Dylan's mouth wiggled and I knew he was fighting a smile.
Kai glared at me, before leaning close to my ear. "I still want to kill him. He better watch himself," he said before nipping my ear and sending frissons of energy running towards my belly.
Well, this was going to be fun. I had lots of decisions to make. And I wasn't rushing into anything.
Oh, then I was going to have to tell my parents that I was in love with was the enemy, and fairly sure I wouldn't be able to pick between the three men.
Fun times.
And I was looking forward to every one of them.
About the Author
LA Fox is a British writer with a passion for tea, muffins and writing romance. She lives with her hairy husband, demonic toddler, and lazy cats. Basically, her life is full of chaos and crap. Writing romance is her escape, and she's been known to stay up all night, crying into her bucket of caffeine, when the story overtakes her.
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Siren’s Curse
Margo Bond Collins
Siren’s Curse
When the Sirens of ancient Greece retreated to deeply sunken Atlantis, they never expected to return to the world above. But now that their old foes, the Titans, are pushing into this dimension, the mermaid-shifter Circe must find new allies…and she knows just the place to start. Welcome to The Hotel Supernatural.
Siren’s Curse © 2020 Margo Bond Collins
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Circe
The world of men is no place for mer.
Sea-witch, they called me, and siren. Maiden and monster.
My song-sister Skyla claimed the love of Odysseus, but not his rage. She didn’t receive the vengeance of a trickster scorned, who strikes with words as ruinous as any sword.
That was my reward.
He said I turned his men to swine.
But his men, those soldier-sailors who put to sea with him, were swine already, fresh as they were from the sacking of Troy, the slaughter of its men and the rape of its women.
If I sang them to their true form, it was justice, not horror.
Still, he begged my guidance through the land of the dead and past the island of my song-sisters.
He did not resist our allure.
His men did not survive.
So he spun his tale of my god Poseidon pursuing him across the seas, through misery and death, until he returned triumphant to his tiny island to massacre all who gainsaid him.
He never could resist shouting his name as he raced away—I am not No Man. I am Odysseus. All who defy me are fiends.
Thus it ever is in the world of men.
I should have remembered.
Man and mer should not mix.
That’s what I tell everyone in Atlantis, anyway.
We all tell the stories we want remembered.
The gods know it’s always more complicated than that.
Still, I can never return to Greece without thinking, if only briefly, of Odysseus and the men I turned to pigs.
Honestly? That was hysterically entertaining.
I’m not here to contemplate the fun of transformative magic, though.
I’m here to see what I can find out about the recent incursion of the Titans, the proto gods, from their prison dimension into our realm.
Here on land, everything is hard and bright and hot, and the world has changed even since the last time I surfaced. It’s faster, for one thing, and people communicate with each other more quickly—if no more effectively—than ever before.
It hasn’t been that long since I came to the human world, either. Maybe twenty or thirty human years? Poseidon’s decision to send Skyla, who hadn’t been to the surface since Odysseus broke her heart, completely baffled me. I like to think that if I hadn’t been on the other side of the ocean chatting with a shark-shifter (and oh, such an attractive one, too), our god—such as he is—would have sent me, and things wouldn’t have gotten so mucked up.
But I was gone, Skyla thought she was ready to risk the surface once again, and Poseidon was getting desperate.
So of course Skyla transformed the first man she kissed into a merman.
Then she brought him back to Atlantis, against his wishes.
The world of mer is no place for men, either.
I said so to Skyla when she returned from the surface with her earthen male, her Clay, her Adam. He drifted nearby, his human bulk and muscles a clear contrast to our Atlantean men, with their sleek physiques and wide eyes.
He had to work to move through the water and to keep himself still, and the muscles of his new tail rippled with effort.
“I had no choice.” Skyla’s eyes glowed green in the depths, lighting the ocean around us. “Poseidon himself sent me. We need an army if the Titans are returning.” She flicked her tailfin in suppressed emotion, her eyes darting to the side as if to evaluate her new companion’s mood.
Not that she had any need to do so. Anger emanated from him in ripples that charged the ocean water around him with energy.
“And you’re certain the Old Ones are pushing their way back through on the surface?” I didn’t truly doubt her—she’s not known for lies—but I wanted to hear her say it aloud again.
“I am.” Her words bubbled out and around me, tasting of truth and of fear.
“Well, fish crap.” At the sound of my curse, Clay’s gaze twitched back to me, the laugh in his eyes a welcome change from the murderous glare he’s been giving everyone since he arrived.
“What?” I asked. “You think we’re all as old-fashioned as Skyla?”
He frowned, considering answering me, but he still hadn’t adapted to the pressure differential from the surface to Atlantis, wasn’t used to allowing his gills to take on the bulk of the breathing. He certainly hadn’t figured out how to reliably move the air necessary for speaking out of the water and into his lungs.
Though I hadn’t been to the surface in several years, I remembered: that hurt until you got used to it.
In the end, he simply shrugged and looked away again.
Someone was going to have to give that boy lessons in being mer. Not Skyla—he was far too angry with her for changing him to accept what she might teach him. I was about to hit up Poseidon for permission to go to the surface to gather intel.
Glancing around the agora, the open-sea market and general assembly area where we had met, I quickly assessed the other mer-folk—tradesmen discussing business, students listening to tutors, children playing. The mermen wouldn’t impress Clay, who was a peace officer in his surface life. It would take someone more like that shark-shifter I had befriended in my recent travels. The leader of his shoal, strong and muscular.
That left Poseidon himself.
The thought sent a stabbing pain through my stomach. A meeting between the two of them might not end well. What had the other Siren been thinking to bring him to Atlantis?
This will not end well.
No. Better leave Clay’s education to Skyla. If she needed me to intervene, I would. Otherwise, I had better things to do.
Like talk to my god myself.
With a sigh, I turned my
attention back to Skyla. “I will tell you what I learn from Poseidon.”
She nodded, only the slight flicking of her tail giving away her inner turmoil. “Be well, song-sister.”
So old-fashioned.
“You, too, love.” I leaned in close to embrace her, catching Clay’s hard glare as he watched us.
Definitely glad he’s not my problem.
I hoped he wouldn’t turn into an issue for me.
I was going to have plenty to deal with in the days to come without adding a pissed-off human to the mix.
Throughout the centuries, there have been times when even the other Sirens have called me witch—or something like it, anyway. Despite all the powers we have in common, there are degrees of control among us. Truth be told, Skyla was probably the least powerful of the Sirens—still more adept at using her magic than the average mermaid, but it had taken her decades to learn the first of the Siren songs.
Sheer cowardice on my part led to me to leave Clay’s initiation into the world of mer in Skyla’s hands for the time being. Eventually, Poseidon would probably order me to train him.
The topsiders have a saying about the responsibility that comes with power.
In my case, what came with great power was terrible knowledge.
What I know is this: Poseidon, great god of the ocean, is no god.
For that matter, none of the mer-folk are what we claim to be. Or, rather, we are not what we think we are. We take great pride in our separation from the humans who walk on land and are generally disdainful of the shifters who move from water to earth and back again. But we—human, sea-shifters, mer-folk, and all—are connected. Related. Cousins.
Kissing cousins, when the opportunity arose. As far as I was concerned, anyway.
I needed to find a chance to get back to that shark-shifter sometime soon.
A sigh bubbled up from me as I made my way across the Agora, stopping to speak to a few mer I knew, but doing my best to duck past anyone who might want to engage in a long conversation.
That was easier to do if I slipped outside the usual stream of traffic in the marketplace, weaving through the columns and up toward Poseidon’s palace.
The tall columns, covered in barnacles at the base, but swept clean toward the top, supported a grand hall where Poseidon held court. The hall, open to the ocean, was lit by glowing green and blue lights of sea-fire, the first spell any self-respecting sea-witch learned to cast.
Poseidon’s great throne, made of shell and bone and living coral, swept up from the floor at the back of the hall, directly in front of a door leading into his private quarters, carved into the side of the enormous arc of rock that curved across the top of the mer-made structure.
The court of the great lord of the sea was not currently in session. Two mermen, large by our standards but still more willowy than most human males, guarded the entrance to Poseidon’s personal space. I ignored them as I brushed by. Poseidon and I had come to an understanding centuries ago: he didn’t try to stop me from doing the things I considered important, and I didn’t out his secret to the rest of the mer-folk. His guards knew better than to try to stop me.
I waited to call out until the heavy stone door swung shut behind me. “You can quit hiding. I’m not going away until we talk about this.”
“I am not hiding.” The ocean god sounded petulant.
“Sure you’re not.”
I heard his irritated sigh bubble through the water as he moved into the foyer where I waited. “I have been waiting here for you for quite some time.”
Without waiting for an invitation, I drifted through the arched doorway into the space designed to greet guests—not that Poseidon had many. I settled myself on a T-shaped perch, coiling my tail around the slender spire that attached it to the floor.
“What do you know of the Titans breaking out of their holding dimensions?” I asked bluntly.
At least the pseudo-god had the decency to wince. “Nothing more than Skyla has reported.”
I stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Nothing? Then why did you send her to the surface in the first place?”
“Ah. That.” He ran one hand through the gray hair that waved gently in the water in a halo around his head as he moved to take a seat directly across from me. “I had heard from some of my other subjects that there seemed to be breaches in the walls we set up around them.”
I wasn’t included in that “we”—the ousting of the Titans had been well before my time.
“Other subjects?” Reflexively, my tail tightened around the pole it gripped. “Mer? Or … other?” The pause in my question should have reminded him that I wasn’t thrilled about his network of spies among the other shifters, but if it did, he chose to ignore it.
“Not mer.”
“Other ocean shifters?” At his curt nod, I continued. “So on the word of spies you have placed among the shifters, you chose to send Skyla? Why? Why not wait for me to return?”
His steady stare finally clued me in.
“You didn’t send Skyla because I was gone, did you? You waited until I was gone so you could send Skyla.” My eyes grew wider and rounder, and the glow emanating from them changed from a comparatively calm shade of turquoise to the virulent yellow-green of rage. My hands shook and I clasped the edge of the seat under me to keep from reacting any further to the sea-lord’s trickery.
“Tell me why,” I finally said through clenched teeth.
Poseidon shrugged. “This,” he said, waving one hand in a surprisingly elegant motion for someone as bulky as he was—at least for a mer. “You are too quick to anger, Circe. Too likely to take action without waiting for all the information.”
“That is utter seahorse-crap, and you know it.”
His raised eyebrows only made my eyes glow more yellow. His own gaze stayed steady, their mer-glow a serene blue.
Lowering my voice, I hissed, “I have kept your secret for millennia, you fish-shifter fraud.”
When he didn’t answer, but simply stared at me steadily, I reeled in my anger, spooling it deep within me. I could cast it back out again later if necessary. Allowing my gills to flare out from behind my ears, where they were usually hidden by my dark hair, I took the mer equivalent of a deep breath, allowing the cooling water to swirl through me, oxygenating my blood and calming the swirling yellow ire of my magic, then back out, taking most of my remaining anger with it.
“Have you seen the human Skyla brought back to Atlantis?” I asked, my tone more accusing than I had anticipated.
A hint of a smile flickered across Poseidon’s face as he inclined his head once in a nod, and my rage threatened to erupt again. I kept it tightly contained, though the king’s glance at my tightening jaw suggested he saw more than I would have wished.
“I have not met the man as of yet,” he said, “but yes, I have seen him from afar.”
I frowned. “What is the benefit of having him here?”
Poseidon’s blank stare didn’t fool me. “You sent Skyla up top. You haven’t ordered her to return the human to his original shape and take him home. You must have some reason for wanting him here. What is it?”
That almost-smile flickered across his face again. “Skyla and I simply discussed the fact that we would need an army if we were to defeat the Titans a second time—especially as I have no idea where the majority of my brother and sister gods are these days.”
I closed my eyes, allowing the gentle sway of the water around me to soothe me before I spoke. “You are an old, lying bastard of a monster. It would serve you right to be wiped out by the Titans, for them to roam free across this world again.”
“But?”
Bubbles streamed up and away from me as I blew out air from my lungs in a sigh, then closed them off again. “But I don’t want to die.” I glared at him, some of that anger seeping out from my tight control and coloring the light of my gaze.
“Yes,” I finally said. “I will help you keep them locked away, if I can.”
&
nbsp; As I left Poseidon’s palace, I passed Amphitrite on her way in. I presumed the god-king’s consort had been at the temple with the younger initiates, working with the high priestess to teach them the Siren songs.
Good. Her presence here meant the temple would be unoccupied later when I went in to replenish my magic.
Yet another of Poseidon’s secrets that he hadn’t been able to keep from me.
The so-called goddess managed a tight, unfelt smile when she saw me. As the only other mer who knew Poseidon’s secret, I was a threat, as far as Amphitrite was concerned.
I was surprised, therefore, when she paused to speak to me.
“Amphitrite,” I said with a nod, working to keep my voice neutral and my eyes from glowing purple with the disdain I felt for her.
“He has convinced you to act as his emissary in this hunt?” she asked. No need to ask who he might be—for Amphitrite, there was never anyone other than Poseidon. For many years, she had worried that I might attempt a liaison with the only mer she had ever cared about other than herself.
It had taken some time for her to believe that I really had no designs on a mer who styled himself a god.
“If the Titans break free of their prison, they will destroy Atlantis,” she warned.
“Along with most of the rest of the world.” My tone was much drier than should be possible in an undersea city.
“I care little for the rest of it.”
Isn’t that the truth.
Amphitrite’s eyes glowed a clear, untroubled white—the eyes of someone who cared about no one but herself. She and Poseidon belonged together. They deserved each other.
Putting on my most patient air, I said, “It’s a scouting mission, Amphitrite. My only objective is to find out what is going on.”
We both knew I would work to contain the Titans if I had to—and if I could. It was easier to maintain that fiction than try to discuss all the myriad ways this search could go awry.
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