by Marata Eros
She nodded. “Even now we would be dead if it had not been for the jewels of the sea plant I carry in my hair.”
“But that makes you vulnerable...” Constantine said, stating the obvious.
Ember shook her head. “No one knows the treasure for what it is, they think it is but an artifice of beauty.”
Someone might, Constantine thought.
“Stay close to me so I don't have to inconvenience myself with your protection.”
“Yes, whatever you say, brave Constantine. It is more for my brother's benefit. After all, I am the last of the maidens that have magick, so I must be protected, my virginity secured until such time as I align with our sister nation,” she said with clear resentment ringing in the tone of her voice.
Constantine stopped walking, the other warriors plastering themselves against the rough brick of a city building.
“What?” Constantine hissed. “That is strange sibling love.”
Ember stared at him with a defiant tilt to her chin. “It is not about love, it is about survival. I will wed with whom secures our safety the best. I will carry the treasure of the sea in my hair. And we will take on mixed-blood Faction to make our protection more formidable.”
Con was struck dumb at first, as if slapped. He regained his composure quickly.
Along with his age old companion, rage.
He took her by the shoulders, giving her a hard shake and had to stop the feelings that laying rough hands on her brought to the surface. Goddess how he wanted to pound his flesh inside her, preferably tied and bound to assist him in her full sexual degradation. The dark demon hovered inside him like a shadow that would never see light.
“I will not be used!” he hissed as the warrior closest to him laid a staying hand on his arm.
“Take your hand off me or I shall break it at the wrist and shove it up your ass,” Con promised.
The hand was slowly lifted and Constantine gave Ember his full attention.
“No one is used more than me,” she said in a low voice. “You have choice, Con.”
Her unspoken statement, I have none, was not uttered. Nevertheless, Con heard it and let his hands drop from her.
He and Ember were not too far from each other in the hierarchy of life. They were both pursuing freedom. Used for what they were by others.
But like hamsters on a wheel, it went round and round.
Without end.
CHAPTER 3
Brandon
Brandon stood staring at the vast blackness of the sea through the very window that his mother did when the call was strong. It didn't need to be for Brandon, each day it found him as an unlikely sentinel, the yin to his yang. Drawn to the soothing roar of the Mother.
His blooded mother had told him that it would always be that way.
Somehow, when he'd been safely ensconced inside her body, there'd been a suspended moment in time when her interaction with one of the Sirens had brought his mixed blood to the surface in an unprecedented magical mingling of the two species.
For Aubree had a shared lineage: Druid enough to be a breeder and Mer enough to be a maiden. She was mated to his full-blooded Druid vampire father, his younger sibling twins still babies.
Not Brandon.
His strange mix of genetics had accelerated his growth and he entered his biology as an awakening teen, even though only two years had passed since his birth. It had become apparent that he might be a new species entirely.
It made for an uneasy coven.
It caused strife in his household and Brandon was helpless to stop it. He wanted badly to be close with his father but Beau harbored resentment. Where their familial blood was uncontested, their natures were contrary.
Brandon knew his father thought there was a small potential for Aubree to leave him for the Siren's call. Brandon did not agree, his mother loved his father.
Brandon would be the one to leave. His blood had been altered in utero. He would have had a smaller fraction of the blood of the Mer than even his mother without that interference. Yet for the supernatural moment the warrior of the Mer and she had shared... now it was as if that quantum of Mer blood sung louder each day that he aged.
Brandon sighed and felt the answering tug from his mother as she stepped up behind him.
He turned, his face in profile, the dark eyes, so characteristic of a Siren glittering back at Aubree like ebony fire.
“What's wrong, Brandon?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder, one of the twins in her arms.
He turned to face her, the night air chilling the room from the open doors and Brandon moved to shut the divided glass doors that led to the balcony.
“No,” Aubree said quickly, “leave them open.”
He looked a question at her. “You feel them too?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
Brandon and she gazed out at the blackness of the night, and beyond, the vastness of the sea.
The Sirens walked outside tonight. And amongst them a female. A maiden.
“A female is out there right now,” Brandon said quietly, an ache in his chest.
“Oh?” his mother said, her voice telling him what she thought of where his head was. Where it had been for months now.
Brandon's face got hot. It fucking blew to have your own mother know that your thoughts were consumed like all Druid males: with breeding.
Aubree laughed. “It's alright, champ. Remember, this is what we are. It is normal for you to want to hook up.”
“God mom... ah!” Brandon said, raking a hand through his hair. He'd had to learn so much of their history in such a brief time. Learning about his unusual beginning, his accelerated learning a necessity because of his rapid maturation.
It was enough to bring a guy to his knees.
Now the Siren's call could be heard.
Aubree's humor gradually faded. “I can hear it, but faintly,” she said.
It was a pulsating roar to his ears: a summons.
Brandon turned to go but his mother's voice stopped him.
“Don't go, Bran,” she said, her normally sarcastic humor dried up like the hot plains of a desert. This was a total rehash of many conversations that ended up the same. As a Siren who had Become, Brandon would now have to meet with his own kind, the other half of his unusual gene pool. His mother would need to realize that it was part of who he was now.
“I've got to,” Brandon said, his eyes on her face. “It's a compulsion. I feel like I need to be... with them.”
“I knew that you wouldn't stay with us forever... it just seems too soon. You were, just a baby...” Aubree began, looking down at his sister in her arms.
She was normal. Not enough of the weirdness that made him what he was to manifest the rapid growth.
As if to agree, his baby sister gurgled. Gabriella waved a chubby fist at him and smiled, a little drool slipping out of her angelic face.
She swung her tiny fist in his direction.
It looked like a farewell to Brandon.
He gave his mother a tight hug, her quaking sadness felt by him long after he departed.
To human eyes he might look like a physically mature young man of eighteen or so, unusually large and muscled.
What he really was: a hybrid Druid vampire with a bucketful of Siren blood.
It was spilling a pathway like a red carpet that lay before him, unrolling into infinity.
Brandon was on an unconscious hunt for a maiden without name. The other half of his blood called for him to find her.
To find his other people.
The remainder of his heart was left behind with his Druid kin, a shard of his love like a hole in the muscle at the center of his body.
Could the maiden fill it?
Would he live to find out?
Those were questions without answers.
Brandon plowed forward with the barest whisper of hope as his internal barometer rose when the call of his brethren of the sea became stronger.
*
Ember halted and Constantine walked around her, dismissing her pause at first. When she didn't follow, he and the other three warriors stopped.
Constantine found the deference afforded females tiresome. He simply wasn't used to accommodating it.
“Do you feel something?” Con asked impatiently, stabbing his hands on hips covered with hanging weapons. This was his first mission with the Mer and it felt like he wore ill-fitting shoes. It lacked the fluidity that Con took for granted while running raids with the Faction. Their single-minded focus had a purity that resonated with Con: hunt, pillage and kill. Blissful simplicity.
“I do not feel the humans...”
“What?”
Madden, the warrior at his side said, “Our Ember can sense the precious plant in the user's veins.”
Hmmm, Con thought, I cannot. A thought occurred to him. “Tell me when you sense it so that I'll know how to recognize it in the future.”
Ember nodded, obviously distracted.
“That is not what our princess maiden scents now, is it?” Madden asked slyly and she gave him a hard look.
Constantine raised a brow, taking in the surroundings surreptitiously. What had she come upon?
Then he felt it... his blood recognizing what drew near.
Druid.
Con became instantly sharp, crouching down into battle readiness.
He was utterly stunned when a young vampire Druid rounded the corner, eyes only for Ember.
Eyes of a Siren, the body of a Druid, Constantine would recognize those eyes of the sea anywhere. The man's ebony gaze reflected like deep pools of obsidian fire as they found Con's challengingly, his body that of a Druid warrior, though unfinished.
Constantine had an unnerving moment of uncertainty before he launched at the foreigner.
It was a strike meant to kill.
It was Constantine's way.
The only way.
Ember screamed, but it came too slow.
*
Brandon
Brandon saw the one who rang false as Siren, a discordant string or recognition plucked.
He and dear old dad had few things in common but stupid was not one of them.
This gill-laden vampire with a Druid's body screamed Faction to Brandon, who had killed many of the remnants left behind after the massacre.
Yet this one remained.
Brandon didn't have an assload of time to dwell on all that, those thoughts were milliseconds before the very one he considered sprung like a snake, a dagger arcing as he flew in a misted blur at Brandon.
Another vampire of his age and experience may have been crippled by the immediacy of the attack, but Brandon had trained with his father, Beau. And the Exotic named Tarrin, with skin so black it was like a bruised plum. Alongside his other mentor, King of vampire, Kier-- who was a Faction puppet no longer.
Brutal warriors had trained Brandon from the moment he could lift a weapon.
He had many that he wore right now, they'd become extensions of his body whenever he left the safety of the Druid coven. Brandon was atypical, accelerated in maturity, mixed in blood, battle-hardened in the two short years he'd traversed this earth.
All of that coalesced in a blinding moment of providence as two of mixed lineage came against each other in a raw piece of duality and war.
Constantine of the mixed blood came at him and Brandon drove the dagger that lay in his palm into the gut of his opponent. Con's mouth became an “O” of surprise then he lay a shallow slash at the newcomer's forehead.
Fuck, that was smart, Brandon thought with grudging admiration as a gash opened up immediately and blood like a small river flowed into his line of sight; Con had nicked his head, the biggest bleeder of the body, effectively blinding him.
“No!” Brandon heard a female call out and the fight was arrested. “He is Mer, Constantine!”
Constantine? Brandon wondered... where had he heard that name? Oh yes... the renegade. The former Faction vampire that had the blood of all the species pounding through his veins. But nobody wanted him.
Brandon remembered.
He sat up as Constantine backed away from him.
Brandon swiped the blood out of his eyes and saw the look in Constantine's dark gaze: he wanted Brandon dead.
Well likewise, ya fucker, Brandon thought.
He glared at the older vampire, taking in his measure. His body was hard, built like the typical vampire Druid: a brick shithouse with legs and meathooks for arms. It was Tarrin's words that Brandon remembered now as he stared at the Faction.
“There is one that you would come upon, his name is Constantine. He has been allowed to live only because of Lucia. She did not want to see a bloodline of ours expunged. She felt... that he might make a turn for the better.”
Tarrin kept the larger part of the story to himself. The part that spoke of Constantine's dark nature: his sadistic sexual compulsions to conquer females.
Brandon had been a year younger, looking probably around thirteen years old at the time. Perhaps not old enough for those bits of information.
“Why are you telling me this, Tarrin?” Brandon had asked him, his curiosity making him forget his tongue.
Tarrin narrowed his eyes on the unusual coven member. He already knew where this would lead. Siren blood was meant to be at sea. Anything less was soul-starvation. Tarrin had told the boy's father as much: this young Druid vampire would Awaken, then go. He'd find the sea just as surely as Tarrin had found Lucia.
Or the sea would find him.
Either way, a warning about Constantine was not out of order.
“He is the one that if you were to encounter, I would have you recognize him.” Tarrin gave him level eyes, eyes that required attention.
Brandon gave it. Everyone in the coven had turned to him and Lucia as automatic advisors. Kier and Holly may be the Druid King and Queen, but Lucia and Tarrin where the bones of their operation.
“I am kept here all the time,” Brandon had answered in the sullen voice of youth and muttered underneath his breath, “to train,” and Tarrin had him that fast, wrapped in a bear hug, one that went beyond crushing bones, edging towards pulverizing.
“What is the counter to this young sir?” Tarrin asked him quietly.
Brandon was steaming pissed, he'd allowed himself to relax against the most aggressive warrior of the vampire race.
Fucking smooth, ya dumbshit, Brandon thought.
He tramped on Tarrin's instep with vampiric force. The foot gave way underneath his sole and Tarrin grunted, spinning him and flat-palming Brandon dead center in his chest.
His heartbeat stuttered in his chest at the impact as Brandon flew, hoping to arrest his fall as he was thrown backward, Tarrin was on him, his dagger tip at his neck, the pulse of his throat teasing the deadly point on the upbeat.
How could he get to him on that foot? Brandon thought in a spastic lurch.
“Stop thinking, Brandon,” Tarrin's black eyes searched his face. “Thinking is for vampires who wish for a quick death.”
He impaled his own chin on the dagger and took the flat bottom part of his palm and rammed it into Tarrin's nose. The pain from the blade that he'd stabbed into his tender jaw and mouth was a searing spear of fire. Thank goddess the thing was short.
Tarrin howled and backed up.
Fuck, that was righteous, Brandon thought.
He would have lingered on the brief victory but Brandon was in writhe-worthy agony, managing to tear the blade out and fling it away. He went after Tarrin in a head charge before Tarrin had time to respond.
Tarrin did respond, swinging blindly as the blood from his nose jettisoned everywhere in a liquid spray that spattered the floor where they fought. His fist caught Brandon and he fell, slipping on Tarrin's blood.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Aubree yelled with Lucia at her heels.
The two popped their heads up from their hands and knees, Brandon's cheek was swelling, a geyser
of blood exiting his chin. Tarrin's face was a smashed pancake on his face.
“It looks like there was some sparring,” Lucia said dryly, unperturbed by the sight of the bloodied and broken warriors, one teacher and one student.
“Well fuck-on-ditty,” Aubree said, pissed. “Nobody beats the tar outta my boy but me.”
Shit, Brandon thought, here we go.
Aubree, who was far gone with child, came alongside Tarrin and squatted beside him. She pushed a finger in his chest. “Don't you wreck my boy like that again or I'll kick your ass!”
A heartbeat of swollen silence descended and was shattered when Tarrin threw his head back and howled laughter, Brandon clutching his abused ribs and rolled over on his back to join him.
Aubree awkwardly stood, pressing her hand to the small of her back. “Are you both insane?” she asked incredulously, her eyes darting between the two of them as they rolled around, loving the comedy of the moment.
Which she wasn't feelin' at all.
Brandon felt the wound in his chin close and smiled at his mom when his face would cooperate with the expression.
She worried too much, he thought.
Lucia stepped up next to Aubree. “This is the way of Druid males, everything gets handled physically.”
Aubree craned her neck up at the taller woman, taking in the deep oceanic eyes, the golden hair, the ramrod straight back and suddenly she smiled, it was sunlight breaking through clouds. “I am unique. When a sparring partner was needed, sometimes there was no one else. This is typical of teaching methods. And,” she spread her arms out helplessly, “ we heal.” Lucia's eyes took on a slight sheen and she added quietly, “It does not mean it does not hurt.”
Tarrin frowned, standing. Lucia laughed when she saw the state of his tunic. “That is beyond anyone's skills, my love.”
Tarrin looked down at his once-ivory tunic and sighed.
He had a way of ruining his clothes. It was now burnt red, somewhere between bright and brick.
“Aye,” he said with that strange accent of his and Brandon smiled.
He was an excellent teacher.