The Siren Series 1: Ember Read online

  And now that Brandon faced the very one he'd been warned about, he allowed that part of him he kept as second nature, his Mer side, to come to the forefront now, becoming first.

  Brandon was Druid.

  Vampire.

  And most assuredly Mer.

  When the second call of the maiden came, it did not come from the one who stood in front of Brandon, with the rich eyes like low burnt coals, skin that shone like the captured moon. Whose hair was silvered like fine Christmas tinsel in the light.

  It came from the west of them.

  A female of the Mer was in trouble and the squabbles of their new acquaintance would have to be put on hold to deal with this challenge.

  For like the Druids, the Sirens had very few females. As Brandon would soon find out, they sought them like rare pearls, gems hidden in the ugliness of humanity.

  CHAPTER 4

  Ruby

  Ruby jabbed the key into the slot, fighting the lock like she did each night. With a well-practiced jostle and lifting of the handle, the thing finally gave and she shouldered the door open, tumbling inside the seedy back entrance of where she worked.

  Ruby hated her job.

  She needed her job.

  One of the other girls was taking a little break from putting her make-up on, taking the straw and inhaling a line of coke between mascara swipes and eyeliner strokes. After a mind-numbing snort she shook her hair out, opening plump lips as she applied her fifth coat of mascara on her eyelashes.

  Ruby felt like an out-of-body observer of her own debauched life.

  She didn't cast stones, there but for the grace of God go I, Ruby thought. Then added, for all the praying I did, He never answered.

  Ruby prayed a ritualistic habit now. It was all she had left, and she clung to it like a lifeline. She was running and this was work she could do that didn't require numbers. Names.

  Information.

  If she worked a respectable job, then she'd be stuck and found. Pinned like a butterfly on a board.

  Waiting for him to find her. The father who hated her. Who'd killed her mother.

  Who wanted Ruby dead as well.

  Ruby shuddered, thinking how good it was that she revisit what her life had been before so she could live the hell it was now more easily.

  At least that was the repetitive mantra she lived by.

  Irene gave Ruby a look from the reflection of the glass, mid-stroke on another layer of mascara. “Late again... Fred's gonna take it outta your pretty hide.”

  Her body tensed at Irene's superficially caring words. Ruby hadn't meant to be late. She worked a coffee shop job, keeping under the radar at twenty hours per week made them look the other way on her half-answers. After all, twenty hours a week didn't require health care, pension.

  Or wages that came in the form of an official paycheck.

  Right now she had her week's wages in a roll of cash between her tits. There they'd stay until she could get home tonight. Ruby didn't respond to Irene's jab. If Fred saw her and noticed the time... she'd deal with it then.

  There'd be hell to pay if he did. Sometimes her shifts overlapped and there was nothing short of living in the streets that could avoid that.

  And she couldn't live out of this city. Ruby escaped to cities that had proximity to the sea within a few hundred feet. If she didn't live by the ocean she became sick.

  Ruby remembered very well her early childhood and the unspoken looks that passed between her alcoholic father and terrified mother. His filled with accusation and hate, hers filled with resignation and longing.

  After Ruby's dad beat her mom to death those stares stopped altogether. Then began again.

  With Ruby.

  She ran. Ruby ran until the sea called her home.

  She rented a dive that was in a warehouse on the Seattle waterfront. An unadvertised slummy room.

  But it had a window that faced the water and as she fell into uneasy sleep each night Ruby thought she heard a faint melody that came from the depths of the ocean.

  Singing only to her. It made her neck ache and her skin tingle. It was also deeply satisfying.

  And scary.

  It was in the midst of this tender and deeply kept inner musing that a rough and calloused hand landed on her shoulder, spinning her around.

  She widened her nearly black eyes at the beady and accusing ones of Fred, her pimp of a boss.

  “Late again?” he asked, giving her a teeth-rattling single shake.

  Ruby opened her mouth, her palms already slicked with sweat, her fear and flight reaction firmly engaged, terror chocking her instantly.

  She nodded her head. Knowing what was to come, hating it and the necessity of surviving it.

  “What are ya wearing tonight?”

  “The catsuit,” Ruby replied quickly, hoping to deter his wrath.

  No such luck. That just let him know where his abuse wouldn't show.

  He struck her kidneys savagely, all knuckle and bone and she went down to her knees, throwing up her meager supper on the floor at his feet.

  “Fuck! Ya stupid bitch.” He pitched her sideways with a hand on her side and she fell, cracking her head on the floor. “You're fuckin' cleaning that up too. Shit, if you didn't look so good on stage I'd bag you here and throw you to the wolves. But you make me the cash... even though you're an ungrateful cunt.”

  He heaved a disgusted grunt as Ruby lay there, her back in numb agony, her bladder ready to let go from the abuse of her organ. Instead she met his eyes, his flaring at whatever he saw there.

  “You creepy crack, stay away from me or they'll be more of that. Plenty more. Now get your shit on, and swing that sweet ass into gear. You've got a dance to do.”

  Ruby watched him from her sprawled perspective on the floor as he walked out of the room, the fog of pain pulsing at her back and radiating outward. When Irene came over with her mascara wand in one hand and her other bony hand pegged on her hip, Ruby shut her eyes against her words.

  “You're a slow learner, Ruby. Just fuck him and be on time.” Ruby could hear the shrug in her voice. “It's about survival you stupid twat. Spread 'em and show up.”

  Ruby heard Irene settle herself again in the make-up chair in front of lights so bright and hot Ruby could feel the heat from where she lay on the hard cement floor.

  There were a few moments of silence that Ruby thought she could live through, getting over the top of the first horribly sharp pain. Experience told her it would dull with time.

  Though toilet would hold testimony to the abuse, the water inside colored with her blood.

  As Ruby lay on the floor in all-too-familiar agony, Irene added, “I call those the two Ss, sweetie; spread and show, baby... spread and show.”

  Ruby hadn't put on her make up yet so she let the luxury of hot tears slide from behind her tightly shut eyes, crying for living.

  Her survival was more painful because of what she wouldn't do.

  *

  Siren

  Ember came forward between Constantine and the newest Mer, an obvious mixed-blood and hoping to act as referee.

  “Who may you be?” she asked the newcomer, obviously close to full maturity, perhaps within a year of her own age.

  Clearly a skilled warrior despite his youth.

  Brandon straightened, fighting the urge to touch her, hating his Druid nature pushing him to claim her with his body.

  It was that fast, that instinctive.

  Constantine laughed. “He is so Druid.”

  Brandon turned to him with a full look. “And you're so Faction.”

  It was like a perfectly executed strike and Con hissed, his hands fisting.

  “No,” Ember raised a palm.

  “Your name?” she repeated.

  “Brandon,” he answered in a curt word.

  The Mer came closer and he turned. “Back off, Sirens, I've yet to get my bearings,” Brandon said, part fact and part warning.

  Ember gave a nod in the warrior's direction
and they stood down as told, but their eyes said they would spring into action if the need arose.

  Ember strolled up to the new one, taking in his physicality. He was a real mix, the typical Druid vampire build: six and a half feet of heavily constructed bone and muscle, slung on a body that shared the Reaper coloring of hair as black as a raven's wing.

  And there the commonality to the Druid cousins, the Reapers... ended. Instead of the glacial blue eyes of the Reaper, the new vampire had the stamp of the Siren.

  It was his eyes that set him apart. He had eyes of the Mer, not the rare shade that marked herself as different, but the true obsidian of the Mer. Those eyes were not just for show but for sight in waters too dark to navigate without the special properties they afforded the Sirens.

  “We do not have time for sparring amongst the two of you.” Ember stated as absolute fact, her tone brooking no argument. Brandon smiled. Didn't she think she was all that and a bag of chips? he thought. His thoughts made him grin and he was pleased to note a small frown mar the perfection of her pearlescent skin.

  “What coven do you claim?” she asked.

  “King Kier and Queen Holly of the Druid vampire,” Brandon replied, understanding protocol between the supernatural groups automatically. A shadow passed across her face that both vampires watched like a storm averted. She seemed to shake herself out of whatever her thought process had been with difficulty.

  She nodded then said, “You are an ally then.”

  Constantine snorted. “What makes him lily white?” he asked.

  “Con,” Ember said in soft warning.

  Constantine studied her.

  Finally her eyes met his. “It was Kier... while he was Faction, who saved me...”

  “Ah.” Constantine smiled. “It was he that spoiled the fun of the Faction.”

  Ember's lip trembled at the memory of the near victimization of the Faction upon her person. She sucked that full lower lip into her mouth, the two vampires watching the movement with the fine attention of hawks circling prey.

  Ember didn't let the ready tears fall, although their presence burned her eyes with the effort to not let them drop.

  Constantine looked at the waterworks of the female and contained his irritation with an effort. “No offense princess. I wasn't with them at that time. Kier saved your royal ass before my time...”

  Brandon swiped him across his chest, slicing him neatly through his tunic with talons that sprung too quickly to track and Constantine hissed, launching smoothly at the Druid upstart.

  When the sea roared inside his skull, Con dropped mid-strike like a stone in a pool of water. Ember stood beside him and he wrapped her bare ankle with his hand and pushed that horrible tide of power off his mind in the greatest survival play of his life.

  Ember gasped at the backlash of Constantine flexing his own powers as Mer, falling where she stood and into the arms of Brandon, the uninvited Druid, whose tenderness for her as a female was well-hidden in those black eyes. Druids did not manifest their emotions readily. It was considered weak.

  Brandon kicked Constantine's hand away from her flesh.

  Constantine sprung to his feet, blood flowing freely over his chest where the brat Druid had got a lucky strike in, soaking his tunic through.

  Ember lay in the Druid's arms while Constantine as first guard contemplated her laying in an unknown's embrace. As far as Constantine could tell, a possible enemy. Desmond's agreement with Con's brutal methodology came back to him and it was a default mechanism he was quite comfortable with.

  He was quickly figuring a way to get her away and behead the youngster when Madden said, “There is another.”

  Constantine and Brandon looked at the Mer Warrior.

  He inclined his head with a sarcastic uplift of his lips. “While you two lovebirds were posturing like roosters, there be a maiden close by, remember.” Madden tapped his temple lightly.

  It was comical, both vampire's noses rose to scent the area, snapping down at the same moment and locked gazes.

  “Can we be Sirens tonight, Faction? So we can save a maiden?”

  Con deliberated, clearly scenting a female that was of Ember's ilk. It was not a choice, he could feel her like an extra heartbeat. Hating that he was connected to females in any way would not change the reality that he was.

  As now. His mongrel’s blood awakened and acted separately from his intellect.

  Constantine internally raged at what he was even as he responded, “I feel her.”

  Madden smiled. Out of the three warriors, he saw the former Faction struggle to assimilate as a Siren. This would be a test if he would or no.

  Madden knew who the young Siren/Druid was. He could still taste the mother on his tongue, the kiss they'd shared as fresh on his lips as the day they'd shared it two years ago.

  He stepped between the two vampire as the young one placed Ember on her feet.

  There was a maiden who needed saving, these two opposing males would need to come together to see the duty through. For to ignore the Siren's call of a female meant you were not Mer enough to be allowed to live.

  So sayeth the Mother.

  *

  Ruby could feel the effects of the Ibuprofen as the sharp ache in her back gave way to dullness as the medicine softened the inevitable swelling from the blow.

  She had rolled on the scrap of costume that would be the extent of her wardrobe and waited in the dark recesses of the stage for her number to cue her to begin and smelled the familiar musty scent of velvet drapes that had once heralded actual cinematic presentations, when the old building hosted the rich of the era.

  Now that opulence had slid into disrepair, the old girl's slip was showing, the faded and ornate wallpaper absorbing the lustful grunts of patrons who no longer came to hear the poetry of Shakespeare uttered on stage, but to see live tail shake from society's miserables. Women who for one reason or another, took their clothes off for money. And the men who were indifferent to the quiet desperation that motivated them.

  Ruby tried to shake off the abbreviated beating she'd been gifted earlier by Fred. Because she knew that there might be one in the audience watching her that scared her even more than Fred.

  She thought of him as Demon Eyes. Ruby felt like all others didn't notice the low flame that burned in his gaze. His hair was of deepest red, a shade not found in nature with eyes that were just that much darker, burgundy fire.

  The music jarred her out of her reverie and Ruby sashayed on stage as the deep bass of the music shook and thrummed in her chest, the low droning beat never changing. Her number or the next girl's number didn't matter. They moved to the beat, snakes in heat, slithering in their glittered costumes of rampant sex.

  Ruby moved with the music, imagining the churning sea as she did, her eyes at half-mast to close out the raucous crowd of men as they hollered for her to bare her breasts.

  She did, tearing the glittering catsuit down to her waist, her small and perfectly formed breasts popping out of the costume like small pearls, the costume a shimmering ring of material at her hips.

  Ruby jiggled her tits and swept a shapely and muscled leg up high above her head, letting the drooling men catch a glance at her secret flesh bisected by a string of shining material as it cleaved her ass and pussy while she danced and she heard one guy in the audience groan as he discreetly climaxed into his empty beer cup.

  Ruby swore she could hear the sound of his meat hitting his palm and swallowed against the bile that rose in response to what passed for a normal exotic dance shift.

  When she spun perfectly to land on one knee and slid into the splits at the end of the half moon platform of the stage, her eyes met his and her heart leapt in her chest in a sickening stutter.

  Those eyes lit on her body, the fire of his gaze searing a path along her pale hair and lingering where her wounded back begged for respite, his face becoming hard and she dropped her eyes before she saw more. Ruby sprung up from the splits in a smooth pirouette from he
r ballet days and worked the pole, giving the men her smooth back, the fine muscles in play like rippled marble as she did a flawless spread and grind against the cool metal. Ruby's small hand held her safely in a death grip on the pole and she ended her set with her head tipped back, a pale wave of hair in a cascading tumble over the end of the platform within touching distance of the pervs who hooted and hollered for the last part of her performance.

  Her leg was hooked on the pole and her abs clenched as her back howled in protest and she allowed the strength of her belly and legs to draw her up tightly against the pole for her grand finale move.

  Ruby tore her panties off, the small, strategically placed Velcro resisting just enough for dramatic effect.

  The screams of the men as she tossed the floss of cloth behind her without a backward glance was deafening, effectively drowning out the music.

  When a hand grabbed her hair before she could escape, Ruby screamed.

  Then she was sucked under in a sea of groping hands and probing digits.

  It wasn't the sea of her choice, but rather the scum of men that covered her like a perverted ocean.

  The eyes of flame were the last she saw before Ruby was sucked under.

  CHAPTER 5

  Demon

  A finger pushed itself inside Ruby before she could utter a sound.

  Not that it would've mattered anyway, there was a hand covering her mouth.

  Then the horrible attacker screamed, “Oh my god, she's got herself a cherry in her pussy!” he chortled in glee, savagely pressing against her barrier.

  Ruby did cry then. It was the only thing she had left. After surviving beatings, emotional whippings, struggling to have enough money to eat... to live.

  Just existing and nothing more for months that had slid into years....

  She had been brought low on the sticky, cum-laden floor of a place she loathed working in, a stranger's finger shoved where no man's flesh had ever been, discovering the last precious thing that she owned.

  It was hers goddammit. He had no right, Ruby screamed inside her mind, jerking away from his probing fingers.