Siren.
John Everson.
UNDER THE SIREN"S SPELL.
"Shhhh," Jack urged, reaching up to put a finger on her lips. But she held his hand at bay, and then the melody captured him. It was light as air, yet thick as honey. Amber notes so pure they pulled him in. Jack Nelson had never felt so happy in his entire life. His flesh burned with pleasure while the faces in his mind shifted; he was guzzling from the finest, rarest booze ever refined. It burned so sweetly as it slid down his throat.
The song had stopped. That"s probably why Nelson surfaced from the musical spell in time to understand. The fire wasn"t in his mind. His throat burned. He opened his mouth but gagged on something rich and iron. Blood spilled out across the woman"s chest, dripping like gory wax down her ribs.
"Wha-di-ya...?" he gurgled as he slapped a hand to his neck and felt the hot flow and ragged flesh of his neck. He blinked and saw his blood on her mouth. She was grinning, and her fingernails dug into his back, dragging him back down for the fatal bite...
Prologue.
1979.
Salt hung in the air like fog; the taste of the ocean filled Andy"s mouth as she led him along the rocks. The stark light of the night sky picked up and followed the st.i.tching on the denim of her jeans. It was all Andy could do not to grab at the shifting moon of her a.s.s as she stepped up and down and across the labyrinth of seaside boulders, leading him to the secret spot she"d prepared. The place where she would release that denim. The place where they would share blood.
She was an older woman. A dark-haired, slim and s.e.xy older woman named Ca.s.sie, whom Andy had met at the bohemian coffeehouse where he studied after school. She said she was twenty-three, but her eyes held a knowledge of things far older than her years. Andy had been both afraid and entranced by her attentions, but ultimately, the lure of her dark eyes had called him out. And tonight, he would perform a ritual with her. A spell, she said, to call to the earth a power from beyond. A power that she could use. A power that would benefit them both...if he did as she said. Bottom line: he didn"t really care about getting a piece of the power...he just cared about getting a piece of her. She had haunted his dreams-waking and sleeping-for weeks.
"Here," Ca.s.sie announced. She turned to him and put her arms around his neck. Beyond her hair, he could see the waves breaking in faint white sparks against the rocky sh.o.r.eline. "I can feel something strong here," she said. "There"s power in this spot. I"ve known it for years."
Andy shrugged. It looked like any other stretch of this G.o.dforsaken beach to him. Even in the daylight n.o.body swam here; the beach was treacherous. And the bay had had more than its expected share of shark reports, even though few ever swam in it.
But when Ca.s.sie pressed two warm lips to his own, Andy forgot about the beach, and only considered the heat of the body pressing against his own. And the flash of pa.s.sion in the eyes that stared back at him. She may have been older, but she was a little thing, all lithe and sumptuous against his chest, and as he stared down into her eyes, he knew that tonight, tonight...he would become a man.
For a seventeen-year-old boy, that"s an amazing, wonderful, knees-shaking kind of thought.
Ca.s.sie, meanwhile, considered the spell she planned to cast. There was power in the ocean, the mother of all life. A heavy, deep, silent power. A power as treacherous and uncertain as it was vast. And there was something more in this place, though she wasn"t sure exactly what it was. It sang in the air like a faint locust call.
She led Andy to an open s.p.a.ce on the beach right at the tide line and emptied her bag onto the sand. With her hands she dug eight holes in a circle in the sand and set the stub candles inside them, a disembodied set of crow"s feet in the center. She kissed Andy again and pushed him backward to relax on the ground. Then, with a smile, she got up again and walked along the waterline until she found what she needed. Returning to the circle, she threaded a twine of seaweed in and out, around the perimeter of candles.
Andy watched as she set more things inside the circle center-leaves and hair and bits of dark gnarled stuff that could have been flesh or vegetable. He wasn"t sure, and didn"t want to know.
Ca.s.sie lit the candles, which despite the protection of sitting deep in the sand wells she"d dug, flickered fast in the night breeze. She sat back on her haunches then, and surveyed her work. After a moment she nodded and reached into her leather handbag to withdraw a knife. Not your standard kitchen steak knife, or even a street fighter switchblade. No, this was something special; the blade tapered to its point in a curve that mimicked the swell of an ocean wave. Its dark wood handle was decorated in strange jagged characters surrounding a bloodred stone.
"Now we"re ready," Ca.s.sie said. Her eyes danced with the reflection of flames.
"Tell me what to do," Andy said. He hated how his voice sounded small against the whisper of the surf. Somewhere, a night bird cried; in pain or victory, it was impossible to tell.
"We have the elements of air, fire, earth and water in our circle, as well as the seeds of life and death. Now we add the elements of blood-and pa.s.sion-to complete the spell."
"Don"t you need to say something, or wave a wand or..."
Ca.s.sie laughed. "I"ll say a few things as we f.u.c.k, but really...the magic is in the combination. The trigger is my will, and us, being together..."
She leaned forward to kiss him and Andy"s eyes rolled back. G.o.d she tasted good in his mouth. When she broke the embrace, she set the knife between them and stripped off her shirt, motioning for him to do the same. Then she stood, shucked her jeans, shimmied out of a pair of pink bikini panties, and they sat again, naked on the ground. Andy shivered as his b.u.t.t touched the grit of the cold sand.
"Give me your hand," she whispered, and he did.
"Give me your life," she said, and drew the blade across his palm. Andy winced, but didn"t say anything as the blood welled.
She sliced a cut in her own palm and then pressed their hands together, holding their arms out over the center of the circle of flame. "My life in yours," she whispered. When she relaxed her grip, drops of their mingled blood splattered the totems in the sand.
Then Ca.s.sie"s b.r.e.a.s.t.s were warm against Andy"s chest, and he was on his back, her hair curtaining his face, her mouth sucking in his tongue with a hunger he"d never known. He grew hard against her and in moments, she rolled him over so that now he was on top and whispered, "Now, Andy. Now."
Andy slid against the velvet skin of her thighs and felt the warmth of her against him. He pressed and shifted and felt a momentary pang of fear. What if he couldn"t find the way inside her...
...And then warmth engulfed him and he was there. The feeling was amazing, as if a liquid hand had slipped around his c.o.c.k, teasing and taunting him in a way real hands could never attempt. He pressed against her, trying to find his way deeper, closer to her. He kissed her, pushing into her mouth. She returned the probe of his tongue, but then her eyes flared and she pressed him back.
"Harder," she demanded. "Make me feel you."
He tried to comply but still she demanded more.
Andy stabbed into her faster, slamming against her with more force. Their skin smacked and echoed with the rhythm of the surf, and her cries crescendoed, tight, anxious gasps of pleasure. Still she insisted on more. She gripped him by the shoulders, lifting him and pulling him back. Her mouth lolled open as he followed her lead, and she moaned. "Grab my hair," she hissed.
He slid a hand into her hair and pulled her neck back in time with his hips. "My neck," she said then. "Slam me hard, Andy. I need to feel it all."
Andy slipped his hand from her hair and held both hands around her throat, gripping her like a rag doll. She held him just as tightly at the neck, guiding his pa.s.sion, pushing him back to lift her head from the sand, and then letting go as he slammed her whole body beneath him. In seconds her cries grew uncontrollable as his pa.s.sion released. As the first waves of o.r.g.a.s.m engulfed him in a fever dream, he pounded into her faster, faster, faster, lifting her head and slamming her to the sand with him, a single body in desire. Her hands and thighs urged him on, her screams moved from "yes, yes" to guttural grunts and moans. He lost himself in the motion, crying out with her in sharp staccato bleats of pleasure.
He didn"t notice immediately when her cries of ecstasy turned. But as his own wave crested, the echo of his partner died. As the euphoria slipped away like water through sand, Andy blinked and slowed, releasing his fingers from their grip on her throat as her own arms fell away from their grip on him.
Ca.s.sie was motionless beneath him, and he bent to kiss her. "Ca.s.sie?" he whispered. But the velvet of her lips didn"t respond.
"Ca.s.sie, wake up," he urged.
The sand beside her black hair was dark, and when Andy lifted her into his arms he felt the reason. The sticky, hot, horrible reason.
The point of the boulder that had been hidden beneath the sand glinted in the moonlight, its tip black with blood, and when he panicked and dropped her motionless body, Ca.s.sie didn"t move. One arm lay pinned beneath her back while her legs remained twisted in an unnatural crouch. One thin drip of saliva slid down her cheek, and Andy saw that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were still. Completely, uns.e.xily still. No breath to raise them.
"s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t," he whispered, and bent to her chest. Her heart made no sound.
Andy pulled on his pants and paced the beach, jumping at every night sound. He thought of his hopes for college, his dreams of scholarships and football. His ticket away from this tourist-trap town. Every time he turned back to the light of the dying candles, those dreams changed to an image of rusted prison bars.
When he finally collapsed again beside Ca.s.sie"s body, tears wetting all of his face and chest, she remained undeniably dead. He ran a hand over the white skin of her chest, and his hand came back slick and cold. He knew he couldn"t leave her there. And he couldn"t tell anyone what he"d done. Her life was over, no matter what. Why did his have to be over too? "This is not my fault," he cried out in anguish to the waves, though there was no one there to hear.
Under the midnight moon, Andy made his decision.
He was not going to die with her. Shoveling all of the candles and totems into her big leather shoulder bag, he lifted Ca.s.sie over his shoulder and, bag in hand, walked her body down the beach. There was a rock promontory-Gull"s Point-that extended out into the black of the ocean, and he thought that would be as good a spot as any.
When he reached the edge of the rocky finger, he laid her body down on the stone and took one last long look at her thin, still face.
His first older woman. Maybe his last.
"s.h.i.t," he whispered again.
Andy gathered some fist-size rocks and shoved them into her bag before dragging its long handles over her head and around her neck. At first, her head wouldn"t slip through the hoops, but he screamed one long cry of anger and with a yank of pure fury, finally the leather stretched and gave way. The bag slipped around her throat, and strands of black hair specked with red were caught between his fingers. Crying silently all the while, he stuffed another rock into the bag. One thing you learned while living near the ocean is that things had a tendency to float.
He stuffed a couple rocks in the back of her jeans, and wrestled them partway up her legs before tying another heavy rock inside her shirt, and knotting that around her ankle. Satisfied that she would sink, Andy wrestled her off the ground again, and staggered to the edge of the rocky promontory. With a cry of anguish and pain, he lofted her away from the rock, to splash down and into the whitecaps just a few feet below.
She sank without a whisper. Andy ran. It was hours before his tears stopped.
Beneath the surf, Ca.s.sie sank and shifted with the fickle flow of current, finally coming to rest at the broken mouth of an old rotted ship"s hull. Seaweed fanned her head as the rock-laden purse and jeans dragged her down. From the back of her head, dark blood seeped into the sea, the steady suction and push of the water releasing more of her lifeblood to the bosom of the first mother. The ocean accepted her body home.
Blood slid like smoky ribbons over the face of a snow-white rock next to her head. That rock protruded only slightly from the heavy brown sediment of a century. But as the blood coiled and diluted in the waves, some of it lingered like a stagnant cloud.
If anyone had been watching, they would have seen the white stone shift slightly. And a few minutes later, again. They would have seen something like a funnel appear in the muck, as the tip of the stone lifted, a cloud of ocean dust swirling away in its wake.
They would have seen the skeletal joint that held that rocky white finger to a hidden piece of bone beneath the mud, and they would have seen that mud shiver and slide away as the bone sought release and brought four more bony white appendages with it.
They would have seen that hand cradle the head of Ca.s.sie like a mother, only...instead of giving care, this hand was taking it. Feeding. Bony fingers stroked the softly swaying locks of her black hair.
Only, n.o.body was there to see.
n.o.body saw that a century of sleep had at last come to the end, thanks to the call of Ca.s.sie"s spell...and the power of her blood.
Chapter One.
Today.
The rock skipped across the waves like a bullet, skimming the surf and bouncing once, twice, three and four times before it finally hit its match, a whitecap with att.i.tude. The stone disappeared without a fifth leap into the unrelenting ocean.
Evan shrugged and picked up another stone. An oblong one. Gray and smooth. This time, he only got two skips before the rock was stolen by the waves. Arm was tired, he told himself, and left the next stone where it lay.
The ocean stole everything. Leaning down, he picked up the hook of a crab claw and flung it into the foam.
Everything.
Evan wiped the tear from his cheek and walked on down the beach. The night hung on him with its own rushing silence, but Evan could still hear the sounds of his past. He could hear Josh out there, in the waves. His son. His baby boy.
Dad! Josh had called, voice filled with sudden panic. And then, Dad?
And then there"d been no sound at all.
"Stop it," Evan screamed, as he did nearly every night, angry at himself for more things than he could describe. But fear certainly topped the list. A long list of words came to mind actually: fear, coward, chickens.h.i.t, weak, pathetic, loser, sc.u.mbag, f.u.c.khead...the words degenerated further with the acid heat of his tears.
Evan picked up another rock from the beach and flung it into the waves. But this time, he didn"t stop to see how far it went before it fell. Instead he turned back toward the lights of home.
The rock skipped seven times.
The sound system overhead played a Georgia Satellites song and Sarah smiled to herself, because as she looked around the bar she thought that she might be the only one old enough to remember the Georgia Satellites. When the hick tw.a.n.g of her youth faded into the raspy growl and twining guitars of Foo Fighters, she saw the heads of several guys around the single pool table begin to nod with more gusto. The kids knew this one.
Somehow rock had left her behind thanks to an invisible anchor around her heart, holding her back. She could never escape her past. And wasn"t that why she was here?
"Can I buy you a drink?" one of the pool boys asked her, and Sarah stared into the hopeful"s eyes, not with honor, but with a simple question. Why?
Her days of one-night stands were two decades past, and she knew the lines along the sag of her jowls and the silvering web in her hair were just the most obvious indicator that time was not on her side. No guy with jet-black hair and pecs that dared his belt buckle to try to cinch tighter could possibly have an interest in her. Still, that guy did stand at her side, and put his hand on her shoulder, and offered her another beer.
What the h.e.l.l? she thought, and asked for a Guinness. Maybe he saw the ring as her hand slipped easily around the gla.s.s.
"You married?" the man said, pulling up a stool. He didn"t take his hand off her. Instead, he let it slip from her shoulder, across her back, to grip familiarly on her thigh.
She nodded. "For about as long as you"ve been alive," she said with a grin. She looked up at him with weary eyes, and maybe something there sent a chill of reality down his spine, because his easy hand slipped away. He threw down a couple bucks on the bar, nodded and slipped back to the pool table. From behind, Sarah heard low voices and laughter. She didn"t turn around. There was only so much heartache you could absorb in your life, and she had had her fill. If someone were making fun of her now, for sitting here old and empty in a bar...she wasn"t going to eat that. She wasn"t going to do anything at all, except take one more pull on the edge of her gla.s.s. Okay, maybe two.
And then she"d go home. Home is where the heart is, she thought. "But where has my heart gone?" she answered herself aloud.
The sound system-whatever happened to jukeboxes-now pumped with the beat of Britney, and the voices in the bar around her began to pick up in volume. It was amateur hour, Sarah thought. Time for the adults to go home. She looked into the neon lights of the bar signs above her head, and smiled sadly at the s.e.xy tattooed thing behind the bar who made no bones against sticking out her rack and flirting with the pool table boys for tips. Sarah looked back to her beer.
The foam on the latest pull of Guinness made her laugh. She couldn"t have explained why, exactly. It just struck her as funny...all this dark, heavy liquid coloring the bulk of her gla.s.s and then this white wreath of bubbles trying to hold it all in. She knew about holding it in. That"s why she was here. She held it all in.
"Something wrong with your beer?" a voice asked from behind her. Sarah turned slowly, afraid that the pool boy was back. But then the tenor of the voice sunk in, and she saw the hard line of his jaw, and the soft care in his deep-set blue eyes, and she shook her head.
"Nah," Sarah said. "The beer"s just fine." She lifted her gla.s.s and drained half of it in one desperate pull.
"Let"s go home, huh?" Evan said, and pulled her off the stool. She only stumbled a little, as the bells of the door rippled to announce their exit, just as they did nearly every night. Behind them, the bartendress with the rack rolled her eyes and cleared the bar. She gave little thought to why the old girl had to be escorted home every night. She just pulled her T-shirt tighter to smile falsely at the boys drinking Bud as they shot eight ball.
d.a.m.n drunks never left a good tip.
Chapter Two.
Loss is an all-consuming pa.s.sion. Kylie could have told you that in a heartbeat, if she"d still had one.
"I never said I would take you with me," Abram yelled in the dark corner of the beachside club. n.o.body around them seemed to hear the outburst, though the girl with the shock white hair and the short pink skirt heard him loud and clear. She heard him in the marrow of her bones.
On the stage, a short guitarist in gla.s.ses and a plaid shirt rambled his earnest way through CCR"s "Have You Ever Seen The Rain," and Kylie suddenly wasn"t sure if it was Abram"s betrayal or the power of the song that made her cry.
But she knew what it was that made her tears split into a smile as Abram explained that he didn"t have time for a relationship, he had an opportunity in the Bay Area, and he had to devote himself to that and make it happen. And maybe someday if...
Kylie ignored Abram"s pathetic explanation for abandonment. Sucker "em, suck "em and dump "em...she knew the drill. Now the plaid boy at the mic was singing, "Stop, children, what"s that sound," and she was struck, not with the power of the old Buffalo Springfield lyric but with the memory of a group of Muppets singing a hippie song.