The Siren Series 1: Ember (5 page)

Aubree craned her neck up at the taller
woman, taking in the deep oceanic eyes, the golden hair, the ramrod
straight back and suddenly she smiled, it was sunlight breaking
through clouds. “I am unique. When a sparring partner was needed,
sometimes there was no one else. This is typical of teaching
methods. And,” she spread her arms out helplessly, “ we heal.”
Lucia's eyes took on a slight sheen and she added quietly, “It does
not mean it does not hurt.”

Tarrin frowned, standing. Lucia laughed when
she saw the state of his tunic. “That is beyond anyone's skills, my
love.”

Tarrin looked down at his once-ivory tunic
and sighed.

He had a way of ruining his clothes. It was
now burnt red, somewhere between bright and brick.

“
Aye,” he said with that strange accent of
his and Brandon smiled.

He was an excellent teacher.

And now that Brandon faced the very one he'd
been warned about, he allowed that part of him he kept as second
nature, his Mer side, to come to the forefront now, becoming
first.

Brandon was Druid.

Vampire.

And most assuredly Mer.

When the second call of the maiden came, it
did not come from the one who stood in front of Brandon, with the
rich eyes like low burnt coals, skin that shone like the captured
moon. Whose hair was silvered like fine Christmas tinsel in the
light.

It came from the west of them.

A female of the Mer was in trouble and the
squabbles of their new acquaintance would have to be put on hold to
deal with this challenge.

For like the Druids, the Sirens had very few
females. As Brandon would soon find out, they sought them like rare
pearls, gems hidden in the ugliness of humanity.

CHAPTER 4

Ruby

Ruby jabbed the key into the slot, fighting the
lock like she did each night. With a well-practiced jostle and
lifting of the handle, the thing finally gave and she shouldered
the door open, tumbling inside the seedy back entrance of where she
worked.

Ruby hated her job.

She needed her job.

One of the other girls was taking a little break
from putting her make-up on, taking the straw and inhaling a line
of coke between mascara swipes and eyeliner strokes. After a
mind-numbing snort she shook her hair out, opening plump lips as
she applied her fifth coat of mascara on her eyelashes.

Ruby felt like an out-of-body observer of her
own debauched life.

She didn't cast stones,
there but for the
grace of God go I
, Ruby thought. Then added,
for all the
praying I did, He never answered
.

Ruby prayed a ritualistic habit now. It was all
she had left, and she clung to it like a lifeline. She was running
and this was work she could do that didn't require numbers.
Names.

Information.

If she worked a respectable job, then she'd be
stuck and found. Pinned like a butterfly on a board.

Waiting for
him
to find her. The father
who hated her. Who'd killed her mother.

Who wanted Ruby dead as well.

Ruby shuddered, thinking how good it was that
she revisit what her life had been before so she could live the
hell it was now more easily.

At least that was the repetitive mantra she
lived by.

Irene gave Ruby a look from the reflection of
the glass, mid-stroke on another layer of mascara. “Late again...
Fred's gonna take it outta your pretty hide.”

Her body tensed at Irene's superficially caring
words. Ruby hadn't meant to be late. She worked a coffee shop job,
keeping under the radar at twenty hours per week made them look the
other way on her half-answers. After all, twenty hours a week
didn't require health care, pension.

Or wages that came in the form of an official
paycheck.

Right now she had her week's wages in a roll of
cash between her tits. There they'd stay until she could get home
tonight. Ruby didn't respond to Irene's jab. If Fred saw her and
noticed the time... she'd deal with it then.

There'd be hell to pay if he did. Sometimes her
shifts overlapped and there was nothing short of living in the
streets that could avoid that.

And she couldn't live out of this city. Ruby
escaped to cities that had proximity to the sea within a few
hundred feet. If she didn't live by the ocean she became sick.

Ruby remembered very well her early childhood
and the unspoken looks that passed between her alcoholic father and
terrified mother. His filled with accusation and hate, hers filled
with resignation and longing.

After Ruby's dad beat her mom to death those
stares stopped altogether. Then began again.

With Ruby.

She ran. Ruby ran until the sea called her
home.

She rented a dive that was in a warehouse on the
Seattle waterfront. An unadvertised slummy room.

But it had a window that faced the water and as
she fell into uneasy sleep each night Ruby thought she heard a
faint melody that came from the depths of the ocean.

Singing only to her. It made her neck ache and
her skin tingle. It was also deeply satisfying.

And scary.

It was in the midst of this tender and deeply
kept inner musing that a rough and calloused hand landed on her
shoulder, spinning her around.

She widened her nearly black eyes at the beady
and accusing ones of Fred, her pimp of a boss.

“Late again?” he asked, giving her a
teeth-rattling single shake.

Ruby opened her mouth, her palms already slicked
with sweat, her fear and flight reaction firmly engaged, terror
chocking her instantly.

She nodded her head. Knowing what was to come,
hating it and the necessity of surviving it.

“What are ya wearing tonight?”

“The catsuit,” Ruby replied quickly, hoping to
deter his wrath.

No such luck. That just let him know where his
abuse wouldn't show.

He struck her kidneys savagely, all knuckle
and bone and she went down to her knees, throwing up her meager
supper on the floor at his feet.

“Fuck! Ya stupid bitch.” He pitched her sideways
with a hand on her side and she fell, cracking her head on the
floor. “You're fuckin' cleaning that up too. Shit, if you didn't
look so good on stage I'd bag you here and throw you to the wolves.
But you make me the cash... even though you're an ungrateful
cunt.”

He heaved a disgusted grunt as Ruby lay there,
her back in numb agony, her bladder ready to let go from the abuse
of her organ. Instead she met his eyes, his flaring at whatever he
saw there.

“You creepy crack, stay away from me or they'll
be more of that. Plenty more. Now get your shit on, and swing that
sweet ass into gear. You've got a dance to do.”

Ruby watched him from her sprawled perspective
on the floor as he walked out of the room, the fog of pain pulsing
at her back and radiating outward. When Irene came over with her
mascara wand in one hand and her other bony hand pegged on her hip,
Ruby shut her eyes against her words.

“You're a slow learner, Ruby. Just fuck him and
be on time.” Ruby could hear the shrug in her voice. “It's about
survival you stupid twat. Spread 'em and show up.”

Ruby heard Irene settle herself again in the
make-up chair in front of lights so bright and hot Ruby could feel
the heat from where she lay on the hard cement floor.

There were a few moments of silence that Ruby
thought she could live through, getting over the top of the first
horribly sharp pain. Experience told her it would dull with
time.

Though toilet would hold testimony to the abuse,
the water inside colored with her blood.

As Ruby lay on the floor in all-too-familiar
agony, Irene added, “I call those the two Ss, sweetie; spread and
show, baby... spread and show.”

Ruby hadn't put on her make up yet so she let
the luxury of hot tears slide from behind her tightly shut eyes,
crying for living.

Her survival was more painful because of what
she wouldn't do.

*

Siren

Ember came forward between Constantine and the
newest Mer, an obvious mixed-blood and hoping to act as
referee.

“Who may you be?” she asked the newcomer,
obviously close to full maturity, perhaps within a year of her own
age.

Clearly a skilled warrior despite his youth.

Brandon straightened, fighting the urge to touch
her, hating his Druid nature pushing him to claim her with his
body.

It was that fast, that instinctive.

Constantine laughed. “He is so Druid.”

Brandon turned to him with a full look. “And
you're so Faction.”

It was like a perfectly executed strike and Con
hissed, his hands fisting.

“No,” Ember raised a palm.

“Your name?” she repeated.

“Brandon,” he answered in a curt word.

The Mer came closer and he turned. “Back off,
Sirens, I've yet to get my bearings,” Brandon said, part fact and
part warning.

Ember gave a nod in the warrior's direction and
they stood down as told, but their eyes said they would spring into
action if the need arose.

Ember strolled up to the new one, taking in his
physicality. He was a real mix, the typical Druid vampire build:
six and a half feet of heavily constructed bone and muscle, slung
on a body that shared the Reaper coloring of hair as black as a
raven's wing.

And there the commonality to the Druid cousins,
the Reapers... ended. Instead of the glacial blue eyes of the
Reaper, the new vampire had the stamp of the Siren.

It was his eyes that set him apart. He had eyes
of the Mer, not the rare shade that marked herself as different,
but the true obsidian of the Mer. Those eyes were not just for show
but for sight in waters too dark to navigate without the special
properties they afforded the Sirens.

“We do not have time for sparring amongst the
two of you.” Ember stated as absolute fact, her tone brooking no
argument. Brandon smiled.
Didn't she think she was all that and
a bag of chips?
he thought. His thoughts made him grin and he
was pleased to note a small frown mar the perfection of her
pearlescent skin.

“What coven do you claim?” she asked.

“King Kier and Queen Holly of the Druid
vampire,” Brandon replied, understanding protocol between the
supernatural groups automatically. A shadow passed across her face
that both vampires watched like a storm averted. She seemed to
shake herself out of whatever her thought process had been with
difficulty.

She nodded then said, “You are an ally
then.”

Constantine snorted. “What makes him lily
white?” he asked.

“Con,” Ember said in soft warning.

Constantine studied her.

Finally her eyes met his. “It was Kier... while
he was Faction, who saved me...”

“Ah.” Constantine smiled. “It was he that
spoiled the fun of the Faction.”

Ember's lip trembled at the memory of the near
victimization of the Faction upon her person. She sucked that full
lower lip into her mouth, the two vampires watching the movement
with the fine attention of hawks circling prey.

Ember didn't let the ready tears fall, although
their presence burned her eyes with the effort to not let them
drop.

Constantine looked at the waterworks of the
female and contained his irritation with an effort. “No offense
princess. I wasn't with them at that time. Kier saved your royal
ass before my time...”

Brandon swiped him across his chest, slicing him
neatly through his tunic with talons that sprung too quickly to
track and Constantine hissed, launching smoothly at the Druid
upstart.

When the sea roared inside his skull, Con
dropped mid-strike like a stone in a pool of water. Ember stood
beside him and he wrapped her bare ankle with his hand and pushed
that horrible tide of power off his mind in the greatest survival
play of his life.

Ember gasped at the backlash of Constantine
flexing his own powers as Mer, falling where she stood and into the
arms of Brandon, the uninvited Druid, whose tenderness for her as a
female was well-hidden in those black eyes. Druids did not manifest
their emotions readily. It was considered weak.

Brandon kicked Constantine's hand away from her
flesh.

Constantine sprung to his feet, blood flowing
freely over his chest where the brat Druid had got a lucky strike
in, soaking his tunic through.

Ember lay in the Druid's arms while Constantine
as first guard contemplated her laying in an unknown's embrace. As
far as Constantine could tell, a possible enemy. Desmond's
agreement with Con's brutal methodology came back to him and it was
a default mechanism he was quite comfortable with.

He was quickly figuring a way to get her away
and behead the youngster when Madden said, “There is another.”

Constantine and Brandon looked at the Mer
Warrior.

He inclined his head with a sarcastic uplift of
his lips. “While you two lovebirds were posturing like roosters,
there be a maiden close by, remember.” Madden tapped his temple
lightly.

It was comical, both vampire's noses rose to
scent the area, snapping down at the same moment and locked
gazes.

“Can we be Sirens tonight, Faction? So we can
save a maiden?”

Con deliberated, clearly scenting a female that
was of Ember's ilk. It was not a choice, he could feel her like an
extra heartbeat. Hating that he was connected to females in any way
would not change the reality that he was.

As now. His mongrel’s blood awakened and acted
separately from his intellect.

Constantine internally raged at what he was even
as he responded, “I feel her.”

Madden smiled. Out of the three warriors, he saw
the former Faction struggle to assimilate as a Siren. This would be
a test if he would or no.