Siren. Part 16

Cauldry felt her claws on his shoulders as he pa.s.sed the captain's cabin, and he turned into her and kneed her in the belly once more. But Ligeia did not let go. And suddenly the words in his head changed from understandable syllables to an ancient language that he couldn't fathom. But its beauty stopped him. It was as if his limbs were suddenly cased in amber, as she sang and slipped her arms around him, once again pressing her naked flesh to his, and brought her face up to stare into his centimeters away. He could feel the faint fishy breath of her mouth against his lips, and her hideous eyes seemed to draw his into her, inside her, into a dark, heavy place where nothing moved, especially him. He couldn't look away from those cold-blooded eyes, even when he felt her fingernails ripping like daggers at his back. He closed his eyes to block the sight of her and gather his bearings but as he did so the pain bloomed like a gunshot in his neck, and his eyes sprang back open to see the twists of Ligeia's hair against his face as her teeth dug into his neck and struggled to bite deeper, deeper into his very core.

The music was gone now, and all Cauldry felt was the pain and the disappointment that the woman he had briefly coupled with-coupled in a way that had been more satisfying than any girl he'd ever bedded before-had only wanted one thing from him. And despite his enjoyment of it, what she wanted hadn't been the s.e.x. It had been his life.

And she had won it, he realized, as he slipped to his knees, and his head fell to rest against the cold, alien fish scales of her legs.

Chapter Thirty-Two.

The air buzzed. Okay, maybe it wasn't the air, exactly, but rather the s.p.a.ce in Evan's head. The s.p.a.ce now occupied with four Red Hooks and a night full of laughing, reverberating, unintelligible bar noise. He blinked heavily and walked with a clumsy tread down the sidewalk from Delilah's main drag into his bayside subdivision. He hoped the ten-minute walk would clear his head a bit by the time he got home; as much as Sarah drank and came home to him slurred and shaky, he hated to turn the same trick for her.

When he reached his driveway, the events of the morning suddenly came rus.h.i.+ng back; he'd managed to blot it out for the past few hours of chatter. Now the chain of events replayed in his head and his chest tightened. Evan found himself looking into the shadows for the carca.s.ses of seagulls.

But the gra.s.s and the drive were empty. He stepped up the walk and took a deep breath before pulling out his keys and unlocking the front door. He wondered if Sarah were home yet; he hoped so, because if she weren't...well...he might be cleaning up after her at two A.M. after she upchucked the contents of last call in their bed. And he wasn't sure he could handle that tonight.

The living room was still as he kicked off his shoes, grabbing at the door frame for balance. The house felt empty, and Evan groaned inwardly. He knew he'd been out too late himself, and if Sarah weren't home...

He stepped into the kitchen and noted the time on the microwave. 12:43. Wherever she was, she ought to be calling it a night soon, he supposed. He walked down the hall toward their bedroom, pausing briefly to look into the empty hole he'd made of Josh's room...G.o.d...just this morning. He could almost see the ghosts of the posters and plaques and CDs and c.r.a.p that had remained untouched for over a year until today.

Time for a change, he thought. Way past time for a change.

Evan stripped off his s.h.i.+rt and threw it in the direction of the hamper as he walked through the bedroom on his way to the bath. Barely blinking back sleep, he pulled up the toilet seat and let go a seemingly endless stream before flus.h.i.+ng and then clumsily squeezing toothpaste onto the brush that didn't want to stand still in his hand.

Finally, after some of the beer had been expunged from his mouth, he dropped his jeans and underwear, and exited the bathroom, tossing the pants in the direction of his s.h.i.+rt. He slipped beneath the covers of the bed, and fully expected the room to spin into motion as soon as he lay back and stopped moving himself.

The pillow felt amazing beneath his head, but as he slipped his feet in and around beneath the sheets, he felt something cold and wet against his knee. "What the h.e.l.l," he murmured, and reached down with his hand to explore the wet spot. It was cold and very wet...and he could feel small bits of...something...in the midst of the damp.

Evan reached out of the bed and turned on the lamp on the end table. Then he threw back the covers and looked at the mattress.

The sheets were definitely wet-a dark stain covered the half of the bed where Sarah normally slept, and small bits of something silver glittered in the dull yellow light. He leaned closer and picked one up with his fingertips, holding it closer to the light.

A fish scale.

"Huh?" he said to himself.

Something moved in the bathroom, and Evan looked up, pulling the sheets up instinctively to cover himself. "Who's there?"

From the shadows of the bathroom he saw a hint of movement, and then she stepped out into the warm glow of the room, skin glimmering with beads of water.

Ligeia.

"You!" Evan gasped. "What are you doing here?"

She smiled, thinly, and brushed a wet strand of black hair from her face with her hand. "I've been waiting for you to come home," she whispered. "You didn't come to the beach, so I came to you. You're late, you know."

"I was out with a friend..." he began to explain, and then stopped himself. "You can't be here," he said. "My wife will be home soon, you have to go."

"I am your wife now," Ligeia said, stepping to the bed. Evan's eyes were drawn to the lush promise of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, swaying just inches from his chest, and he gulped involuntarily, trying to swallow his desire and remember his anger. His head buzzed with alcohol and desire and he couldn't stop looking at her, here in his own place, here where for the first time, he could truly take her in his own bed, comfortably intimate, as if she were his wife.

She leaned to kiss him, and he almost gave in. But just as her lips brushed his, Evan put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. "I can't," he began.

"I am the mother of your child," Ligeia whispered. "You can't deny me this. I've been lonely for too long."

With that, she began to sing, a low, sensual purr of a melody that sent a s.h.i.+ver up Evan's spine. From the first note he felt his resolve slip, as his desire visibly grew. Ligeia dipped her head, encouraging him to look into her eyes, as her fingers slipped up his arms, soft and tentative, begging for him not to deny her.

In the back of his mind, a voice was screaming that he had to get rid of her; Sarah would be home any minute. The last thing he wanted was for her to find him in their bedroom, naked, with an equally nude G.o.ddess of a woman. That would end everything between them, no second chances. "Make her leave," the voice pleaded, reminding him that he also needed to strip the bed and clean the sheets before Sarah returned.

But Ligeia's song rippled and moved like honey over his heart, slowly smothering the voice of caution, and drawing out instead the beast inside. The memories of the ecstasy of their s.e.x on the beach overcame him, and he couldn't say no, regardless of the consequence. His mind fogged as his c.o.c.k ached-physically, throbbingly ached-to be inside her. "Just this last time," another voice whispered in the depths of her song. "Just once here, in your own bed."

Evan's breathing turned involuntarily to panting, as his legs trembled with the force of the need he felt. Now Ligeia's song trilled higher-angelic and ethereal, into the clouds, and she pressed his arms with her elbows down, off her shoulders to hold her waist. "Oh G.o.d," he gasped, as his hands slipped along the cool, wet curves of her body. He couldn't stop, but instead drew her tight to him, pressing his need against her groin and cupping her a.s.s in his hands, kneading her, needing her...

In seconds she was straddling him on the bed, and Evan blinked and cried at the emotions and sensation. With every movement of her hips he felt an electricity punch through his b.a.l.l.s and up into his belly. She didn't only touch him with her body, she seemed to seep through his pores to touch his very soul. The room dissolved into a haze and all he could see, all he cared about, was Ligeia. He would give up his house, his job, his wife, everything, for one more moment with her. Evan lost himself in the grinding, sinuous rhythm of their s.e.x, running his palms from the smooth point of their union up across her belly and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then back down her ribs. The velvet of her skin amazed him. He couldn't touch her enough.

She never took her eyes from his. She never stopped with her gentle, heavenly song, the soft, whispery music flying above and embracing them invisibly like an angel, and then dipping into the dark, sensual depths of wicked h.e.l.l to ripple at the back of his spine like a train rumble, almost beyond the range of hearing. She never stopped singing, and Evan never stopped thrusting, struggling with all of his being to draw himself out of his own body to live completely in hers. The golden flecks in her eyes hypnotized him and he felt himself crying inside at her beauty. He needed her.

Evan could feel her rhythm increasing, and her song grew more and more violent, a hissing, animal hunger dripping from every note. He knew she was close, and his own moment threatened to crest.

"Oh G.o.d, I want you, Ligeia," he moaned. "I want all of you."

"I...am...yours...forever," she cried, and pounded her body to his. Evan screamed, oblivious to everything, and closed his eyes. As the waves of o.r.g.a.s.m slowed, he gazed into her dark eyes and smiled, seeing her in a different light as the moment began to pa.s.s.

Now he saw that her face wasn't quite so full and perfect, as he'd imagined just moments before. She still was beautiful in her postcoital exhaustion. Black rings of hair caught and stuck to her cheeks, and perspiration beaded on her forehead, and the long tip of her nose.

He ran his hands down her waist and noticed that she didn't feel quite so silken smooth now. There were scars and b.u.mps on her flesh, just as there were with any woman. She was no perfect Venus, regardless of the allure of her song and her desire. Still...he took a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. Still, he realized, he wanted her with all of his heart. He loved Sarah, but this, this...amazing woman was something unlike any he'd ever been with. He wanted to continue to explore her mysteries. He wanted to know more about her desires. He wanted to know why she'd chosen him.

Ligeia smiled and brushed her lips over his, playfully nipping at his lips with her teeth. His hands slipped across her b.u.t.t again and shook her a little, s.h.i.+fting his diminis.h.i.+ng but still turgid flesh inside her. She giggled girlishly with her tongue still in his mouth, and his hands continued to her thighs, and then stopped.

Just below the cusp of her a.s.s, her skin turned cold, brittle. For a moment, he imagined she was wearing thigh-high boots. But then his memory returned. She'd been fully nude when she'd pressed him to the sheets.

His fingers explored and slipped up and down over the divide of her flesh. Ligeia's legs melded from hot skin, with an impossibly soft down of hair to an unyielding, cold span of...scales?

"What is that?" he asked, pus.h.i.+ng her off him enough to stare down between their bodies to look at her legs.

He gasped. Her thighs glittered silver-blue in the low light of the bedroom, and as she slowly moved one knee up his leg, he saw that her whole thigh and calf were encased in scales. Her foot ended, not in toes, but in the wispy, translucent webbing of fins. As his eyes registered the reality of her alienness, she moved her legs against him, slipping her scales up his leg and then pulling them down to catch him with a sandpapery hint of abrasion.

"This is who I am," Ligeia whispered in his ear. "This is what your child will be. This is what you can be, if you'll only come with me tonight."

The chill that suddenly caught the perspiration on Evan's skin had little to do with the room temperature. He'd laughed at Bill's fantastic stories, even when they rang true. He'd refused to consider whether he believed in them, though in the back of his head, he supposed he had begun to believe regardless of his cynicism. But now...

He rolled away from her, rejecting the strange sensual touch of her fish legs.

"You didn't look like this before," he complained.

"I didn't let you see," she whispered, and then let her voice trail into a humming note of song. She breathed notes of slow desire into the air between them and Evan felt his abhorrence instantly slip. At the same time, her face seemed to s.h.i.+ne with a fles.h.i.+er, erotic fullness, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s suddenly looked fuller, and her legs...were pale moonlight flesh, creamy womanhood begging for a man to kiss them, inch by inch to where...

Evan blinked. "What are you doing to me?" he cried.

He shook his head and Ligeia stopped singing. Her voice grew hard. "I can be whatever you want me to be," she said. "Whatever you need. But you have to agree. You have to say you'll be mine. I can make you happy forever, I promise you that."

"I have a wife," he protested. "I need to make her happy." He shook his head again, and her legs again looked alien; silver-scaled nylons below a pale body that seemed to have shrunk from the fertile woman who had just mounted him with the foggy lens of dream p.o.r.no. "She'll be home soon," he said, the realization blooming like ice in his bowels. "You can't be here."

"She won't be coming home again," Ligeia said. Her eyes held his, unblinking. The flecks of gold in the depths of brown suddenly struck Evan as fishlike. And cold. "I am your wife now. I will give you back the child that you've lost. Maybe even a son."

"No, you can't replace Josh," Evan exclaimed, pus.h.i.+ng himself from the dampness of the bed. He realized suddenly that the room reeked of fish. He could feel his c.o.c.k shriveling as the smell crept inside him along with the knowledge of what he'd just lain with. A woman who wasn't human. Something of the sea. Something that could change shape. Something untrue.

"You aren't my wife," he insisted.

"The woman who used to live here will not be coming home again," Ligeia said, and stood up on the opposite side of the bed from him. She stepped to the edge of the halo of their dim bedside lamp, scales s.h.i.+mmering weirdly as she walked around the foot of the bed to approach him again. She seemed smaller than he remembered, more wiry. More pointy and...somehow...coldly, immorally cruel.

The import of her words finally sunk in, and Evan asked, "What do you mean?" His heart suddenly spasmed as he thought of the wet spot in his bed, the wet spot that had been there before he'd gotten into bed. "What did you do to Sarah?"

Ligeia put her arms out, and smiled with a flash of white in the dark room. Her teeth looked sharp, sharklike in the shadows. "Come here, darling," she whispered. "I'll sing for you and everything will be all right, forever and ever."

With that, her words slipped into the wrenching crescendo of a love song. The first notes sent a s.h.i.+mmer of lethargy up Evan's back, but this time he was mentally prepared.

"Oh no!" he yelled, and sprinted to the bedroom door, continuing to yell. "No no no no no!" he called out, struggling to blot out the sound of the Siren's call from his ears. He fumbled with the sliding gla.s.s door latch in the kitchen as her song followed closely behind him, and Evan's legs seemed to waver and fold like jelly. He pulled himself up against the door and pushed it open, falling out into the yard. He didn't care that he was naked, he bolted toward the compost pile, intending to race through the Bentons' yard to the street beyond.

He stumbled forward a few steps but didn't quite make it to the ground where dozens of seagulls lay freshly interred. Instead, something hard slammed into the back of his head, and he went down. He had a faint glimpse of a white rock and two eyes glinting yellow in the moonlight and teeth as sharp as a shark's before the night overtook him, and Evan slipped away with an angry song coiling around his neck like an invisible noose. For a split second he saw Sarah's face superimposed over the feral edges of Ligeia's and his true heart cried and struggled to ask the Siren, "What did you do?" But his lips never quite managed to open before the night came down.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

She swam in a dark blue ocean. She didn't worry about breath; somehow it didn't seem necessary. But there was urgency in her tread. Vicky kicked hard with her feet and pushed with her hands. She needed to find its home. It was important that she got there before it knew she was near. The dark timbers of the old s.h.i.+pwreck came slowly into view amid the murky turquoise of the depths of the sea. This was the place, she knew in her heart. Looking behind her, she only saw the faint disturbance in the water left by her feet. Vicky kicked harder and swam toward the old wreck. Evan needed her.

The deck of the old wreck was black with age and dark green with the anchors of algae and seaweed that trailed and s.h.i.+vered in the waves like a mirage. Vicky swam past the old captain's wheel, looking for a way inside. Below her, she saw a dark rectangle carved in the rotten boards of the deck, and her eyes lit. Maybe there. She kicked and turned in the sea, darting toward it. But just as she reached the opening into the depths of the s.h.i.+p an explosion pushed her back. A hundred silver shapes leaped from the blackness of the s.h.i.+p's belly to dart past her in the water. Vicky flailed in the waves, struggling to hold her position and avoid being hit by one of the foot-long torpedoes that streamed out of the hidden heart of the old wreck.

Then the school of frenzied silver bullets was past, and Vicky began to move again toward the hole. She nosed in and grabbed the edges of the rotten wood, pulling herself down.

That's when something grabbed her by the hair.

Something yanked.

And yanked hard.

An explosion of bubbles sprayed from Vicky's mouth, and she turned to see the glowing eyes of another woman, one who had fins for ears and fangs for teeth. A woman who pulled her close with a sudden grip on her shoulders.

And it didn't feel like the stranger wanted a welcoming embrace. The creature's mouth opened like a trapdoor, wider than any human should be able to open its jaws. Feral teeth gleamed in the dull light and threatened to fasten like a snake's snap on Vicky's shoulder.

Instead, the psychiatrist kicked with her feet and caught the creature in the chin. "Ha!" she laughed, twisting in the water. She kicked and swam hard toward the surface. Take that.

She didn't get far. Needles of pain lanced into her ribs and Vicky felt her flight cease, as the Siren wrapped its cold body around her like a leaden blanket and dragged her down to the cold muck of the sea bottom. She felt the seaweed twist between her legs, and the heat of teeth breaking the skin of her neck. Just before her, inches out of reach, the old planks of the s.h.i.+p loomed like a wall. All this, she thought, and I'm not going to get inside?

Then the Siren turned her to lie on her back in the mud of the ocean, and smiled. When she opened her mouth, Vicky's heart stopped. Long needle teeth exposed and struck, ripping into the soft flesh of her throat...

Vicky Blanchard woke up screaming.

Her body was wreathed in sweat beneath the sheets and she threw them off, kicking the covers down.

"Whoa," she gasped as she realized that she was not underwater, but simply lying in her dark bedroom, in her dark bed, after a dark, weird dream.

She lay there, on her back, smoothing the nights.h.i.+rt down along her waist with her palms, staring at the ceiling for several minutes, willing her heart to stop pounding, and the heat of her flesh to cool.

Finally, when the sweat turned cold, she pulled the covers back up and stared into the corners of her room. Everything felt strange; the comfort of her home alien and dangerous.

"It was a bad dream," she said aloud, trying to calm herself. "Just a bad dream."

But as she lay there, Vicky knew that it was more than a bad dream. It was a bad worry. More than a worry, really. There was a reason that Vicky had gone into psychiatry; she was more than just a good listener, she could feel things. Everyone had always said she was a little psychic-she'd think of someone and twenty seconds later her phone would ring. She always seemed to "have a feeling" just before something happened.

Evan had skipped their appointment this week and, strangely, hadn't returned her voice mail. In the year that she'd known him, he'd never missed an appointment without calling. She had worried for the past couple days that something was wrong, and now it was haunting her sleep. All of Evan's stories about a mysterious woman by the sea, and his friend's taunts that she was really the fabled Siren of Delilah had lodged in her subconscious. Now it was keeping her up.

Vicky shook her head. It was dangerous to get involved with a patient at that level. She'd felt sorry for Evan since the day she'd met him and, for a while, she'd thought they had made progress. But over the past month, as the story of his fantastic infidelity had unraveled in the privileged confines of her office, she'd become uneasy. Maybe they hadn't made any progress at all, she thought. Maybe just the opposite. Now his fear of the ocean had grown into an obsession with a woman supposedly of the ocean. It was a thin excuse for cheating on the woman who Vicky knew needed him more than anything now. Evan's wife had become increasingly unstable over the past year as Vicky felt Evan himself was improving. But maybe nothing she'd concluded was, in fact, true.

Vicky shook away the images of the dream. She knew it was bad to get emotionally attached to a patient. She was supposed to remain detached. Aloof. Objective.

Still. She had gone into this line of work because she cared about people. And after a year of weekly sessions, she cared about Evan.

Vicky took a deep breath and forced away the images of the dark ocean. She would call Evan again on Monday. Everything was okay, she told herself. She was overreacting, and he was probably just busy. h.e.l.l, if she chilled out, he'd probably just show up for their regular Wednesday appointment like usual.

But she needed to know something before then.

"I'll call him on Monday," she said to the empty room, and pressed her head into the crease in her pillow, demanding comfort in the place where she should be most comfortable.

"For now," she whispered, "sleep."

Chapter Thirty-Four.

Evan woke in the dark, held in a tight embrace. A woman's arm wrapped around his back and kept his face pressed against the soft flesh of her chest. He knew immediately it was Ligeia. Evan tried to push away from her, but her grip tightened. He turned his head from the cus.h.i.+on of her breast, and saw something that made his throat close.

Ligeia held him close because...they were swimming. She was his lifeline, pulling him through the depths of the ocean, kicking steadily with her feet, and guiding them with strokes of her one free arm.

Evan started to take a breath and then stopped. My G.o.d! How deep are we? I'll drown! The panic rose like a wave and he pushed away from her with both hands, at the same time kneeing her in the gut.

She let him go, instinctively grabbing at her belly, and Evan kicked away from her. But in seconds he went from escaping to flailing. He had never learned to swim; he had always been too petrified of the water to try. Ligeia's body disappeared into the murk and suddenly Evan was completely aware of the weight of the water. It pressed his chest and he struggled not to take a breath. But he kicked with his feet and he could feel the water's resistance. And somehow, instead of rising to the surface, he didn't seem to be going anywhere. He pushed with his hands and kicked and couldn't seem to coordinate. Instead, the panic owned him, and he clawed with his hands, a spasmodic dogpaddle that succeeded only in stripping the last air from his lungs. He needed to breathe and couldn't stop. No, his brain screamed, but his mouth opened. No, he begged himself, but his lungs took a deep pull of breath. And sucked in seawater.