Full snake. Lovely. I shivered at the thought.
“They’re mentioned in the myths of neighboring countries too,” Olivia continued. “So they seem to travel.”
“Well, she had a British accent,” I reminded.
“About that,” Celeste added. “I looked up Anwen’s name. It’s Welsh for beauty.” Wow, my sisters were digging deep. I hadn’t thought to look up name meanings. But it made sense. In naming me Faline, my mother gave a nod to felines, which were known favorites of Freyja.
“So then, maybe we should search for cobra Goddesses,” Shawna suggested.
My computer must have been newer than Shawna’s because the results popped up on mine while hers was still processing the request.
“Dammit,” I said under my breath, massaging my temples. “I think I found their Goddess.”
“What?” Shawna glimpsed my screen. “Oh.”
“What is it?” Celeste yelled from the bedroom.
“The whole first page of results for a cobra Goddess is of one deity,” I said.
“And?” Celeste prodded.
I sighed. “And she’s Egyptian. Like, early Egypt.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Marcus asked, looking up from the pink laptop sitting on his knees, dwarfed by his size.
“You weren’t taught about Wild Women who came from the more ancient Goddesses?” Patricia asked the ex-Hunter.
“I was, briefly,” Marcus assured her. “But, to be fair, the harpies were created by Inanna, who comes from a more ancient civilization than Egypt, and you aren’t worried about them.”
“The Wild you know is better than the Wild you don’t know,” I said. Marcus’s comment registered in my mind. “Wait. The Hunters teach their trainees about Goddess beliefs and history?”
Marcus chuckled, peering back at the laptop, while sitting on the flower-printed chair. “Not at all. I don’t even think I heard them mutter the word ‘Goddess.’ That’d be acknowledging the possibility of a divine female.” He shook his head while his finger moved around the mousepad. “In matters of Goddess spirituality, I’m self-taught.”
If that declaration didn’t make me want to grab him right then and there…
Aunt Patricia answered Marcus’s earlier question regarding our distrust of Egyptian Wilds from the flower-print chair in the living room. “Wild Women created by Egyptian Goddesses are rumored to have been the driving force behind more than a handful of secret underground cults. At least that’s what I overheard as a child from our grandmothers.”
“Humans call them cults,” Olivia added. “Any belief system that isn’t widely held and doesn’t feature a male at the top is referred to as a cult. Gets on my last nerve.”
“Huh.” Marcus paused from working. “That’s true.” After a few moments of thought he responded to Patricia, who sat on a chair across from him in the living room. “What’s wrong with taking part in secret groups? That’s essentially what you guys are, a secret group who worships a being not widely venerated. You even claim to have received your abilities from said being.”
Patricia searched Marcus’s eyes for a moment. I wondered what exactly she saw—the man behind the Hunter or the Hunter behind the man. “When you belong to an old Wild Women group who’ve planned underground ceremonies and revolts, we can only assume you’ve been raised to believe traits such as sneakiness and rebelliousness are acceptable, honorable even. Plus,” she added in a lighter tone, “they’re more likely to have connections and alliances with unsavory types.”
The room quieted for a few breaths before everyone went back to their work. Or at least we went back to work for a few minutes.
I hadn’t noticed Aunt Renee place the black Dell laptop she’d been using on the table beside her chair until she moved toward the closed sliding glass doors separating the living room from the deck.
“I heard something,” she said when the rest of us watched her look out the window to the deck and yard below. “Someone’s snooping around the house.”
“Did the Hunters find us?” Shawna asked, slapping her laptop shut and standing in a hurry.
Patricia joined Renee beside the glass doors. “Speak of the devil. Who invited the harpies?”
“The harpies are here?” I asked, jumping up from the floor to get a look.
Sure enough, three tall, lean women made their way from the back yard and up the wooden steps to the deck in long strides. Their heads made quick, jerky movements as they took in their surroundings.
“I’ll invite them in,” Patricia said, sliding the glass door open and making her way onto the deck to meet the tall Wilds.
“I’ll join you,” Renee said, following her sister.
It didn’t take long before the two huldra and three harpies stood in the living room. “They weren’t followed, as far as we could tell,” Renee whispered into my ear as she passed by me and took a seat on the couch.
True to form for the harpies, no hugs were given or friendly salutations repeated. The three women stood in a half circle, the coffee table separating them from the couch. They craned their necks in sharp movements, their eyes following, as they took in the Airbnb home.
“What brings you here?” I asked, standing behind the couch. I leaned on the back of the furniture, mere feet above my aunt’s head.
They zeroed in on me.
“We were summoned,” Eonza answered. Golden feathers hung from her blonde ponytail.
“By whom?” I said, reliving flashbacks of the first time I met the harpy outside a golf course restaurant where she’d been trying to pick up the bartender she had no interest in. I didn’t take what appeared to be aloofness as an offense. Harpies often kept to themselves and lacked the desire to appear human. Either that or they kept to themselves because they weren’t able to appear human. I hadn’t quite figured them out. Hell, I’d spent the most time with the succubi and they still confused me to no end. I thought to add another question because Goddess knew Eonza wouldn’t offer the information without my asking. “And why’d they send you?”
Eonza cocked her head slightly and narrowed her eyes. Not being rude, just trying to gauge the meaning of my question. Huh, the fact that I knew that much meant I’d picked up a little knowledge about this flock.
“A rusalka appeared beside our pool as soon as the sun set,” Eonza began. “She told us the succubi galere had been detained by the Hunters and the huldra would need help retrieving them. We flew through the night and day to reach you. Before we reached the apartment complex, we were told to adjust course to this location.”
I cleared my throat as my eyes filled with tears. The support from a known Wild group hit me in the heart and filled me with a deep gratitude from out of nowhere. I thought better of asking if I could give her a hug—when they’d stayed at our common house I’d noticed the harpies weren’t much for physical contact. They just dropped everything to come help us, to come help the succubi, to assist their fellow Wild Women. I hadn’t been giving these women enough credit, but that was changing now.
“We really appreciate you coming. I mean that,” I said with as much inflection as I felt, which was a lot.
“We are tired,” Lapis announced. Her square shoulders released their flex and bent forward.
“And hungry,” the third harpy, Salis, said as she turned to view the kitchen.
“By all means,” I said, motioning to the refrigerator. “There’s a few condiments and sandwich fixings in the fridge and also some non-perishables in the cabinet, but whatever is there you can take.”
The three harpies wasted no time in raiding the fridge and cabinets. Abigale cleared the laptops from the dining table, giving the harpies a place to sit and set their food. Harpies did not eat like birds. The women shoveled cold cuts and cheddar cheese slices into their mouths—a deconstructed sandwich.
“I wonder how many calories it took them to fly all the way here?” Renee, ever the nurse, asked. “How many calories they’ll need to consume to make up for that.�
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“It took us over thirty-five hours to travel here from our home in North Carolina,” Eonza said between bites of meat and cheese. “And that is not including rest stops.”
Marcus said, “Wow,” on a breath and the three faces, full of food, jerked to peer at him sitting on a chair pushed to the far corner of the living room.
They had to have seen him when they came in, but now they watched him as though they’d just noticed his presence.
“I see the Hunter still resides with the huldra,” Lapis said, returning to her meal. Her sisters resumed eating, too.
The tone of her statement didn’t request an answer.
Eonza answered her sister anyway. “I am not interested in mating with a Hunter, but I would like to discuss a possible mating agreement with the incubus.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, trying not to laugh at the harpy’s insistence on getting pregnant. Before she’d left my house after we’d rescued Shawna, she’d assured me she’d wait to conceive a little harpy until after the Hunter complexes, all of them in the United States, were destroyed.
Eonza looked up at me. “Any will do. I’m not particular.”
Her sister Lapis added, “She’s volunteered to make the sacrifice for us. She has every right to decide who she will mate with. And if we can form an alliance through this, it will be more beneficial for our flock.”
My coterie watched for my response. Celeste suppressed a laugh.
I had so many questions, but one kept pushing its way to the front. “Why the incubi, though?”
Lapis fielded this one. “We are small among the Wild Women groups,” she started. “Our daughters will need any advantages we can bestow upon them. To have the protection and possibly the abilities of an incubus only seems logical. Our ancestors were logical in choosing with whom they mated. We should be as well.”
I couldn’t fault them there. But a small part of me broke for their logic. They may not have realized it, but they were forming a back-up plan, in case the Wilds weren’t successful and their small group needed protection. I wondered if this had anything to do with the weak state we’d recently found ourselves in. Would it become a situation of each Wild group for themselves, as it had in the past?
That one strategy of theirs brought forth the tornado of self-doubt I’d been trying to hold back through research and creating new plans. Plain and simple, I wasn’t adequate for the job. And the harpies, the most direct Wilds of the bunch, knew it.
I glanced to Marcus. Is that why he was considering being changed to an incubus, to be able to better protect me because I was too weak and unable to protect myself and my coterie? Did he want Aleksander to change him because of me? Maybe his explanation to be changed so that Aleksander will no longer pursue me held less water than I’d thought. No way was I going to let him go through such an unknown thing because of my inadequacies. First though, I needed to blow the Aleksander-wants-me-as-his-mate excuse out of the water.
“Eonza,” I said, still looking at Marcus. “I happen to have the incubi leader’s phone number. His name is Aleksander. Fair warning, though. I’m told they can’t procreate with humans, not sure if that extends to Wild Women. But if you’re going to align with an incubus you may as well do it with an old and powerful one.”
“Yes?” she answered.
Marcus tilted his head, just slightly.
“I’ll call him and invite him over to meet you. Would you like that?”
Eonza stood so quickly the chair she’d been sitting in scraped along the floor and filled the otherwise silent kitchen. I turned to her. Her blank face reminded me of a woman preparing for battle, steeling away her true feelings of fear and disdain for bloodshed.
“Yes,” she said solidly, tilting her chin up in decision. “I will do this for my sisters.”
Twenty-Four
Since meeting underwater with the rusalki, my dreams had been more the stuff of enlightenment and less the stuff of odd mental knots unraveling their subconscious selves. Tonight’s dream held no difference. I strolled through a temple, its stone walls an orangish color with only candles and moonlight streaming through the narrow openings in the outer walls to light my way.
A woman ran past me, holding the hem of her linen robe to keep from tripping. As she passed, she yelled for me to hurry, they were coming and we didn’t have much time. I picked up my pace to follow her. She led me to a small alcove of a room, potted plants lined a round pool in the center, a pool I instinctively knew cleansed away past hurts. I also knew the woman was a high priestess. So was I.
“She Who Is will be here shortly,” the high priestess exclaimed, motioning for me to get into the water. “We must prepare ourselves.”
“For what?” I asked blankly.
Her brows furrowed as she studied me. “For her breath of life, of course.”
A head of auburn hair slowly rose to the surface of the pool. The woman eased her way from the water, pulling her naked body up over the edge. The rusalka Drosera stared at me, her body dripping and her hair long, straight, and clean.
I spun to take everything in and clear up my confusion. “Where are we?” I asked the rusalka. “I thought I was dreaming.”
The priestess peered at me like I was crazy, talking to myself.
Before the priestess had a chance to remind me of anything, Drosera answered my questions. Her words whispered into my brain like unspoken outside thoughts. “You are dreaming. And I am here to wake you. My physical form waits outside your door. Now, you will wake in three, two, one!” She clapped, an unearthly sound, and I shot up in bed.
Marcus shifted beside me, but the movement failed to wake him.
I crept from our bed and eased open the bedroom door, expecting an auburn-haired rusalka to be standing naked, dripping wet, waiting for me. The dark upstairs hallway was empty and quiet. I rushed to the front door and unlocked it, swinging it open without worry of waking those of my coterie who slept in the other bedrooms.
A shadow moved, just slightly, under the darkness of the porch steps leading to the walkway and driveway. Yes, I could see in the dark. No, I couldn’t see through stairs. I jogged down the five steps and peered around the front yard. “Drosera?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
The rusalka, clothed in animal skins, wearing a crown of woven branches and vines, stepped from under an oak tree in the center of the yard. Her green eyes struck me first, they nearly glowed with light, but not in a radioactive way. She smelled like lake water and birch leaves.
“I am,” she responded. “I have come with a message.”
I yawned and stretched, no longer on the defense at the idea of dealing with a possible intruder. “Anwen called me,” I said. “They should be here tomorrow.” I looked back to the closed front door. “Or today; I don’t know what time it is.” Streetlights nearby poured across the wet grass. Early morning dew settled like a crisp mist above the ground.
“I have come to tell you that we spoke to Marie, the succubi leader,” she began.
“How were you able to contact her? You went onto the Oregon Hunter complex grounds?”
She shook her head. “No, we are unable to transport ourselves there for the same reason the succubi are unable to leave.”
“Because there are Hunters guarding it?” I asked.
“Our sister, Azalea, has explained to us the red stones used in the Hunter’s cabin, the ones lining the steps to the attic where your own sister was kept—these blood stones, the very same stones adorning their daggers, inhibit our abilities. It is why my sister had not been able to use the stairs and rather chose another mode to get into the room with your Shawna, weeks ago. Even from the hall they’d weakened her abilities. They weakened yours as well. It is why you were forced to fully unleash your huldra to fight off the Hunter. It is why you blacked out.” Drosera paused and looked to the side of the house. I followed her gaze, but saw nothing.
“Marie has told us that her and her sisters chose to attend check-in because some
did not agree with the new decision to hide underground,” she continued. “They believed the decision too large to make at such a moment’s notice and thought it best to discuss it further. Attending check-in would give them that time.”
“The incubus said as much,” I told her. “I didn’t know whether to trust him or not, though.”
“He is trustworthy,” she explained, “in the way a housecat can trust a lioness. The two may seem connected, but they come from very different worlds. The house cat is aware of her bondage, the lioness lacks the knowledge that such a thing exists.”
“Still,” I muttered mostly to myself. “It feels good to know the succubi galere, at least some of them, didn’t really want to abandon us. And now they’re imprisoned for that choice to hold off on going underground.”
Drosera squinted at me. “You take too much into yourself. The decisions of others directly reflect their beliefs about themselves, not their beliefs about you.”
I waited for the feeling of a brain massage to enter my skull, but nothing came. “Can you not read minds anymore?” I asked.
“We can, but if unnecessary, it is best that we save our energy. I must finish my message and leave,” she said.
I waited for her to continue. After looking around and watching the side of the house again, she spoke. “The succubi believed they would be able to thwart any opposition from the Hunters by using their abilities. They assumed that after helping with the Washington complex, there was a chance that they would not pass check-in.”
I almost asked why they hadn’t mentioned that to me when we’d discussed the topic, but I let her finish because she seemed as though she were on some sort of timeline. I didn’t know much about rusalki ways and figured maybe she lacked the energy to stay very long and still return to her sisters. Also, I appreciated Drosera’s forthright explanation. In the past the rusalki would explain concepts with parables. Tonight Drosera seemed to find a way to get to the point.
“However,” she continued. “They planned to use their power over energy to persuade the Hunters to allow them to pass through check-in and release them. They did not foresee the Oregon Hunters covering their classroom walls with blood stones.”
Wild Women Collection Page 42