Marcus shut the door and grabbed my hand. “Let’s get back to the action.”
We made it halfway through the large, circular entry area, past the water fountain and toward the hallway leading to the back of the house, when Marcus’s father appeared at the end of another hallway that fed into the entry. He leaned against the corner wall with his hands in his pockets. “Well, don’t you two make a cute couple.”
His black pinstripe suit looked expensive and personally crafted for his height and broad shoulders. A silver dagger emblem attached to a black ribbon hung from his neck in lieu of a tie. “You do realize you just let a human run to her death. She’s carrying a hybrid warrior in her belly, one that’ll surely kill her on its way out.”
So the rogue Hunter hadn’t been misinformed. They were impregnating the human women with Wild Women/Hunter hybrid embryos. I made a mental note to make sure we found the impregnated human women when this was all over and help them. Renee, ever the nurse, would be happy to assist in whatever they chose to do with their pregnancies.
“What are you doing here?” Marcus growled. He placed me behind him.
“Now, that’s no way to talk to your father, son. I raised you to be more respectful than that.”
My heart thrummed in my chest. We needed to join the others, get out of the building before the fire outside burned through to become a fire inside. But we couldn’t leave Marcus’s father alive in the process. And my poor ex-Hunter had a track record when it came to confronting his father in a fight to the death.
Marcus pulled his dagger from its sheath. “You raised me to take orders without question, to hate beings who only want to exist in peace, hell, to hate everyone who’s not us.” He shook his head. “Apparently, the way you raised me didn’t take.”
“Apparently not,” his father said, pushing off from the corner wall to stroll toward Marcus and me. “What’s all this going on out there?” He waved a hand toward the back of the building. “A rescue mission for your revolution leader?”
“Something like that,” Marcus answered, his voice low and his dagger hand at the ready.
His father laughed mockingly. “Do what you will. We’ve already got her eggs; we were going to dispose of her soon anyhow.”
Marcus’s muscles tensed as though he were going to rush his father, drive his dagger into the man’s gut and slide it up as far as it would go. But the front door flung open and froze him in place. A tall, regal woman with long silver and black hair peeking from one side of the hooded portion of her cloak, marched from the door to stand in between the two men.
Marcus’s father’s face softened for less than a second before his brow furrowed again. “Avera.”
Her lip curled and her eyes shot daggers. “Paul Garcia,” she said in a Spanish accent, her tone making it sound as though each syllable left a disgusting taste in her mouth. “I should have known. Where my son is, his father will also be.”
Thirty-One
“And here you are, Avera,” Paul, Marcus’s father said. He ran a hand through his thick silver hair. “To remind me how our son, my son, is a half-breed.” He shook his head, eyeing his son. “Ironic isn’t it? My heroic efforts at bedding a Wild Woman to create you is what gained me my high station, as commander of all American Hunters. When I saw you with this huldra, in Oregon, I had hoped you would follow in my footsteps. I knew you’d figured out the gist of our taking the Wild Women and, I don’t know, maybe it was foolish hope, but I’d thought that if the huldra proved to be with child, your child, you’d turn from your rebellious ways and take your place at the helm with me.” He shook his head in disappointment. “But when we tested her blood, and the pregnancy test came out negative, I did what had to be done, went ahead with our original plan.” Paul looked over Marcus’s shoulder to me. “Don’t worry, when they inseminate your eggs with my sperm, I’ll make sure our son is raised under a harsher hand.”
Marcus rushed his father like an angry bull seeing red.
I saw red too, but for a different reason. My huldra pushed her way to the surface, ready to take over. I’d been told they’d realized the combining of genes, Wild and Hunter, only worked with a Hunter leader, and that it’d worked in the past. It seemed Marcus had been the product of the first time they’d been successful. His father was the leader of American Hunters. His mother…was a Wild Woman.
I hitched a breath, not able to fill my lungs with enough oxygen to keep the dizziness of shock away. Suddenly, it all made sense, Marcus’s ability to be around me and other Wilds without losing his control, his deep desire to protect the Wilds and our ways.
Paul swung at Marcus, but Marcus ducked to the side just in time to force Paul to stumble forward and lose his balance. Marcus swiveled and planted an uppercut into the kidney area of his father’s back.
My huldra thrummed with the need to join in, to defend my man. But my rational self knew Marcus needed this, needed to stand his ground and break ties with his brotherhood in this real and physical way, especially after what he’d done in Oregon. Avera only watched the two men fight, and my huldra hated her for it, for her lack of any kind of empathy for her own damn son.
Paul jumped, unsteady from the blow to his back. He fell forward, but quickly righted himself within a couple steps. He turned to face Marcus and brandished his dagger. He ran toward Marcus, aiming his dagger for his son’s throat. Hurt flashed across Marcus’s face and my heart ached for him as he jumped up and back. Paul’s dagger failed to hit its target, but he made quick work of righting his miscalculation. The Hunter leader spun in a circle, crouched low, and shoved his dagger up into Marcus’s gut. Marcus stumbled backwards, clutching his bleeding stomach.
I moved to rush Paul, my branches out and ready to push into him like a pin cushion.
Avera intercepted me, blocking my path. “The honor is not yours,” she commanded.
I paused, only inches from the xana, and watched my man. Marcus was strong, but everyone needed to tap out sometimes.
“I didn’t want to have to do this,” Paul said, walking toward his son as Marcus tried to get back into battle position with a wound that had to have cut deep. Blood pooled along his shirt and dripped to the tile floor, creating a puddle. “But I knew there was a chance it’d come to this. And when you left the brotherhood, left your chance at moving up the ladder, I figured it was only a matter of time. Even when you re-joined, I didn’t foresee that lasting very long. You’ve got too much of your mother in you.”
I tried to get around Avera, unwilling to allow her screwed sense of honor to govern my need to help Marcus. But she grabbed my elbows and whispered into my ear, “This fight began before you were born. Back down huldra. Paul’s death does not belong to you.”
I shook my head, but didn’t move.
Marcus laughed. “You created me for a purpose.” He exhaled and composed himself again to talk through the pain. “And you’ll kill me because I no longer fulfill that purpose. Don’t pretend I was anything more than a science experiment to you.”
“A failed science experiment,” Paul stated, rushing forward to offer Marcus the final blow.
“Enough!” the cloaked woman bellowed, stomping a foot to the floor in a way that seemed to shake the house and crack the square tile beneath her foot. She raised her hands in front of her and water from the decorative fountain in the entry flew through the air, in a ball, to unroll like a curtain between the two men, blocking them from reaching one another.
She marched toward the two Hunters, her raised hands keeping the water in place.
“You, Paul, forced me into a disadvantageous relationship, under false pretenses, to use me. You took my son, stole him from me, and ordered your goons to end my life.” She stopped at the edge of the water curtain, the liquid swirling and shifting within itself. “And now you seek to kill my son.” Her voice lowered and the water vibrated in place. She glared at Paul. “If you end my son, I will end you.”
Paul chuckled. “I’d like to see you try
—wouldn’t be the first Wild Woman I’ve taken out, and you won’t be the last.”
Paul thrust his hand and dagger through the water to stab Marcus’s throat. Marcus dodged and reached back. Only, when Marcus pressed his arm into the water, the liquid melded around his skin like a protective glove, breaking formation around the dagger’s blade and hilt. Paul tried to push his son away, but the water absorbed the movement. Marcus aimed his dagger down and thrust it into his father’s solar plexus. Paul coughed and stumbled back, clutching his abdomen. His legs gave out and his tailbone hit the floor with a thud.
Marcus pulled his hand back to his body, out of the water, and began to walk around the water curtain to finish the job.
“Please,” his mother, Avera, said, “allow me the honor?” Her eyes searched her son’s, as though she knew having to take his own father’s life, no matter how badly it needed to be done, would scar him forever.
Marcus gave her a nod.
With a swoop of her hands, the water rushed together and formed a waterfall, landing on Paul’s chest.
Terror filled the Hunter leader’s eyes. “No, no, no!” he shouted, as a thick stream of water inched its way up his chest, toward his mouth and nose.
“Your heart is impure,” Avera declared. The water halted, swirling in place, and she opened her mouth to sing.
The melody sounded like the voice of an angel. I fought to stay alert, to keep my eyes open, because I wanted nothing more than to follow that melody into a place of inner peace, to close my eyes and absorb her song into my being.
It had an entirely different effect on Paul Garcia. Blood dripped onto the floor from his ears. He squirmed and clenched his jaw and hands, and when he could take no more, he shouted out, begging her to stop.
She only raised her voice and the strength of her song.
Paul thrashed along the tile, unable to get up due to the water holding him down and his ripped gut. “Please,” he cried, “please stop! I can see them. I can see them coming for me!”
She paused her singing. “Paul Garcia,” she bellowed, “you have been found impure. I sentence you to die.”
The water on his chest gushed into his nose and mouth, drowning him in the middle of the entry of the North Carolina Hunters’ complex. Within seconds, Marcus’s father, the leader of all American Hunters, died.
Marcus clutched his own stomach and fell to the ground.
I ran to him and held his head in my lap, brushing hair from his forehead. “Marcus,” I fretted, “hold on. Just hold on long enough for us to find a succubus. She’ll heal you.”
“I’ll heal him,” Avera announced. She knelt beside Marcus and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed. She raised her hands from her lap and held them above him, palms down. Water streamed from Paul, across the floor, up her body to her hands, and down to Marcus. As the liquid streamed along her hands, it cleared, the blood and other impurities fading out of existence before the water touched him.
It pooled on Marcus’s abdomen, where his father had stabbed him, and a portion of the water disappeared into his wound. The rest of it stretched along his exposed skin, leaving openings for his nose, mouth, and eyes. It spread up his forehead, and over his head, his hair, his temples. Some of it dripped onto me and my jeans greedily absorbed it.
“What are you?” I whispered in awe. “What is he?”
She spoke softly as she worked. “He is the first male xana to be born. I am xana.”
“Are xana like the mermaids and the rusalki?” I asked, her connection to water unmistakable.
“We are not. We cannot breathe water, yet we are of water.” She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, as though a battle wasn’t being fought outside the building we sat in, as though our last stand for freedom wasn’t currently being made. “The water tells me you too are wounded.”
Before I had the chance to confirm her statement, a handful of water splashed onto the right thigh of my jeans, and made its way through the sheet strip I’d used as a bandage to my cut-up skin where my identification tattoo used to live. My thigh tingled and warmed. The pain I’d been fighting lessened and comfort eased into its place.
Marcus opened his eyes and blinked, reaching down to check his stomach. He gazed at me and a goofy grin lifted the corners of his lips. “What happened?”
I smiled down at him. “You scared me there. I thought we were going to lose you. Your mother saved you.”
His gaze shifted to the woman kneeling beside us, pulling the water from us to herself to gather and hold it in a swelling ball. His grin dropped. “You said I wasn’t your son.”
“I lied,” she stated. She collected the remaining water and splayed her fingers wide, causing the ball to unwind into a line that she directed back to the fountain with a wave of her hands.
“Why?” he asked as he sat up.
I moved back to give him space. He stood and reached to me, pulling me up to stand. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head.
“I know,” I said, sensing his mixed emotions of battling his father. I would be his sounding-board later, when we were alone and he felt safe enough to let it all out. For now, I just hugged him back.
Avera stood and smoothed her cloak. She pushed the hood back to fully expose her face and exuded even more regality than I thought possible. “Your ears bled,” she said. “I knew you weren’t full Hunter, or your reaction would be more like your father’s, writhing on the floor. But you have enough Hunter in you to cause your ears to bleed. Too much for my comfort.”
Marcus absently touched his right ear. He studied the bit of fresh blood on his finger. “Then why are you here?”
She sighed. “Because you are still my son and I could not risk losing you again.”
I expected to have to release him so he could hug his mother, but they only stared at one another.
“I have questions,” he told her. “A lot of them.”
“I imagine you do,” she responded.
Was nobody going to share a happy reunion hug? I’d never heard of a xana, but seeing as I’d spent enough time with the rusalki and the harpies, I couldn’t be too shocked that a type of Wild Woman acted so nonchalant about a major life event.
I pulled away from Marcus. He was half Wild Woman, half xana. I couldn’t wrap my mind fully around that fact, only the ways it made sense.
“There’s a war going on outside,” I reminded them.
Marcus stiffened. “Shit, I’ve been standing here.”
“No, you’ve been fighting and almost dying and then healing,” I corrected. “But yeah, we need to get out there.”
“They’ve already made it into the building,” Avera said, turning toward the hallway that lead to the courtyard. “There’s a shift in the air.”
I poked Marcus’s arm. “You’re gonna need to figure out if you can do that too, because that’s really cool.”
“Tomorrow,” he joked. “I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
We held hands, jogging through the entry, past the fountain, and into the long hallway. Screams caught my attention and my huldra rose. “One of those is a huldra scream,” I exclaimed.
“The fire is in the house,” Avera warned as we ran toward the screams.
My heart thrummed. My sisters, my aunts…my mother.
A door in the hall flung open and we skidded to a halt. John stood in the center of the hall, blocking us from passing. Marcus pulled his dagger from its sheath and moved toward the Washington Hunter, his old boss.
John smiled a slimy, disgusting grin. “My friends have arrived. And they don’t like you approaching me like that.”
Four handsome, rugged-looking men walked from the office, each of them filling the space with the scent of seaweed and saltwater. The mermaids weren’t helping the North Carolina Hunters. These men had caused the mermaid-type scent lingering around the monastery hallways and entry. Who the hell were they?
As though John had read my mind, he spoke. “These here are kelpies. Ever heard
of them?”
Of course none of us gave him the satisfaction of an answer. I needed to get past him, get to my coterie. I didn’t give a shit who these men were, business associates of his or something. Well, the human women they’d probably come to buy were gone. They needed to leave before they fell by the hands of a Wild Woman.
“Kelpies,” John said with a gleam in his eyes, “are supernatural males. Their power?” He laughed, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Is killing women.”
Thirty-Two
Why I hadn’t realized it as soon as he said what they were, I don’t know. It must have been the trauma of being in captivity. “Hold on,” I said, interrupting John’s twisted moment of pride over his “friends.” “You’re selling human women to these, these…kelpies…for them to kill?”
I hadn’t thought highly of John since his response to Shawna’s disappearance, but this was a new low for him.
His boastful smile dropped. He looked confused for a moment. “No, of course not. They’re here to kill you and your kind.”
Smoke rolled along the first-floor ceiling like the slow creep of a menacing fog. The old monastery was on fire. I could smell it, and now I could see signs of it. How much worse were the conditions outside the complex building?
My coterie was fighting for their lives and freedoms and every fiber of my being needed to join them, to fight alongside them, in what I hoped would be our last battle. Time to process this news of yet another male supernatural species would have to come later. I gave a quick glance to each of the four kelpies. None displayed any type of obvious weapon. Two stood on each side of John, their hands in their pockets like they were just here to kick back and have a few beers, not kill an entire species of females. But if I’d learned anything in these last weeks, it was that looks could be deceiving.
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