all sighed in relief.

  I made my way to Marcus and kept from smacking him in the arm. “What was that?” I whispered, knowing full well the only people in the warehouse that couldn’t still hear me were the human males probably holed up in the restroom or an office.

  “It’s how she’ll heal and move forward,” he answered unapologetically.

  “By losing control of herself?”

  “By taking back control, which is exactly what she did.” Marcus rubbed the back of my bicep. “They took her and drugged her and there was nothing she could do about it. Today she got to fight back. She got to release the anger and hurt onto a Hunter.”

  “You just shook a bottle of soda and popped the top off. We won’t be able to get it all back in. What’s out is out.” I shook my head. “Her huldra is out.”

  Marcus cupped a hand to my cheek and leaned in toward me. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  His comment caught me off guard and I reassessed my thoughts. My huldra had saved my sister and just now my partner sister accessed her own wildness to save herself. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not like she killed an innocent human, or even another Wild Woman. This huge Hunter tracked us down to either take us in or kill us while trying. We defended ourselves.

  Shawna defended herself.

  “I hate that what they taught us still hides in my thoughts,” I confessed.

  Marcus pulled me in for a hug and rested his head on top of mine. “Welcome to the club, babe. Welcome to the club.”

  Two

  Fiberglass skylights lit the messy warehouse, made messier by our little scuffle. We didn’t set out to end the lives of five more Hunters today, but that’s what had happened. And all before dinner. Which gave me an idea.

  “Anyone else hungry?” I asked while heaving the largest Hunter onto the pile of his brothers.

  Marcus dropped the arm of the Hunter he’d been helping to move and wiped his hands on his dark khaki cargoes, now stained with blood, dirt, and…was that wine? Well, didn’t we make a wine-stained pair. “Seriously?” he asked. He glanced from me, to Shawna, and back to me.

  “What?” I said, unafraid to talk about the elephant in the room. “Just because she had a snack, I shouldn’t be hungry? The partner sister bond doesn’t work like that.” I went back to work hauling the Hunter, but without the help of my coterie and Marcus, the body didn’t move an inch.

  Abigale stifled a gasp. Shawna went back to coddling the skittish cat who’d found her after the fighting ended. My coterie members fidgeted and wiped dirt from their hands.

  I dropped the leg I’d been tugging on. “Oh, come on.”

  Olivia spoke up. “You’re being insensitive, Faline.”

  “Really?” I wiped sweat from my brow. “How so? I attacked and killed a human man, then watched a rusalka kill a mermaid friend of mine with a snip of her birch scissors, and then I killed a bunch of Hunters. So excuse me if being present to my sister taking a few bites of her enemy didn’t leave my stomach in knots and my appetite on the fritz.”

  Shawna laughed. “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m hungry too.”

  I wanted to fist-bump my partner sister right then and there, but I withheld the urge. Instead, I smiled at her.

  Her words changed the energy of the warehouse and my coterie relaxed—brows un-furled and arms uncrossed.

  Celeste peeked from the hallway leading to the restroom and offices, leaving the wine owner and his son behind. “I have to get back in there. Don’t want them worrying enough to call the police. Just, let us know when it’s safe to come out. It’s not like they can live in that tiny office.” Celeste rested her hands on her hips and took stock of the almost-pile of Hunters.

  Don’t ask me why we’d decided to pile them up; it’s just what they do on TV.

  “No one’s getting anything…else…to eat until we deal with this mess.” She retreated back the way she came.

  “Why don’t you call Marie and see if she knows of a good service for something like this,” Marcus suggested.

  I had no idea why a peaceful succubi leader, who only used her energy manipulation powers to heal others and have fantastic sex, would have contacts for a body-removal service, but I doubted the human winery owners could point us in the right direction, so it was worth a shot.

  Renee scoffed. “No, thanks. We’ll be just fine without the manipulating succubi. Especially that one.”

  Old xenophobia dies hard.

  “No, he makes a good point,” I said, speaking more from a desire to fill my growling stomach than actual logic. My coterie had gotten accustomed to Marcus, though I wouldn’t say they
liked having him around by any stretch of the word. Abigale appreciated him. Shawna needed him. And I had the hots for him and still waited on bated breath for the moment we could spend a full night together rather than midnight rendezvous while Shawna slept. The others weren’t too keen on the male. Not that they didn’t like him; they barely made an effort to get to know him. I couldn’t blame them, though. If I were in their shoes, I’d probably feel the same way.

  “This isn’t our territory,” I added. And maybe Marie would know of someone who discretely disposed of bodies. She might be peaceful, but she was also highly sexual, and I could imagine how many secrets were spilled between the sheets with a succubus. “Most of you have never even left Washington until yesterday. How will we know what to do with the bodies? We don’t even know our way around without a GPS.”

  “So we’re in agreement?” I said, pulling my for-now-phone from my back pocket. I inspected the screen for cracks while I waited for a unanimous response. Not one crack. The heavy duty case had been worth its expensive price tag.

  “Fine,” Renee said with all the grace of a toddler whose opinion had been overruled.

  My sisters and other aunts nodded, and I called Marie. We hadn’t spoken since the Wild Women left our home to go back to theirs the day after we leveled the Washington Hunters’ complex. I’d been meaning to call, to discuss the dates for the next Wild gathering in North Carolina to overrun that Hunter complex. But honestly, I’d been putting it off. I needed to rest and unwind before playing mind games with Marie again.

  “My favorite huldra,” Marie answered with a smile in her voice.

  “I have a favor to ask,” I said, cutting to the point. The quicker we cleaned up our mess, the quicker I could sit down to a table and order food.

  “What? Did you lose another sister?” Marie laughed and a man moaned from her side of the call. Was she ever by herself?

  “Nope, all huldra are present and accounted for. Your Oregon Hunter complex is missing five members, though.”

  The phone rustled and a door shut. “You killed Oregon Hunters?” Marie asked with a whisper. It interested me what Marie deemed private versus what she deemed public.