The Siren

by Petra Landon

  “I’ll make the arrangements” he offered. “Is it to be the two of us?”

  “I want to keep this between us for now, Alexei.”

  Puzzled by the cryptic remark, he waited for her to explain further.

  “ElThor reached out to me” she murmured, fixated on the snow-covered landscape outside.

  Alexei was aware that, though infrequent, such communication was not unusual. While their numbers were few, they were very much the custodians of old magic and the First Ones prized ancient mystic powers above everything. Well, he amended silently, almost everything. But why keep this a secret, he wondered.

  She turned, to look him in the eye. “Like father, the others don’t give a damn about the Council or facilitating Chosen solidarity.”

  He knew that she had it right. As far as the others were concerned, the First Ones had failed them in every way that counted. And no Council of Chosen would ever be able to rectify the injustices of the past or heal the gaping wounds of the present.

  But now that he had Alya’s attention, Alexei asked her the question he was most curious about. While his sister was as bitter about the past as everyone else, she had faith that one day, their brethren would correct the injustice. Alya had not given up on the First Ones. But neither had she ever expressed any interest in the CoC.

  “Why the sudden interest in the Council, Alya?”

  “It’s not the Council.”

  He frowned. “Not the Council or the Wyr. Then, it must be the Chosen on trial” Alexei concluded, only to straighten in alarm. “It’s not one of us, Alya?”

  She shook her head. “The Chosen on trial is a Guardian.”

  Stumped by her words, he stared at her in confusion. They had even less to do with the Wizards. At least, with the First Ones, they kept up appearances.

  “I know him, Alexei” she admitted, her eyes skittering away from him.

  He waited patiently.

  “He’s friend to the one that took Aleka away from the Blutsaugers” she attested.

  Pack Lair, San Francisco

  Tasia let everything recede into the background, to focus on the man stalking her. Though every instinct screamed at her to flee, she forced herself to stand her ground. She would never evade him by running away. Her advantage lay in her powers. All she needed was one square hit with a blast of her magic. That would suffice to stop him in his tracks. Easier said than done. He moved like a cat — a sleek, lethal predator with his prey in his sights; single-minded, inexorable and dogged at stalking his game. And, he moved fast, so preternaturally fast that she had to be careful to not blink lest she lose him. To test her reflexes, she directed a few experimental blasts of magic at him. She would only get one chance — once he picked up on her strategy, she would lose her advantage. To her dismay, he skirted her blasts effortlessly. The magic bounced harmlessly off the walls, not even within touching distance of the target. As she’d suspected, her reflexes were no match for his speed or dexterity.

  She had other abilities, Tasia reminded herself — unique and powerful magic that he could not counter as easily. But she must be smart about deploying it against him. Tasia forced herself to slow down and study him, her gaze steady even as her mind worked furiously through the options. He was a blur now, moving so fast that all she glimpsed was a flash every now and then. The long narrow chamber allowed him plenty of room to stalk her. It was his black tee that allowed her to pinpoint him occasionally, a bright splash of color against the stark white walls, despite the dizzying speed with which he circled her. He was playing with her, like a cat with a mouse. Against her better judgement, Tasia found herself retreating, slowly but surely. It was now or never, she told herself fiercely. He was almost upon her. The trick was to keep it simple. She worked magic even as she retreated, spinning herself a shield quickly with skill and efficiency. Yet, she wished she had the time to build herself proper armor. No Chosen could penetrate her magic.

  The fast-moving blur, with the occasional dark flashes, moved inexorably closer. Tasia had only a few seconds to feel relieved by the partial magic shield she’d conjured to defend herself. She was to be proven wrong almost immediately. The blur ground to an abrupt halt beside her. Her eyes shot to him, adrenaline pumping through her. A powerful leg shot out to trip her, in a move so quick and unexpected that she had little time to even attempt to evade it. Tasia gasped, trying to draw her magic closer. But her shield was incomplete and he slipped under it to sweep her off her feet. She went down with a cry, the sound echoing off the walls in the silent hall. Flailing wildly, she let go of her shield to focus on regaining her balance as the room tilted on its axis.

  Before she could crash into the ground, the momentum was interrupted by a muscled arm clamping around her waist. The band of steel clasping her strained as a large palm between her shoulder blades righted her. Swung off her feet to momentarily dangle over the floor, Tasia felt the hard warm body of the man who clasped her to him. With minimal fuss, she was set back on her feet and released. Tasia glanced up to meet familiar gold eyes, set in an attractive face with striking features and tawny hair framing his skull. He would always stand out in a room; exuding a kind of animal magnetism that drew people to him, despite the coldness and the aura of restrained violence that clung to him like a second skin.

  The gold eyes, coldly enigmatic as usual, contemplated her.

  “You let me get too close” he remarked.

  “I protected myself” she countered, wondering how he’d guessed at the magic armor.

  “You cannot allow me to get that close, not unless you’re willing to unleash the heavy artillery” he pointed out.

  Tasia bit down hard on her tongue. Truer words had never been spoken, she mused.

  Yup, I should never have let him get so close. If only I’d recognized the threat before.

  The gold eyes blanked abruptly, his face an arctic landscape without the merest hint of vulnerability. “We’re talking about the bout” he said evenly.

  Tasia roused herself. “Of course. What else would we be talking about?”

  His jaw flexed, the only sign that he’d heard the undertones in her response. “Again” he directed. “This time, don’t allow me within touching distance.”

  Now he tells me.

  Tasia waited while he strode to the opposite end of the vast hall. He’d demonstrated indubitably that a partial magic armor was no counter against him. Her best option was to keep him at arm’s length, she concluded. Otherwise, none of her powers would be effective against him. Also, she must try and throw him off his game: make stalking her not as easy as he’d made it look.

  He turned to face her. Before he could transform into a speedy blur she must work hard to track, she sent two bolts of magic whizzing at him, one to each shoulder.

  An eyebrow arched sardonically, as the gold eyes pinned her. “What the hell was that?”

  Tasia stared at him. “Magic.”

  “That pinch?” He looked incredulous. “It won’t stop anyone.”

  Huh.

  “You can do much better, witchling. Throw some real power at me.”

  Despite herself, Tasia directed an uneasy glance at the door.

  “No one can hear us” he assured her, catching the glance. “Duncan checked it out himself.”

  The hall, they sparred in, was the last of an interconnecting set of four vast and windowless spaces that adjoined the enormous gym on the second floor of the Lair. She’d been told that this extended space had always been noise-proofed to protect the sensitive auditory senses of the Lair’s inhabitants from the frequent bouts in here, training and otherwise. Duncan had merely had a heavy stainless steel door, much like the ones that guarded the Pack Room and the Alpha’s Room, installed to separate the last hall from the rest of the space.

  “Hit me” he reiterated. “We’re private in here.”

  Tasia directed another blast at him, cautiously dialing her power one Magic Level up. Escalating the potency of her magic in controlled in
crements was not an easy proposition. She knew how to stay within the role designated for her — a nondescript Magic Level Two. That was the easy part. Now, he was asking her to not pretend in this room while they sparred.

  “That one felt like a mosquito bite” he said bluntly. “Come on, witchling.”

  She dialed up her magic again, to send a few more blasts, always careful to stay in control. It’s what she had done all her life. She could not bring herself to let go. Not here and not with him.

  He watched her, a hint of puzzlement on his face.

  “I’ve seen you subdue a nestful of leeches” he said pointedly. “Why’re you holding back?”

  Prodded thus, Tasia hit him with a blast close to what she guessed was Magic Level Seven. This time, she knew she’d hit her mark. The force of her blast spun his shoulder back before he righted himself.

  “Better” he purred, sounding pleased. “Much better. What you need is a little incentive.”

  He stalked towards her, leaping high into the air, before a stupefied Tasia could react. She retreated hastily, directing another blast of magic up at him. In her haste to back away, her foot slipped. With her distracted, the blast released without her usual formidable control over it. Raw power surged through the air in an arc, sparks rising to sizzle.

  “No” she screamed, fighting desperately to regain her balance. “Watch out. It’s too much!”

  The panic in her voice gave him fair warning, though he’d already taken note of the incredible power in the magic streaking towards him. It didn’t take Spell Caster heritage to comprehend that the blindingly bright flashes in the air pointed to magic likely to be off the charts.

  He swerved to avoid her blast. But he was in mid leap and it wasn’t easy to skirt with his balance precarious. Yet, unlike most Shifters, he’d run wild in his beast form for a few years under Duncan’s aegis, and he was an expert at using his physical attributes to steer clear of trouble. With a superhuman effort, he managed to dodge most of the magic, except a trailing edge that brushed his shoulder. Agony like he’d rarely experienced speared him, and the force of the blast spun him around in midair, to shove him forcefully towards the wall. He made no attempt to fight the momentum of his body. Instead, he hit the wall high like a cat, his palms and feet keeping the brunt of the impact from his torso, to bounce off it nimbly. The thrust carried him deep into the hall. Tasia, who had run forward in her panic, turned tail to get out of his way again. But her reflexes were nowhere as good as his. As he landed on light feet to spring fluidly back up, whirling around to face her, his shoulder caught her in her headlong dash away from him. Tasia’s world shifted on its axis again, as she fell backwards.

  “Not again” she muttered. This was getting old.

  He made a hasty grab for her, but unlike before, he wasn’t steady enough on his feet to haul her upright. So, he did the next best thing. Swinging her around and over with his phenomenal strength, he put himself between her and the ground. They went down together, slamming into the hard floor in an untidy tangle of bodies and limbs.

  Stunned by the quicksilver fall of dominoes, a dazed Tasia took a few seconds to catch her breath. And realize that, while miraculously unscathed, she was entangled far too intimately with the man under her, who had cushioned her fall with his body.

  “Damn” she said clearly.

  From below her, he chuckled softly, the sound filling the hall.

  She felt the vibrations, as the muscled chest and stomach, plastered against her, rippled with his laughter.

  Way too close again, Tasia.

  She made to roll off him onto the floor, and his arms tightened reflexively around her.

  “Watch those knees” he warned. “We don’t want a repeat of the cage.”

  Tasia squirmed in his grasp. “I did not knee you in the cage” she protested.

  “You came close, witchling.” There was a note in his voice she picked up on.

  Recognizing that she was being teased, Tasia renewed her struggles to disentangle herself.

  “Witchling” he said huskily. “Less squirming please.”

  This time, there was a different note in the even tones. Sensing the sudden tension in the large body intertwined with her, Tasia stilled.

  He took a deep breath. “I’ve got this” he said brusquely.

  Quickly and efficiently, he helped untangle her from him, enabling her sit up before he came off the floor.

  Tasia slid away from him, to fold her legs under her. Cross-legged on the floor, she eyed him warily.

  He made no attempt to stand. Instead, sliding the long legs before him, he addressed her. “That last blast would take care of a leech. Hell, it should fell any Chosen. That’s what I mean by heavy artillery.”

  Tasia’s eyes flickered to his shoulder, where a tiny bit of her magic had brushed him. “Does it hurt?”

  He caught the lightning glance. “No worse than a blow from a powerful Shifter. You land one like that squarely on a leech. And you’ve bought yourself the time to deploy more sophisticated magic.”

  Tasia remained silent.

  The gold eyes, that missed nothing when it came to her, read her hesitation almost as clearly as if she’d voiced it herself.

  “Witchling.” He drew her attention. “What do you think we’re doing here?”

  Tasia answered readily. “Teaching me to use my magic effectively.”

  “Remember, if you ever have to rely on your magic to protect yourself, it’s because you’ve become separated from your friends.”

  Yes, I know what the stakes are.

  “If that happens, you do what you have to” he asserted, his voice hardening. “Use anything and everything you have, to survive until the Pack can get to you.”

  Her eyes shot to his face, where the gold eyes glittered like chips of ice.

  “You have magic in you” he said forcefully. “Use it, ruthlessly if you have to. Don’t allow your heart to soften.”

  Or you’ll be done for. The last was unspoken, but Tasia didn’t need to hear the words to know what he meant.

  She sighed. “I understand the stakes” she assured him. And she did. In his way, he was trying to prepare her for the worst case scenario — a situation where she must make a stand alone. But the way he was going about it had one huge drawback.

  His brows snapped together. “What?”

  “I can be ruthless about using my magic” she told him.

  “But?” he prompted, confident that there was one.

  She worried at her bottom lip, her hesitation almost palpable. He waited, holding his impatience back with an effort.

  “This isn’t going to work. Between us, I mean” she murmured.

  An arrested expression flashed across his face. The gold eyes narrowed on her.

  Tasia shook her head. “That came out wrong” she said hastily.

  “What’re you trying to say, witchling?” he demanded in a hard voice, not masking his emotions this time.

  “I have no trouble deploying heavy artillery against a Blutsauger” she said.

  He said nothing, the gold eyes boring into her. The expression in them drove her to explain herself.

  “But I can’t use the really powerful magic on you. Even in a training session. I don’t want to … hurt you.”

  His eyes flickered, once, before they blanked completely. They stared at each other; the air charged with awareness. This was an admission from her. Not the one he’d asked of her. But nevertheless, it was an admission. The first acknowledgement from her of the invisible but strong threads that drew them to each other.

  Tasia was the first to blink, glancing away to break the spell. “This was a disaster” she muttered, a tad forlornly.

  His lips quirked in response, the words coming easier. “I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s clear that this requires some fine tuning.”

  Before Tasia could respond, the door to the hall slid open without warning. Two people strode in together — an attractive man with bright
blue eyes and a gorgeous woman in yoga pants and a top that matched the exact shade of her green eyes.

  They came to an abrupt stop as they caught sight of the two on the floor. The man’s stunned eyes goggled at the pair on the ground, clearly at ease with each other. The woman’s reaction was harder to read. Despite her astonishment, she studied them with a rather calculating look in her beautiful green eyes.

  Not entirely displeased by the interruption, Tasia nevertheless cursed silently. She’d known that, sooner or later, the training sessions would generate gossip. The Lair was a hotbed of rumors and innuendo. But she wished fervently that it had not been these two to walk in on them. Elisabetta had been keeping unnaturally close tabs on her in the past few weeks, though Tasia had no clue what had drawn the attention of the sharp-tongued Were-Alpha. As for Stefan Simeonov, he’d developed the uncanny ability to appear out of thin air near her orbit. Tasia, who remembered the early days of her association with the Pack when she’d rarely encountered the Were-Alpha, wondered at this new state of affairs, even as she went out of her way to keep her distance from him.

  Across her, the Alpha sprang to his feet to stride over to the two Shifters studying them.

  “Is my time up?” he demanded, clearly annoyed at being interrupted.

  This was the real Raoul Merceau, Tasia mused. Coldly reserved and brusquely demanding. A man alone, standing apart from the crowd around him. Used to getting his way, accustomed to unquestioning fealty from his Shifters and liable to swift, ferocious retaliation against his foes. A potent and incendiary mix of ruthlessness, coldness and aggression, held in check by fierce determination, iron will and absolute control. Though the most self-controlled man of her acquaintance, there was an aura of tightly-bridled violence about him that had terrified Tasia. Still did occasionally, if she were honest, she admitted to herself. There had been a subtle change in demeanor when it came to her. But the essence of the man remained the same. She had not misread him before, Tasia knew. A warning that nagged constantly at the back of her mind.