The Siren Series 1: Ember (4 page)

Brandon would be the one to leave. His blood had
been altered in utero. He would have had a smaller fraction of the
blood of the Mer than even his mother without that interference.
Yet for the supernatural moment the warrior of the Mer and she had
shared... now it was as if that quantum of Mer blood sung louder
each day that he aged.

Brandon sighed and felt the answering tug from
his mother as she stepped up behind him.

He turned, his face in profile, the dark eyes,
so characteristic of a Siren glittering back at Aubree like ebony
fire.

“What's wrong, Brandon?” she asked, putting a
hand on his shoulder, one of the twins in her arms.

He turned to face her, the night air chilling
the room from the open doors and Brandon moved to shut the divided
glass doors that led to the balcony.

“No,” Aubree said quickly, “leave them
open.”

He looked a question at her. “You feel them
too?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Brandon and she gazed out at the blackness of
the night, and beyond, the vastness of the sea.

The Sirens walked outside tonight. And amongst
them a female. A maiden.

“A female is out there right now,” Brandon said
quietly, an ache in his chest.

“Oh?” his mother said, her voice telling him
what she thought of where his head was. Where it had been for
months now.

Brandon's face got hot. It fucking blew to have
your own mother know that your thoughts were consumed like all
Druid males: with breeding.

Aubree laughed. “It's alright, champ. Remember,
this is what we are. It is normal for you to want to hook up.”

“God mom... ah!” Brandon said, raking a hand
through his hair. He'd had to learn so much of their history in
such a brief time. Learning about his unusual beginning, his
accelerated learning a necessity because of his rapid
maturation.

It was enough to bring a guy to his knees.

Now the Siren's call could be heard.

Aubree's humor gradually faded. “I can hear it,
but faintly,” she said.

It was a pulsating roar to his ears: a
summons.

Brandon turned to go but his mother's voice
stopped him.

“Don't go, Bran,” she said, her normally
sarcastic humor dried up like the hot plains of a desert. This was
a total rehash of many conversations that ended up the same. As a
Siren who had Become, Brandon would now have to meet with his own
kind, the other half of his unusual gene pool. His mother would
need to realize that it was part of who he was now.

“I've got to,” Brandon said, his eyes on her
face. “It's a compulsion. I feel like I need to be... with
them.”

“I knew that you wouldn't stay with us
forever... it just seems too soon. You were, just a baby...” Aubree
began, looking down at his sister in her arms.

She was normal. Not enough of the weirdness that
made him what he was to manifest the rapid growth.

As if to agree, his baby sister gurgled.
Gabriella waved a chubby fist at him and smiled, a little drool
slipping out of her angelic face.

She swung her tiny fist in his direction.

It looked like a farewell to Brandon.

He gave his mother a tight hug, her quaking
sadness felt by him long after he departed.

To human eyes he might look like a physically
mature young man of eighteen or so, unusually large and
muscled.

What he really was: a hybrid Druid vampire with
a bucketful of Siren blood.

It was spilling a pathway like a red carpet that
lay before him, unrolling into infinity.

Brandon was on an unconscious hunt for a maiden
without name. The other half of his blood called for him to find
her.

To find his other people.

The remainder of his heart was left behind with
his Druid kin, a shard of his love like a hole in the muscle at the
center of his body.

Could the maiden fill it?

Would he live to find out?

Those were questions without answers.

Brandon plowed forward with the barest whisper
of hope as his internal barometer rose when the call of his
brethren of the sea became stronger.

*

Siren

Ember halted and Constantine walked around her,
dismissing her pause at first. When she didn't follow, he and the
other three warriors stopped.

Constantine found the deference afforded females
tiresome. He simply wasn't used to accommodating it.

“Do you feel something?” Con asked impatiently,
stabbing his hands on hips covered with hanging weapons. This was
his first mission with the Mer and it felt like he wore ill-fitting
shoes. It lacked the fluidity that Con took for granted while
running raids with the Faction. Their single-minded focus had a
purity that resonated with Con: hunt, pillage and kill. Blissful
simplicity.

“I do not feel the humans...”

“What?”

Madden, the warrior at his side said, “Our Ember
can sense the precious plant in the user's veins.”

Hmmm
, Con thought,
I cannot
. A
thought occurred to him. “Tell me when you sense it so that I'll
know how to recognize it in the future.”

Ember nodded, obviously distracted.

“That is not what our princess maiden scents
now, is it?” Madden asked slyly and she gave him a hard look.

Constantine raised a brow, taking in the
surroundings surreptitiously. What had she come upon?

Then he felt it... his blood recognizing what
drew near.

Druid.

Con became instantly sharp, crouching down into
battle readiness.

He was utterly stunned when a young vampire
Druid rounded the corner, eyes only for Ember.

Eyes of a Siren, the body of a Druid,
Constantine would recognize those eyes of the sea anywhere. The
man's ebony gaze reflected like deep pools of obsidian fire as they
found Con's challengingly, his body that of a Druid warrior, though
unfinished.

Constantine had an unnerving moment of
uncertainty before he launched at the foreigner.

It was a strike meant to kill.

It was Constantine's way.

The only way.

Ember screamed, but it came too slow.

*

Brandon

Brandon saw the one who rang false as Siren, a
discordant string or recognition plucked.

He and dear old dad had few things in common but
stupid was not one of them.

This gill-laden vampire with a Druid's body
screamed Faction to Brandon, who had killed many of the remnants
left behind after the massacre.

Yet this one remained.

Brandon didn't have an assload of time to dwell
on all that, those thoughts were milliseconds before the very one
he considered sprung like a snake, a dagger arcing as he flew in a
misted blur at Brandon.

Another vampire of his age and experience may
have been crippled by the immediacy of the attack, but Brandon had
trained with his father, Beau. And the Exotic named Tarrin, with
skin so black it was like a bruised plum. Alongside his other
mentor, King of vampire, Kier-- who was a Faction puppet no
longer.

Brutal warriors had trained Brandon from the
moment he could lift a weapon.

He had many that he wore right now, they'd
become extensions of his body whenever he left the safety of the
Druid coven. Brandon was atypical, accelerated in maturity, mixed
in blood, battle-hardened in the two short years he'd traversed
this earth.

All of that coalesced in a blinding moment of
providence as two of mixed lineage came against each other in a raw
piece of duality and war.

Constantine of the mixed blood came at him and
Brandon drove the dagger that lay in his palm into the gut of his
opponent. Con's mouth became an “O” of surprise then he lay a
shallow slash at the newcomer's forehead.

Fuck, that was smart
, Brandon thought
with grudging admiration as a gash opened up immediately and blood
like a small river flowed into his line of sight; Con had nicked
his head, the biggest bleeder of the body, effectively blinding
him.

“No!” Brandon heard a female call out and the
fight was arrested. “He is Mer, Constantine!”

Constantine?
Brandon wondered...
where
had he heard that name?
Oh yes... the renegade. The former
Faction vampire that had the blood of all the species pounding
through his veins. But nobody wanted him.

Brandon remembered.

He sat up as Constantine backed away from
him.

Brandon swiped the blood out of his eyes and saw
the look in Constantine's dark gaze: he wanted Brandon dead.

Well likewise, ya fucker,
Brandon
thought.

He glared at the older vampire, taking in his
measure. His body was hard, built like the typical vampire Druid: a
brick shithouse with legs and meathooks for arms. It was Tarrin's
words that Brandon remembered now as he stared at the Faction.

“
There is one that you would come upon, his
name is Constantine. He has been allowed to live only because of
Lucia. She did not want to see a bloodline of ours expunged. She
felt... that he might make a turn for the better.”

Tarrin kept the larger part of the story to
himself. The part that spoke of Constantine's dark nature: his
sadistic sexual compulsions to conquer females.

Brandon had been a year younger, looking
probably around thirteen years old at the time. Perhaps not old
enough for those bits of information.

“
Why are you telling me this, Tarrin?”
Brandon had asked him, his curiosity making him forget his
tongue.

Tarrin narrowed his eyes on the unusual
coven member. He already knew where this would lead. Siren blood
was meant to be at sea. Anything less was soul-starvation. Tarrin
had told the boy's father as much: this young Druid vampire would
Awaken, then go. He'd find the sea just as surely as Tarrin had
found Lucia.

Or the sea would find him.

Either way, a warning about Constantine was
not out of order.

“
He is the one that if you were to encounter,
I would have you recognize him.” Tarrin gave him level eyes, eyes
that required attention.

Brandon gave it. Everyone in the coven had
turned to him and Lucia as automatic advisors. Kier and Holly may
be the Druid King and Queen, but Lucia and Tarrin where the bones
of their operation.

“
I am kept here all the time,” Brandon had
answered in the sullen voice of youth and muttered underneath his
breath, “to train,” and Tarrin had him that fast, wrapped in a bear
hug, one that went beyond crushing bones, edging towards
pulverizing.

“
What is the counter to this young sir?”
Tarrin asked him quietly.

Brandon was steaming pissed, he'd allowed
himself to relax against the most aggressive warrior of the vampire
race.

Fucking smooth, ya
dumbshit
, Brandon thought.

He tramped on Tarrin's instep with vampiric
force. The foot gave way underneath his sole and Tarrin grunted,
spinning him and flat-palming Brandon dead center in his chest.

His heartbeat stuttered in his chest at the
impact as Brandon flew, hoping to arrest his fall as he was thrown
backward, Tarrin was on him, his dagger tip at his neck, the pulse
of his throat teasing the deadly point on the upbeat.

How could he get to him on
that foot?
Brandon thought in a spastic lurch.

“
Stop thinking, Brandon,” Tarrin's black eyes
searched his face. “Thinking is for vampires who wish for a quick
death.”

He impaled his own chin on the dagger and
took the flat bottom part of his palm and rammed it into Tarrin's
nose. The pain from the blade that he'd stabbed into his tender jaw
and mouth was a searing spear of fire. Thank goddess the thing was
short.

Tarrin howled and backed up.

Fuck, that was
righteous
, Brandon thought.

He would have lingered on the brief victory
but Brandon was in writhe-worthy agony, managing to tear the blade
out and fling it away. He went after Tarrin in a head charge before
Tarrin had time to respond.

Tarrin did respond, swinging blindly as the
blood from his nose jettisoned everywhere in a liquid spray that
spattered the floor where they fought. His fist caught Brandon and
he fell, slipping on Tarrin's blood.

“
What the fuck is going on here?” Aubree
yelled with Lucia at her heels.

The two popped their heads up from their
hands and knees, Brandon's cheek was swelling, a geyser of blood
exiting his chin. Tarrin's face was a smashed pancake on his
face.

“
It looks like there was some sparring,”
Lucia said dryly, unperturbed by the sight of the bloodied and
broken warriors, one teacher and one student.

“
Well fuck-on-ditty,” Aubree said, pissed.
“Nobody beats the tar outta my boy but me.”

Shit,
Brandon
thought,
here we go
.

Aubree, who was far gone with child, came
alongside Tarrin and squatted beside him. She pushed a finger in
his chest. “Don't you wreck my boy like that again or I'll kick
your ass!”

A heartbeat of swollen silence descended and
was shattered when Tarrin threw his head back and howled laughter,
Brandon clutching his abused ribs and rolled over on his back to
join him.

Aubree awkwardly stood, pressing her hand to
the small of her back. “Are you both insane?” she asked
incredulously, her eyes darting between the two of them as they
rolled around, loving the comedy of the moment.

Which she wasn't feelin' at all.

Brandon felt the wound in his chin close and
smiled at his mom when his face would cooperate with the
expression.

She worried too much,
he thought.

Lucia stepped up next to Aubree. “This is
the way of Druid males, everything gets handled physically.”