“Some would call them the cousins to succubi,” she answered. “Some would call them our brothers.”
I suppressed a groan. “And what do you call them, Marie?”
“Before they showed up in Portland, I hadn’t called them anything. The humans, though, they call them incubi. Incubus. Our male counterparts.”
Well, shit. Males with all the power of a succubus and twice the size. I’m such a lucky lady. Now I wished Marie had softened the blow with a little energy manipulation.
Five
When Marie opened the door to a first-floor apartment, four succubi were finishing up cleaning the place. After quick hellos, the four left with a broom, rags, buckets, and a mop in tow. Marie didn’t have to say the words for me to know that her giving us the bottom floor apartment was her way of showing us we were free to come and go. I appreciated the sentiment.
“There are two bedrooms,” she said as she stood in the doorway and the three of us moved around the small living room-kitchen combo, taking in our surroundings. “One has two twin-sized beds and the other has a double.”
I leaned on the white-tiled kitchen counter. “That won’t work. We need to sleep in the same room.” I trusted Marie…to an extent. But I didn’t trust her with my life. Or more importantly, the lives of my sisters. Sleeping apart from one another was unsafe.
“It’ll be fine,” Celeste said, brushing off my concern. “I’ll take the double bed so that my sisters can share a room. Thank you, Marie, for giving us our own space.”
Marie’s smile warmed until her eyes smiled too. She gave Celeste a slow nod. “It’s that one.” She pointed to a closed door across from the entrance to the apartment.
Celeste peeked into the room.
I assumed Olivia’s and my room was the next door over, but I was wrong. Still, I toured the little bathroom with its single sink and claw foot tub. The next door over belong to us, our temporary bedroom. Dark tapestries made up the bed coverings and curtains.
“There’s microwavable meals in the fridge. You know where to find me if you need anything. I’ll be around tomorrow morning at seven to pick you up.” Marie left the apartment and shut the door behind her.
After a more snoop-centered tour of the place to check for cameras and anything of the sort, my sisters and I convened on the dark green couch beneath a wall painting of Lilith. She stood tall and proud, her white eyes glowing against dark skin. Snakes wound around her naked forearms and calves like jewelry.
I folded my legs beneath me and rested my back against the couch’s arm. “What do you guys think?”
“I want to help them,” Celeste said. She pulled her knees to her chin and faced me. Olivia sat on the middle cushion, between us.
“Of course you do,” I uttered under my breath.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Did you feel your emotions shift at all while we were up at her place?” I asked. “Like, one minute you felt one thing and without a reason that feeling went away and was replaced by another?”
“No, Faline, Marie did not manipulate my emotions. She’s a good person.”
“How do you know what kind of person she is?” I asked, offended that my sister took offense to my protectiveness. “You’ve barely talked to her.”
“Marie and I trained together at our house,” Celeste informed me with a raised voice. “We ate meals together. I’ve taken more time to get to know the succubi leader than you’ve taken to get to know any of the other Wilds.”
Olivia raised her hands between us. “You two are getting too loud. They’ll hear us.”
I spouted off, “Well, according to Celeste, it shouldn’t matter if another Wild group hears us, right?”
“We’re all on the same side,” Celeste reminded.
“We. Don’t. Know. Them,” I stated through a clenched jaw.
“Because of the Hunters. We don’t know them because of the Hunters, Faline,” Celeste countered. “Not because the other Wild Women are bad or unsafe to be around. The Hunters fed us lies to keep us apart, to divide and weaken.”
“Yeah, the Hunters lied to them too, about us. What do they still believe? We don’t know. And until we do, they aren’t safe. They don’t have our best in mind. They have their own in mind.” I let that little fact sit with Celeste for a moment.
“And whose best does your Hunter have in mind?” Celeste scoffed. “You’re lecturing me on connecting to a succubus when you’re sleeping with a fucking Hunter.”
Olivia shot Celeste a shut-up glare.
“No, she needs to hear it,” Celeste insisted. “Marcus is the huge male elephant in the room, even when he’s miles away. I get why Shawna insists on having him around, in a weird and twisted way. But you? Why do you insist on having him around, Faline? Does he make you feel more powerful or something? Because I don’t get it. None of us get it.”
My sister’s words knocked the wind from my pipes and I stuttered to give her an answer. Except, I had none to give. Her concerns echoed my own private thoughts. Why Marcus? Was it some seduce-the-oppressor crap I dealt with mentally to make me feel more in control than I actually was? No. “I liked him before I knew he was a Hunter,” I heard myself saying.
I’d forgotten. Our jail-house chats and argument of superheroes and heroines over dinner seemed like lifetimes ago. When I thought he was human and he assumed the same of me. When life was so much simpler.
When life was so much more laid out for us, chosen for us by the Hunters.
With self-empowerment came layers of personal truths, some messier than others—all foreign and in need of close examination. That’s the hard part. Examining my own heart.
“He has proven his loyalty.” I closed my eyes before speaking the words begging to come out. I couldn’t look my sisters in the eyes when my true feelings saw the light of day. I couldn’t stand to see their disappointment in me. “I have feelings for him. Deep feelings.”
Olivia sighed and touched my knee. I opened my eyes to see Celeste’s filling with tears. She bit her lip and shook her head. She had to have known. Wasn’t it obvious? But maybe the confirmation was too much.
“But he’s a Hunter,” Olivia said gently.
“You guys keep saying that,” I said. “Don’t you think I already know? Don’t you think I hate it a thousand times more than you do? But he betrayed his own kind for our cause. That counts for a lot.”
“It’s just, his past is his past. He can’t help who he was born to,” Olivia said. “But, Faline, we know close to nothing about Hunters, other than they are supernatural. What if something in him is triggered, something he doesn’t even know about? And he can’t control his strength, his urge to dominate you, to control us, physically, mentally, and however else they do it? What if he gives us up to the Hunters by following an order he can’t deny?”
I thought of the night I’d blacked out and killed a man. How I’d thought my huldra had taken over without my consent because I was born that way, evil to my core. But I had been wrong. My huldra protected me, strengthened me, because I worked with her and not against her. I shook my head. “I have to believe they aren’t born with the uncontrollable urge to hurt and lord over us. I have to believe it was ingrained in them, like fearing our abilities was ingrained in us.”
“Would you risk the safety of your coterie for that belief?” Celeste asked.
I swallowed the burning lump in my throat. Of course I wouldn’t risk their safety.
“I support you. I love you,” Celeste said in a softer tone. “I just worry you haven’t thought this through all the way. I don’t want to see you get hurt. I don’t want to see any of us get hurt.”
Neither did I.
I leveled with my sisters. “You’re right, I haven’t thought about this in detail. I don’t want to, if I’m being honest. I don’t have the headspace for it right now. I’m thinking of the survival of our kind. I’m thinking of the future for the next generation of Wilds and the one after that
. I want our daughters to grow up loving the skin they’re in rather than suppressing their strength to gain acceptance from their oppressors—literally having their skin marred with a number as though they’re nothing more than branded cattle. I want them to be whatever profession they desire and not have to cower down to some asshole Hunter telling them that their thoughts don’t matter, that their life and happiness is not equally important.” My voice cracked. “I’m thinking about things like having my mother back in my home someday, in the room next door to me, safe and proud of what her coterie accomplished.”
“We realize you’ve done a lot for us. And we appreciate it,” Olivia said.
“Really?” I asked. “Because it doesn’t feel like it.” It had been a while, since before the night I’d blacked out, that I’d had an honest and open conversation with anyone other than Marcus. And it felt cathartic to get it all out and on the table. “I don’t like the role I’ve been put into. I don’t want it. But I want what’s best for my coterie, for all Wilds, so I’ve accepted it. But every day I struggle with uncovering the real me, who I would have been without the Hunters governing our lives, which parts of me are products of their brainwashing and which are my own.”
“We’re all going through that,” Olivia said.
“So are the succubi,” Celeste added. “Marie is trying to lead a galere of succubi who can see and feel the emotions of others, with a confidence she’s not sure she has. Consider how challenging that is.”
“But is she trying to lead a war?” I started to say, but then realized the words came from a place of hurt. “I shouldn’t compare struggles.”
My sisters nodded. Celeste and I scooted closer to Olivia until the three of us met in the middle of the couch. We held hands like little girls, like best friends.
“I know this is hard on all of us,” I whispered.
“It is,” Olivia said as she squeezed our hands. “Thankfully, we’re not going through it alone.”
“But if we don’t talk about it, compare notes and support one another, it’s as if we are going through it alone,” Celeste added. “So can we be more open, talk through it with each other without fear of stepping on toes and hurting feelings?”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Me too,” Olivia agreed.
Olivia pulled us in for a group hug before standing and stretching her legs. “In one day we tasted wine, beat up a group of Hunters, and found out incubi actually exist. The sun is down and I’m ready for this shitty day to be over.”
Celeste gave me one last squeeze before hopping from the couch and heading to her bedroom for the night. She shut the door behind her.
Olivia made her way to our room and stopped at the door. “You coming?”
“In a minute,” I answered.
Olivia shut the bedroom door behind her, leaving me alone, standing in front of an altar to Lilith. I rubbed the Freyja pendant hanging from my necklace as I watched the candle’s firelight dance. The succubi who’d opened their home to us prayed to a Goddess in the same way we did. Burnt incense lay in the hollow part of an upturned turtle shell. A small snake skin lay atop a dark velvet runner across the back edge of the altar.
Like the snake, as we grow, we shed our old ways of thinking and beliefs, our old skin, to don new selves. Lilith has been demonized by many for having the attributes of a snake. But according to my mother’s whispers, before the Hunters came to be, people revered the snake for her ability to grow and change despite the discomfort it entailed. “They honored the snake,” she’d say during bedtime stories. “For the snake conquered death to live anew each time it lost its skin. Much like we women bleed monthly and do not die. This is why the Hunters demonized Lilith. Because Lilith could do what they could not.”
I kept the candle burning and let my mother’s words sink in as I made my way to bed. Had I demonized the succubi because they had abilities that I didn’t? Was I also guilty of fearing the unknown?
And if my answer was yes, where did that leave me in regards to the horde of who-knows-how-many incubi who currently lived within the same city I slept tonight?
Six
I shot from my temporary twin bed with a start and canvassed the room. Olivia rolled in bed to face me. “What is it?” she asked.
The sun hadn’t risen yet and a nearby streetlight sprinkled light through the window into our room.
“I heard something, movement, outside our door,” I answered.
Olivia flung the sheet out of her way and stood beside me, at the ready to burst through the door. She stood in a t-shirt and panties, not bothering to throw on her shorts she’d draped across the foot of her bed. I held three fingers up, then two, then one, and swung open our bedroom door.
I knew it was unwise to sleep in separate bedrooms, especially while staying in an apartment building full of succubi. A huldra can never be too careful.
The hall was empty. We hadn’t even crept out into it when we heard another noise from our sister’s room. Celeste was in trouble. Shivers ran up my spine. I couldn’t lose another sister, not even for a moment. My coterie had suffered too much already; our hearts couldn’t handle another blow. I motioned my head toward Celeste’s door and Olivia nodded. At once we both ran for her room. Olivia reached the door knob first and gave it a turn before I could smash through the wooden thing that kept us from our sister. I stumbled forward into Celeste’s room, set on rescuing her from a galere of succubi, or at least helping her to fight them off.
But only one succubus lay in Celeste’s bed, her naked body beneath my sister’s. Candle light flickered across their skin; shadows of their intertwined bodies danced across the wall farthest from me. Celeste paused from running her lips along the tattoo of three snakes interwoven to look like a belt under Marie’s breasts, around her ribcage, with Lilith in the middle.
“Can I help you two?” Celeste asked, still straddling Marie.
Marie only smiled at us, her fingers still woven through Celeste’s dark hair.
Awkward silence hung between Olivia and me until she excused herself and padded back to bed as though we’d just interrupted Celeste reading a book or something. And normally I would too, except the story my sister read was printed along the skin of a succubus with every ability to manipulate her emotions enough to invite the huldra to bed without realizing fully what she was doing.
“Your concerns do not belong here,” Marie said with a raspy voice. “Our affections for one another are organic.” She kissed the top of my sister’s head and leaned back onto the pillow.
Celeste caught my gaze for all of a second before scooting up to plant her lips on Marie’s. “You can shut the door behind you,” she offered between passionate kisses.
I backed out of the room, a little jealous and a little in shock. I hadn’t pictured Celeste and Marie together, with Celeste more of the controlling Type-A personality and Marie a leader who didn’t like to be questioned. But, since tapping into her huldra abilities, Celeste’s characteristics seemed to have found their stride, her nervous need to control rested into a comfortable sense of knowing what she wanted and sticking to that. Apparently, she wanted Marie, which brought me to my feelings of jealousy. While falling for another Wild hadn’t been done before, that I knew of, it’d be much more accepted than falling for a Hunter.
I shut the door behind me like I was told.
By the time I’d gotten a drink of water and crawled back into bed, Olivia was sleeping peacefully on the other side of the room. I thought to text Marcus, ask him how the drive back had been, ask him if he was still angry at me for pulling away when he left, but I couldn’t bring myself to open that can of worms, not when a wriggling snake lady lay two doors over from me, under my sister. Not when I currently attended my own pity party of one, wishing I didn’t always have to take the hardest road possible to get to my goals.
Exhaustion gnawed at me, made my mind weak. No, talking to Marcus would be better left for the morning. At least I hoped so becaus
e whether or not I was ready, I had to have a phone conversation with him before seven o’clock, bright and early, before my visit to the incubi.
Seven
Seven a.m. came too early. Or maybe too late. The fogginess clouding my head made it too hard to know. I’d tossed and turned as though worry concerning the incubi resided on one side of my body and fear for the future of Marcus and I lived on the other. And then there was the guilt. The United States Wild Women were prepared to follow me into battle. Hell, they already had once and eagerly waited to do it again. My mind should be on working out the newest kinks in my plan to take down the east coast Hunter complexes—the runaway succubi kinks. Should be. Yet I lay here concerned what my sister’s newest romance said about my own.
As I shuffled from the bedroom and down the short hall to the small kitchen beside the dining table, I was thankful succubi couldn’t read minds. My two sisters and Marie sat at the table, enjoying coffee and making small talk. The talk of friends and lovers, not new allies. Why did that bother me so much?
I chalked it up to lack of sleep as I poured my own cup from the half-full coffee pot and mixed it with a splash of creamer. I took the fourth and last empty chair at the table and drank a few swigs of the java before nodding to my sisters.
“Allow me to give you a tad of energy before we go,” Marie offered. She wore that red silk robe I’d seen her in the first time I’d met her. The time she’d propositioned to have a threesome with me and the strange man on her couch and then later propositioned just me.
Maybe that was it. Maybe I didn’t like my sisters being so friendly with Marie because I knew more about her than they did; I’d seen her more manipulative side. I got to be at the receiving end of her ability to manipulate energy when she had her sisters pin me in place, when she thought me a threat. My sisters only met her once Marie had agreed to join our cause. I met her before, when we were still on enemy terms.
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