The Scent of Salt & Sand: An Escaped Novella

by Kristin Cast

  “Please don’t kill me,” she begged.

  Rhapsody opened her mouth and dragged a bloody claw across her tongue. It left a glossy crimson streak on her taste buds. “Be still.”

  Melody was rigid, each inhale shallower than the last in fear of making any unwanted movements. A damp finger swiped her uninjured cheek, rubbing harder and harder until her flesh was raw and bruised.

  “Well, well, well, that is a pleasant surprise.” Rhapsody released her fist from Melody’s hair and beamed a nightmarish smile. “You have no makeup on.”

  “No, I don’t,” Melody said softly.

  “You’ve been here a month. You should look at least a decade older than you do.”

  “I know,” Melody said miserably.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone about this, you foolish girl?”

  “I—I…” Melody scrambled for an explanation that wouldn’t further infuriate the enraged Siren, but fear muddied her thoughts.

  “You know, you’re exactly what we have waited centuries for.” Rhapsody leaned in closer, blood hanging metallic on her breath. “You’re the beginning of our salvation.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Melody’s stomach churned. “No.” She shook her head. “I’m no one’s salvation.”

  Rhapsody’s laughter lacked real humor. “Do tell, then, why aren’t you aging like the rest of us?”

  “Something happened to me on the way to this realm, and since then I’ve been having memories of a different life. A human life,” she blurted.

  With inhuman strength, Rhapsody lifted Melody to her feet and pulled her to stand before a dirty window where their reflections stared back at them.

  “Change into your True Form with me. Now!” With a flick of her head, Rhapsody’s human face shifted to reveal the Siren again. When Melody hesitated, she hissed a warning. Her breath sent waves of nausea coursing through Melody.

  The young Siren stared into the mirrored glass, drew a deep breath, and opened herself to the fear and anger Rhapsody uncovered within her. She clung tightly to those vulnerable and violent emotions, and by doing so found her True Form.

  Her skin shivered and Melody’s reflection quivered and changed, but she didn’t look like the creature lurking beside her. In her True Form, Melody’s body was the same emerald as her eyes, just as Rhapsody’s True Form reflected the honey gold of her irises. And like Rhapsody, Melody’s face took on an aquatic look. Her eyes had doubled in size, and her teeth were sharper. Her hair had changed to long, undulating coils of copper that moved as if they were submerged in an invisible ocean. Her neck had lengthened, and grown small gill slits, but it hadn’t thickened like Rhapsody’s. And except for the emerald scales that covered all of her skin, and the delicate webbing between her fingers and toes, her body hadn’t changed at all.

  “Ssssssssssshift!” Rhapsody screeched and gnashed her teeth together.

  “I did! This is as far as I change! Rhapsody, this is my True Form.” Melody choked back sobs. “I told you something happened to me. I’m no one’s savior—I’m broken.”

  With another flick of her head, Rhapsody’s face shifted back to its human form. She stared at Melody in disgust.

  “Return to your human form. Like this you’re too hideous for me to look at,” she commanded.

  Melody did as she was told, trying to edge away from Rhapsody, but the Siren followed her, still staring at her ageless skin.

  “It’s incredible, really,” Rhapsody said. “I didn’t expect the change in your True Form, though I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. Your blood has been diluted for generations. It had to be to break Hera’s wretched curse.” She shuddered delicately. “It is unfortunate how much of your humanity you retain when you shift. It’s pathetic, really, but as we know all too well, with each gift comes a price.”

  “I—I just don’t know if this—” Melody made a gesture that circled her lineless face “—has anything to do with my blood being diluted, or breaking the curse. Something human took over my body, keeps taking over. I know her name. I did research. She drowned the same day we arrived.” Melody paused, the realization of her words momentarily overpowering her. “I think—I think that’s why this is happening.”

  “How about you leave the thinking to me.” Rhapsody sauntered to the dead man, reached down, and dipped a finger in the scarlet pool. Licking it contemplatively, she studied Melody. “That’s why you were able to take that human lover. You don’t have to shift when you mate with him.” She spat red foam. “You truly are special.”

  “But we haven’t had sex. He’s waiting until I’m ready.”

  “Does he know what you really are?”

  “No, but he will.”

  Rhapsody scoffed. “You tell him, and he’ll leave you. Or worse, if you show him he’ll either go mad or hunt you down and kill you like an animal.”

  “You mean like you would?”

  Rhapsody’s expression softened. She inhaled deeply and swayed slightly as her scales melted into her skin. “I would never hurt you.” Her bare, blood-streaked breasts pressed against Melody as she enveloped her in a cloying embrace. Rhapsody’s heated touch warmed Melody’s shivering torso. “It’s clear you were sent to me as a gift from the gods. You’re our way out of that Underworld dungeon.” Slowly, she rocked them from side to side.

  “Can you imagine our race able to live unrestricted among the humans, feeding and breeding, remaining young and beautiful? So many of you are too young to remember how much power we used to possess. And how free we were. Don’t you want that for your sisters? I do. Desperately. And it will start right here in San Francisco—birthplace of the new Siren.”

  Melody’s breath caught in her throat. Rhapsody and the Sirens like her could never be allowed to escape and infect this realm.

  “Now, Melody, my savior.” She wiped away the crusted blood on Melody’s wounded cheek. “Let us find you a new human. You’ll have to get rid of your plaything. He is an unacceptable risk.” Rhapsody squeezed her gently. “But I’ll help you with that. I can even end him for you, if you’d like. From this night on, you and I will do everything together. I’ll make sure that soon, very soon, you begin to produce children so that my race, our race, is able to take its rightful place in this delicious world!” Her smile was feral. “But first, we’ll go to the water. Show me how to merge a human life with mine.”

  Melody went very still inside. She focused, forcing her ivory skin to tingle and trade places with deep green scales. “Never!”

  Without her golden shield and borrowed strength, Rhapsody was no different from the humans she despised. Into her hands, Melody channeled the pain from a lifetime of lies and her fears for the future. She thrust her palms against Rhapsody’s sternum. Her naked body flew backward, crashing into the ground and rolling end over end.

  Melody didn’t wait to see if her rag doll body stirred. She tore through the plastic door, releasing her scales as she sprinted down the street. She let her feet carry her toward the one human she’d risk her life to protect—Dean.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dean popped open the top of his third bottle of HUB IPA and hurried to the freezer to grab another cold beer stein, singing badly but enthusiastically along with the opening credits of Criminal Minds. “Gotta love a Netflix marathon,” he told the beer as he tilted the glass and poured the amber liquid.

  His doorbell buzzed insistently. Dean checked his watch—almost eleven thirty. Maybe it was Mel—“Dean! Let me in! Dean!”

  He was off out of the kitchen and at the door in an instant. He wrenched it open and Melody hurled herself into his arms. Her hair and her body were soaked and she was dripping seawater all over him.

  “We have to go. We have to leave. Now!” she heaved though uncontrollable sobs.

  Visually, he cleared the hall before closing the door and locking it behind them. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head, wet hair matted to her face. “We have to leave,” she repeated.
“We can run away together. Just the two of us. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  He tried to make her sit, but she remained rigid. “Tell me what’s going on. I can protect you, but I need details.”

  “I don’t need protection. But you, you do.”

  “From what? What are you talking about?”

  She brushed back her hair, revealing a red slash dissecting the pale flesh of her cheek.

  “Jesus! You’re bleeding. I’m getting my first aid kit.” He turned for the bathroom, but she grabbed his wrist in a vise grip.

  “She’ll come for you, and when she finds you, she’ll kill you.”

  Her solemnity made Dean’s stomach clench. “Who?”

  “Rhapsody.”

  “Your cousin?” A chuckle blew past his lips. “God, you had me really worried there for a minute.” He sat back on the couch and ran a slightly trembling hand through his hair.

  “What are you doing? Get up. We have to go!”

  “Look, I know you have crazy family drama, but I’m not going to run away every time one of your jealous cousins comes into town. Now sit down and let me look at your cheek. I think you might need stitches.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. “This is serious.”

  “And so is that cut on your face.”

  “I’ll let you look at it only if you promise we’ll leave if she finds this place.”

  “Would it make you feel better if we went to the roof? We can see the whole street from up there.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said, sounding a little more like herself.

  “I’ll grab a blanket and light the fire pit so you can dry off. Why are you all wet, anyway?”

  “It was Rhapsody,” she muttered.

  Dean snagged the throw from the back of the couch and they went through the kitchen and out his back door, and climbed the flight of stairs that led to the rooftop patio area attached to his condo. “Did she do that to your cheek too?” He wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, guiding her to the wide, comfortable chaise he’d bought just a week before because Melody loved spending time up there, gazing out at the bay with him. He lit the fire pit and hurried back to her, pulling her close to him.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “This is really hard for me to talk about.” She paused, lifting a shaky hand to brush back a damp curl. “I’m afraid it’ll never be the same between us once I tell you.”

  He took her trembling hand and kissed it lightly. “Melody, there is nothing you could tell me about your family that would make me change how I feel about you.”

  “How do you feel about me?”

  He hesitated, caught off guard by the directness of her question. She’d spent the past month avoiding the subject of feelings between them, and that had become their norm—spending almost every day together, and talking about everything except her family and their relationship.

  “Never mind. I shouldn’t have—”

  “I love you!” he interrupted. “Although I hadn’t planned on yelling it at you like that. I’d planned on telling you after I filled you full of my Nana’s famous spaghetti and, maybe, coaxed you to drink too much wine.”

  Normally, she would have laughed and teased him about the famous Nana spaghetti he’d already attempted to make for her—and managed to totally ruin with sticky, overcooked pasta. That night, Melody’s full lips didn’t so much as begin to lift in her familiar, beautiful smile. That night, Melody stared into his eyes as if she were trying to see through them to his soul.

  “What does love mean to you?” she asked.

  He blinked in surprise, but his response came easily. “Love means being willing to make her needs as important as yours, and accepting her completely—faults and all.”

  She nodded somberly. “That’s what I think it means, too.” Melody drew a deep breath and let it out with a long sigh, and as she did she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “I have to tell you two things, and then I need to show you something so that I’m sure you understand.”

  “First, could you tell me what happened to you tonight? You look like it was something pretty bad.”

  “It was—it is. And that’s part of what I have to tell you—show you.”

  “Okay,” Dean said hesitantly.

  “I love you too. That’s the first thing I need to say to you.”

  Pressure he hadn’t realized had been squeezing his chest lifted, and his grin was so wide it almost hurt. “That’s good to hear, Melody. Really good to hear. Does that mean you’ll actually say yes to being my date at my sister’s wedding this weekend?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “If you still want me after tonight.”

  Dean took both of her hands in his. “Melody, you are the only woman I want—tonight, tomorrow, next year, and next decade. That won’t change. No matter what.”

  Melody’s emerald eyes glistened. “Promise?”

  He wiped a tear from her smooth cheek. “Promise.”

  “Oh, Dean! I do love you! I love you so much!” She wrapped her arms around him and pressed into him, raining kisses all over his face.

  He laughed again, trying to capture her mouth—and then her lips found his and everything changed. After that first night, when he’d moved too fast and frightened her, Dean had been taking it slow—really slow. He made sure he followed her lead. Sometimes they’d curl up on his couch, or here, by the fire pit, and he’d hold her while she kissed him. Lately, she’d been doing a lot of exploring—three nights ago she’d actually asked him, shyly and sweetly, to take off his shirt. He’d happily complied, and then had thoroughly enjoyed her hesitant caresses, being careful not to do anything that might spoil the sense of trust and safety he’d built between them.

  That night her kisses changed, and so did her caresses. Neither were hesitant. Her eager mouth consumed him, asking for more as her tongue teased in time with hands that reached under his shirt, gliding up to find his sensitive nipples and then down to the waist of his jeans, where her clever fingers played over his trembling skin.

  Slowly, he found the edge of her top, letting his fingers move up and under to the unbelievably warm, unbearably soft skin beneath it.

  Melody moaned against his mouth. “Yes, Dean, touch me. I want you to.”

  Finally, Dean allowed his hands to follow his fantasies. They dipped under her shirt, softly caressing the smooth, curved line of her waist up and up until he found the fullness of her breasts. She arched into his touch, gasping in pleasure as he teased her taut nipples.

  “Dean! I—I have to show you something. Have to tell you something.”

  “Anything, Melody—you can show me, tell me, anything.”

  Dean kissed a line up her neck, loving the seductive scent of salt and sea that always clung to her skin. He was so mesmerized by the taste and touch of her that he almost didn’t notice when she began to change.

  Almost.

  Beneath his eager lips her skin twitched. The thought that surfaced from his passion-fogged mind was that it reminded him of what a horse’s skin did when it flicked off flies, and that one, strange thought was enough to cause him to pause—to lean back—to look at Melody.

  At first he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, and he just stared. Something was happening to her—something terrible.

  Melody’s skin wasn’t actually twitching. It was changing. What had been soft, seductive flesh was now covered with green scales—smooth and supple like a snake. His shocked gaze went to her face. Her hair! Her beautiful, strawberry blonde hair had disappeared, and in its place was an undulating mass of copper tentacles.

  Dean’s head swiveled back and forth, back and forth. The fear hit him then—hard and deep in his gut. He tried to fight against it—tried to think through the panic and make sense out of what was happening, but the horror was visceral, uncontrollable, and overwhelming.

  He surged from the chaise, stumbling against the fire pit and almost knocking it over.

  “Dean
! Be careful!”

  The voice was still hers, but it echoed from a mouth that was now ringed with sharp, glistening teeth.

  “No! No, no, no!” He heard himself speaking, but it seemed as if the sounds were coming from another person.

  “Dean, it’s okay—I promise. It’s just me. This is the real me. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—show you.”

  “No! This can’t be real! It can’t be happening. You’re—you’re…” He forced his gaze from her teeth to her eyes. They were huge emerald orbs in which he saw nothing but his terrified reflection. “Oh, God! You’re not even human!”

  Water spilled from her strange eyes, washing down her jewel-colored cheeks. She stood and took a hesitant step forward. Terror spiked from deep within him. Dean staggered back so quickly that he tripped and almost fell.

  “I’m sorry! So, so sorry!” Melody spoke imploringly. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I can explain this—I can explain all of this, just sit down and give me a chance.”

  “What are you?” Dean heard himself ask, though he wasn’t sure how he was still able to speak, as an overwhelming and instinctual need to get away from her consumed him.

  “I’m a Siren,” she said.

  “You’re a monster!” he shouted.

  “Dean, it’s me. I’m still the Melody you love and who loves you right back. None of that has changed.”

  “Everything has changed!”

  “No!” she sobbed brokenly. “You said love means accepting me completely! Please, please just sit with me.”

  As she spoke, the creature that had been Melody reached toward him, as if to embrace him with her arms of scales and her green hands—hands that Dean saw were no longer human, but tipped with pointed claws, as sharp and deadly looking as her fangs, which glistened dangerously at him as she smiled a cruel parody of the beautiful expression he had come to crave—come to love.

  “Come on,” she coaxed, her sweet, familiar voice suddenly grotesque as it came from the hideous maw. “It’s okay, Dean. Come here to me. I would never, ever hurt you.” Still baring her teeth in that terrible smile, she moved to him, reaching to take his hand.