by Lucia Ashta
Siren Magic
Sirangel: Book One
Lucía Ashta
Siren Magic
Sirangel: Book One
Copyright © 2019 by Lucía Ashta
www.LuciaAshta.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Sanja Balan of Sanja’s Covers
Editing by Lee Burton
Editing also by Elsa Crites
ASIN B07NKV1JCR
Version 2019.06.10
Books by Lucía Ashta
WITCHING WORLD UNIVERSE
Sirangel
Siren Magic
Angel Magic
Fusion Magic
Magical Creatures Academy
Night Shifter
Lion Shifter
Mage Shifter
Magical Arts Academy
First Spell
Winged Pursuit
Unexpected Agents
Improbable Ally
Questionable Rescue
Sorcerers’ Web
Ghostly Return
Transformations
Castle’s Curse
Spirited Escape
Dragon’s Fury
Magic Ignites
Powers Unleashed
Magical Arts Academy Omnibus, Books 1-4
Magical Arts Academy Omnibus, Books 5-8
Magical Arts Academy Omnibus, Books 9-13
The Witching World
Magic Awakens
The Five-Petal Knot
The Merqueen
The Witching World Omnibus, Books 1-3
The Ginger Cat
The Scarlet Dragon
Mermagic
The Witching World Omnibus, Books 4-6
Spirit of the Spell
The Light Warrios
Beyond Sedona
Beyond Prophecy
Beyond Amber
Beyond Arnaka
PLANET ORIGINS UNIVERSE
Dragon Force
Invisible Born
Invisible Bound
Invisible Rider
Planet Origins
Planet Origins
Original Elements
Holographic Princess
Planet Origins Omnibus, Books 1-3
Purple Worlds
Mowab Rider
Planet Sand
Holographic Convergence
OTHER WORLDS
Supernatural Bounty Hunter
(co-authored with Leia Stone)
Magic Bite
Magic Sight
Magic Touch
Pocket Portals
The Orphan Son
STANDALONES
Huntress of the Unseen
A Betrayal of Time
Whispers of Pachamama
Daughter of the Wind
The Unkillable Killer
Immortalium
About Siren Magic
The Magical Creatures Academy has sent its finest fairies to recruit her.
As a hybrid shapeshifter—half siren, half angel—Selene is one of a kind.
It’s a label that makes her the target of a rebel faction of supernatural creatures that seeks to claim her power.
But her power is undeveloped and more a danger to herself than an aid. Yet her magic is her only advantage over the vicious vampires and fierce shifters who seek to eliminate her.
Soon Selene is on the run in an unfamiliar world and unable to return to her ocean home. At least she’s not alone. Quinn, a shifter with his own secrets, has her back. Selene and Quinn must find a way to escape those that hunt them while surviving their unstable powers. But can Quinn help her stop vampires and shifters who’ve had centuries to master their abilities?
For Sonia Isabella,
who makes my life magical
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Want More?
Angel Magic
The Magical Creatures Academy Series
The Magical Arts Academy Series
The Witching World Series
The Dragon Force Series
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
I stared at a silver wolf head, all ferocious teeth and gaping jaws. And it stared back.
Without a doubt, the wolf head was meant to instill fear. I swallowed a sizeable lump of it and wondered if the sea witch would allow me to return home.
Why would anyone place such a frightening knocker on their door? Certainly it didn’t bode well that this was where Mulunu had sent me instead of assigning me a comfortable role among our mertribe.
Built in a pocket of forest, the house was larger than the fishing ships that dotted the ocean, standing tall at the end of a very long and narrow dirt drive that had no beginning from where I stood. The house’s blue exterior, the color of a deep, stormy sky, was pleasant enough, but the thought of being enclosed by its thick walls made me shiver. My entire life, I’d never been enclosed in anything.
I turned around, hoping to find the way back to the ocean, when the door was yanked open and the maws of the silver wolf were flung out of sight.
“Well?” the man barked from inside the house. I blinked at him, thinking nothing particularly useful, only that he reminded me of the lifelong sailors I occasionally saw at sea. Scraggly beard, bushy mustache, and a scowl as deep as the crags that edged the ocean. The interior was dark compared to the bright sunshine outside, and the man’s blustery eyes were equally dark, like a rolling sea about to fling its sailors to kingdom come.
“If you’re waiting for more of an invitation, y’aren’t gonna get it,” he said.
I blinked at him some more, sure that by then he’d decided I was an idiot. Here was my chance at a fresh start, a place where no one knew me or my history, and I was already blowing it.
“What’s it gonna be, lassie?” the man insisted, moving the door back toward me an inch, as if he’d shut the door in my face if I didn’t make a move.
“Uh…” I said, just to say something. I wasn’t expecting someone like him … so gruff. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, since Mulunu hadn’t said, but I’d hoped for a more pleasant welcome. “Um, Mulunu sent me.” My voice was a weak squeak and I cringed at the sound of it.
The man pulled the door open wider and took a step toward me, narrowing those fierce, tumultuous eyes like he could see through me. “Did she now?”
“Yes, she did.” A part of me realized his question hadn’t required much of an answer, but this was the part I’d rehearsed since I’d arrived with a thud atop his doorstep in a swirl of Mulunu’s magic. “During my coming of age ceremony, her sea crystal told her that I needed to come to land. So she sent me—”
“To me,” he said. “As if I have nothing better to do than to babysit wide-eyed lasses who don’t know how to handle themselves.”
This time when I blinked, I blinked back tears. I was not going to let myself cry. If
he didn’t want me, and my people didn’t want me, I’d just find another place to go. I tilted my head high and met the man’s piercing gaze.
When he didn’t say anything more for a beat, I started to turn, speaking over my shoulder. “I see that you weren’t expecting me. I won’t bother you any longer. I’ll be on my way.”
To where? I had no idea. But I still had a certain amount of dignity left, even if I was the only siren in history to be ordered to head to land during her coming of age ceremony.
A callused hand landed on my shoulder and the voice that followed it was gentler than before. “If Mulunu sent you, there must be a good reason. That woman may be wily and old as seashells, but I’ve never known her to be wrong.”
Neither had I, and that’s what worried me most.
I turned back to face the man and the open door behind him, peering around his bulky body. He was only as tall as me, but he was stocky and firm all around. He probably weighed twice as much as I, all muscle and gristle. Past him, it was dark as a cavern, with no sunshine or breeze inside. I’d only been on land for a short while and already I missed the ocean as if it were a limb ripped from my body. I didn’t want to be here. I hadn’t wanted to leave my home. But no merperson of our tribe had ever defied Mulunu, with her gray hair that was so long it pooled around her in the currents like the ink of squid. Her unnerving milky eyes glowed like opals when the sunshine hit them just right.
The man took a step back and to the side, gesturing inside with a sweep of his arm. “Come in, lass. I don’t bite.”
But he looked like he might, in the right circumstances.
However, Mulunu, no matter how fierce and unyielding in her ways, had never led anyone in our clan wrong. Her magic was the strongest of all my people. My people. Yeah, not according to them. I chuckled darkly. I only realized I had when my reaction elicited a curious look from my reluctant host.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Just thinking about things.”
“No crime in that. Better to think than not to, if ya ask me. Come on, in ya go.”
Although I stood at the threshold, and “in” was only a few steps away, I steeled myself for the transition. The moment I stepped into this man’s house was the moment I accepted my path wasn’t aligned with my tribe’s. And my clan was all I knew.
The man’s eyes softened. My torment must’ve been apparent on my face.
“Mulunu knows what she’s doing,” he said. “We’re both going to have to trust in that for now.”
I nodded, my head feeling as if it were filled with sea sponges, my waist-long violet hair smacking against my back in heavy, wet strands. Before I could talk myself out of it—because I knew myself and I would—I lifted leaden feet, which were as awkward to me as if I were forced to stand on all fours, and walked into the house that looked as worn and hardened as its owner. My bare feet slapped against the hardwood floor, rubbed to a shine by the entrance.
The moment my entire body passed through the threshold, I was zapped by lightning.
I yelped and clutched at my chest and stomach, squirming, trying to get the sensation to stop. Did they have jellyfish on land as they did in water, so transparent that they nearly blended into their surroundings? I didn’t see anything like it, but I could barely open my eyes against the pain.
Mulunu had sent me to my death, the sneaky old crone. She hadn’t dared to kill me in front of my mother, so she’d sent me away under false pretenses. The reach of her powers obviously extended beyond the ocean since she was the one to deposit me here in a swirl of flashing light and color … to die.
I hunched into myself, tears stinging my eyes at the pain of it.
“Child, are ya all right?” the man asked, running his hands over my shoulders and back as if checking for injuries.
I jerked my shoulders so his hands would fall away from me, but I could do no more than that to rid myself of the annoyance of his touch. I was dying and I wasn’t sure if he was Mulunu’s accomplice in my end.
The sting traveled through my body, leaving no bit untouched. I clenched my teeth shut, whimpering, hating that I’d have to share my final moments with a man I didn’t know instead of the mother who loved me and would do anything for me—even send me away because she thought it was best for me.
I cried, wishing for my mother so intensely that the feeling only augmented my suffering. She’d lose it when she found out Mulunu had sent me away to die far from her. My mother was kind and gentle, oh, but she could be fierce. She’d tear Mulunu limb from limb, and the crone would deserve it for her treachery.
I collapsed onto the wooden floor, my legs—awkward foreign appendages—unable to hold me any longer.
“Quinn!” the man roared into the depths of the house while continuing to crouch next to me. His voice was loud and ferocious, and I tried to pull away from it. I couldn’t take any more stimulation. I was about to lose the fight, I could tell.
Every bit of me had begun to shake so that I could no longer wrap my hands around myself in desperation to claw the pain out. In moments, I more or less collapsed onto the man behind me, who hurried to adjust so he could catch my head before it hit the floor.
“What the hell’s going on?” another voice, Quinn’s I presumed, asked. His words were laced with panic. Kind of the second stranger to care that I was dying—unless he just didn’t want me to die on the floor of their house.
“I don’t know,” the Sailor Man said. He bent over my face and pried open my eyelids. I fought him though, my eyes clenched shut against the pain. “It’s got to be the ward.”
“The ward shouldn’t be able to do something like this. It’s not set up that way.” Quinn knelt by my side, running his hands along the length of my body and then leaning over my face. His breath was warm and just the heat of it made me want to die already. I couldn’t take another thing. My body was about to explode.
I opened my mouth to say something, but garbled, slurred sounds were all I managed before giving up.
“Call the witch!” Sailor Man said.
“There isn’t time,” Quinn said. “We need her to shift or something, to interrupt the magic.”
“What makes you think that’ll work?”
“I have no idea. But she’ll die if we don’t try something, right?”
“Yes.” Sailor Man’s voice was grim. “No body can withstand this for long.” He leaned next to my ear, his beard hairs rubbing against my skin and driving me crazy with the additional sensory stimulation. “Shift, lass. Shift. It’ll help.”
Shift? It was just my luck that I’d be dying and the only useful tips I’d receive would be nonsense. I tried to shake my head, hoping they’d get the drift that I couldn’t shift into a damn thing. I’d even lost my siren tail when Mulunu transported me onto land, a few feet away from the spot where I was going to die.
“What’s she doing?” Quinn asked.
“She must be having a seizure or something.”
Okay. So obviously shaking my head hadn’t worked.
“Mulunu is going to kill me,” Sailor Man added. “The girl’s only just arrived.”
“She wouldn’t actually kill you, would she?” Quinn asked, though it didn’t seem like the time to worry about someone else dying when I was in the throes of it.
“You don’t know Mulunu. If this lass is important to her, I’m a walking dead man.”
Yeah, well, he was lucky there. I was only important to a total of two people in this world, my mother and my best friend, Liana, and both were oceans away from here.
The pain intensified and I gasped for air. I swallowed big, empty gulps, my eyes popping open like a fish’s stuck out of water. That was me, a siren stuck on land, condemned to death for being different. I should’ve known it would end like this. I was done for before I was even born.
“This is horrible,” Quinn said. “She’s really going to die.” He sounded freaked out. “Why won’t she shift?”
“Maybe she can’t.”
“The
n why else would this Mulunu send her to you?”
“Beats me. But the old hag always has her reasons.”
I didn’t understand much of what they were saying. I mean, I could shift I supposed, kind of. I’d lost my tail when I popped up on the doorstep, and that had never happened before, not once in my eighteen years.
But once I’d shifted into what passed as a human, what else was I supposed to shift into?
My heart squeezed at the pain, my lungs spasmed, and I understood this was truly the end. My eyeballs ached from the strength of whatever was running through me. I closed them for the final time as my limbs seized and trembled violently, making me jump across Sailor Man’s lap.
He tried to hold me still by pressing against my shoulders. “Help me,” he cried out to Quinn. “Hold her so she doesn’t hurt herself.”
But that ship had sailed.
I tried to pull in a final breath of peace, figuring this messed up life I’d led owed me at least that. However, I failed even in that. My breath came up short, and I began to choke and cough at the same time, all while my body thrashed around.
Then the shaking subsided suddenly, as if I were already dead.
Quinn cried out. “Oh no, no, no. Come on! This can’t be happening.”
My sentiments exactly. I was to die without ever seeing the face of the young man who lamented my loss. Figured.