Wild Women Collection

by Rachel Sullivan

  I made it to her before he could, though I didn’t know how—it all seemed a blur. She fell into my arms and I almost dropped from the sudden weight. I refused to lay her on the ground and hover over her as I had Aleksander. I refused to let her fall.

  “Shawna! Shawna! Stay with me,” I begged. “Please. Marcus!”

  Marcus caught us both up in his arms, helping me stand by carrying some of Shawna’s weight. My legs shook with shock.

  Blood pulsed from my sister’s left shoulder. “It’s just a shoulder wound,” I assured her and myself. “No major organs. You’ll be okay.”

  “I think,” she ground the words out through pain. “I think the bullets are made with bloodstone. It hurts like a motherfucker.”

  “Grab her,” the middle Hunter told the others. Marcus and I looked up, away from Shawna, to the three Hunters. Marcus released his hold on us and I leaned to the side before righting my stance enough to hold my sister up. He spun around to fight off his ex-brothers.

  Arms grabbed for me, and I clung to Shawna tighter. I wouldn’t let them separate us. No, not again. I screamed into the woods, to the trees, to anyone who would help us, who would help my sister. Arms wrapped around my waist and heaved me backwards. Still, I wouldn’t let my sister go. Marcus left the Hunter he’d been fighting and stabbed my attacker in the side with his dagger as he punched the man in the face. I pulled from my attacker’s grip and turned to choke him with my vines.

  One shot rang out so loudly, everything else rang around me with a muffled hum.

  Marcus dropped.

  I screamed. My huldra wailed.

  Arms grabbed at me again and another set of hands pulled Shawna from my arms to dump her in the dirt.

  I fought for my life. I fought for my sister’s and my lover’s lives. My huldra thrashed and bit for freedom. The taste of copper filled my mouth as I spit out a chunk of flesh and went in for another.

  Something scorching hot pierced my side and then something heavy and burning was draped over me, rendering me motionless, weak. Hunters hauled me away from Shawna and Marcus, away from the complex, and deeper into the forest, away from the fire and the fighting.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. And soon, even opening my mouth grew too difficult.

  Thirteen

  I sniffed the air to ensure I was alone before peeking my eyes open. I half expected to find myself in a boxed cement holding cell with the two captured rusalki sisters. What I found appeared to be a room twenty stories up in a city full of high rises. The sheer drapes pulled shut left little to my imagination about my outdoor surroundings.

  The Hunters were nothing if not clever. Trap the rusalki in a cement box to keep them shielded from their Great Mother. Trap a huldra, who grows vines, high enough up in a city to keep her from accessing the ground and planting roots beneath the building. I’d never tried to break through layers of concrete with the vines from my feet, though I figured I could if I had to. But twenty stories worth? Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

  I sat up slowly, waiting for a cocktail of drugs to hit my head and swirl my thoughts. Nothing happened, outside of the scorching pain in my side each time I used my ab muscles. Trying not to move my torso, I peered around my bed and then to my arms. No green liquid-filled IV bag, no IV stand at all. But damn my thigh ached. I leaned forward in the twin bed and the pain in my side made me immediately wish I hadn’t. I held my core perfectly still as I rubbed my right thigh and winced from the soreness of touching it. Another scorching pain shot up from my right side and I lifted my shirt to see what the hell hurt so badly. I peeled away a rectangular strip of fresh gauze framed by medical tape. A small patch of blood covered the inside center of the bandage.

  I touched the slit made into my side and sucked in a breath. Recollection hit me like a Mac truck and made my head swim worse than any drugs could ever do. I sprang from the bed. My dirty bare feet hit the floor shortly before my knees followed, my whole body screaming in pain.

  The wound in my side had been made by a Hunter’s dagger…when they took me…and left Shawna, Marcus, and Aleksander to die.

  “Shit,” I cursed quietly so no one would hear me as I worked to pull myself up and make my way to the window overlooking a city. The dagger went through muscle, core muscle my body used for basically every movement, which meant just walking burned like a scalding knife.

  The room I was being held in looked like any other master bedroom, with a door open to an en suite bathroom, night stands on each side of the bed, a black six-drawer dresser, and various pieces of framed art sprinkling the walls, all of skylines and architecture. Whoever lived in this place didn’t have much of an appreciation for nature.

  Who was I kidding? A Hunter lived here. I stood as pain ricocheted through my core and legs. I wanted to snoop through the room before someone heard my rustling and came to shoot me up with some of their famous Hunter drugs, enough to knock a Wild out for days. I couldn’t defend myself in such a weak state. I needed help in the form of something sharp.

  I slowly winced my way to the bathroom and searched through the drawers under the sink for scissors or a razor or even a pair of tweezers. All I found was Q-tips, towels, and travel size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. Oh, and my pathetic reflection in the mirror. Dark half-moon bags hung under my bloodshot eyes. My auburn hair held knots at the back of my head like a crown of matted hair. Dirt smeared along my jaw line and elbows. My lips were cracked and bleeding. I stared at the faucet a moment before realizing how thirsty I was. I turned the knob and scooped water from my hand into my mouth, the movement of bending over the sink shooting burning agony through my abs. The water still ran as I braced my arms on each side of the sink and sucked in enough air to help me push myself to standing again. The sudden need to pee forced me over to the toilet where once more I pushed through the pain to sit and then stand again.

  Well, if my captors hadn’t heard me falling out of bed, they definitely heard the toilet flushing. I tried to push past the throbbing in my abs to hurry back to bed and realized I should have checked the bedroom doorknob first, before looking out the window and searching the bathroom. I’d not finished climbing into bed when the sound of keys jingled outside the door and the knob turned. Okay, so I had assumed right, it had been locked.

  A woman, standing around five and a half feet with mousy brown hair pinned up in a bun entered the room. Clarisse.

  I groaned. “Ugh, I should have known you’d be involved in this.”

  She held a folded red blanket in her arms as though she held the ceremonial pillow a queen’s crown rested upon. “Now that you’re up it’s time to move you,” she said as though nothing were out of the ordinary; as though I weren’t being held against my will.

  I thought to ask if this was how they transported their human trafficking victims but decided against letting her know I knew about their latest attempts to sell young Wiccan women. Not when we were so close to exposing them.

  If there was any of us left.

  The alae had planned to torch the complex. I hoped the Hunters didn’t detain them first. I hoped my loved ones got out of there before the place went up in flames.

  Wait. Heather. She was supposed to have met up with a person we believed was a Hunter or Hunter’s daughter masquerading as a Wiccan to collect what they deemed as throwaway women to sell to the highest bidder. How long had I been here? Oh, Goddess, I hoped Heather was okay. Her incubus boyfriend, Mason, probably would have accompanied her, but I doubted the two of them could outfight a group of Hunters.

  “Where are you moving me to?” I asked as Clarisse hesitantly eased toward me and then quickly threw the blanket she’d been carrying over my shoulders like someone who’d throw a net over a wild animal.

  “Ah,” I groaned, the weight of the blanket uncharacteristically…exhausting. “What is this?”

  I shrugged to try to push the thing from my back, but my ab muscles shot another burst of hot pain through my body.r />
  Clarisse jumped back. When I ground out a sound of pain from the movement, she quickly reached forward and clasped what looked like the two corners of the blanket around my neck. She jumped back again.

  I looked down. It wasn’t a blanket, but a shawl of sorts. I lifted a heavy arm to rip it off of me.

  “It’s no use,” Clarisse said. “The clasp is locked and neither of us have the key. Plus, they’ve embedded tiny red stones all through the shawl. That’s the red sparkles you see in the pattern.” She tilted her head. “Oh, you can’t see them. They’re on your back.” She shrugged her shoulders and lifted an eyebrow. “Well, I guess you should have changed me and made me one of you when you had the chance, huh?”

  The sadistic woman was referring to the day Marcus, Azalea, and I rescued Shawna. Clarisse had been in the attic when my inner huldra broke free and tore apart the huge Hunter holding my sister captive. Clarisse had admitted to being part of the human trafficking ring, taking the blame for organizing it, and begged me to make her a Wild Woman. Little did she know, it didn’t work like that. Not that I would have “changed” her even if it did work the way she believed.

  She’d killed the rusalka Azalea that day and I’d sworn to her that the rusalki would make her pay for her crimes against their coven. Yet here we were, me being held captive and Clarisse still alive. With the help of her Hunter family, she’d officially skipped bail shortly before I’d picked up Samuel Woodry from Pike Place Market in Seattle.

  I closed my eyes, took a breath, and opened them again. I was in no place to make Clarisse even more of an enemy. I had to play nice, as much as it disturbed me. “Can you tell me where they’re taking me?” I asked semi-politely.

  Clarisse turned to me as she placed her hand on the bedroom doorknob. “I’m not authorized to give you that sort of information.” She opened the door and walked out.

  Within minutes of her closing the door behind her, it opened again and four armed Hunters entered the room wearing what looked like nylon breastplates with bloodstones stitched into a dagger pattern on their chests. The Hunter organization had been getting more and more creative at using Wild Women’s kryptonite, the red bloodstone. Of course, it didn’t work nearly as well on post-menopausal Wilds. Too bad menopause was nothing more than a far-off reality for me.

  With bloodstone draped across my shoulders and on the Hunters, I was rendered helpless. My vines and branches couldn’t grow; it subdued my huldra in lethargy. Not that I’d felt her much when I’d woken up here, but now I knew for sure I couldn’t rely on help from her. Two Hunters stood at the foot of the bed and the other two each took a side.

  “Stand,” the two at the foot of the bed ordered.

  I tried, but my side wound burned with searing pain and my right thigh ached too deeply to use the muscle. The movement from before had been too much. The Hunters at my sides grabbed my biceps and heaved me up, dragged me across the bed, and stood me before the other two.

  I screamed out in agony.

  “Let’s go,” one of the Hunters said as they heaved me forward, dragging the tops of my feet across the wooden floor when I failed to move them quick enough to walk on my own.

  They hauled me through the otherwise empty penthouse, void of furniture and decorations, and into a private elevator. After a short ride up, the elevator doors opened, greeting us with a gust of wind and the whirring sound of a black helicopter ready for takeoff. They loaded me into the thing and squished in beside me. Clarisse sat inside waiting, her headset over her ears. Once the Hunters holding me situated themselves, their headsets in place and safety belts on, the helicopter lifted off the launch pad and flew out of the city they’d been holding me in.

  I fought my growing exhaustion to stay present, to watch the helicopter’s route as it flew over farmland and forests. I accidentally nodded off a couple times, but finally woke with the jolt of the helicopter’s rails hitting the ground. The Hunters’ lips moved, speaking into their headsets, but seeing as I didn’t have a headset and my huldra abilities were on the fritz, I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  I studied my surroundings. Turned out, I hadn’t needed to keep an eye on the route we took in case I needed to tell the rusalki where I was, or in case I had the opportunity to escape. I knew exactly where the Hunters had taken me.

  The three higher ranking Hunters who’d seized me at the Maine complex waited a distance away from the helicopter with serious expressions and arms at their sides as though they stood at attention. They kept the same formation they’d had last time I saw them.

  A Hunter from inside the helicopter flung the door open and another pressed his hand into my back, shoving me out and onto the ground. I rolled to my back, grabbing the throbbing pain in my side, holding in a shout. Hunter boots made their way near my face and I stiffened, preparing to be kicked in the face. They heaved me up from the ground and forced me forward, toward the three higher-ranking Hunters.

  “Hello, huldra eight-two-zero-one-three,” the middle Hunter said after blowing a puff of cigar smoke into my face.

  I coughed, which sent scorching pain through my abs. Goddess, I hated muscle wounds.

  He flicked ash from the end of his cigar and seemed to study it. “Don’t mind this,” he said, bringing the thing to his lips again. “We’re just celebrating the successful capture of the leader of the little revolution you’ve started.”

  The two Hunters beside him gave deep laughs and puffed their cigars.

  Dicks.

  “Take her to her room,” he said as he and the two others turned and walked toward a large curved-top wooden door outside what looked to be a huge circular brick building.

  He paused and didn’t bother to turn to face me. “Oh, and welcome to the North Carolina Hunters’ complex.” He coughed out a laugh and continued walking.

  Fourteen

  Captain Dickwad had called the space I now stood in my room, but it felt more like a cell to me. Either the Hunters were getting cocky or they knew I had no chance at escaping, because they hadn’t even bothered to put a bag over my head as they had led me into a monastery-looking building and up a couple flights of stairs to what looked like old servants’ quarters, down a dank hall, and into this cramped space. Did monasteries have servants’ quarters? Maybe this was the area for lower ranking monks. Did monks have rank?

  If I lifted my arms out to the side, each would touch a wall, but my side wound urged me not to try.

  Once the Hunters had brought me into my room, Clarisse brandished a key, removed my bloodstone shawl, and closed the door behind her. We’d shared no words.

  Now I breathed in the damp moldy scent of my quarters and wished I’d at least tried to ask her a couple questions. I carefully lay on the smaller-than-twin bed and rested my hands out in front of me, willing vines grow from my fingers. My fingertips tingled and tiny buds pushed up from under my skin, like little bubbles, only to sink back into my fingers. I curled into the fetal position, holding my side wound for at least a small amount of comfort.

  I couldn’t help but think about everyone I’d left behind at the Maine complex. My walk here without a bag over my head reminded me of the first time I’d visited the incubus with Marie in his underground home. I hoped Aleksander was okay. The moist smell of the bedcovering reminded me of the bootleg basement under the harpies’ secret home. Had the mermaids in the tunnel agreed to help yet?

  And of course, I couldn’t get Shawna and Marcus out of my head. I sent a little prayer up to Freyja, begging her to keep my partner sister and the love of my life safe from harm. From the tiny bed, I watched the sun set through a small window encased in iron bars and drifted off to a restless sleep.

  I woke up to the sounds of birds chirping and a girl screaming to be let go. Forgetting my current lack of well-being, I jumped from the bed and threw myself against the door to break it down…and flopped off the wooden thing like a tennis ball on a brick wall. The agony of the impact, let alone the movement of bouncing off it,
made my vision go a little dark.

  Nursing my pride and my side, I hobbled back to bed. That had been right up there with one of my stupidest moments.

  As though someone stood on the other side of the door and realized, from all the clatter, that their abductee had awoken, the door unlocked and Clarisse waltzed in with a tray holding a plate of toast and a bowl of applesauce. She set the tray on the nightstand beside the bed and unfolded the red shawl from under the tray.

  I let out a groan. “Where are you taking me now?”

  “Again,” she stated dryly, as though she blamed me for this fact, “I’m not authorized to share that with you.” She paused and changed her tone. “But you’re not going anywhere until you eat. You missed dinner last night. They won’t allow you to miss a second meal.”

  I started to ask her why, but figured she wasn’t authorized to tell me.

  I considered the food a moment. They weren’t administering drugs intravenously, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t put something in my food. Except, I didn’t feel drugged, just weak. And anyway, if they wanted me drugged, they’d drug me. Not a whole lot I could do about that at the moment. I slowly spooned apple sauce into my mouth as Clarisse watched. After I finished the last bite of dry toast, she held out the shawl.

  “All right, time to go,” she said, as though I were a dog waiting for her to put my collar on.

  I only sat on the bed and stared at her.

  She sighed. “Don’t make me call in one of the guys outside this door,” she said. “I promise you’ll still have this thing locked onto you, but your walk won’t be nearly as pleasant once it’s done.”

  For fuck’s sake. How had my life gone so fast from organizing battle plans to taking orders from Clarisse? I exhaled, stood slowly while placing pressure on my right side, and turned to show her my back. The moment the red shawl rested upon my shoulders my lids felt heavy and I wanted to crumble onto the bed. Before I turned to face her and walk out of the room, I peered down at my hands and tried to grow vines. My fingers only shook with effort.