Lilith's Children

by Rachel Pudelek

  “Clearly you are not my friend either,” Marie spat.

  “We have no place in this war of yours, and only seek to offer a place of refuge for those who desire it. Nothing more. We will not get in your way.”

  “You will not help us either,” I said.

  “You misunderstand me, huldra.” Aleksander paused. “I am sorry, I should have asked your name much earlier. I would prefer to address you properly, if you don’t mind.”

  “Faline. My name is Faline of the Washington huldra coterie. And if you’re not for us, then you’re against us.”

  “I do beg to differ, Faline.” Aleksander came around the side of the couch to sit beside his fellow incubus. “We support your cause, but not in the way you prefer. We have nothing to lose by standing down and everything to lose by taking up arms. Supporting someone does not necessarily come from a place of agreeing with them, only recognizing their plight.”

  “Seriously?” I scoffed. “You think you understand what we’ve gone through? You don’t, or else you’d be standing beside us, not behind us.”

  “Technically,” Aleksander said with an infuriating twinkle in his eye. “We do not stand behind, or beside, or in front of you. We stand beneath you, in the underground.”

  “Why the hell is this so funny to you?” I said, unable to contain my anger any longer. I jumped up from the couch. My sisters quickly joined me. “If Heather doesn’t return to her galere, they’ll all be imprisoned. And without them, we have no—”

  Marie shot up and sent me a harsh glare. I shut my mouth. Shit, I’d done it again, let my temper get the best of me and showed our cards.

  Aleksander stood and took a step toward me. He reached his hand out to plant it on my arm, but Marie quickly stood between us. “Do not touch her,” she seethed, finally showing her true feelings.

  He stepped back. “I was only trying to help.”

  “Your methods of helping us have yet to inspire any amount of trust on our part,” Marie warned.

  “You cannot doubt that the young incubus and the succubus are in love. She too has a matching tattoo,” Aleksander said, taking two more steps back until his legs hit the couch Mason still sat upon, shirtless. “But beyond that, we’d like to prove our support.”

  “Oh? And how do you plan to do that?” Marie asked, nearing the door to leave. We followed, at the ready for anything.

  “I hear you have a check-in coming up,” he said.

  I almost asked how he knew that—was it what I’d just said or had he already known?—but didn’t want to interrupt him showing his cards.

  “Rather than attend the check-in and risk never leaving the Hunter complex,” Aleksander offered, “come stay with us. All succubi are welcome. Our presence is unknown by the Hunters and they’ve never taken much notice of our existence anyhow. Come. You will be safe and free here.”

  Fear shot through me. If Marie took Aleksander up on his offer, the rest of us Wilds would not succeed in rescuing our mothers and sisters from the Hunters. Without the succubi galere, we wouldn’t be able to take the other Hunter complexes. The harpies were few in numbers, as were the rusalki, who’d just lost a sister at our last battle and hadn’t contacted us since. I couldn’t count on them to show up to the next battle. That left the mermaids. And after the rusalki uncovered some of the mermaids playing double agents, I trusted them about as far as I could see their sneaky scales. The harpies and the huldra were in no way able to take down whole Hunter complexes on our own. And my mother could still be out there, suffering whatever foul plans the Hunters were concocting. I’d made a promise to myself to get my mother back. I refused to accept anything less.

  Marie opened the door to the dank, dark tunnels and left the room, with us huldra flanking her. “I will think on it,” she said.

  Aleksander caught up to us, moving quicker than any other being I’d seen, and pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. “Call me any time, day or night, with your answer. In the meantime, know that your sister is safe. You could be too, if you chose.” He spoke smoothly as though he’d just casually walked right up to us.

  Marie turned on her high heel and walked back down the tunnels, the way we’d come from. Aleksander snapped his fingers and the two incubi who had stood guard outside his chamber door hurried to walk in front of us, leading us out of the maze. One handed us the black fabric head coverings.

  Marie gladly took the bag and placed it over her head, as did I, happy to be free from the claustrophobic underground. And I didn’t have to be able to feel energy to know she was even more ticked than I was about the outcome of this meeting.

  We convened as we briskly walked back to the apartment complex down the busy Portland streets. The morning sun barely shone through the clouds, but even the small amount of daylight made me wish I’d thought to bring sunglasses after spending an hour underground.

  “Bullshit,” I murmured as my boots pounded the pavement.

  “Which part?” Celeste asked.

  “All of it.” I let out a huff. “Of course they want to be Switzerland in all of this. Why would they mess up a good thing? The Hunters keep their every watching eyes on us, which means the incubi can just slink through the night, unnoticed, as they drain human women of their energy and create new incubi.”

  “Maybe the Hunters don’t know the incubi exist,” Olivia offered.

  “No, the Hunters know,” I said. “Marcus didn’t want me meeting with them because of their reputation.” I wondered if the Wilds walking with me bristled at how I connected Marcus to the Hunters, but I didn’t look to find out. I hadn’t meant to do it. From what I’d seen, he’d been wrong about the incubi being overly dangerous. Or maybe he had just overreacted out of jealousy. I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  “And I thought for sure bringing you three would do the trick,” Marie muttered.

  “Why would you think that?” I asked.

  Marie’s heels clicked the pavement in rhythm as she spoke. “I wanted him to see the succubi united with other Wild Women, to know that he’d be outnumbered if it ever came to a fight.”

  Apparently, Aleksander didn’t think it’d come to that.

  A blue-striped city bus rumbled by and my pony tail whipped at my face. I spit strands from my mouth. “They think that cheering from the sidelines is helping us to destroy the opposing team. We don’t need cheerleaders; we need those who’ll stand beside us and join in our fight for freedom. But the free get great comfort from believing everyone else enjoys the same freedom as they do. Admitting that someone is oppressed almost forces anyone with a conscience to help the oppressed group, and so it’s easier to tell yourself they’re fine.”

  We rounded the corner, within sight of the succubi’s white brick apartment building. Trees lined the sidewalk, full of orange leaves, but not nearly mature enough for my taste. Their thin trunks told of life in a city that only recently began appreciating nature.

  “What are you thinking, Marie?” Celeste asked.

  When the succubus didn’t answer, only stared ahead at her home, I added, “You’ve been awfully quiet. Don’t tell me you’re actually considering Aleksander’s offer.” Or was she too angry at her sister to speak? Pissed over her sister’s selfishness in endangering the galere by insisting to stay with her incubus rather than attending check-in together?

  I waited for a reassuring answer, but got none. “Marie, if you and your kind forsake the Wilds, we’re doomed.” There, I’d said it. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to reveal how much we needed her and her sisters, but her silence bore into me the way impending doom twisted one’s insides into knots.

  Marie bounded up the apartment stoop ahead of us and through the front door. At the base of the stairs she paused and turned toward my sisters and me. “Feel free to rest in the apartment we’ve loaned you. I must meet with my sisters and discuss our next move.” She took the steps up to her top-level apartment, two by two.

  All we could do was stand there
and watch as the threads of hope for our kind potentially unraveled.

  Eleven

  When I finally took my throw-away cell phone off airplane mode, it buzzed repeatedly with messages from Marcus. I called him back, filled him in, and listened to him warn me repeatedly about the risks of dealing with a kind of creature I hadn’t wanted to deal with in the first place. It didn’t go well. Even more frustrated than before, I ended the call to join my sisters at the small table. Olivia called our coterie to let them know the latest news.

  “Marie won’t abandon us,” Celeste insisted. “She’s got a good heart.”

  “In all honesty,” Oliva said, “you’ve only spent a night with her. You don’t really know what Marie will do.”

  I fought the urge to openly agree, but my sister didn’t need salt poured on her wound.

  “Either way, we’re going to have to leave our homes soon,” I said, changing the subject for Celeste’s sake. “We know that despite the records burning in the Hunter complex fire, it’s only a matter of time before they find out where we live and our name changes won’t happen soon enough. We need to think about where we want to go. The mermaid’s island is out. They’ve already abandoned it for who knows where. We obviously can’t stay here. The rusalki live in a literal hole in the ground, so that’s out of the question. And the harpies have a nice place on a mountain cliff, but it’s not very big, so it’d be cramped.”

  “I need a time out from all of this,” Celeste said, covering her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I can’t do this right now. It’s too much.”

  I softened my voice, “Okay. We can pick this up later.”

  “I’m going to lay down now. Let me know when Marie returns.” Celeste stood and made her way to her bedroom.

  “A nap is a good idea,” Oliva agreed, standing to stretch.

  I followed her into our shared bedroom, eager for an hour of catch-up sleep.

  “Marie wants to talk to us,” Celeste said, her head peeked through the bedroom door. Afternoon sun streamed through the window and settled on my bed. Celeste left the door open and waited on the threshold, arms crossed, looking impatient.

  Olivia sat up and yawned. “Seriously? She literally just slept in a bed with one of us last night. And now she’s summoning us?”

  My thoughts exactly.

  We rose and followed her out. Celeste refrained from responding as she urged us to move quicker up the steps. When we entered Marie’s apartment déjà vu hit me like a branch to the face. More than ten succubi stood, crammed into her living room so tightly they spilled into the kitchen. Each of them sported some kind of snake tattoo, seen or unseen. All of them watched us, waiting for Marie’s signal. Uncertainty crawled through my mind. Marie wouldn’t use energy against us the way she’d pinned me the first time we’d met, would she?

  Bark tingled to the surface of my skin and spread up my back, wrapping around my waist. A succubus, let alone more than ten of them, would not be stopped for even a second by my bark. But my inner huldra didn’t know or care.

  “Thank you for coming,” Marie said.

  She patted the cushion on her red couch beside where she sat. Celeste shook her head no. Despite my aggravation with her, the sight caused pride to swell in me. The two of them may be lovers, but huldra are always loyal to one another.

  “Very well then,” Marie said as she sat up straighter. “My sisters and I have taken a vote and come to a decision.” She canvassed the room before setting her gaze back on us. “We will pack our things and leave tonight to stay with the incubi.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” I exclaimed.

  Two succubi stepped closer to where Marie sat, one on each side.

  I regarded them with a glare, “Don’t get all in a huff. I’m not going to try anything.”

  Marie gave them each a nod and they stepped back.

  “I am not joking,” she assured. “This is a decision we made for the safety of our galere. You are more than welcome to join us.”

  Celeste bit her bottom lip and clenched her fists. Bark sprang from the skin on her arms, no doubt caused by her perceived disloyalty of Marie.

  “Of course we won’t join you,” I spat. “We had a plan. I will not sacrifice the safety of other Wilds and their missing loved ones to hide like scared incubi. What about our agreement? You agreed to help. We took out the Washington Hunter complex. The huldra are on the Hunter’s radar now!”

  “And you retrieved your sister in the process,” Marie reminded. “You have no more reason to fight.”

  The possibility of getting my mother back gave me every reason to fight, as did saving the mothers and sisters of other Wilds. None of them deserved to live under Hunter oppression. None of them.

  “How could you betray us like this?” I said in exasperation.

  “Why would we continue to fight?” A blonde succubus leaning on the kitchen counter asked. “We have no pawns in this game. They have taken none of our sisters.”

  I shot her an icy glare. “That doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t.”

  “It does when we have a place to hide,” she retorted. “It means exactly that.”

  I shook my head and turned my attention toward Marie. “The huldras are outed. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll be found and have to flee. For all we know, the United States Hunters could be planning an attack on us all, locating our homes and planning to take us all out in one fell swoop.” We didn’t have time to hide and hope things worked themselves out.

  “Then gather your coterie and come with us, underground. You’ll be safe,” Marie answered, looking at Celeste as she spoke.

  “Are you kidding? What about the other Wilds, what about the harpies, and the mermaids, and the rusalki?”

  “I will argue with you no longer. Out of our alliance and friendship, I allowed you to be privy to our plan. But now my sisters and I must prepare; the incubi will be here shortly after the sun sets. But Faline,” Marie added, “I do still see your kind as friends to mine. And because of that, I would like to help you.”

  I threw my hands in the air, exhausted by her games.

  “Aleksander,” she continued, “took a liking to you. He tried to hide it, but I could feel his desire and intrigue radiating like heat from a raging fire. He is an old incubus, I suspect many hundreds of years. But he has yet to learn to hide his tells.”

  I sighed and rubbed my temples. “I don’t see how that can help me.”

  “The incubi live in the dark, in the shadows, watching those who do not know they’re being watched. And at times, they sleep with the most powerful people in the world, people who know things, who utter secrets in the height of the kind of passion only an energy weaver can bring.” Marie stood and walked to the back of the couch, between the furniture and her bedroom. “Befriend Aleksander when he comes tonight, preferably in an intimate way, and receive more than the most pleasurable night of your life.” She rested a tear-filled gaze on Celeste. “When a succubus, and I assume an incubus, finds someone who embodies more than a conquest to them, but rather an interest and something deeper they can’t quite understand, they are likely to give much and ask for little in return.”

  Marie moved to stand inside her bedroom with her hand on the doorknob. Deep red and orange tapestries hung on the walls behind her. Gold and red fabric, covered in gold embroidery, lay across her four-poster bed. Incense burned from an unseen corner and twisted its way past flickering candles, around her, and out toward us. “Please,” was all she said to my sister as they locked eyes. And that’s all she needed to say. Celeste took a deep breath, slouching her shoulders as she exhaled, as though releasing her anger for Marie on a breath. She went to the succubus.

  The two Wilds closed the bedroom door behind them and Olivia and I made our way downstairs. I didn’t know if I’d pretend to flirt with Aleksander for the sake of helpful information. But I did know I had a few phone calls to make. And that whether or not I chatted up the incubus, I was screwed.
r />   Twelve

  “I’ve been trying the rusalki and the mermaids for hours, still nothing.” My aunt Renee released a heavy sigh. The line went quiet as we both considered our options. We’d called our sisters back home after leaving Marie’s apartment. We’d given them thirty minutes to talk and make a few phone calls before calling us back.

  After Marie’s heart-bashing news, Olivia and I regrouped in our temporary apartment and came to multiple conclusions. First, we weren’t hiding anywhere. Wilds had done enough hiding, and clearly that didn’t work out so well for them. So, no thanks.

  Second, our sister’s infatuation with the succubi leader was way more than infatuation—a quickly growing bond we’d do well to respect, however hard that was going to be. And no, the difficulty wasn’t in the part that most may think we had issue with, the idea of a succubus and a huldra together long term. No, it was the idea of a huldra and anyone together long term. Before I ventured out of my huldra territory and into the great big world of Wilds, we Wilds never came into contact with one another. Not that I knew of anyhow. And though maybe mermaids were into hooking up with their shoal sisters, huldras weren’t. It’s one reason why being with Marcus felt so foreign, outside of the whole Hunter issue. Huldra do not do long term. And yet here Celeste was, falling head over heels for another Wild, a woman who could quite possibly be her perfect match.

  And here I was…fighting my feelings for Marcus. Because even if the rules had recently changed, which I didn’t doubt they had, they hadn’t changed enough to allow a Hunter and a Wild a happily ever after. A revolution may be able to happen in a day, but changing minds about who can be with whom—yeah, that takes much longer.

  This led me to my next question of Renee. “Have you and the others there had a chance to discuss Marie’s advice on my befriending the incubi leader?”

  Renee huffed again. “Of course Marcus had no part of this discussion,” she assured me. I’d figured as much, but was still thankful she’d said so.