by Ann Gimpel
“The same way you faced Karin.” Her bond animal was back. “And Ketha. And Aura.”
“It’s different.”
“How?” the coyote asked.
Zoe quested about for answers as she dried her body and hair and dragged clothing over her still-damp skin. She’d known the women longer, certainly trusted them more. The hard truth was, she wanted Recco to see her as competent and capable.
As partner material.
After today’s events, he probably viewed her as vain and weak and pathetic. She sucked in a ragged breath and tugged a comb through her tangled hair. If she didn’t sort it out now, it would be much harder to deal with once it dried.
“He helped you because he cares about you,” the coyote observed.
“No. He helped because he’s a decent man.” Zoe waited; her bondmate didn’t contradict her. She’d been half hoping it had inside information from Recco’s wolf. If it did, it wasn’t saying.
She glanced at a clock mounted over the door. Almost an hour had elapsed since Aura announced dinner was in fifteen minutes. Zoe thought about it; her stomach didn’t feel up to food. Maybe a shot of whiskey would sit better. After a final glance around her cabin, she left and headed up one flight to the bar. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with anyone since they’d all still be at dinner.
Pleased her assessment about not having to see anyone had been accurate, she sat in the bar, hunched over a tumbler of Irish whiskey. Since it was easier not to think about anything, she stared at the amber liquid sloshing around her glass. After the first few sips, her mouth and throat had numbed, and it had become easier to keep intrusive thoughts at bay.
“Mind if I join you?” Recco’s deep voice broke into her reverie.
Zoe almost knocked her glass over when she shot to her feet. “I—I didn’t hear you.”
He reached a hand to steady her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I’ve always had a quiet tread, and it grew quieter once I became a Shifter.”
A welter of emotions pummeled her. Happiness. Confusion. Shame. She sat down in a hurry and looked away, the humiliation from earlier fresh enough to make her cheeks heat. “You don’t have to babysit me. I’m all right.”
The open expression on his face faded. “No one sent me to check up on you, if that’s where you’re headed.” He let go of her arm and stepped back. “Everyone is gathering on the bridge in about half an hour. You need to be there too.”
Something about his tone snapped her out of her funk. “Why? What’s going on?”
“They can’t raise McMurdo on the radio.”
Zoe thought about it. “What’s so unusual about that? I’m pretty sure Ketha lost contact with the outside world a few years into the Cataclysm.”
He balanced from foot to foot with the rocking motion of the ship. “The satellite network is down. Has been for years, but before satellites, ships used shortwave radios to communicate over distances.”
“And no one at McMurdo is answering?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s fine if you want to sit.” She stole a glance at him. “I have enough to feel bad about without adding a lack of manners to the list.”
Recco didn’t wait for a second invitation. He swung by the bar and grabbed a glass before he pulled out the chair across from hers and slid into it. Hefting the bottle she’d placed on the table, he poured a finger into his glass. “What’s bothering you? Everyone missed you at dinner. Aura told us she didn’t think you’d be down.”
Zoe rounded on him. “How can you ask what’s bothering me? You were there. Goddammit.” She pounded a closed fist on the table and winced when pain lanced up her arm. “You saw what a blithering ninny I turned into.”
He closed his fingers around her fist. “Not what I observed at all. The magic from the instrument was powerful. Did you realize part of it was aimed at me?”
Zoe’s eyes widened. “Aw shit. Did it hurt you? Or your wolf?”
“No. It made it abundantly clear, though, it expected me to let go of you.” He inhaled, a ragged sound that tore at her heart. “You weren’t the only casualty. Beyond the lyre’s efforts to upset my grip, every man there got hammered with lust.”
His cheeks developed a warm hue, but he kept talking. “I haven’t had such an instantaneous physical response since I was a teenager. Daide too, and I have no reason to believe Viktor or Juan were immune. Ted and Boris were groping each other, something Boris would never have done in public. Argies aren’t as progressive as other cultures, and they tend to keep same-sex activities under wraps.”
“Your reaction to them isn’t surprising. Sirens lure men to their doom, using sex as bait.” Zoe shook her head to clear her thoughts. “What none of us knew was how they made new Sirens.”
“Would you have been more careful if you’d known about it?” He took a sip of the whiskey, sighing with pleasure as he swallowed.
Her mouth twisted downward. “Probably not.”
He let go of her and spread his hands across the table. “From where I sit, you got snared in one kind of magic. The men and I fell prey to another. What I don’t understand is why you’re beating yourself up. You wanted the lyre. I wanted one of those Sirens...” he faltered, and then added, “In an up close and personal way. My wolf told me it would have stepped in before anything happened, but its offer to intervene doesn’t dilute how much I craved one of those abominations.”
“They looked pretty desirable to me.” Zoe set her glass down. “Most of us would kill for bodies like theirs. From the waist up, anyway.”
“See what you’re doing?”
“Not exactly. In truth, I’ve been trying not to look too hard nor too deep at anything right now.”
He focused his liquid dark gaze on her. “You’re trying to make me feel better about falling under the Sirens’ spell. And you’re succeeding by normalizing my reaction to them. The only reason you’re chagrined by your response to them is you didn’t expect them to recruit you into their ranks.”
She wanted to protest her discomfort ran deeper, except maybe it didn’t. She’d been quick to offer him latitude for his lust. Perhaps her situation wasn’t as unique—or as horrible—as she believed.
“What? I can feel your thoughts churning.” He grinned crookedly. “I’m not adept enough to listen in. Not yet, anyway.”
“Even if you were, it’s not polite to barge into someone else’s mind.”
“You gals do it to each other often enough.”
“Yes, and I blame all those years of close quarters in Ushuaia. We had to fly beneath the Vampires’ radar, so we resorted to mind reading and telepathic communication. Kept us safer since Vamps weren’t particularly skilled in that regard.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Not sure it has an answer. In the first place, I assumed the Sirens lived on one of the islands off the coast of Greece. Finding them here was a shock, and probably why I never associated the discordant music in my mind with them.” She sat straighter in her chair. “It’s an excuse. A much bigger item is it never occurred to me mythical beings would tap humans to swell their ranks.”
“Aren’t there stories about such things happening?”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Of course there are. I know dozens. For me to put two and two together and come up with fifteen is inexcusable. Maybe part of me never believed the material I taught. All those stories were allegory, kind of like the Bible...” Her words ran down. No matter how she sliced and diced things, she’d made a string of elementary errors, and they’d ended up trapping her.
“This will sort itself out, if you let it. We probably should get up to the bridge.”
She nodded and waggled the bottle his way. “Want another shot of fortification?”
“Nah. I’m good. Never was much of a drinker.”
“Och, laddie. Sure and ye’d naught survive in Ireland where they take a man’s measure by how much booze he can consume and still remain upright.” Zoe walk
ed the bottle back to its slot on the far side of the bar. When she returned, Recco was standing.
“Love your brogue.”
“’Tis always there. I was laying it on a wee bit thick for emphasis.”
They walked out of the bar next to one another, knocking hips as they jockeyed through the doorway. It might be the infusion of whiskey, but she felt more settled, not so sunk in self-pity.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” she said as they traipsed up several sets of stairs.
“Thanks for not sending me packing. You came close.”
She stopped on the fifth deck’s landing. “How’d you know?”
He shrugged. “Try being a vet for a long time. The animals couldn’t talk with me, so I developed other skills to help figure out what was going on with them.”
She chuckled. “So now I’m a pony or a wee dog?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a totem animal?”
His question surprised her. “Not that I know of. There’s my coyote, but I’ve never thought of it in quite that way. Why? Do you?”
“Yes. They’re part of my culture.”
Fascinated, she leaned close. “Is it anything like the Shifter bond?”
He drew his dark brows together. “Not really. My wolf is—or will be once I get better with Shifter magic—part of me. Interestingly, my totem animal is also a wolf. I never held conversations with it, though. Young men—and women too—take part in a coming of age ceremony when they reach puberty. Years ago, the ceremony included choosing a mate. You spend three days in the forest on your own. When you return to your people, you’ve discovered your totem animal and are deemed an adult.”
People streamed up the stairs, splitting to move around them. Everyone greeted her as they passed by, telling her they were glad she was still in one piece.
“I’d love to hear more about your traditional ceremonies,” Zoe told Recco, “but maybe we should follow everyone else. So Viktor—or whoever is running this meeting—doesn’t end up repeating himself.”
Recco smiled warmly and hooked a hand beneath her elbow. “I agree. Being late never sets a good precedent.”
They polished off the remaining set of stairs and walked into the bridge. Viktor and Juan stood near the helm, both wearing grim expressions. The small island of equanimity Zoe had glommed onto, frittered to nothing. Something had happened. She’d bet her near brush with Siren-hood on it.
Boris, Ted, and Sasha were last to arrive, and they walked to the windows before settling into chairs.
Viktor turned to face everyone. “Good. You’re all here. We really didn’t need this meeting after all. Someone at McMurdo responded to my radio call. Finally.”
Juan elbowed him. “You have to tell them the rest of it.”
Something flashed from Viktor’s green eyes. It might have been apprehension, except it was gone so fast Zoe couldn’t tell.
“Rest of what?” Boris spoke up. Dark hair swept back from a high forehead, and his brown eyes were pinched at the corners.
“Indeed. What is going on at McMurdo?” Sasha asked in his pronounced Russian accent. Bald and with kind, dark eyes, he looked far better than he had when they’d found him living in an ice cave. “We had shortwave radios at Arctowski. Many times, we ping McMurdo, but they never pick up.”
“This time, they did,” Viktor said. “I’d been trying off and on ever since we left Arctowski, alternating satellites with shortwave.”
“Cut to the chase. What’s left there?” Karin asked.
“I don’t know.” Viktor raked curved fingers through his tawny hair. “The conversation was normal enough, except I didn’t recognize the man’s name. He identified himself as John Anderson. I asked what happened to Jack DeVoe, but he didn’t seem to know the last base commander.”
“He might have transferred out of there,” Boris said. “He’d been talking about retiring for years before the Cataclysm hit.”
“Wouldn’t one base commander know who preceded him?” Zoe asked.
“I’m not being clear,” Viktor said. “This was scarcely a base commander. I got the impression someone wandered by and noticed their shortwave was blinking.”
“Did you tell them we were close and planning to stop?” Ted asked. White-blond hair fell across his forehead, and he pushed it out of the way, revealing a pair of keen blue eyes.
Viktor nodded. “John didn’t say much. I’d have expected more enthusiasm. They can’t have seen anyone beyond whoever’s left there for a long time.”
“What precisely did he say?” Juan pressed. “You never did tell me.”
“It wasn’t exactly ‘whatever,’ but it came close. I asked my raven if it picked up on anything odd, and it hadn’t.”
“Might bode better than you expect.” Aura stood and made her way to Juan’s side. “If anyone at McMurdo wanted to trap us or use us for nefarious purposes, they’d have been far more gung ho after you suggested stopping.”
“The poles have an unpredictable effect on people,” Viktor said. “It’s why most of us limit our time here and in the Arctic to the summer months.”
“Why would they be any worse off than us?” Tessa spoke up. “We spent a decade in Ushuaia.” Her curly black hair had been tamed into braids, and her dark eyes were serious.
“Ushuaia’s not nearly this far south. It has trees. Seasons. Some daylight even in June,” Juan replied.
“The question is whether we stop at McMurdo.” Viktor’s statement was devoid of inflection. “I believe we owe it to ourselves to at least take a shot at landing there. If there’s too much ice, we’ll pass on by and turn the ship north.” He sent a pointed glance Juan’s way.
The mountain cat shifter sucked in an audible breath. “Most of my reluctance was based on no radio contact. Since you talked with someone, I’m game to see what’s left there.”
“Discussion?” Viktor’s gaze roved through the room. When no one said anything, he nodded. “Done. Who has watch between now and midnight?”
“Me.” Boris strode to the front of the room.
Recco stood and waited for Zoe to get to her feet. “Want me to walk you to your cabin?”
“Sure. On one condition.”
He eyed her. “I agree.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She smiled. “You make it hard not to like you.”
“What’s the American expression? You used it too.”
“Busted?” She furled a brow.
“Yup. That’s it. There might be a method to my madness. I’ll never tell.”
He grinned engagingly and steered her toward the door where they joined the others. No one said much as they filed out of the bridge, and Zoe didn’t need her mind-reading ability to know they had to be worried. So far, they were batting three for three. Grytviken and Arctowski had yielded monsters. So had their last toss-up with the Sirens.
No reason to expect McMurdo would ruin their perfect average. She waited for her coyote to pop up with some bit of pithy advice, but it remained silent.
Chapter Eight: Asylum?
Recco leaned over the rail and peered at McMurdo, a sprawling complex sitting on hills above the Ross Sea. The Ross Ice Shelf Viktor and Juan had been concerned about remained well inland—rather than spilling out into the ocean—so they had a clear shot at getting close enough to launch the Zodiacs.
He took a deep lungful of frigid air, welcoming it after the dry heat of the ship’s interior. It hadn’t taken long to reach McMurdo, only one more day. He’d wondered about Scott base, a neighboring installation run by New Zealand. According to Boris, they’d temporarily closed it for needed repairs a month before the Cataclysm struck. Leaving Antarctica might have been a stroke of luck for the couple hundred scientists who’d staffed the base—depending on where they ended up sitting out the Cataclysm.
Most of yesterday had been spent working on his fledgling Shifter magic, which meant he’d been with Zoe. She was a
ll business, though. Probably a good thing since it kept him on track. Not that his wolf wouldn’t have leapt into the breach if his attention wandered. Becoming more adept as a Shifter wasn’t an optional endeavor. It was both serious and mandatory.
He and Zoe sat together at breakfast, mostly continuing the previous day’s tutorial on the best uses of his new ability to leverage magic. She’d said she liked him when they left the bridge night before last. It had been the only personal comment from her. He wanted more but was willing to offer her all the emotional space she needed. They had time to get to know one another.
At least the haunted, guilty look had left her eyes. He hoped he’d helped free her conscience from guilt and blame. Once they were done clearing the breakfast things away, he’d invited her to join him out on deck. She’d demurred. The women were having some kind of meeting this morning. No one had offered details, yet Recco felt certain they were planning for contingencies if things went to hell once they landed at McMurdo.
Both Viktor and Juan had tried to reestablish radio contact multiple times, but no one picked up. Recco harbored visions of the hapless soul—the man who’d been dumb enough to respond to the radio—hamstrung in some dungeon. He grimaced. His imagination was probably working overtime.
Just because Arctowski had turned into a snake pit harboring evil didn’t mean McMurdo would too.
A dark shadow cut across his field of vision, chopping through the ocean’s uneven surface. He shielded his eyes with a hand to cut the glare and scanned the area where he thought he’d seen something unusual, a hollow in the waves that didn’t belong there.
Gunmetal gray swells tipped with frothy white rolled past, heading for shore. He was almost ready to decide he hadn’t seen anything, when a shiny, black triangular shape slithered across several waves. He kept his gaze glued to it, urging whatever was down there to show more of itself.
Almost as if the creature heard him, a blunt, wedge-shaped head broke the surface. Reptilian in appearance, amber eyes were spaced wide on either side of its head. The creature’s mouth was open, displaying double rows of sharp teeth. It twisted until it looked straight at him before angling its head downward. As it dove beneath the surface, long loops of its body created humps before disappearing entirely.