He bowed his head, his hair shielding much of his face, but he couldn’t hide from me. I saw what the smiles masked: a lonely man who had loved and lost. When he looked up, his mask of a smile was back. “You won’t kill me.” He got to his feet and brushed sand off his coat. “You are no different from the men and women who hired me to steal for them. They also wanted something so much it pained them not to have it. You are a creature of desperate want, that is true.” He strode forward and stopped so close I had to lift my gaze to look him in those haunted eyes. “If you kill me, my song will end here. Is that what you want, siren? For my song to end?”
* * *
Curtis Vance
Doubt lessened her penetrating gaze. She tried to hide it by hardening her eyes, but I’d seen enough. There we stood, face to face, her a creature of the sea, and me a creature still learning who and what I was. Her and her sisters would kill the crew. The mass graves foretold that—and all for their songs. She was a killer, a thief. She and I were not so different, but I’d had someone to catch me when I fell…
I moved closer, and when she didn’t step back, I stopped close enough that we almost touched. “Isn’t a song better admired when it’s alive?” I lifted a hand and brushed a knuckle against her soft cheek.
It was the wrong thing to do.
She bared her blunt teeth and stepped back, then opened her mouth and drew in a breath. I clamped a hand over her lips before she could unleash that deadly shout and drove her back against the cave wall. We scrabbled, her hands shoving at my body while I kept her pinned.
“I can’t let you hurt them. They’re good people…”
Her teeth sank into my arm. Pain shot through me. I tore my hand free. Her smile was painted with blood. My hand dove into my pocket for the dagger and she kicked out, catching me in the gut. I doubled over in pain. A knee struck my cheekbone. Her tiny frame belied her speed and strength. Her fingers sank into my hair and yanked my head back. Again her knuckles found my face, driving me down onto my hands so all I could see was the cave floor.
“You don’t need to do this…” The coppery tang of blood coated my tongue. I spat to the side and lifted my head. She stood over me, her hair a tangled play of seaweed and green strands, and her eyes, so enthralling they could pull me down to unimaginable depths, were so full of rage and hate. “Songs aren’t meant to be taken. They’re meant to be lived.”
She laughed, and the sound slithered down my back.
“You cannot know Mother Ocean’s will.”
I tried to turn, but pain twinged up my side. I winced and looked up. “Is your mother kind?”
She blinked, her rage softening. “Yes.”
I clutched my side to stop the ache from spreading. “Does she love?”
“She loves us all. She bestows gifts upon us, like this night, like you.”
“She brought me and the crew here to die? Truly? Then how is she kind? Tell me that, siren.”
Doubt flashed across her eyes.
“Thieves do not destroy what they take—”
“I do not destroy the songs. They are mine. I keep them safe, forever. They become my song.”
“What good is that to anyone but yourself? What you are doing, killing to hoard their lives, is a heinous crime. I do not believe any mother would want that for her children.”
“You are an ignorant fool.”
She sounded so much like Shaianna that I had to laugh despite the pain it caused. “You can’t even see it. You are too blind. Do you feel nothing?” She stumbled backward as though I’d struck her, her eyes flying open wide. “You have no song of your own because you live to take the songs of others. Can you even make your own song?”
She recoiled in on herself, clutching her fists to her chest and stomach. “I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Why?” she echoed, and real fear shimmered in those sparkling ocean eyes. From this angle, with me on my knees, she couldn’t see me withdrawing the dagger from my pocket. I did not want to kill this creature, but I would to save the crew, to save Tassen and Molly. Tightening my grip on the handle, I bowed my head, keeping her in the corner of my eye. “What kind of life is this if you must take the lives of others?”
* * *
Blue
His words struck like knives to my chest. Mother Ocean weeps for them. He could not know what Syriene had said. You are blind! Yet his words echoed my sister’s sentiment, throwing me off balance. This man, this thief, how could he see what I could not? His words had hooked in fast. Words of living, of songs, of things he couldn’t understand, yet in his eyes, there was an understanding. Perhaps he was not aware of it, but inside him was a connection. His words were true.
He launched from his crouch and came at me in a blur of fury. I jumped back, but the dagger blade kissed my neck, and the thief was on me, pinning me against the cave wall.
“I can’t let you do this,” he said.
His blade sang with magic where it touched my skin, calling to the magic in my veins. Like to like. There, in his eyes, that same magic flickered to life, a spark—not yet a flame, but one day it would be. One day, if I did not steal his song. If I let him live through this Night. But if I did that…
“I didn’t want to kill the siren on the beach, and I don’t want to hurt you … but I will. I have seen more than you can imagine, and I’ve fought monsters worse than you. I’ll kill you and the others and all their songs will be gone. It ends this night…” The blade dug into the column of my neck. “… one way or another.” His words were fierce, but unlike all the others who had threatened my sisters and me over the years, this one spoke the truth. It would be a mistake to kill him and take his song too soon.
“If I do not…” I swallowed. “… take your song, I will lose them all. I will lose my voice.”
His eyes narrowed, and his body pressed closer, his clothes rough against my skin. He smelled of the sea, of salt and leather, of steel and the sharp bite of magic. He didn’t know what he was. He couldn’t know, or he would have killed me. His song was truly marvelous, but it was just beginning. I could not stop it now.
The spark snuffed out of his eyes, and the sneer fell from his lips. The threat in him faded, but he could easily reignite it again. He retreated, keeping the dagger under my chin.
“If you cannot find your voice, perhaps you are not meant to have one.” His dark eyes drilled into mine. The touch of the blade vanished from my neck, and the thief stepped back. “I’m going back to the crew. Don’t follow me.”
“You are letting me live?”
He clenched the dagger tighter and looked at it as though it had all the answers. When he looked up, his expression held a fresh determination. “Like you, I had a choice to make. It cost me everything, but it was the right choice. Tonight, on this beach, make the right choice, siren.”
* * *
Curtis Vance
The jungle clawed at my face and clothes as I ran back to camp. Every second counted. Every fall in the dirt was another few seconds into the night and time was running out. Torches flickered ahead, and shadows moved among the firelight. “Tassen!”
They were fine. Still alive. We still had time.
The perimeter guards pointed to Tassen speaking low with Molly. He saw me stagger into the camp. Everyone saw me.
“Vance, what happened to you?” the captain asked at the sight of me.
I’d forgotten about the blood and bruises. “We need to get everyone away from the fires and out of sight. The sirens…” I glanced at Molly, her eyes wide. She’d fight. They would all fight, but not all would survive. “They’re hunting us.”
He scanned my cut-up face and my torn and sandy clothes. “We’re far enough away from the shore—”
“Doesn’t matter. Trust me like you trusted me before. We need to get into the trees and hunker down. The torches are beacons and they’re coming.”
“Then let’s snuff the torches out?” Molly suggested.
“No, we
use them to lure the sirens close to the camp and attack them from behind.”
“How many?” Tassen asked.
“I don’t know.”
His crew had heard me, and they looked on, waiting for the order.
“You heard him,” Tassen said. “Let’s move out… into the trees!”
They marched into the trees, rustling wordlessly through the undergrowth and spreading out while keeping one another in sight. If any crew had a chance of surviving sirens, it was Tassen’s.
Molly crouched beside me in a hollow. The crew was close, tucked into nooks and behind bushes.
“Are you armed?” I whispered.
She grinned and showed me her kitchen cleaver—the one she’d accused me of taking. “Always.”
Our camp torches flickered between the trees, their dancing light making the palms appear to move. They were out there.
“What happened?” Molly asked, raising an eyebrow at my roughed-up state.
“I met one.”
She sighed and clicked her tongue. “Trouble sticks to you like shit, Master Vance.”
My mouth twitched around a smile. “You need to stop calling me that.”
She sniffed. “Tis good manners.”
It might be good manners while acting as a lord’s housekeeper, but out here, we were different people. “This isn’t Brea, Molly. You have no master.”
“Don’t I know it…” Her tone spoke of sorrow. Brea had been her home, more than it had been mine. I’d never asked if she had family, if she’d lost anyone when Brea fell. It seemed too late to ask now. Besides, if she’d had anyone left, she wouldn’t have been on Tassen’s crew. We’d both left our old lives behind. Out here, we were just Molly and Curtis. She could be anything she wanted—if we survived the night…
It felt like hours we hunched in the dark, watching the torches burn down. I wondered if I’d imagined the entire encounter with the blue- and green-dappled girl from the sea, but as the night thickened, movement shifted among the trees surrounding the camp and into the camp the sea-women slunk, silent and ghostly. As they moved among the torches, their skin shimmered like silk and their eyes shone like the jewels in my dagger handle.
Tassen lifted his fist and slowly, silently, drew his short sword.
All around, more blades whispered free from leather scabbards.
My dagger thrummed hot against my palm. Molly wore a hard grimace, cleaver glinting at her side.
We would survive this. I knew it, the same as I knew I was no longer alone in this world. Molly sent a small, knowing smile my way, and over her head, Tassen nodded once and dropped his arm.
The crew bellowed so loud and fierce their voices thundered through the air. We charged through the undergrowth toward the firelight where the sirens glowed ethereal blue. A crewman breached the camp and felled a siren with a sweep of his blade.
The song hit us.
They screamed or sang or did whatever sirens do. They opened their mouths, and out from between their lips poured a unified note so loud and so high it cut me and the crew down between one step and the next. The sound tore in through my ears, threatened to shatter my skull, and clawed at my soul. I clamped both hands over my ears, but it didn’t matter. The sound was inside me, tunneling through bone and flesh, to tear me apart. And then there was silence.
* * *
Blue
They could not escape us. No man had escaped us in thousands of years. I watched them fall, cut down so easily by my sisters’ sweet song. They fell as surely as the sea pulls back from the shore, clutching at their heads, writhing in the dirt.
None noticed I did not sing.
And as these lost men fell, something inside me broke open and the thief’s words wove their spell as the siren song wove around them.
Mother Ocean weeps for them.
Make the right choice, siren.
This was wrong.
Syriene had been right.
Their songs were their own, and the thief still had his to live.
I weaved through my sisters’ lines to Luine’s side and stepped ahead of her. The men all twitched where they knelt. Women too, I noticed, not that it mattered. Mother Ocean did not discriminate. And there he was, the thief, teeth gritted and head clasped in his hands, but he was conscious enough to watch me step forward. I hoped he would remember my choice on this Night of Bleeding Hearts.
“Stop!” I yelled, whirling to face Luine.
And she did stop.
They all stopped. My blessed sisters, so hungry for more.
Luine’s glare cut through me the same way it must have cut through Syriene. Her lips rippled and pulled back to reveal still-sharp teeth. Even in her human form she was vicious.
She lowered the trident, its three prongs thirsting for fresh blood.
“Mother Ocean does not want this.”
She thrust the trident forward, and I welcomed it. This was my song. I would make this choice, and I’d live forever in the memories of these men.
A blur, a clang of metal on bone, and the thief was in front of me, his dagger snared in the trident’s forks. Luine pushed down, and the thief’s dagger strummed its powerful magic, its gems aglow with the throb of power like a beating heart. Impossibly, the thief pushed Luine back a foot.
“Stop…” he growled, echoing my command. “Stop this madness before it can’t be undone. No more need to die!”
Luine’s laughter pealed through the air, and all around my sisters laughed too. They could not see. Sorrow for all the songs cut short and hoarded away from the world clutched at my heart. How could I have been so blind for so long?
“Foolish creature,” Luine purred, yanking her trident free. “Nothing can stop us. Not even you, mage.”
The thief jolted at the word. He did not know what he was, but Luine had recognized the power in him, and behind her cackling, a shiver of fear tightened her eyes. His magic was our magic—earth, water, air, blood. He had inside him the means to control all the elements, but not yet. He wasn’t ready, but Luine did not know that.
“Syriene was right,” I said, lifting my voice so all could hear. “Time and our lust for things we do not possess have blinded us. There is another way.”
“There is no other way!” Luine hissed. “This is our night, sisters! Let us glean these songs!”
I stepped beside the thief. “No. Their songs are their own. It is time we made our own songs.”
“But our voices…” a sister chimed in.
“For millennia we’ve believed the stories that tell us if we do not take the songs, we will lose our voices.” The thief glanced over and nodded, acknowledging my choice. “Mother Ocean can be cruel, and she can be kind, but she is always fair. She gives, and she takes. This is the ebb and flow of our lives, sisters. We have no right to take and not give. And so, as surely as the tide gives back, so must we. We cannot take these lives, not tonight. We must know the truth.”
A growl rumbled through Luine’s chest. “Get out of our way, Blue, or die like Syriene.”
“No.” My sisters’ faces all told the same story. They were no longer sure. Maybe they never had been, but it had taken one lost thief to show us the way. This was right. It felt right.
Luine roared and flung the trident. The thief yelled something, but it was too late. The fork punched into my chest as it had Syriene’s. Blood bubbled up my throat and coated my tongue. Yes, this was my song, my choice, and it had been the right one. The cycle had to be broken.
“No!” The thief flung his dagger. It cut through the fire-licked night and slammed straight into Luine’s chest to a chorus of cries and moans. Her gaze found mine, and the fierceness drained away.
“Why?” she mouthed, her voice silent.
“I remember… it all now. We were once guardians of all songs.” Blood cooled where it ran from my lips. “And this Night of Bleeding Hearts was a gift from Mother Ocean so we might walk among those we protected.” I fell onto my knees and sank to my hands. “But we co
veted their songs… I remember now. I see what we have forgotten… Sisters, let these people go free. This was not Mother Ocean’s wish. She weeps for them.”
My salted tears fell too, but my song would live on, alongside the thief’s. I was part of him now. He would not forget. And he would live…
* * *
Curtis Vance
A sky bled across the ocean as dawn approached. We watched as, one by one, the sirens walked into the surf and disappeared beneath its surface. But not all.
In my arms, I cradled the siren named Blue.
She had died for us and for change. I knew another who had once made the same sacrifice.
So light and fragile a thing, Blue was. It didn’t seem possible that any of this was real, and I wondered, when the sun rose, would this girl from the sea vanish like a dream.
“Vance,” Tassen’s low voice grumbled. “The tide is coming in. We need to get the Lady Jane afloat.”
“Leave him a minute,” Molly uttered.
I drew in a breath and waded into the shallow water.
Her life shouldn’t have ended this way.
I looked down at her sleeping face and wiped the blood from her chin. I’d tried to save her…
My coat fanned outward on the water’s surface, and the dagger in my pocket bumped against my hip.
“No,” I told the ocean.
Not again.
I wouldn’t allow it.
Holding her close, I pulled the blade free and brushed my thumb over the gems in the handle. There would be a high price for this.
Mage, the siren had called me.
But in my head that word meant monster.
Deep Blue Sea: Heartstone Thief 1.5 Page 4