Crave the Night (20 page)

"Let me try," she murmured.

The dragon stared at her. His tongue flicked
out again, but this time didn't touch her. "You'll bring him back
to me?"

Sarina couldn't promise that. She froze, but
Allera saved her. She swam forward and placed her hand on Sarina's
shoulder. "If he won't come, I will and I'll bring the mermaids.
We'll figure a way out of your enchantment."

Surprised again by her sister, Sarina's eyes
widened. Allera seemed to have knowledge and instinct that Sarina
lacked.

"Enchantment?" she asked.

"He's a merman," Allera replied. "The sea
hag trapped him six decades ago. Whatever your vampire did, broke
the bonds, but not the enchantment. He's still stuck in this realm
and this state."

The dragon lifted his head. "If Melusine
finds me before you return...."

Allera folded her arms over her chest. "I
know, but I won't forget or forsake my promise."

The two had lost Sarina, but that didn't
matter. What did, was getting Nolan to land. While the dragon
stared at her sister, Sarina leaned forward and carefully pulled
Nolan free.

Then, with his body wedged under her arm,
she swam for the surface.

Days later...

Nolan gagged and began to cough. Rolling
over, his body began to heave until the contents of his stomach,
nothing it seemed but sea water, flooded onto the ground beside
him.

Ground. He was on solid ground.

He coughed some more, his hands gripping the
rough wooden deck he lay on. His fingernails dug into the planks,
tearing them to the quick. His skin felt shriveled, and his clothes
were heavy and wet.

He coughed again, expelling more sea water
until his throat burned and his stomach ached.

A foot nudged him in the side, shoving him
onto his back. "What are you? That you survived her tricks?"

He looked up. The bartender stood above him.
The moon shone at his back, clearly illuminating the pistol in his
hand.

"Are you part fish? A witch?" The bartender
cocked the gun and held it up, his hands and the weapon
shaking.

"Where is she?" Nolan rasped. His voice was
rough, and it hurt to speak.

"Gone. She dumped you here and left. With
luck, she won't be coming back."

But she had to come back. Nolan had to get
her back. He pushed his body to a sit, the world shifted as he
moved and his head ached. He clasped it in his hands.

"I should ignore her threats, and kill you
now," the man beside him muttered.

Nolan glanced at him again. "Threats?"

The man's lips thinned and his hand moved to
a pocket. "If I give it to you, will you leave? Never come
back?"

"Give me what?" Nolan couldn't imagine what
the bartender could have for him.

"I wouldn't...but she was different this
time...hard...cold. I could see she didn't care, meant every word
she spoke. She'd have eaten my liver and fed my brains to the
birds, then sent her sisters to hunt down all I've loved." The
man's thumb caressed the gun's hammer. "I ain't got much, but I've
fought for what I have. I don't fancy losing it to the
mermaids."

Nolan staggered to his feet and threw his
body against the bartender. His hands, still stiff from their time
under water, gripped the man by his shirt. "What did she leave for
me?"

For a moment the bartender hesitated, and
Nolan could see the decision revolving behind his eyes. Then he
pulled his hand from his pocket and shoved it toward Nolan. "This.
She left you this. Take it and leave!"

The vial Sarina had worn around her neck
fell from his fingers and onto Nolan's palm. With a harried glance,
the man shoved his gun into his pants and scurried for the safety
of his bar.

Nolan didn't watch him leave; he barely
noticed that he had. He just stared at the vial and wondered at
what it meant.

A soul. Sarina had given him a soul. Elation
and warmth shot through him. Then he closed his fingers around the
glass, and his emotion changed.

Not a soul...her soul.

Sarina had sacrificed her soul for him.

Dawn was approaching. Nolan had been at sea
for six days. This sunrise would mark his seventh. His eyes burned
from sleeping on deck in the day, and his skin itched from the salt
still coating his body after his time under the sea with
Sarina.

After he'd realized what the mermaid had
given him, he had forced his body to stand and follow the
bartender. Then he'd used his built up hunger and exhaustion to
show the man how intimidating a preternatural creature could
be.

The bartender hadn't even reached for his
gun. Instead, eyes wide and face pale, he'd babbled every bit of
trivia and lore he'd collected about mermaids, including how to
find them.

In the distance, silhouetted by the rising
sun, Nolan could see the island he sought. The bit of land was
covered in rocks, no sign of a sandy beach or a tree, but jutting
from the water around it were hulls and masts of ships long ago
wrecked and their sailors taken.

Taken by mermaids, harvested, according to
the bartender in the mermaids' never-ending quest for souls.

Sarina's soul safe in a silver box, Nolan
walked to the front of his small vessel and waited.

Slowly, as he approached, the mermaids came.
Only a few at first, brunettes and blondes, red-heads and a few
with silver or green hair that glistened like some exotic precious
metal in the gathering light.

All were attractive, but none were as
beautiful as Sarina.

The mermaids circled his boat, confused, he
guessed, by his presence but obvious lack of a soul.

As more mermaids appeared, the water beneath
the boat shifted. Nolan widened his stance to maintain his balance
and continued to scan the growing group of mermaids.

According to the bartender, the mermaids
couldn't touch him or his vessel, like vampires they had to be
invited aboard—more than that—invited to touch him. And there was
only one mermaid he would give that permission.

Another half an hour he waited. The sun was
up now and strong enough Nolan was forced to pull sunglasses and a
hat from a duffel.

She wasn't coming. His presence alone wasn't
enough. A bit of him died, but he wouldn’t give up hope; he
couldn’t.

Kneeling, he dug into the duffel again,
pulled two softened chunks of wax from inside and placed them into
his ears.

Then he opened the box.

Immediately, the mermaids began to rise out
of the water and sing. They bared their breasts, held out their
arms and tossed their hair. It was enough to get any male of any
species to step off the boat and into the water, to give up his
life...his soul...for just the brush of one mermaid's finger.

Enough, that is, for most, but not Nolan.
With his ears plugged and his heart taken, he looked over the
alluring bodies with the cold clinical eye of a computer tech
searching for a missing piece of code.

And then he saw her.

She rose out of the water like the others,
her hair flowing over her shoulders and her lips curved in a
smile.

Only, Nolan, knowing the real Sarina, could
see the cold death behind her eyes and the robotic lack of caring
in her movements.

Still, his pulse jumped, and it took all his
self-control to keep from jumping overboard into the mass of
undulating mermaid forms.

His eyes never leaving Sarina's, he pulled
the chain that held her soul from the box and held the precious
piece over his head. "Sarina!" he called. "Come for me."

And she did. She pushed the mermaids closest
to her out of her path, then sliced through the water with her
arms. At the boat, she looked up at him. Water slicked back her
hair and glistened on her breasts.

"Human," she whispered.

"Nolan," he replied. "Say my name,
Sarina."

Her hand reached up to take his, but he
stepped back. "My name."

Her brows lowered and confusion flitted
across her face. "You called me."

"My name. Say it." He didn't know why he
needed her to say his name. Perhaps it was to prove that even minus
her soul, she could remember him, love him as deeply as he loved
her.

To prove that neither of them—soul or no
soul—was a monster.

"Nolan," she whispered, then placing her
hands onto the boat's edge, she lifted her body up. As she rose,
her face changed; her mouth opened and her teeth sharpened. Not
just fangs, teeth...like a piranha's.

He didn't pull back. He didn't feel any
horror. She was still his, still everything he loved. "Sarina. Say
it again," he ordered, stepping back again and hiding the soul
behind his back.

She shook her head as if trying to dislodge
some thought or nightmare. "Nolan," she muttered. "Nolan...the
vampire...the man I...."

Her face crumpled, and she fell limp into
the boat. She curled into a ball, shaking.

A trick. It's what the bartender would
have claimed, but Nolan knew better.
She
remembered him.

He rushed forward and pulled her close. Her
face was hers again; the monster was gone. Her fingers tightened on
his arm, but her eyes remained closed, screwed tight as if she was
afraid to open them.

Carefully, he slipped the necklace over her
neck and let her soul fall down against her heart. Then he tipped
her face up to his and stared into her now open, beautiful
sea-green eyes.

"I don't need to be what I was. I don't need
a soul," he murmured. "Not if you can love me as I am."

"But..." Her fingers went to the vial. "I
would have killed you, dragged you to the bottom of the sea and
torn out your heart. I...wanted to."

"But you didn't."

"But—"

"You didn't." It was enough. He didn't
expect perfection, didn't expect the impossible. Her loving him at
all, accepting him, was miracle enough.

"The sea hag has more souls," he told her.
"Enough for all the mermaids here."

"You would go back? Risk being captured
again?"

"I would." For Sarina he would risk
anything...everything.

"I love you," she whispered. "I shouldn't,
but I do."

"And I love you."

Then he pulled her close, and he kissed
her.

One soul, one life, one love—nothing could
be better than what they had, together.

###

Michele Hauf

Bree kicked and screamed and clawed. The
powerful men wrangling her added their own share of hissing and
swearing as they moved her from a van toward a dark building. One
cried out at the pain she inflicted with slashing fingernails.

Kidnapped from the back lot of the strip
club where she worked, Sabrina Kriss hadn’t seen the three men
coming until it was too late. Normally, she got along with
werewolves. These bruisers were trying that relationship. Whatever
they wanted her for, she wasn’t about to make it easy.

Aware they were moving her into a dark room,
she kicked blindly. Something tender crunched under her spike heel.
She hoped it was a pair of gonads. Fingernails cutting through her
captor’s flesh, she shouted and spat, and—

Suddenly, she was free. Shoved, stumbling
forward across a hard cement floor. The door slammed shut. Utter
darkness surrounded her.

Bree spun and beat her fists against the
metal door. Not iron but some kind of cheap tin. Iron would weaken
her. Stupid werewolves.

“
Let me out! What the hell is going
on?”

She pounded the door until her fists ached.
Pressing her forehead to the dented metal, she huffed. Heartbeats
pounded faster than a heavy metal guitar solo. Nasty-smelling wolf
blood coated her fingertips.

This was not happening. She would not allow
a bunch of werewolves to harm her. Squeezing her eyes shut, she
fought against releasing a mournful cry. She was tougher than that.
Besides, crying would get her nowhere.

A
clink
disturbed the air behind her.

Bree swung about, slapping her palms against
the door behind her. “Who’s there?”

The metallic noise had sounded distinctly
like chains. Now they clattered as if being pulled through a heavy
ring. A deep male groan accompanied the commotion.

Impossible to press her shoulders any
tighter to the door. She couldn’t see who or what was chained, but
sensed it was male by the baritone groan.

Did her captors think to feed her to a
hungry wolf? Made little sense. For the most part, wolves got along
with her kind. Werewolves didn’t eat faeries, nor did they drink
their blood—though they were partial to fresh rabbit.

Another growl rumbled from the man’s
throat. She didn’t know what was chained perhaps twenty feet from
her. He wasn't human, for she perceived his distinctive aura of
something
other
. Humans did
not give out such peculiar vibes.

Her sensory perception bounced off the
walls, determining the room was small, perhaps the size of the huge
kitchen in her St. Paul loft. The air was stifling, and the
smell—

For the love of Herne, now that her anxiety
had begun to settle the scent crept into her nostrils unbidden.
Blood, and lots of it. Neither fresh, nor stale. She wiped her
fingers over her dress, but there was little werewolf blood. She
wanted to sneeze from the acrid pinch the odor delivered her
sinuses. And punctuating that odor, a salty male scent she
recognized as exertion, perspiration—and heightened arousal.

Overhead, an electronic buzz preceded a
blinding flash. Ultraviolet lights whitened the room painfully.
Bree squinted, but didn’t take her eyes from the creature before
her.

He strained against the chains, using his
shoulders, as his wrists were bound before him by manacles. Tight,
rock hard muscles pulsed his abs as he struggled to get closer to
her. Jaw tense and neck thick with strain, he groaned, sweat
dribbling along his limbs.