But after a scant moment, when the music had soared up to airy heights and then made its way back down to the depths it would need to maintain to finish weaving this particular spell, a slight confusion crossed the spectators' faces, and they moved on as the library's security force continued to usher people out of the building.
When I had woven the song into the very fabric of reality around me, anchoring its deep vibrations into the bedrock of the island beneath me and tying it to the ocean surrounding this overly built-up island, I turned to look for Zale.
I had expected to have to interlace him into the song's spell along with me. At best, I had hoped that he would not have left the building entirely at the security officers' behest.
Instead, as I brought my awareness fully back into my own body, I found him standing silently beside me, watching in wide-eyed wonder as I sang my spell.
"That was amazing," he said, shaking his head slightly.
I tilted my head to one side. "What did you see, exactly?"
Zale shook his head. "I wouldn't call it seeing, precisely. But I … knew … that you were creating a diversion, something to keep the people around us from realizing what was going on here."
"And what did the rift do while I sang the spell?" I asked, too busy to give him more than a passing nod to acknowledge his understanding of what I had created as he watched, remaining somehow unaffected.
"Nothing," Zale replied, then shook his head slightly, and his voice took on a more clipped tone. "At least, nothing new. It didn't change size, or seem to be preparing to throw off any more bomb-blasts. Cold air continued flowing out of it."
I nodded, taking in his military-style report. We stood in something like a spell-bubble, running from bedrock to the top of the building, where I had anchored it to the roof. It was large enough to hold the two of us, the gap between realities still floating about three feet away from us, and the marble wall behind the rift.
Its full force was focused on this floor, though people on other floors might feel a moment of disorientation should their paths happen to cross the bubble, but it was a temporary and harmless side-effect.
For now, we were safe from discovery, at least for as long as the Titan on the other side of that gap refrained from widening it too much more.
As if my thought had drawn the creature's attention, a deep rumble shuddered from one side of the split to the other, registering more as vibration than sound. Even some of the humans nearby blinked and looked puzzled for a moment.
"Damn," I said, shaking my head. "This one's strong."
"How many are we up against?" Zale asked again.
I considered the opening, unable to see anything through it other than light. "Here? Probably only one. But its magic feels strong, like one of the old ones. And male, for some reason."
"Old, strong, and male," Zale said. "Anything else?"
"Probably white?" I suggested, but he didn't respond with a smile. He was far too enmeshed in his cop-persona at the moment to appreciate any kind of humor. I shrugged. then continued speaking. "I don't think his coming through here, in this precise spot, was an accident. And I don't believe that you bringing me to it was accidental, either, though I doubt it was in his plan."
"What can we do against him?" Zale didn't take his eyes off the rift.
I considered Skyla's story of how she had defeated Epimetheus, Titan of Afterthought, in Greece. I didn't know if it would work here—and given how I'd reacted when Zale had tried to touch me in the pool room of The Hotel, he might be offended if I tried—but really, what did I have to lose? If it worked, Zale would have nothing to complain about. And if it didn't work? He could go take a cold swim down a deep hole, for all I cared. I didn't need him to like me—just work with me.
So I turned into his physical space, stood up on these brand-new toes that still tingled in funny ways when I focused on them, tilted my chin up, and kissed him.
Zale
To say that Kirka's kiss surprised me would be something of an understatement.
I had been too focused on the impending threat of something trying to take over my world by way of the New York Public Library to notice what the mermaid next to me was doing. Somehow, I had lost track of what the impossible, amazing, stunning, utterly fascinating woman I was working with, the one who turned into a fucking fish, the one every cell of my body seemed drawn to when she sang, and that most of those cells still wanted to be near at other times—that woman—I had lost track of what she was doing for exactly as long as it took her to decide to kiss me.
Granted, it was an odd time for her to make that decision. We were under attack, even if the threat seemed relatively minor at that instant.
But the moment her lips touched mine, I knew what she was doing.
This wasn't a kiss. Not really.
This was a power draw.
A magical suck.
And it was the most horrific thing any creature had ever inflicted upon me.
As her lips moved against mine, my feet grew rooted to the floor beneath me. The rest of me became as motionless as the stones her earlier song had evoked, and almost as cold, as she pulled the life force out of me through her mouth.
My lungs stuttered to a stop, and I couldn't even gasp out my agony. If I'd been able, I would have screamed out with every last fiber of my being.
Instead, all of that energy swept through my chest, pooled in my throat long enough to burn fiery torture, then whipped up and out, searing my tongue as it passed into the Siren.
All of that happened in an instant. The next moment, the pain evaporated, and Kirka used me as a base for some complicated gymnastics move, placing her hands on my shoulders and swinging her legs up and around, then flipping into the air.
She came out of that flip moving through the air like…well, like a mermaid swimming through the water, all of her momentum sending her flying through the air as if she were cutting through waves.
Then she hit that slightly glowing fissure in the air, the one that I had to turn my head away from and look at out of the corner of my eye to really get a fix on it, and everything inside the bubble she had created exploded around me.
For a heartbeat, the world—hell, two worlds—stopped. That hole between the Titans' prison and our own reality seemed to open up to something immensely huge, something that seemed so big that it simply had to rip apart everything in this room—in the library, New York, the country, the whole world—in its attempt to pass through the opening it had created.
At the same time, it fell in on itself, folding over and over, crumpling its reality into a tiny ball that could fit all its billions of molecules through that same opening, threatening to take us with it, sliding into some new horror of a super-dense reality.
All told, it felt like the televisions shows I've watched late at night on the History Channel in an attempt to overcome insomnia, those droning series where scientists with faraway looks in their eyes talk of how stars die, exploding in supernovae, only to crumple, and keep collapsing, until even the protons and electrons melt into each other.
That was what we were up against.
As Kirka flung her hands out to direct the energy she had drawn from me, combined with her own magical force, sung out in a clear voice, her hold on me released.
I fell to my hands and knees and vomited all over the marble floor of the New York Public Library lobby.
Kirka
When Skyla had used her kiss to draw magical power from Clay, it hadn't been quite like that. Not from the way she told it, anyway. It had depleted him, exhausted him, but she had been able to … revitalize him … with nothing more than sexual energy.
My decision to kiss Zale had been, at least in part, based on my song-sister's story. The thought of the recuperation process had appealed to me. Titillated me.
Looking at him wiping his mouth off against the sleeve of his coat, I didn't think he felt the same way.
Blowing
out a sigh, I turned to see how I had done against the Titan. I'd gotten a glimpse of him as I flew partway into his rift, and a better sense of his abilities as I sang a song of blocking and holding.
"Are we safe?" Zale asked, his voice cracking a little.
I examined the slight bulge in reality where I had, in effect, sewed the rip shut. "I think we've stopped this one."
"Good." He leaned his head back until he rested against the wall.
”It's Coeus," I said, glancing down at the policeman on the floor.
He closed his eyes for a long minute, then opened them and stood up, using the wall to balance. "What does that mean?"
"Titan of Intellect."
"Okay." His voice trailed off and he turned one hand up in a shrug. It didn't mean anything to him.
"He was drawn here because it's a place of learning."
Zale looked up at the high ceilings and archways leading into the rest of the building. "I don't get it. Why here? Why not a university? Or even an elementary school?"
"I don't know. But somehow you did—you brought us here. How is part of what I would like to discover."
He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. "Now?"
When I looked closely at him, I could see he was completely drained. Under his naturally olive skin and the tan he had gained in Athens lurked a pallor I hadn't seen there before. There was the slightest tremor to his movements that hadn't been there before.
"Not now," I said, working to sound more decisive than pitying. "That was taxing. We should go back to The Hotel to regroup and decide where to go next."
He nodded, then stared blankly at the floor, where a small crack—this one in the marble, not in reality—had opened up. "What should we do about all this?" His wearied hand-wave took in the crack, the vomit, and the spell-bubble that remained strong, reinforced by the power I'd poured into the spell to trap Coeus.
"I'll deal with it as we leave." I gestured for him to lead the way out, determined not to let him see how energized I was. Draining him had invigorated me in ways I hadn't expected. His magical strength zinged through my veins like pure vitality, and I wanted to laugh aloud for the joy of it.
But even in my high spirits, I wasn't willing to shove home how much pleasure I had gained from the pain I caused him.
This might be a problem.
Because even now, I wanted to practice, work with him to see how much I could pull from him before he collapsed.
I knew that was dangerous—I didn't trust myself to maintain the kind of control I would need for those precise tests.
Not when kissing him had sent me flying higher than I had ever been before.
No.
Continuing to draw power from him had the potential to be far too much like giving an addict that which she craved most.
I had heard tales of human drugs that addicted users at first try. As far back as the Greek stories of the lotus-eaters, there were accounts of those who were unable to maintain self-control in the face of their drug of choice.
I'd always been disdainful of their weakness.
For the first time, I thought I might understand it.
I could get addicted to Zale Stavros.
And not in any way that could possibly end well for either of us.
I shoved the thought down as deep as I could push it, and followed Zale toward the exit. All told, very little time had passed since the Titan's original attempt to break through to our world. The library security guards were ushering the final stragglers out of the building. We stepped out of our bubble of virtual invisibility as if we were coming out of nearby hallway.
As we approached the main doorway, I hummed a little tune under my breath and gathered a small spell into a ball in my hand.
With a flick of my wrist, I sent it back behind us. As the bubble dropped from above and rose from below, it pulled at the ground just enough to send a tiny tremor through the building, right where we had been.
I had done what I could to ensure that there would be no real damage, but the cracking sound was loud enough to help explain the earlier noise that had been mistaken for an explosive device. That was my hope, anyway.
A single chunk of marble, already loose above, fell to the ground, and shattered, dusting over the mess Zale had left behind.
He glanced back and nodded once. "Thanks."
I didn't know what to say, since I had caused his illness in the first place, so I settled for, "It's the least I could do."
He nodded again, pulled his card to The Hotel out of his pocket, glanced at the address—the Broadway one again, I noticed—and began trudging along 42nd Street, back to The Hotel we had left such a short while ago.
And so long ago, too.
Zale
I didn't even bother to knock when I got to The Hotel's Broadway entrance. I was too tired for whatever stupid games they might want to play.
If only I had realized.
I might have decided to walk into New York's streets, find my way back home without returning to either The Hotel or Athens.
I would have been able to justify it, at least to some degree. I knew where Clay was. He was alive, if not precisely well. And he was somewhere I couldn't reach him—not without some serious intervention.
If I'd been less exhausted, less sapped, I might have realized that was the smart choice, and simply disappeared into the city.
But I was beyond weary.
I was completely drained. On the verge of shattered.
So when David the Porter pulled The Hotel door out of my hand to finish opening it for me, I staggered in. We shed our outerwear and handed it to him, and I stumbled down the long hallway to the elevator.
"Your luggage has been deposited in your room," David said as he left us at the elevator. I was too tired to ask what luggage he meant, and Kirka merely nodded.
This time, the single button in the lift deposited us on a floor decorated in burgundies. Single-color themes for the floors seemed to be the standard here. I didn't know what it meant that we were no longer on the ocean-blues floor where I had originally met Kirka, though it crossed my mind briefly to wonder.
The omnipresent statues pointed us to a single room.
When the door swung open, it revealed a luxurious room—with only one bed.
I stared at it blankly for a moment as I considered objecting.
I wasn't sure I wanted Kirka to ever touch me again, much less sleep in the same bed with me. But I suspected my complaints would fall on deaf ears.
"Whatever," I muttered, and headed to the bathroom for a long, hot shower. When I was clean, I pulled on a new pair of boxers—from my own suitcase, transported miraculously from my own hotel in Athens—and climbed under the covers, my back turned to the rest of the bed, a beautiful Mediterranean sunset shining its final rays through the room's window and across my cheeks.
My last thought before fell into a long, dreamless sleep was to wonder if the window looked out onto a real view somewhere in the world, and if so, where.
When I awoke hours later, it was completely dark, and a warm figure nestled in my arms.
Kirka, breathing deeply as she curled her forehead against my chest, her head tucked under my chin.
She smelled like the ocean, the scent of sunshine and saltwater wafting up from her hair, though I had a dim recollection of hearing the shower running as I slept.
Perhaps a mermaid always carried the aroma of the sea.
This one certainly did.
I had expected her touch to repel me, but apparently my body had betrayed me as I lay unconscious. Instead of being repulsed by her nearness, my skin grew sensitized as I became aware of the fragrance of her heated body, and I grew stiff with desire.
Even in her sleep, she responded to me, too, making a small cooing noise deep in her throat and rolling over to nestle her curved ass against me, wiggling as she snuggled further back into me.
I wouldn't hav
e thought it possible, but I hardened further, and bit down on my lip to hold myself as still as possible.
I knew the moment she woke, her body going from relaxed and sensuous to completely still and aware.
For a long moment, we remained perfectly motionless. Then, with a deliberate, if slight, slide from side to side, Kirka rolled her hips once before giving a small, sharp thrust backwards.
I moaned at the unspoken permission, and allowed my hands to slide to her shoulders, stroking along her side to her waist and hips, then back up.
This was a bad idea. Merely hours before, one kiss from this woman—this creature—had left me shuddering on the floor. And not in any good way.
Yet the attraction between us was undeniable.
Her breath blew out in a heated sigh as I allowed my hands to slide down inside the tank top she wore and cup her breasts, circling them with my thumbs as I leaned forward to drop kisses down the side of her neck. The skin along her shoulder prickled in tiny goose bumps, and her nipples hardened into sensitive buttons. My cock jumped in time with the small noises she made in the back of her throat.
Raising her arms above her head, she extended her hands back to run her fingers through my hair and again pressed her ass into my groin, as I strained toward her.
I pulled my hands out of her shirt, and then dropped them to her abdomen to run my fingers along the waistband of the boy-style boxer shorts she had pulled on before crawling in bed with me..
"Is it strange to wear pants?" I asked—perhaps not the most romantic thing to have said, but it seemed fairly intimate under the circumstances.
She laughed, a deep throaty sound. "Not as strange as you might expect. No more odd than wearing legs."
With a sinuous twist, she turned in my arms to face me, her dark hair floating onto the white pillowcase behind her, the contrast only slightly more distinct there than it was against the pale skin of her shoulders. My fingertips trailed along her waistband, then reached down inside her shorts to cup her ass.
Siren's Curse (Hotel Paranormal) Page 7
