Okay, so his innate power was to see hidden truths and from the sound of it, Sirens were all about the camouflage… hold on, not the Sirens, the rocks. Bettina used Cyd as her salesperson, to dazzle and lure the marks in. But it wasn’t just a parasitic relationship as Cyd had stated, Bettina had been clearly upset on Cyd’s behalf when he and Destiny had been tussling on the ground? Bettina cared for Cyd… clung to Cyd, had been terrified for Cyd, sending her a warning just before the last minion arrived so she could jump out of the way.
Maybe it wasn’t about feeding at all, maybe it was about Cyd. How had Bettina survived before Cyd’s powers kicked in? How had she fed before Cyd? If you were starving and a person turned up who could feed you, wouldn’t you cling possessively to that person? Try to control them… do anything you could to keep them coming back? The more Cyd struggled to assert her independence, the deeper Bettina reflexively dug her claws in, scared she was going to lose her.
One way to keep Cyd all to herself was to repel anyone and everyone who might try to take her away. Perhaps feeding off the men was a defensive move. What had Cyd said? The victims were drained of emotion and the whole episode took on a dream like quality. But he was different, he saw Cyd for who she really was, maybe that’s why the day they’d danced, first met, Bettina had wrapped a possessive tentacle around Cyd’s throat… same at the house. Bettina was scared he was getting too close to Cyd and she was protecting her property… her only friend, the only way she knew how.
Shit, all these revelations were interesting but none of them were getting him any closer to finding Cyd, to killing Destiny for once and for all.
He knew his Goddess was all about the free will, that she could rarely interfere directly but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Just tell me she’s alive?”
Maat cocked her head to the side for a moment. “Knowing the mad Queen as you do… what do you think?”
Nate took another deep breath, he did know Destiny and she never did things quickly or painlessly if she could draw it out for maximum shits and evil giggles. His shoulders relaxed slightly for the first time since Destiny had absconded with Cyd. There was no doubt in his mind that she was alive. “She’s alive.” He stated factually.
“I think you’re right Candy Cane. The only thing that little deviant upstart vampire Queen likes more than a toy to play with is…”
“…An audience.” Nate finished his Goddess’s sentence. “So she wouldn’t go far, she’d want me to find her and find her fast.” Nate snapped his fingers; of course, there was only one possible place they would be.
Grabbing two swords he started running for the window, there was no time for saying goodbye to his Goddess, stairs or long drawn out explanations for his Captain and fellow warriors. He flipped in mid-air, landing well. Sheathing the swords he raced around the house to the driveway and jumped in the jeep waiting there. Thank Maat for Rafe and his organisational skills. Tapping his earpiece he put a call through to Vaughn.
“Did you just jump out a first floor window?”
Nate spun the jeep on to the road, spewing gravel in all directions, aiming the car towards town. “Yes, look, I know where they are.”
“Where?”
“You have to promise to give me a head start.”
“I don’t have to promise you shit Nate, talk to me.” Vaughn snapped back.
“Listen, Destiny is expecting me. Let me go in, be a distraction, once I’ve managed to get between her and Cyd, you guys can come to the rescue.”
“Nate.”
“No. Destiny is damaged in the head. If she’s cornered, she’ll hurt Cyd. Maybe kill her as a diversion. This way, I go in and give her what she wants… a chance at me.” Nate spun the wheel left taking the corner a little too sharply, causing the tires to squeal.
There was a pause on the comms as Vaughn considered the situation. “Fine, tell me where they are and what you want us to do.”
Chapter Twenty
Charisse was sprawled on the floor of her own living room. How strange it was to be home after what felt like a lifetime away, but was in reality only four days. There had seemed little point in refusing to invite Destiny to enter when they’d arrived. Oh sure, she’d had the added incentive of avoiding a too sharp nail to the jugular, but there was also the knowledge that Nate would quickly figure out where Destiny had taken her and be riding to the rescue close on their heels.
“Such a little life.” Destiny prowled around her living room, sniffing disdainfully at her cosy beachside cottage set up.
Charisse leaned her back against the nearest sofa, every bone in her body aching. “Do me a favour would you, Vamperella? Pull up the zip of your catsuit. Watching your tiny assets bouncing around is making me feel nauseous.”
Destiny pulled up the zipper absently, pre-occupied primarily with running slow fingers over her broken teeth.
“I can give you the name of a good dentist, if you need one.”
“They’ll grow back by tomorrow night… unless your dentist makes house calls? I am feeling a little peckish.”
While Destiny continued to prowl, Charisse catalogued possible escape strategies and available weapons. Unfortunately all her options were rather limited against Destiny’s lightning fast reflexes. Fighting back was a pipe dream. Certainly a full frontal attack would be a mistake. No, what she needed to do was lull Destiny into complacency, whilst at the same time, providing a big enough distraction to catch her off guard.
“I didn’t mean to fall for Nate.” Whoops, the words popped out before she’d clearly thought them through. Oh well, this was obviously something she needed to talk through and Destiny would just have to listen. “I mean, I wasn’t looking for a man period. Hooking up long term in my family equals permanence of epic proportions. We’re talking very long lived here…”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Destiny advised, but didn’t do anything to stop Charisse from talking.
“Melded … joined together, for over a hundred years! Can you imagine?” Charisse mused out loud. When she’d been growing up, that thought had horrified her, but now… now she was beginning to reconsider.
Destiny laughed gleefully. “Not really, most men just make me want to kill them the moment I set eyes on them, and when they open their mouths, invariably to say something insipid, it makes me want to rip their heads right off their puny bodies.”
Charisse ignored Destiny’s vivid description. “Though it’s not like I’ve ever heard any of them complain, not the ones matched by Great-Aunt Alma… Maybelle’s dismal attempts at match making are a whole different story.” Charisse smoothed back her still damp ponytail. “Of course, it’s not like they have the time to complain, they’re too busy having copious amounts of sex.”
Destiny scoffed a grating laugh. “No one has sex all the time, not if they are together for over a hundred years.”
“The melded couples in my family do. Once you’ve officially hooked up, the couple become connected to the Sanctuary grid, there’s a whole, generate magic - feedback arrangement, that involves the couple having sex… no one has studied it scientifically yet, so we’ve never really quantified how it works, but then magic is always hard to pin down.”
Destiny heaved a faux bored sigh, seemingly intrigued despite herself. “So everyone here goes at it like rabbits?”
“Only if you find the perfect partner and meld with them. But then, like I said, you’re stuck together for a very long time.”
“But if you are so-called perfect for one another, what does it matter?” Destiny pointed out with surprising logic.
Charisse nodded her head. “So you’d bind yourself for all eternity to one other person knowing that when you did so, you would forever be under the sway of some unseen powerful entity that influenced your actions just so it could keep itself charged?”
“Well, not when you put it like that.” Destiny continued to pace, glancing out the windows. “But if this magical grid is such a horrible slave driver, then why has th
ere been no revolt? No uprising?”
Charisse looked glum. “Because they’re too busy having sex to see that anything’s wrong.”
Destiny continued to look intrigued. “So these people are sheep? Docile an easily led, with no lives of their own?”
“No, not at all.” Charisse responded immediately… then actually thought about what she’d said.
“Huh, and you think I’m the emotionally damaged one in the room.” Destiny scoffed with a delighted laugh.
Goddess, okay, so who wouldn’t be wary of being at the mercy of another demanding power when they already had one like Bettina in their life? Yet no one ever acted like being melded and connected to the Sanctuary grid was a burden. Nor did anyone’s behaviour change dramatically after their melding, well except for being totally in love with their meld mate and all the sex.
Fine, so she had a few commitment issues, understandable surely, with Bettina in her life demanding so much time and attention. The thought of meeting someone and adding their demands to her life along with connecting on a fundamental level to the Sanctuary power grid had, for such a long time, seemed far too over whelming. Until Nate.
“You know he’s coming here to kill you once and for all this time, don’t you?” Charisse asked curiously.
“He can try.” Destiny smiled.
“It seems kind of strange to me that you’d chase after a warrior of Maat like you’ve been doing and not expect to get… well, dead. Do you have a death wish, is that it Destiny? Suicide by warrior?”
Destiny shook her head. “This grid of yours that makes the couples act like bunnies in heat… it must be nice to feel so strongly, so passionately about another person… about anything really. My kind is even longer lived than yours but very few of us do highs or even lows for that matter. Most of us live a very moderate existence, keep our heads down, never take too much blood, never draw too much attention.”
“But you were born differently?”
“From the cradle I wanted more… more of everything. It happens occasionally with the females of my species. It is expected that we will split off from the group, take our excesses elsewhere. And the highs are so addictive we gladly go to seek them out.”
“And the lows?” Charisse asked softly, gasping as suddenly Destiny was kneeling in front of her, a dagger sharp nail once more resting against the side of her throat.
“I make sure there are never any of those…” Turning her head, Destiny looked towards the sliding glass door leading out to the beach. “Why don’t you join us Lover. We were just about to start the games without you.”
Nate had chosen not to mask his approach to Cyd’s beach cottage. Destiny would be expecting him and there was no point in trying to take her by surprise until all the pieces were in place. Entering the living room from the double doors leading to the beach he kept his swords sheathed, all his attention on Destiny snuggled up so close to Cyd on the floor, she was practically sitting on her lap.
“Lover.” Destiny almost purred the word, though her broken teeth made the sound come out a little unevenly. “We were beginning to wonder where you’d got to. Was dispatching Gustave really that big of a challenge for your skills?”
Nate remained frozen in place. Thanks to the bright moonlight he could see that Destiny was in a perfect position to bleed Cyd out with no more than a sharp jab of her razor sharp fingernail. “I’m pretty sure I killed Gustave a few days ago, I think the one I just offed was Olaf.”
Destiny shrugged unconcerned shoulders. “No matter, plenty more minions out there for the taking… though next time, I think I’ll co-opt some that have at least half a clue when it comes to fighting.” Destiny shifted restlessly on Charisse’s lap. “Whilst we’ve been waiting, girlfriend here and I have been having a deep and meaningful, haven’t we precious?” Destiny reached up, grabbing Cyd’s ponytail and giving it three hard tugs.
Charisse grit her teeth at the enforced nodding. “Yes.”
“It was starting to border on the nauseating. Thankfully you’re here now, so the fun can begin.”
Nate’s whole body tensed in readiness.
“Easy there lover.” Destiny applied a fraction more pressure to the tender skin of Cyd’s throat. “So eager to spend quality time with me, so flattering. But first I need to deal with girlfriend here. You know what gals are like when they have a falling out… merciless.”
“No.” Nate kept his tone low and even, though every instinct he had screamed at him to attack, to save Cyd. “It started with just you and me Destiny, that’s how it should end. Let Cyd go.”
“Hmmm.” Destiny bit into her lower lip, a jagged fang drawing blood. “I don’t think so Lover. She joined our exclusive circle of her own volition and she’s come to mean so much to me, not just food but more of a… sister. One who gets on every nerve ending I have, stealing my boyfriend, making me want to pluck out her eyes and drink her life’s blood via the sockets.” Destiny smiled with evil promise.
“Destiny, you know real couples… soul mates, don’t play these types of games?”
Destiny pouted. “Then they’re playing them wrong. If there’s no pain, no bloodshed, then there’s no challenge, no test… and it’s all meaningless.”
Nate shook his head, the vamp Queen was bat-crap-crazy, maybe it was time for a few home truths. “You know you were only ever a means to an end for me Destiny. A chance to get at Sek and Mot. Essentially you were just a tool.”
Destiny blinked silver eyes that eerily reflected the moonlight before tossing her head back and laughing. “Oh Lover, I know that. But you’ve been so much fun to play with, not a dull moment to be had since the moment we met. And you have to admit, you’ve liked the challenge… I’ve seen the look in your eyes.”
“I think you’re mistaking bloodlust for something else.”
Destiny shook her head. “Bloodlust is the best kind of lust in my book. I thought maybe you’d…”
Nate sighed. “Thought what?”
It was Charisse who answered. “She thought you might change your mind.”
Nate shook his head in denial. The vamp was crazy but she couldn’t be that crazy. “You’ve killed hundreds of people for money and fun. You nearly killed Vivian. You’re hurting Cyd. As for there never being a dull moment? Well I’m sorry, but I like a clear dividing line between the monsters I kill and the women I date.”
“Oh really?” Destiny twined Cyd’s long ponytail around her wrist like a rope. “Girlfriend here lured my minion to its death, the air around her hums with potent power that messes with men’s minds and enslaves their will, and you don’t think she lives in the abyss?”
“Cyd isn’t a monster.” Nate stated flatly.
“Hmm, that’s one interpretation I should imagine. Maybe you’re just blind to the amount of wilful damage she inflicts when she takes possession of their hearts and minds? At least I have the good grace to be upfront about the cost of what it means to be in my arms. A pint or three of blood is a small price compared to trading one’s soul. How can you be sure Lover, that you’re not just the next poor dupe in line to be mind-fucked? What makes you think you are in any way, shape or form, different or special, from all those other drooling deluded fools that grovel at her feet?”
“Because her powers don’t work on me for a start, she hums, it’s like nails on a blackboard to me. Maat, if she sings, it has me wanting to reach for the nearest ice pick to end the pain.”
“Hey!” Charisse protested. “Ouch…” Wincing as Destiny yanked hard on her ponytail.
“If you’re not a slave to her song, why do you prefer her to me?” Destiny frowned in genuine puzzlement.
Nate breathed out a frustrated sigh. “What answer can I give you that will result in you letting Cyd go and you and me having it out between us once and for all?”
Destiny laughed, dragging back Charisse’s head so that her pale throat gleamed velvety smooth in the moonlight. “I think you know that no matter how tonight plays out, your
little bit of fluff won’t be getting out of here alive.”
“Could I just say something at this juncture?” Charisse enquired through gritted teeth, her back arched tight like a bow, her hands scrabbling behind her for purchase.
“Must you?” Destiny huffed out a put upon sigh.
“Look, we get that you have abandonment issues. Ugh…” Charisse came to a halt as Destiny pulled even harder on her hair.
“Minions dying on me is kind of annoying, but I’d hardly classify it as abandonment.”
Charisse struggled for air, bucking futilely to dislodge Destiny from her lap. It took a few seconds for Destiny to notice and let up on the pressure.
“I was talking about your family… kicking you out. I think you have some unresolved issues with your parents.”
Destiny barked out a grating laugh. “You’re so funny.” She glanced Nate’s way. “She really is the whole package isn’t she? Girlfriend, I killed my par…” Destiny shrieked in pain an outrage as Charisse plunged the knife Nate had insisted she carry, formerly concealed down the back of her shorts, deeply into Destiny’s right eye, leaving a chunk of her hair behind in Destiny’s fist as she rolled away from those razor sharp flashing claws.
“Now!” Nate bellowed, even as he leapt forward, dragged Cyd up from the ground and threw her bodily across the room.
Goddess, Charisse panicked in mid-air, in the dark she couldn’t see where she was going to land… this was going to hurt. Except she didn’t splatter hard against the living room wall, instead she found her face buried in pillowy softness… suffocating, pillowy softness. Argh, she fought for breath, there was only one person she knew with cleavage this killer.
Jerking her head back, she looked up dazed. “Hadleigh?”
Her warrior cousin grinned down at her. “I’ve got you.”
Shattering glass and the sound of splintering wood sounded behind them. Destiny was in a killing frenzy as she hurled furniture around the room. Hadleigh pushed Charisse’s head back down as she bought up one of her arms, a shiny wicked looking samurai sword suddenly in her hand.
To Seduce A Siren Page 19
