Macabre Melody: Reverse Harem Siren Romance (Spellsinger Book 7)

by Amy Sumida

  When the shaking stopped, Slate eased back enough to see my face. We were pressed tightly together; my hands flat to his chest and my chin still resting just above them. Over his pounding heart. His eyes were shining again; bright with an emotion I couldn't name. Fury maybe? Fear? Something else. I heard Aaro's voice in my head; The only thing magic can do is make it easier for you to admit what you feel. Slate stroked my hair back gently; his thumb rubbing over my cheekbone as he searched my face. This time, it wasn't for injuries. But I pretended it was. I couldn't confront whatever was in his eyes; not yet.

  “I'm all right.”

  Slate nodded; hearing my underlying meaning. His gaze darted to the side and he inhaled deeply. I watched his jaw clench as he reluctantly let me go.

  “Eleanor,” Slate said gently as he helped the blonde to her feet. “Are you all right?”

  “I'm fine,” Eleanor said stiffly as she glanced at me.

  I met her gaze steadily; Tell my father about me and you can have your man back.

  Eleanor nodded; looking as if she were answering Slate's question when she was actually making a pact with me. “I'm fine,” she said again. “Thank you.”

  Then, keeping her gaze on mine, Eleanor stretched up on her toes and kissed Slate. His back went rigid as he gently pushed her away from him.

  “Eleanor, this is my girlfriend, Elaria,” Slate said pointedly.

  “Oh,” Eleanor whispered. “I hadn't thought for a second that the rumors were true.”

  “They are,” he said firmly. “Thank you again for your help. I'll send double your regular fee by your place tonight. You've earned it.”

  Eleanor nodded; her jaw clenched tight against anything else she might say.

  The wall behind me rumbled and eased apart; turning into an open entry again. Slate took my hand and walked me out to the sidewalk. The street was a mess; cars crumpled into each other, windows broken, blood everywhere. Slate's stare narrowed on the chaos. Beneathers stumbled by us; clutching at each other and shooting him accusing looks.

  “Well, there went your plan to keep everyone calm,” I muttered.

  “That fucking monster is dead,” Slate snarled.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Tell me you have something!” Slate demanded as we burst into his office.

  There were seven men waiting there; all gargoyles. They wore grim expressions and lots of leather. All of them shook their heads.

  “What of the creature that Elaria saw?” Slate asked. “No one's discovered anything about it? Any way to kill it?”

  “We're just as baffled as you, Boss,” one of the men said. “If there is a beast beneath us, there's no record of anyone putting it there.”

  “If?” Another of the men scoffed. “We found the fucking ice and the dragon never returned. There's definitely a beast below us.”

  “But if we don't know what it is, we don't know how to kill it,” a third gargoyle pointed out. “From what you've told us, Boss, it sounds as if it could be one of several types of beneather; Dybbuk, Salamander, even Gargoyle. Just a really fucking big one. But none of those beneathers could live underwater. So, that rules them out.”

  “Fuck,” Slate snarled. “What the hell is it?”

  “We'll figure it out,” another guy said. “We got our people on it, and we know where it is. If we have to, we'll drill into that ice again and shoot it with a fucking missile. Or hell, we could boil it alive; have us a nice monster stew.”

  That made Slate smile. Yeah; having a plan was good. Having one that included blowing up the bad guy was even better.

  “Boss,” yet another gargoyle came into the room. “We got the shooters.”

  Slate swiveled on his heel with a wicked grin; his eyes flashing like the edge of a blade. He'd been waiting for something to take his rage out on, and now he had it. Or them, rather. “Where are they?”

  “Got 'em in the cells,” the gargoyle said. “They're fucking Aaruns.”

  I straightened.

  “Egyptian Gods?” Slate asked in surprise.

  “No; not any that we recognize,” the man said. “Just their cousins; sent to do their dirty work most likely. I figured you'd want to question them yourself. We don't know how they got those guns past us. They were beneather made.”

  Beneather made weapons—and, more importantly, ammunition—were ten times as deadly as human-made. I gaped at Slate. He should be dead. Those bullets should have gone right through him, into me, and then into the wall. Maybe there was stone dust in his bones. Holy hellhounds; the Zone Lord was closer to indestructible than I'd thought.

  “You're damn fucking straight I want to question them.” Slate still had his torn, bloody clothes on; we'd come straight to his office from the restaurant—his other business forgotten. His back was entirely rust-red; some of the stain seeping toward the front; giving his pale blue shirt a tie-dyed look. Blood-dyed. Combined with his malicious grin, it looked diabolical. A fucking hippie from Hell.

  Slate started forward, but the gargoyle held something out to him; a square of paper.

  “We found this on one of them,” the gargoyle said.

  Slate took the paper and stared down at it. His eyes widened fractionally and flicked to me. His chiseled jaw hardened even further and his chest rose in steady breaths that appeared far more violent than his verbal raging had. His hand clenched around the paper as his stare narrowed. Shoulders hunched as if for battle, and Slate surged toward the door.

  The crumpled paper fell to the floor in his furious wake.

  “Someone watch her!” Slate shouted over his shoulder as he left.

  The man who had brought Slate the news of the Aaruns had followed him out. The seven remaining gargoyles grimaced at each other and then started arguing over who'd get the ignoble task of babysitting the Spellsinger while the others got to return to investigating the earthquakes. As they argued, I stretched my foot out and edged the ball of paper over to me. Pretending to scratch my leg, I picked it up.

  It wasn't regular paper; it was a photo paper. A picture of Slate and me at his arena party. I remembered the camera flashes. The hooded men. Slate had been betrayed. I didn't take it personally; this wasn't my zone. Even if I'd been the target, they were his guests. This was an attack against him.

  I tossed the picture back to the ground just before the gargoyles came to a decision. Through Rocks-Paper-Scissors, no less. One of them seated himself in a chair near mine and pulled out his cell phone. I rolled my eyes as he started playing Bejeweled. The others filed out silently. My guard ignored me completely, but I knew he'd spring to action as soon as I tried to move.

  It didn't matter; I was too busy thinking about the attack to bother trying to escape.

  Aaruns. A picture of Slate and me. The hooded men. What did it all mean? If I assumed they were the same men who had withheld my power in the arena, I could also assume that they wanted me dead, not Slate. But that was two assumptions, and I preferred facts. Still, if you add in the Aaruns and my past with them—invading their planet and killing several of them; including Isis, one of their top goddesses on Earth—it became far more likely that they'd been trying to assassinate me. I could survive a lot, but I wasn't sure about beneather bullets to the brain.

  It was very possible that Slate had truly saved my life.

  Oh, fuck; that left a horrid feeling in my belly. What was I going to do with that? More importantly, what was I going to do about the hooded men? Were they Aaruns? If they were, why had Slate been surprised to hear that they had shot at us? They obviously wanted me dead. Slate should have deduced that from the arena battle when they'd prevented him from turning off my collar. So, Slate shouldn't have been shocked when they'd made another attempt on my life. But then there was the photograph. Why did they take pictures of us? Perhaps the hooded men were Egyptian Gods but—just as one of the gargoyles suggested—they didn't want to dirty their hands with something as crass as an assassination and so they sent their lower ranking cousins to k
ill me. In that case, their cousins would need to know who to shoot.

  “Dismissed,” Slate barked out as he strode back into the room.

  Now, the front of him matched the back. Slate was completely covered in blood. And other things. I swallowed a lump that formed in my throat and watched him warily. My gargoyle guard got to his feet and skedaddled out of the office faster than a frog jumping off a hot skillet. Slate strode past him; his bloodstained boots crunching over the photograph of us. The door clicked shut behind the fleeing gargoyle.

  “You won't be singing tonight.” Slate started unbuttoning his shirt. The fabric was wet and clung to him; making a sucking sound as he removed it. “You may relax in your room for now. I'll call you when it's time for dinner.”

  Sculpted chest smeared in blood. My eyes fastened on it. Crimson patches shaded the defined muscles of his stomach. The soft light shone on Slate's golden bronze skin. He looked like a god of war. It was so fucked up that this was turning me on. Hello, Faenestra. How about we reel it in before we turn into a fucking lunatic again?

  “Elaria?” Slate balled up his ruined shirt and tossed it in a black trash can beside his desk.

  “Who were they trying to kill?” I asked softly. “You or me?”

  Slate stared at me; nothing in his eyes. Blank as a shark. “Don't you want to shower? I know I do.”

  “Have I told you that I've been to Aaru?” I stood up and stepped closer to him; two feet of tense air separating us.

  There was the barest twinge around his eyes.

  “I was hunting Isis,” I went on casually. “She had freed the Maya Gods, and they were killing blooders.”

  “And you care about blooders?” His look was skeptical in the extreme.

  “Some of them.” I nodded. “There are bad ones and good ones, just as with any race.”

  “Fucking parasites,” he scoffed.

  I wasn't shocked; it was a common beneather opinion. I didn't want to argue about it. I just shrugged. There was a more important point I was trying to make.

  “They were being hunted, and I wanted it to stop,” I said simply. “I went to Aaru to find Isis. A group of friends accompanied me.”

  “And?”

  “And we were discovered; chased out. It was a... violent exodus.”

  “Was it?” No reaction beyond that.

  Slate went to his desk and opened a drawer. He pressed something inside it. I heard the click of a bar sliding into place. It had come from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the office door.

  “I'm going to wash this blood off,” he said crisply. “Do what you like.”

  Slate turned to head to his bedroom.

  “Devon.”

  He kept walking.

  “Slate!”

  Slate froze and looked over his shoulder; not at me, just back.

  “Thank you for saving my life.”

  A smile twitched his lips; there and gone, just like him.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “I have some things to do today,” Slate announced over breakfast. “You will stay here; on this floor. If you try to leave... well, don't.”

  I grimaced at him.

  We hadn't spoken since he'd walked away from me covered in blood. A gargoyle woman had brought a dinner tray to me later that night in my room. I heard Slate in his bedroom for awhile and then listened to his soft footsteps prowling down the hallway, but he never approached my door. These were his first words to me in hours.

  I'd spent the night soul-searching. Not about the shooting or the earthquakes or the trapped monster, but about what Aaro had said. Had I misinterpreted the tingles? Was I falling for Slate? I had analyzed my emotions as critically as I could and finally admitted to myself that Slate appealed to me. I wanted to sleep with him. There; cold truth. No, let's be really honest; I wanted to fuck him. Sweet stones, I wanted to. Raw, wild, back-clawing fucking. But I didn't love Slate. And nothing short of phenomenal love could make me betray my men. Which meant that the tingles—the feelings that flooded me and made me want things that I shouldn't want—had to be a spell. I knew magic; I am magic. This wasn't real.

  “There's a library next door.” Slate waved vaguely to his left. “You may borrow any book you'd like. I don't have a television so you'll have to make do with old-fashioned entertainment. I shouldn't be gone long.”

  Slate stood up, wiped his mouth, and tossed the napkin on his plate. I wondered if he was interrogating the Aaruns again or if they were already dead. The amount of blood he'd been covered in the night before suggested the latter. Which meant this was either about plotting revenge for the shooting, planning preventative measures against future attempts, or figuring out what kind of monster swam beneath us.

  “Okay,” I finally said.

  He strode out, and I finished my breakfast. And then I looked up in sudden realization; a smile spreading across my face. The fool had left me alone in his home.

  I rushed out of the room and started searching. Maybe Slate had been sloppy enough to leave the key to my collar lying around. With that thought in mind, I went straight to his desk.

  There were no handles on any of the drawers. I sat in his extremely comfortable, leather chair and frowned at the glossy, black expanse before me. The silver battle scene with gargoyles—fighting both in the sky and on the ground—seemed to mock me. How did Slate get these drawers open? I'd seen him slide out the shelf that held his keyboard and toss things inside drawers. Hell, that bolt that locked the office door was triggered from a button inside one of those drawers. There had to be a way to open them. I pushed and prodded; slid my fingers under every ledge looking for secret triggers. Nothing. I had to concede defeat.

  “Oh, shove it up your silver ass,” I muttered to one of the gargoyles leering at me from the corners of the desk.

  I left the desk behind and went through the other rooms. The library had no secret, key-hiding boxes or hidden panels that I could find; just books and more books. I even looked under the set of wingback chairs. Nothing. I went through the kitchen, an entertainment room, a gym, and every guest bedroom there was before I finally ventured into Slate's room.

  I stood on the threshold for three seconds; something clenching in my belly. The last time I'd been in this room, I'd touched Slate intimately. I'd seen all of his body. I'd listened to him use that body in ways I could only—and, in fact, did—imagine. The memory of kneeling before him—that hard length in my face—shivered through me. A flush crept up my chest as I crept into the room. I half expected Slate to step out of his bathroom and tell me to suck his dick or get out.

  But no; Slate didn't magically appear and after a few minutes of carefully rooting around his room and finding nothing, I plopped down on his bed in frustration. Beside me, there was a sleek bedside table. The man really liked black. My hand stroked the velvet comforter absently; it reminded me of the feeling of his— Shit; stop thinking about that! I jerked my hand away from the velvet.

  The room was a blatant, masculine lair. Massive bed with thick posters perfect for tying a woman to. Velvet comforter and cool cotton sheets. Women always think silk is so sexy, but manly men don't like silk; it catches on their callouses and annoys the shit out of them. If an alpha male wants luxury, he usually goes for expensive cotton. I ran my hand over Slate's pillow; Egyptian cotton, I was betting. Stop that! Look away!

  I directed my attention to the dresser; ebony and silver like Slate's desk. A tall mirror was propped on it; framed in silver. A single bottle of cologne and a hairbrush sat on the dresser; that was it. The only other furniture in the room was a black leather chair on the other side of the bedside table. There was only one table. The other side of the bed was directly beside the bathroom door. A book was tossed carelessly on the leather chair. I expected to see The Art of War or something like that. I was shocked to find instead Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum. Slate liked funny fantasy books? I just couldn't imagine it.

  My gaze landed on the bedside table. There was a slim
drawer tucked under the top lip.

  I flicked on the lamp—a glamorous lead crystal column with a black shade—and opened the drawer. A key was the first thing I saw. I nearly squealed with joy, but it didn't fit the little lock in my collar. I scowled at the key; it was an odd, hollow shape. The type used for...

  I leaned toward one of the bed posters and pulled back the pillows. There it was; a pair of handcuffs. One of the cuffs was closed around a bedpost.

  “Can you be any more predictable?” I muttered as I tossed the key back in the drawer. Then I spotted something else. “Hold the presses.”