by Sonya Blake
“Yeah.”
He’d heard the news, all right. Foley’s Point was on the market. It was all anybody was talking about. At Penfeld’s Market. At the Hook and Anchor. And he’d heard it plenty from Violet, too, who continued to summon him and force him to satisfy her and her other half on a daily basis. Sam handed Felicia the turpentine next, avoiding her gaze. Though he couldn’t say it to Felicia, it made perfect sense to him that Kaia had left Quolobit without a word.
“Hey.” Felicia put a warm hand on his wrist, turning her sympathetic eyes to him. “Are you all right, Sam?”
“Me?” His heart was broken. His pride was crushed. His dick was sore. “I’m fine.”
Felicia shook her head. “Don’t lie to me,” she clucked. “What’s got you so down? Is it the wind farm they’re going to set up? You worried it’s going to cut into your business?”
“What?” Sam felt like he’d just been slapped out of his daze.
“The wind farm,” Felicia said. “Town council voted to go ahead with the project, starting this spring.”
“What?” Sam repeated. “No. No fucking way.”
Felicia frowned and nodded. She handed him an issue of the Quolobit Gazette. There it was on the front cover: an image of a towering wind turbine rising from the water.
“They’re going to drag up some old sunken military ship that’s been down there since the forties, right where they want to build. It’s all in the article. They say it’ll put a halt on all fishing in Wapomeq Bay for the rest of the year. They’re going to offer some kind of compensation to the fishermen in town, but… who knows if their word is good. You know how those corporate assholes are.” She gave a disparaging grunt. “I never liked that Wilde family.”
Sam shot his eyes to hers.
“I mean no offense,” Felicia said, holding up her hands. “I know you’ve been dating one of their girls a while now. It’s their father I’m talking about.”
“Their father?”
“Kenneth Wilde,” Felicia said. “He’s the owner and CEO of Maracor, the company that’s going to build the wind farm.”
Sam could only shake his head. “I didn’t realize that,” he whispered.
Felicia pursed her lips together. “Mm. Well, now you do. Go on. Paper’s free. It’s yesterday’s.”
“Thanks, Felicia.” Sam sighed. He gathered his bag of supplies and slid it wearily off the counter, tucking the paper beneath his arm as he turned for the door.
“Sam.” Felicia’s voice stopped him. “What’s going on? You’re not yourself,” she said, leaning over the counter. “Haven’t been for a while now. You’ve got a look about you like…”
He stepped closer. “Like what?” he asked, hoping she saw everything that was at war inside him. Hoping she could help get him out of it alive.
“Like you’ve been bewitched.”
Sam nearly collapsed with relief. He set his bag back on the counter and glanced around the store, then took a deep breath.
“Can you help me?”
*
An hour later, after pouring out his story to Felicia, Sam left her store with his lamp oil, some protective herbs, and an assurance that Felicia would be conducting a magickal ritual for protection on his behalf. “Oh, and by the way, Sam,” she said as he was about to leave, “I put up one of your posters in my window.”
He turned back to her with a questioning gaze.
“For your show?” Felicia said, her brows lifting above the large frames of her tortoiseshell glasses. “Your art show? Isn’t it tomorrow?”
“Oh, yeah.” Sam shuffled toward the door, noting the poster Violet had created for his show and plastered all over town. He couldn’t care less about it now.
“The girls and I can’t wait!”
“Thanks, Felicia,” Sam said. “Thanks for everything. I’ll see you there.”
He left the store and walked down Milk Street, toward Main. With a brief gaze up at the towering Victorian where he’d been spending too much time with the Wilde sisters, he turned toward the wharf, toward the Angeline, toward home. He had yet to complete the one painting he wanted to set as the centerpiece of his show: the one of Kaia asleep in his bed. He still needed to do some work on the rumpled bedcovers. That kind of work was tedious, but if he flubbed it the whole painting would look amateurish. Her face, though—he had captured that perfectly. Eerily. He had put off finishing the rest because he didn’t want to look at her.
And because he did.
He had emailed her, called (hoping she’d finally gotten a new phone), and stalked her social media. Nothing. His truck was still at the Point where she had left it, but he couldn’t bring himself to go get it. He had hurt her, and now not only would she not be there to play at his show, but he would likely never see her again.
His plan was to bring the two paintings he had done of Kaia with him the next day and put them front and center when people walked in. They were intimate and raw. They were his best work. And they were all he had of her.
He wanted to use them against Violet. To show her that, no matter how much control she had over his body, she couldn’t touch his heart.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Darkness surrounded her.
The metallic taste of Kaia’s own blood filled her mouth, circulating in the water she floated in. She had memorized the dimensions of the iron walls that enclosed her, knew she had to be mindful of where she was letting her tail go if she didn’t want the tips of her fins to snag on rusted debris littering the room. She couldn’t tell how much time had gone by. It could have been hours, days, weeks. It seemed that for every minute she spent in her siren form, time meant less and less to her.
She’d done a lot of stupid things in her life. She’d been too trusting, always. A Pollyanna, one particularly nasty schoolteacher had once called her. A blooming idiot. She’d gotten herself into plenty of scrapes. But this was the worst.
When she had gone in the water and transitioned, she thought she’d swim out and call to the siren using the strange, high-pitched screech that came out of her mouth in this form. She’d called and called, swimming farther into Wapomeq Bay. She went past Thursday Island, putting Sam behind her because that was the best thing she could do for herself, the only thing. She’d been betrayed before; she knew the deal: the sooner she cut the ties he had on her heart, the quicker she’d heal.
No, she wouldn’t let herself think about him. Not even for a minute. She had ventured far out, far past where she had gone before. Her voice carried even farther. And, eventually, she was heard.
The white siren appeared out of the deep, ghostly and sleek, eyes glowing with eerie phosphorescence. She was flanked by three others—one muscular female and two large males.
They attacked, slamming into Kaia with their tails and scraping with long, untrimmed fingernails. The water was soon clouded with blood. Kaia let herself sink, in too much pain to continue fighting back. She thought they’d leave her to die. Then the white one articulated a command in a series of chirps and her three companions took hold of Kaia and began dragging her down.
She distantly thought she probably should try again to fight them off, to escape, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She felt too weak. Too helpless. So she surrendered. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness—did that mean they glowed, too?—as they reached the belly of the bay, where there wasn’t enough light for plant life.
They had brought her to an old, sunken military ship, tilted on her beam ends and grounded in the sand. USS Davis was painted in chipping red paint on her side. As they approached, Kaia counted six other sirens swimming around the ship, some working on a repair, others scouting.
So this was where the colony lived.
Clan, Kaia reminded herself. That was what Felicia Dunne had called it.
The white siren went ahead as Kaia’s captors dragged her closer to the USS Davis, then into a quarterdeck door in the top deck. It was all strangely quiet… haunted.
Plunged int
o the darkness of the ship’s hold, they followed the trail of the white-finned one and came eventually to a large room at the ship’s stern. Furniture fuzzy with decades of sea debris had shattered in the collision and now lay heaved to one side of the room, where it had landed when the ship settled to the ocean floor. The white siren floated in the center of the room, gesturing in some form of sign language to another siren.
This one had a powerful tail of midnight blue that deepened to black at the fins. Her abs and arms were toned and muscled, and laced with silvery scars. Battle wounds. Judging by her face, she had to be somewhere in her late sixties, Kaia noted with surprise. Her silver hair was cropped close to her head, highlighting brilliant blue eyes that now landed on Kaia and shimmered with their own inner light. This was their leader, then.
As the leader approached, the white siren turned to her. Finally able to look at her nemesis, Kaia noticed that she did have a nasty scar on her side where Kaia had sliced her with a shell, but it was healing well. Very well. In fact, it looked like it had happened more than a month ago, not just a few days. Clearly the siren possessed some kind of accelerated healing. Did they all?Was it the same for all of them? And to think that Kaia had been so wracked with guilt she had gone on a suicide mission!
As the leader lunged forward and took Kaia’s face in her webbed hands, Kaia felt her heart pound against her ribs. Pointed teeth revealed themselves between the siren’s parting lips. Were her own teeth like that? She made the mistake of running her tongue over them and found that yes, they were. Bleeding from her mouth, her face, and somewhere on her tail, she felt herself becoming weaker in the siren’s grip.
The leader-siren flung out a hand in some sort of gesture and said something, letting out a stream of bubbles.
Baba baba was what it sounded like.
Kaia felt herself swooning, about to faint. Aware of the shadows of at least a dozen others behind her, she knew there was no escaping. She met the siren’s gaze.
To her surprise, there was kindness there. Sadness, too. And hard, undeniable determination. She felt the siren’s grip tighten around her arms. The leader then gave a nod to the white siren, who began signing something to the others.
It wasn’t traditional sign language—not that Kaia could recognize. The gestures were slower and larger. Fit for water. Hands were placed in angular gestures at different heights, switched in swooping motions. It was complex and lyrical, and as Kaia glanced around she saw the others nodding and making gestures of their own. It seemed that what the sirens lacked in verbal communication, they more than made up for with signing.
Soon there were ten sirens floating in a line. All male, Kaia noted, as the leader angled Kaia toward them. She gestured for Kaia to look at them, drawing her closer and bringing her to the first siren in the line, an older male with a gray beard. She watched Kaia’s reaction. Confused and terrified, Kaia shook her head.
Is this a lineup?
She pointed to the white female siren.
That’s the one that attacked me.
The leader tightened her grip and shook her head, firmly pushing Kaia toward the next male in line. He reached out for her, opening his scary, pointy mouth. Kaia felt her tail slip against his as she pushed herself away, back into the arms of their leader, who released a series of laugh-like chirps.
The white siren darted forward and pushed Kaia into the third male in line. His hands closed around her waist.
Oh, I get it. They want me to choose one. They want me to… mate?
Kaia pulled away, shaking her head.
“No!” she tried to say, letting out a stream of bubbles. It might have been garbled, but they got the message.
The dark-tailed leader let go of Kaia and gestured for her to be removed. Kaia fought against clawed hands that grabbed her by the arms, bucking with her muscular tail as they dragged her through the door. She scraped herself on the corroded metal doorframe and screamed as they pulled her into a corridor and shut her into a cell.
And there they’d left her, sending in males one at a time to try to woo her. She had rejected all of them, and, thankfully, the males had respected her wishes. Still, they kept coming, over and over. After several rounds of this, Kaia could tell they were as tired of it as she was. When guards came to unlock the cell and her suitors communicated that she’d been unresponsive, the white siren would come in and beat her up. Now her body was covered in gashes and bruises. It stung every time she moved. Her head throbbed.
Kaia wished she knew how long it had been since she had left land. Long enough for them to come in about a dozen times to give her raw fish to eat. That could mean anything between four days, or two weeks. She had no idea. She was starving, that was all she knew.
Her stomach growled as she twitched in the confines of her cell. She wanted land. Wanted to feel the wind. To see the sun. To sit by a fire and eat something warm and soft. Like bread… buttered bread. And a cup of coffee. Coffee. That would explain the headache, Kaia thought, bringing her hands to her head. If she was still having headaches from lack of caffeine, that meant it had been less than two weeks, she figured. She hoped.
Just then the door opened. In came yet another male. He was thrown in, seemingly against his will. The metal door was slammed shut, the lock pounding into place like a gunshot. The male flinched at the sound and curled into a ball.
Haven’t seen you before, Kaia thought.
Despite his non-threatening body language, Kaia backed herself up against the wall and folded her arms over her bare chest. She still wasn’t used to the nakedness around here—the way all the females’ breasts were uncovered, the way males showed their arousal without shame through the narrow vent at the front of their tails.
This one sank to the floor of the cell without even looking at her. In the gloom, Kaia observed that though his ribs showed beneath his pale skin, his arms were thick with muscle, and inked with what looked like old-time military tattoos. Lank blond hair floated at his shoulders, cropped unceremoniously. He tilted his handsome, unshaven face up toward her, revealing one black eye. There was something searching and pleading in his gaze.
Kaia held up a tentative hand in greeting. The siren blinked, then offered a curt smile. He saluted her sarcastically.
Whoa. That was… awfully human.
She pointed to her own eye, then to his bruised one. He jerked his head toward the door and the guards outside it, then shook his head in response.
The siren moved his ink-black tail and floated upward. He moved closer, eyes taking in Kaia’s injuries. When she flinched at his nearness, he lifted his hands, signaling his neutrality. She floated nearby as he pressed a finger to the wall of the cell and began to draw something in the silt that coated it.
Stick figures—a man, a woman, and beneath them, a smaller one. A baby. He circled the little one for emphasis. His eyes searched hers again.
Kaia laughed grimly and shook her head.
Can’t, she wrote in the dust. Barren.
She hated that word, but it was the quickest way to explain herself. The male began scratching something else into the dust.
TOMMY.
He floated backward and pointed to his chest. Kaia wrote her name beside his and then offered her hand to shake. Returning to the wall, she wrote: Prisoner?
Tommy nodded.
ESCAPE, he wrote.
Kaia nodded, her heart beating faster.
TRUST, he wrote, and moved his index finger back and forth between them.
She nodded again. Tommy gave one short nod in return and lifted his eyes in thought. His movements were quick and efficient as he turned to her and opened his mouth in a grimace, gesturing with a hand. He pointed to her and repeated his strange antic.
You want me to scream? Kaia pointed to herself and opened her own mouth, repeating Tommy’s gesture.
He nodded.
She let out a searing, high-pitched shriek, then looked at Tommy for approval. He circled his hand, widening his tired blue eyes
, telling her to keep doing it. She screamed and screamed until they heard the metallic clinking of the door being unlocked. Tommy grabbed her and covered her body with his. She felt him press firmly against her, his mouth landing halfway on hers as his hands gripped her waist, and he thrust against her as though they were going at it. It all happened too quickly for her to take in what the hell was going on, but when the door squealed open, Tommy turned toward it snarling, baring his sharp teeth and his half-erect, unsheathed penis from the vent in the front of his tail.
Tommy lunged toward the guards and they pushed him back into the cell, chirruping between themselves as they threw the lock again. He remained facing the door for several moments, his hands pressed against it, his muscled, finned back facing her. Eventually, he turned back to her and wrote again on the wall.
SORRY.
Kaia shook her head at him and rested a hand on his shoulder. It’s okay, she said, but he was already swimming away from her, down into the far corner of the cell, where there was a pile of rubble. He looked over his shoulder and gestured for her to keep making noises.
Oh geez, Kaia thought with dread, but she began groaning as Tommy rifled through the mess of broken furniture and rusted tools. She thought she might as well make it sound real, so she increased the rhythm of her cries, raising her voice in pitch until she was keening.
Tommy looked over his shoulder and grinned, giving her a thumbs-up. She almost laughed, but there was really nothing funny happening. At last, he dislodged the metal leg of a chair. He wiped their scribblings off the wall, then held his finger up to his lips.
Kaia quieted and swam close to Tommy as he approached the door. They waited. The USS Davis was quiet. Tommy’s hand was firm on her hip as he positioned her behind him. At the sound of movement outside the door, he lifted the chair leg, jagged edge up.
That’s gonna give somebody tetanus was Kaia’s last thought before the door swung open. Tommy lunged for the guard, thrusting the chair leg into his belly and up under his ribs and ripping it out again, sending a cloud of blood and chunks of tissue into the water. The siren gave a low grunt and went motionless, floating up toward the ceiling. Tommy wasted no time, grabbing the other guard by the neck and pulling her into the cell, threatening her with the chair leg. She held up her hands in surrender as Tommy shoved Kaia out the door. As he shut and locked the door behind them, Kaia felt her stomach twisting in terror.