The Siren Series 2 (3 page)

The trio made their way along the border of
trees.

“
What will happen to Ember?”
Lucia asked as she moved beside Tarrin in a silent blur of stealth.
Con thought about it: Ember had left his protection, however
dubious. She might not understand what was happening between them,
what the future held for her if she stayed with Constantine. Of one
thing he was certain. He spoke of it as he blurred from tree to
tree, the sparse cover of leaves granting him reprieve from the sun
as it began to warm the forest around them.

“
She will need to return to
the sea. Ember is Mer, they can only tolerate brief sojourns
inland, then must return to The Mother.”

“
What is 'the mother'?” Lucia
asked, catching her breath against a trunk. She breathed out a deep
sigh of gratitude upon seeing the stone entrance to their mainly
underground coven.

Tarrin looked off into the distance, his
head clearing the top of Lucia's. He kissed the crown of those
loose curls, dampened by the dew of the morning. “The sea.”

Constantine nodded. “She is
out there,” he began, his eyes searching the ambient darkness that
was blooming toward daylight. He pressed his arms closer to his
sides, deeper into the shadow. “Scared and running, she thinks I'm
dead.”
Or hopes so
, he thought with
a pang of doubt.

They moved toward the stone door, the edges
cleverly tucked and camouflaged from casual observation and
subsequent discovery. Tarrin tapped the opening where the latch lay
hidden. He stepped aside to allow Lucia to precede him and then
shut the door behind her.

“
Tarrin!” she yelled, whirling
at the sealed stone entrance separating her from her mate's sure
retaliation against Constantine.

Tarrin pivoted smoothly and punched
Constantine in the face. Con used his uncanny precognitive senses
and turned his head at the last moment. The blow glanced off
instead of striking him full in the face.

“
You tried to rape my mate,”
Tarrin growled as he swung again. The sunrise shone onto their
nocturnal flesh, the skin heating in response. Their Druid blood
was the only savior of their bodies as they fought. Vampires
without Druid blood would even now burn like brightly lit vampiric
torches.

“
She was only a female,”
Constantine huffed, his fist crashing into Tarrin's injured rib. It
was a purposeful strike, Con automatically sought the harshest
injury his fists could earn.

Tarrin grunted in acute agony when
Constantine's knuckles bashed into his half-healed and tender ribs.
The bastard fought like a mercenary: unpredictable, violent and
unceasing. He smashed his knee into Constantine's nose and Con
leapt back shaking his head to free his face of the blood that
flowed like a small river.

“
I will teach you a lesson
this day... on how to treat females!” Tarrin roared and Constantine
drove forward while Lucia's fists pounded the other side of the
stone door to stop them, the material shuddering under her
strength, but the door remained inexplicably jammed.

Con leapt on Tarrin like a stout ape,
wrapping his legs around the other male's waist and bellowed into
his face. “I do not need a lesson! That is all my life has ever
been: a lesson of torture!” He butted his stout forehead into
Tarrin's, ringing his bell.

Tarrin swayed, feeling Con's powerful thighs
beginning to crush his ribs, tender organs suffocating from lack of
blood flow, and room.

Constantine put his bashed nose an inch from
Tarrin's own. “I shall die before I suffer another abuse,” Con said
in a harsh bark of emotion, a volcano of unhealed mental wounds
woven within the fabric of those words.

Tarrin heard it. He saw the conviction and
agony in Constantine's face and as his body was screaming for
release he responded, “Do not touch Lucia again.”

“
Do not assume I will,
Exotic,” Constantine said, jerking his body backward and falling
from Tarrin in a graceful backward plunge.

Their chests heaved, their gazes locking in
a silent challenge. A stalemate of a fight.

“
Stop this!” Lucia said loudly
through the other side of the door. “We must devise a plan to save
the princess so that our allies will be satisfied with her return,
not beat each other into pulps so we cannot. I have forgiven
Constantine his transgressions. Let us... let us come to terms of a
truce.”

Tarrin sighed,
What
concessions he made for his female
. He would
have avenged her. But as he looked at Constantine, his body scarred
and hard, his wounds from the demons, then Faction and finally the
ones Tarrin had inflicted closed as he watched and Tarrin saw what
only Lucia had seen before: a male who may be of worth.

If only he had true camaraderie for anyone
but himself.

Tarrin did not know if he could give it.
This was a male Lucia had tortured in retaliation for his attempted
abuse against her. Could Tarrin overcome that, even if she had
already evened the score?

He would try.

For Lucia.

He stuck his dark hand out at Constantine
and he looked at the symbolic gesture.

A human gesture.

After a full minute of deliberation,
Constantine took it and the hard kiss of flesh held.

When Lucia finally got the stubborn door
open she saw her mate eyeing Con with clear reservation and
residual anger.

A trick of the light made her see what she
wished for in Con's eyes: hope.

“
Let us go underground,” Lucia
advised into the stillness of the pregnant moment.

Constantine gazed around the outside, the
weak light of almost winter piercing the ground in jagged shapes of
white light.

“
We can do nothing for her in
full daylight, we will cook in the fire of the sun, Faction,”
Tarrin said logically.

Constantine nodded. He knew this.

He swore he could almost feel the pull of
her and glanced over his shoulder again.

That silken sex of wetness and mermaid heat
called to the blood of the Mer that he held within the confines of
his body.

The blood of the Druid to breed.

And that spot of Exotic lineage attempted to
forge a psychic connection that he was not in the practice of
employing.

He warily followed the Exotic advisors deep
under the protection of the earth. Another hostile environment
without ample blood, friendless with enemies and unknowns in every
corner.

Con was coming home.

It was always the same wherever he went.

Home was no haven.

Ember backed away when Constantine was
distracted. It was better that she go her own way. She did not know
what would happen with that mixed-blood. Guilt stabbed her... he
had saved her.

He'd also promised her violence while he fucked
her.

Ember knew her brethren would be searching for
her and she ran, the dawn creeping at the edges of a sky that shone
like a black stone, gradually washing with colors of pink and
orange, bleeding together like a canvas where water had spilt.

Ember did not wish to have her virginity torn
out of her body like a plug of purity to be rid of. That is what
the Mer warriors had planned for Ruby and her. Desmond had
spear-headed the movement. He had been too much the coward to tell
her what would happen. Two decades earlier, Kier, now King of the
Vampire, had actually rescued her from the same fate. A fate her
brother condoned if perpetrated by Mer warriors.

That had been a betrayal she could not look upon
too closely. The introspection would shred her soul.

Ember was utterly confused. During the fight
with the demons, the Mer Warriors had defended her. Yet... they
would have easily ignored her distress once it came to the communal
breed of her later. It made no sense. What had happened within the
Mer society? What breakdown of civility had transpired that the few
women they possessed should be bred like animals? Their rarity made
them less precious... than what? Ember shivered in the forest,
every tree looked the same. Her shoulders slumped and she shied
away from what she must do.

There were no protectors, only manipulators.
Males bent on the control of females. It was a sad reality that
Ember did not know whom she could trust.

Ember had always been able to survive away from
the sea longer than the other Mer. No one knew why. But even she
grew weaker with the distance she kept from The Mother. If Ember
closed her garnet eyes, she could feel the pull of the tide
approaching and receding off that distant shore.

The cold sucked further at her energy and she
was lost. If she went to the sea she could rejuvenate easily. She
bit her lip, indecision eating at her already exhausted mind.

However, the Mer warriors might also be there.
In fact, it was almost certain. Without the proximity of the sea
they were limited. They would need to recharge themselves near the
sea before chasing her again.

Ember could bed down if she could find
someplace... she looked around, spotting a pile of leaves, forest
debris and moss.

Ember thought of her pampered life within the
womb of the Mer. How she missed her warm seawater sleeping chamber,
her cleaning cubicle. She suddenly thought of her seed pods and put
her hand to her hair. After searching deliberately through the
entire mane she found each and every one, though they were
hopelessly tangled. She sighed, tears burning the back of her
eyelids.

She knew she'd made the right decision, but it
was hard convincing herself as she lay down in her makeshift bed,
her skin losing its last bit of heat. Ember closed her eyes, the
blanket of leaves covering her, the luminescent color of her skin
softly shining in the earth tones of the forest.

A lone jewel for criminals to stumble upon. And
this part of the forest was a virtual highway for nefarious traders
of illicit goods.

Ember was vulnerable. Not because she was
female. But because she was far from the sea. The call she could
cast to The Mother would not help her. The sea lay too far
away.

When the men came upon her, a sleeping mermaid
without a tail, they knew what she was immediately, and what
decorated her hair.

Mason looked at the fragile creature of the sea,
the sea they exploited for monetary gain. He nodded to the thug
that was paid to do his bidding.

“Look, she's shivering,” he said. “Do yah think
she's dying?”

Mason shook his head. “No, those people that
live in the ocean are plenty adaptable enough to make do with
temperature changes. It's that she's not close to the ocean. She's
weak.”

“Let's just take the shit and get the fuck out
of here,” Brutal said. His name was an apt moniker because of the
atrocities he'd perpetuated in the name of the almighty dollar.

Mason cleared his throat. “No. We'd have to kill
her to take the pods from her hair.”

Brutal lifted his brows, his face clearly
saying,
and that's a problem... why?

“
It's from the boss. No death.
In fact, there's no fucking either,” Mason warned, obviously
feeling the other man's vibe.

“
Well damn, I wanted some
fun.” He made a hip thrust in the air.

“
I didn't say we couldn't
have
fun
, we just can't prick her
pussy, yah ass wagon.”

Brutal grunted. He wanted to fuck some
pussy. It pissed him off that there was an imaginary shackle on his
dick. He wanted so bad to be on his own. He'd fuck first and ask
permission later, that's what life was about. Humping pussy,
spending money. What else was there? His cruel eyes landed on the
pale blonde asleep under the soft forest debris. She didn't even
remotely blend in with the earthen tones of the forest. She'd been
easy to spot.

Mason could virtually see the sluggish
wheels of Brutal's intellect as they turned, going through the
motions of his deliberation on what would work.

In the end, Brutal was a well-trained
dog.

He'd give Brutal a little leeway for
pleasure so he could call on more evil favors in the near
future.

“
He didn't say anything about
her ass...” Mason mentioned.

“
Yeah,” Brutal growled. “Lets
do some coming in her other holes.”

Mason and Brutal walked to where Ember
slept, oblivious of the plans of degradation they had in store for
her.

Ember woke slowly, feeling a delicious sensation
along her thigh. She was no longer cold but perfectly balanced in
temperature. When she felt an unfamiliar pressure at the opening of
her sex her eyes snapped open. Blazing sunlight pierced her through
the canopy of the trees, a piece of fallen shadow covered one
deeply chocolate eye that blazed with a ring of blood red at its
rim and a finger dove deeply into her wet channel.

Ember tried to clamp her legs together but a
gruff male form held her knees apart, his male companion making her
body rock back and forth as he pumped her pussy with his
finger.

“Oh god
damn...
she's got a sweet
cherry,” Brutal breathed, his cock throbbing in anticipation of
pumping her tight ass full of cum. Yeah, they'd deliver the little
mermaid with the shit in her hair... with a load of his jism held
in her tight bud.

“Don't go past that,” Mason instructed, slapping
Ember in the face with his cock.

“No!” she yelled squirming away. Ember flipped
on her stomach trying for a clumsy crawl. Land was somehow the
thief of her grace and Brutal landed on her back, the air leaving
her lungs in a whoosh.

Brutal had his cock out of his pants and split
her ass cheeks with his hard dick. Mason grabbed all that platinum
hair as Brutal yanked Ember's hips up in the air, the end of his
cock pushing past her clamped ass bud. Ember sucked in air to
scream again and Mason shoved that plump mouth on the tip of his
cock, ramming her platinum head down to the base.