The Siren Series 1: Ember (9 page)

Or had they?

She sunk deeper into the tub as he strolled
over. Ruby cringed away and he frowned.

“What? I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not that
fire guy,” he said, then added, “I'm Brandon.”

“He didn't hurt me,” Ruby said softly,
remembering his hot tongue, its laboriously torturous scalding
movement over her parts and swallowed.

Brandon scented her arousal and his frown turned
to a scowl. Ruby sank until only her deep chocolate eyes met his
over the rim of her sleeping chamber.

Huh... this wasn't going well. Brandon had made
fast friends with Ember and the rest of the Mer gang. And he'd
thought the maiden would be all over seeing him as a great
prospect.

Of course, he supposed that her being raised
amongst humans didn't help the transition along. He'd kick it into
gear and see how that went.

“What's your name?”

Ruby looked at him. She didn't answer for so
long his gaze became hard. She finally replied, “Ruby.”

Ruby,
Brandon thought, remembering her
pearlescent skin, looking at eyes that sparkled back at him like
deep garnet jewels. He fought another erection with difficulty.

“We saved you from the fire demon,” he explained
for a second time as introduction.

“Uh-huh,” Ruby said doubtfully.

She didn't act very grateful
, Brandon
thought.

“I don't want to be here. Please... just let me
go,” Ruby said, barely keeping the tears that threatened at bay.
She just knew,
knew
, that if she could get some clothes and
get the hell out of this... Ruby looked around,
cave,
s
he'd be able to escape this city and go
to the next. She already knew were: Astoria. She'd jump borders and
high tail it to Oregon. Ruby would be okay if it was coastal.

It didn't take a brain surgeon to get a load of
what she was thinking. Ruby's large expressive eyes held her
thoughts and Brandon couldn't help but think of how vulnerable she
would have been amongst humans. Her fragility was obvious to him
and what experience did he have? Two years in his sheltered coven
learning the ways of Druid vampire and vicarious human existence
through a mother that had lived amongst humans... very much like
Ruby had.

She made every protective instinct he had and
ones he didn't come on line. Brandon hadn't realized what it meant
to be male and Druid vampire until he was faced with his biology.
If she had been Druid he thought it might have been worse. But she
had blood of the Mer and therefore it was just as bad. Like blood
spoke to like.

He moved toward her as Ember walked in through
the door he'd left ajar.

“What are you doing, Brandon?”

He turned guiltily and was overcome by the same
sensation he had with Ruby but somehow different. “I'm visiting the
maiden.”

“Yes, I see that. It was a successful
undertaking,” Ember looked at the girl and smiled and Ruby gave a
small smile in return.

Finally, another girl
, Ruby thought,
relieved.

“I'd like to have a chat, eh?” Ember said
smoothly. Dismissing him without saying so.

Brandon narrowed his eyes on the princess,
taking in her royal garb, a pale violet, playing up those large
eyes, nearly black, the tinsely silver-white of her hair as it
flowed to the small of her back. Brandon knew she would draw a
crowd if she were around humans and was probably barely within
human standards of looks as it was. Ember looked slightly less Mer
than the warriors. He wondered on that.

“Fine,” Brandon agreed reluctantly, looking at
Ruby again, her hands gripping the rim, the sooty lashes over deep
eyes, the pale hair wet from the sleeping chamber fanning out
behind her like wheat in the wind.

His dick twitched.
Time to go
, he
thought, turning and walking out without another word.

But Brandon wasn't done, not by a long shot.

Ember said nothing, instead she gracefully moved
around the room, stepping behind a stone wall and gathering a pale
seafoam green floor length gown.

“I am Ember,” she told Ruby gently, handing over
the garment soundlessly.

Okay, total creep factor,
Ruby thought.
Yet... there was something eerily familiar about the other woman.
Ruby studied her and hit on something.

They looked vaguely alike.

Ruby had never met anyone with her unusual
coloring. She always had the whitest blond hair, the deepest brown
eyes and pale skin with the softest shell pink tint to it. Like an
oyster with a pink pearl.

That is what her mother had called her when she
was a little girl:
her pink pearl.

“What saddens you?” Ember said in distress and
Ruby shifted her eyes away, trying to veil her sadness from this
stranger.

When the first tear came from Ruby's dark eyes,
Ember caught it in a vial that she corked after the capture.

“What?” Ruby's tears dried on her face, she was
astounded by the gesture. “Why did you do that?”

“Mermaid tears. They aid in healing,” Ember
replied in such a matter of fact way that Ruby was stunned into
silence.

“Really? You're what... a fish? Where's the
tail?” Ruby said, half in joke, her mind working a thousand miles
per hour, connecting dots that were impossible.

But becoming more probable moment by moment.

Ember was somber. “I am not a
fish,”
she said with clear distaste and Ruby instantly
felt stupid for her callous remark.

“
I am a Maiden of the Mer. A
princess,” Ember said as if she had announced that a thousand times
before. Maybe she had.

“
Mermaid,” Ruby breathed in
disbelief.

“
As
you
are,” Ember said, her brows drawing together with
Ruby's slowness.

“
Oh,” Ruby said in a small
voice, sliding underneath the water and closing her
eyes.

That revelation had been a little more than
she'd bargained for.

*

Brolach

Brolach took his punishment. The whip of ice bit
into his heated flesh like small razors of incendiary heat. Dipped
in the Blood of the Mer and frozen in stasis, they tore chunks out
of skin that was slightly red in hue, the black ink of his blood
racing from the wounds to gather like a river of oil at his feet,
where it steamed on the heated brick.

The chains bit into his bound wrists without
mercy and his head hung against his broad chest.

“You tasted of her... yet,” slap, crack, bite,
“You. Did,” thwack, Brolach groaned when the fifth lash struck the
open wound of the third, reopening it even as it tried to heal,
“Not. Fuck. Her.”

“No!” Brolach yelled, gasping as the stinging
coolness of the lashings laid his back open. “She was attacked by
the humans. I wished to not force her...”

Lucas strode around to the front of Brolach,
grasping his chin, slicked with sweat. “Did I not tell you to find
the females of demon blood?” He nodded for Brolach, adding,
“Instead you eat her cunt like a dessert?” he asked with scorn.
“And she be of Mer Blood? You could have fucked her senseless and
her water would have put out the fire of your cock and neatly
gotten her with child? What were you thinking?” Lucas asked,
disgusted with his right hand demon. He would never have thought
Brolach capable of any softness toward females.

“The treaty,” Brolach argued in a voice breathy
with agony.

“For a half-breed of Mer and Demon both? You
should have died fucking her,” Lucas said, hanging the whip filled
with gore on its peg on the stone wall, heat coming off it in
waves.

“Those Mers and their water pussies...
succulent. They are guaranteed producers of offspring. How is it
that you were able to resist your demonic nature? Jesus!” Lucas
said in emphasis and instantly screamed in agony, clasping his head
and falling in a writhing pile on the floor that glowed red from
the heat.

Brolach allowed a small smile at his leader's
painful lapse.

It did not affect Brolach in the same way. For
he held a secret. It had been easy before this mission. Now it
threatened to be revealed. With or without his consent.

Ruby was not the only one of mixed blood.

And his was the very worst of combinations. If
discovered, he would be put to death.

So Brolach endured the torture. Better that than
the alternative.

Yet the soul he did possess yearned for the
innocent female he had held but briefly.

A jewel amongst women: Ruby. A gem meant to be
his.

Brolach vowed she would be his again.

A demon never broke a promise once made.

Hell would freeze over before that.

His small smile turned into a grin as blood
trickled out of Lucas' pointed ears and his horns grew in response
to his agony.

A lesson learnt: do not call upon the Almighty
if you hail from the pits of Hades.

*

Ruby rebels

Ruby was fully awake now, and although usually
reticent by nature she was pissed as hell. Few knew it, but a
rebellious and passionate personality roiled underneath the surface
of the shell of neutrality she wore like a mask.

She fumed at the female while her ridiculous
gown flowed around her bare feet.

“I understand you're telling me I'm some kind of
mermaid...” Ruby paused, it sounded stupid beyond words. She plowed
forward anyway. “And that there's this huge supernatural
super-secret world and I've just found myself in the middle of it
all.

“You did not 'find yourself',” Ember tried for
tranquility but Ruby would have none of it.

She nodded her head vigorously. “Oh yes, I've
just moved here, got myself a low life job where I can't be
found...”

“Why would you wish not to be found?” Ember
asked logically.

My father,
Ruby
thought, her palms dampening
.
“Because, I like my
anonymity.” Ruby said and it sounded false even to her own ears.
Dammit, she was a crappy liar, always had been.

“Anyway,” Ruby said, clenching and drying her
hands on the fragile gown she wore, the silk material crushed under
her fingertips.

“I'm really sorry you guys are like, going
extinct and that there are a bunch of... uh, demons and vampires
and stuff. But this is not my problem. I just want to go away and
be left alone.”

Except for Brolach
, Ruby thought,
remembering that tongue on her lips, pumping into her virgin hole.
Moisture pooled where it should have been absent and she pressed
her legs together, pantiless, her arousal moistening her thighs.
She could've died. At least Ember didn't seem to know. She
literally melted for Brolach.

Had melted,
she corrected.

Nevermind,
she thought, casting her eyes
at the floor. She was trapped in goddamned
Waterworld
with
big ass men that she was supposed to breed with.

Ruby hadn't volunteered for this role.

It was okay, Ruby was hell on wheels at getting
the hell out of dodge. Merfolk or not, she was determined. Ruby
would leave this place and they weren't going to find her
again.

Ember smiled. Putting her hand out she indicated
that Ruby should take it. “We have prepared a great feast in your
honor. You are to meet the eligible Warriors of the Mer.”

Ruby was interested despite herself. “What...
only Warriors?”

Ember stopped. “Regular Males of the Mer do not
get their pick of a maiden,” she chastised softly.

Well la-dee-dah
, Ruby thought. “That
ought to cause some hard feelings,” Ruby stated the obvious.

Ember lifted a shoulder dismissively. “I do not
know. But for over one hundred years we have had insufficient
maidens to breed outside the circle of the warriors.”

Holy shit
, Ruby thought, they're
desperate for chicks and I'm a breeding messiah. It was a
motivator. She'd get the Prom Queen of the Mer ceremony over with
and get her ass out of there.

*

Con

Desmond was beginning to see why Constantine
could not be easily assimilated within the different groups.

He tried to reason with Constantine. “Listen to
me,” he commanded and a surly Con looked at him.

“We had to take you out. We couldn't compromise
the girl and you had bled my sister half to death...” Desmond
shrugged his shoulders.

Constantine wanted to rip his head off and shit
down his throat.

Instead, he made a stab at calm. “I procured the
girl. For
you
, yes?” Con asked in a reasonable imitation of
calm. His old vampire Faction leader would have kept his distance.
Desmond was not yet that wise.

Desmond's brows drew together. “Well yes, you
handled that splendidly.”

Good fuck, this Mer was a queer,
Con thought in frustration.

“
Okay...” Con scrubbed his
face, a strand of inky hair falling between his shoulder blades.
“So I should have been in charge of the fem...
Maiden
.” Con put his heavy hands on his
hips. His head was no longer sore where Madden had clocked him.
Constantine's blood-letting of Ember had seen to the healing of the
bludgeon by Madden.

He'd pay. Con was all about touching another
male's dick...

If he was tearing it off to throw it like a
horseshoe. That made a ghost of a smile appear on Con's face and
Desmond gave it an uneasy glance.

“
Not exactly,” Desmond held up
a finger. “Madden didn't understand your intent.”

Constantine understood his
intent:
He'd meant to fuck the girl.

Why. Didn't. They. Get. That?

“
You can't just fuck a barely
conscious maiden, Con,” Desmond said as if he was admonishing a
small child.