Lilith's Children

by Rachel Pudelek

“I would never willingly place myself in a bloodline of vampiric ancestry,” Marcus seethed as though the mention of “vampire” turned his stomach.

  “Enough!” Celeste scolded. “Why did Marie go to check-in?”

  “And,” I added, retracting my branch nubs. “Why the hell are you offering to change Marcus for his muscles if your group is made of pacifists?” Something didn’t add up, and my bounty-hunter senses told me that somehow this equation could be connected.

  I turned from Marcus to face Aleksander, who quickly backed up after making eye contact with the ex-Hunter behind me. Marcus must have mouthed something. Either that or Aleksander felt Marcus’s feelings for me.

  “We talked about her going to their check-in, at length, and came to the conclusion that it was in the best interest of her galere to go. Heather agreed to join them if they returned, together, back to the incubi home once they were done,” Aleksander explained with a shrug of his shoulders. So he was concerned enough to have one of his incubi come get us, but not concerned enough to actually act like he cared? Was this an incubi thing or an Aleksander thing?

  Or maybe this was a child of Lilith thing. Marie liked to play games too.

  Marie. How would her galere survive the Hunters? They already had the misfortune of absorbing the emotions of humans around them, how much worse were the emotions of Hunters?

  “Did you actually tell them to go?” Celeste asked with nothing short of disgust. She had to have some strong feelings for Marie if she was blaming Marie’s bad decision on another person.

  Aleksander regarded Celeste. “I did nothing of the sort, huldra.”

  Ah, yes, he was definitely related to Marie.

  The incubi leader went back to leaning against the brick building behind him. “I simply listened to her concerns and her justifications for going.”

  “Which were?” I asked.

  He gave a long sigh as though we were meddling kids and he was the adult we shouldn’t question. I didn’t care how old he was, it tested my patience. Giving him a fierce look, I made bark spring from the tops of my forearms as a little reminder of who exactly he was speaking to.

  He began, “Well, if you must know, she was not quite sure about her galere’s decision to hide underground.” He paused. “We had a leader-to-leader conversation, which, I’m not absolutely sure she’d appreciate my sharing.”

  “At this point, seeing as it’d help us rescue her galere, she’d be fine with it,” Celeste said dryly.

  Aleksander gave a nod and continued. “She believed they were making this choice out of fear, which she deemed an unwise foundation for a decision. She felt that if they went to check-in, it would give her galere one more month to be absolutely sure this is what they wanted. She hoped time would ease their fear and help them to think more clearly.”

  “It makes sense,” I added, thinking out loud.

  “Which is precisely why I refrained from dissuading her,” Aleksander answered. “She also thought that if they experienced what hiding underground would be like, they may change their minds. She wanted to give them the freedom to do that—change their minds.”

  “But the Hunters are on high alert since the destruction of the Washington complex,” Celeste said, putting the pieces of her lover’s decision together like a heart-wrenching puzzle. “And she knows Oregon Hunters attacked us at the winery, probably thinking we were succubi. Why would she knowingly walk into that situation?”

  Celeste had a good point. If Marie would have just stuck to our plan—if she hadn’t asked me to derail my plans to come convince her sister to come back from the incubi—we’d all be heading to the east coast by the time the Hunters figured out the succubi weren’t showing up for check-in. She wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this.

  “She did mention that,” Aleksander said, with a slight brow lift.

  “Then why didn’t you stop her?” Celeste asked.

  “Because she’d assured me that they knew what they were doing when it came to the Hunters. If the Hunters tried anything, they’d manipulate the energy. When they work together, they’re incredibly strong. She led me to believe that if worse came to worse, her galere could take down that complex on their own.” Aleksander pushed away from the brick wall. The four incubi who had been waiting at a distance in the alley walked over to flank him.

  It occurred to me that they hadn’t joined him when he and Marcus were toe-to-toe. How powerful was this incubi leader?

  “Besides,” he added as an afterthought. “How bad can the Hunters be?” He waved an arm at Marcus. “This one doesn’t seem so vicious.”

  Probably not the best comment to make. Not to a Hunter, but most certainly not to a Wild Woman. I closed my eyes for a quick moment to steady my emotions and took a deep breath. To make sure the man beside me didn’t do the opposite, I wove my fingers with his to hold his hand.

  Also, how did he know Marcus was a Hunter?

  “All right, then,” Aleksander said as he walked away from our group with his men. “I think I’ve told you as much as you need to know.”

  He made it halfway out of the alley before I spoke up. “Wait.”

  He turned on the heel of his leather shoes and cocked his head. “Yes?”

  “Did you feel any emotions from Marie before she left? You told us what she said and thought, but not how she felt.”

  A smile drew the corners of his lips upward. “Very astute. I knew there was a reason I liked you the most.”

  I squeezed Marcus’s hand tighter. He squeezed back.

  “She felt unsure, not fear, nothing so basic as fear,” Aleksander said. “Most emotions are difficult to explain to those who can’t feel them like we can, you see, so this is an impossible question to answer thoroughly. But, if I had to give her emotions labels, I’d say unsure with bits of hesitancy sprinkled throughout, covered in ambition parading as courage.”

  He began to turn to leave, but I stopped him with another question. “Why did you offer to turn Marcus if you knew he’s a Hunter?”

  “For no reason other than that it’d make both our lives easier.” And with that, the incubi leader in his casual suit walked out of the damp alley and took a hard left, joined by his men.

  “What was that supposed to mean?” Marcus whispered.

  “I have no idea,” I said, thankful Marcus hadn’t been changed into an incubus.

  As an incubus he’d know I was lying.

  Seventeen

  The walk back to the empty succubi apartments was a silent one, void of words yet full of tension. We knew to be careful when approaching the apartment building; the Hunters could be there waiting for us. But we had to gather our things before high-tailing it to the safe house. Plus, whether or not the Hunters were at the apartment would tell us just how much information they’d already gotten out of the succubi, if they’d questioned them enough to know the Washington huldra coterie roamed their territory. Once we got that bit of information out of the way, we’d know better how to move forward.

  Despite our being blocks from the apartments and unable to be heard or spotted by a Hunter waiting to attack us within the building, my coterie remained silent. I couldn’t decide if my sisters and aunts kept quiet because of the humans passing by on the sidewalk, or if it had more to do with a lack of answers.

  We spread out to approach the three-story succubi apartment building from different directions, slinking around edges of the brick buildings behind and next door to it, crouching behind the tires of a car with Oregon plates parked across the street from it. We waited, unseen from one another, as my coterie took turns giving the all-clear through whistles too quiet for Marcus to hear. He crouched beside the car’s back wheel as I took the front.

  “Okay,” I whispered to him. “That’s six whistles.”

  We stood and crossed the street to make our way to the stoop. “I don’t smell anything different from when we left. Can’t hear any movement inside either. Is there a way you can sense them?” I asked, figurin
g it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

  A smirk nearly smoothed his brow, furrowed in concentration. “No, I can’t sense them,” he said in an amused voice.

  We paused after stepping onto the sidewalk directly in front of the apartment building. I wished we’d thought to bring an incubus, to know if he felt any male energy inside the building. But all things considered, with the lack of movement and sound, I was fairly certain we were alone on the property. I puckered my lips and gave a nearly silent whistle.

  My sisters and aunts answered my whistle by joining us on the stoop so we could walk in together. Marcus entered the building first and I followed close behind to secure the first-floor apartments. Olivia and Celeste jogged upstairs to check the second level while Renee and Patricia checked the third. Once we gave the all-clear in our temporary housing and shut the main entry door, I realized the true answer behind my coterie’s lack of conversation since we’d left Aleksander. The absence of hope had a way of sealing mouths shut and causing hearts to stammer.

  Marcus broke the wordless silence suggesting the end point we all knew needed accomplishing. Except, none of us knew how to actually accomplish it.

  “They’re trapped and we need to get them out. The sooner the better.” His words faded into nothingness when my coterie sat on the couch and chairs as though the weight of the world became too heavy for their knees to bear. “I know for a fact that they won’t be coming home without our help,” he urged, standing and trying to rally the troops.

  When we didn’t respond, he paced the living room, still talking, trying to express his urgency to a group of defeated Wilds. “The ambush we experienced at the winery was the Hunter’s first retaliation attack. I know their methods. They start out small, quiet and private, and then grow. They took Wild Women from their groups. Then they attacked the mermaid’s island where only mermaids would know of the occurrence. The winery was another step up—their way of taking a slightly bigger risk, of feeling things out as they plan their next, bigger blow.”

  His thoughts about the winery attack got Shawna’s attention. She’d been pretty quiet since returning from home, after fleeing from the Hunters’ surprise attack. Reserved. “You forgot their most recent attack on our house,” she uttered.

  “Exactly my point,” he answered, pointing to my partner sister, probably glad to finally get a little interaction from us. “It’s a tactic. They make small advances to feel out their foes. It’s smart really. And proves the different complexes are working together.” He paused, in thought. “It’s almost like a dance, actually. They take a step forward, partly to gauge the reaction they’ll get, and partly to take a small step back and see if there’s retaliation. The whole time, while their dance partner just thinks they’re doing the waltz, the Hunter leaders are studying their partner so they can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’ll have the upper hand in their last dance, their last stand in achieving their end goal. They’re studying the reactions of you all, of the Wild Women, on different turfs. How will you react in public? They tried that at the winery. How will you react in private, when you’re caught off guard? Those were the island and home invasions. Now they’ve captured the second largest known Wild Women group, for a new level of testing their responses.”

  “Stop,” Celeste demanded. “I can already imagine what they’re doing to her. I don’t need you to set that picture into stone for me.”

  Shawna reached over to place a hand on Celeste’s thigh.

  “The largest Wild group is the mermaids,” Renee offered. “If we can enlist them, we may have a chance at getting the succubi galere back.”

  Olivia turned to answer my aunt. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of them. Last I heard, they were leaving their island, but that’s it. It’s like they trashed their phones and dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “Then they’ve abandoned us,” Renee said. “Probably something to do with their alliance to the Hunters.” My aunt, ever the conspiracy theorist.

  “I don’t think so,” I answered. “The rusalki said we could trust the mermaid shoal, for the most part. Only a select few were working with the Hunters. It wasn’t a shoal-wide thing. I don’t think their whole shoal would get behind them on that. Especially after the Hunters ran them off their island, away from their home.”

  “The rusalki,” Shawna uttered, staring at her hand on Celeste’s thigh, clearly lost in thought. I just hoped this talk wasn’t triggering her PTSD. “The rusalki can help us. They may be one of the smaller Wild Women groups, but they are the most powerful by far.”

  “What makes you say that?” Olivia asked from a chair at the dining table.

  Shawna finally looked up. Her dreads fell to the side of her face. She looked ashen. “In the Hunter’s house…” She paused and took a few breaths. Celeste wrapped a comforting arm around Shawna’s shoulder. “In the Hunter’s house, the rusalka whispered things into my mind. I felt so untethered to reality, like I was floating through air, outside of my body. But she met me there, spoke to guide me back to my body. She said energy is everywhere, but the energy of water held a higher vibration than air, so to imagine I was floating in water and to swim back to my body. When I opened my eyes, she wasn’t in the room. And then all of a sudden, she was there. It’s as though they can transcend time and space.”

  Her assessment of the rusalki abilities reminded me of Azalea, the rusalka who’d pulled me from my huldra rage before I tried to kill Marcus. My heart tightened in my chest at the memory. Seeing my partner sister drugged and unresponsive, and the fact that at any time I could go into a huldra rage and attack the man I was falling for, twisted me in unfathomable ways. The reality of that truth did not escape me. Azalea had been killed in the battle, by the Hunter’s woman no less. The woman who Marcus had urged me to leave behind rather than try to arrest and take in for a hefty bounty as the skip who’d been the alleged leader of Seattle’s most notorious human-trafficking ring. Azalea didn’t deserve such a death. It made me sick just remembering how everything went down.

  My head jolted up and my wide eyes found Shawna. “You’re absolutely right,” I told my partner sister. “The rusalki are our only hope.”

  “We haven’t been able to get a hold of them either,” Olivia said dryly, shaking her head in yet another round of defeat. “They’ve never had phones, but they’d told us they’d be in contact. They’re not.”

  My gaze didn’t find Olivia at the table. I stared at Shawna on the couch. “They’re busy mourning their sister, Azalea,” I said. “And I know where they’re doing it.”

  Eighteen

  We threw our suitcases into the bed of Marcus’s dark blue truck and crammed into the extended cab. Thankfully, each time he’d parked his truck at our home in Washington, he’d pulled it into the woods behind the common house, so it wouldn’t be visible from the driveway. So when the Hunters made a surprise house call, and he and my coterie ran through the back door of the common house and into the forest, they made it to his truck in time and went off-roading through our property to the nearest highway heading south.

  We pulled up to the address on the folded piece of paper and gazed at the yellow split-level located in a bedroom community outside of Portland while the truck idled in the driveway. Celeste exited the vehicle first and the rest of us followed. Shawna let her dog, Sepa, down to excitedly sniff the edges of the front yard before locating the perfect spot of grass to relieve herself.

  “I’ll unlock the door,” I announced, making my way up the flower-pot lined cement steps to the yellow front door. I pressed the series of numbers into the keypad of the lockbox hanging from the doorknob, based on what Aleksander had written beneath the house’s address. His handwriting reminded me of the fancy ink calligraphy of historical manuscripts.

  Marcus looked over my shoulder at the incubus’s writing and groaned. “I still don’t like accepting his help. I mean, I get it, but I don’t like it.”

  “We’ll pay him back when this is over,” I assured
him. “Every penny.”

  I opened the door and we stepped in. The house appeared to be a sewer’s retreat. Brochures announcing Portland’s bi-annual quilting show sat fanned out on the entry counter. Ornate quilts hung on the walls and spread over the tops of beds, of which there were many. Five bedrooms to be exact—three on the top floor and two on the bottom, most filled with two twin beds. Marcus and I called the only room with a queen bed, and those of us who had suitcases, left them in our claimed rooms.

  After Shawna set up a mecca of comfort, complete with full water and food bowls and a floor covered in pee pads for Sepa, we locked up the yellow rental. We were met in the driveway by an Uber that Celeste had asked Aleksander to order with his credit card, and got back onto the road for what we hoped would be a turn-around trip.

  The ten-hour flight from Oregon’s Portland International Airport to Maine’s Bangor International Airport took forever. We finally had a possible plan, one that may just work, but a long-ass plane ride stood between planning and action. It was a hurry up and wait situation. Watching the reactions of my coterie to their first ever airport and airplane experience had kept me slightly entertained in the beginning. But after ten hours of the same thing, nothing is entertaining. Not even my aunt Renee’s suggestion to go home to dig up our weapons and bring them with us, just in case, cracked a smile on my face. Although, my response made Marcus laugh.

  “No, Renee, it would have been a waste of time anyways,” I’d answered her insistent idea as we waited to board the plane. “They don’t let you bring weapons, or anything that can be used as a weapon, past those metal detectors we went through. Trust me, I’ve tried.” I’d left out the fact that we were nowhere near our home to begin with.

  Marcus scoffed. “You tried to bring your dagger onto the plane?”

  I’d rolled my eyes at him. “Of course I didn’t get that far.” I muttered the last part, “Gabrielle wouldn’t let me.”