A Siren's Song

by Saranna Dewylde

  “You can’t really believe that story, can you?” James Larkin said in a tone designed to calm, soothe, and manipulate. “She went to school and told all of her friends that about the hourglass. It’s made of ivory. Gwen and I got that on safari in Africa for our anniversary.”

  I could have killed him right there. Snapped his neck. Shoved that pen from the pocket of his shirt into his jugular. Used that hourglass and crack it across the bridge of his nose so the bones shattered and exploded up into his brain. But I did none of those because I wanted him to be afraid first. Like Kelly. Like Angela.

  “What do you think my job is?” I asked him in that same calm, soothing tone.

  “You protect people. Now I’m asking you to protect me from a girl who has a lot going wrong in her head. She needs love, family, and medication.”

  “I do protect people. Do you know what else I do?”

  He laughed. “What is this? Career day at the grade school?”

  “I hunt monsters, Larkin.”

  “And you put them in cages and keep us all safe,” he said dismissively.

  It was my turn to laugh. “No, sweetheart. I don’t put them in cages. I kill them.” His fingers flexed and his eyes darted to his desk drawer. “You have a gun? Good. Get it. I’ll even give you a free shot.”

  I knew the thought of the gun comforted him. Or it would until he actually shot me and the wounds healed before his eyes. The terror he’d know then, well, that might be a fraction of what his victims felt.

  This was joy. Pure and untainted. Some people were meant to write, and when the words flowed from their fingers, the ink on the page like blood, it was bliss. Some were meant to sing, and when their voice was lifted to the heavens, every cell in their body vibrated with their purpose. Punishing and killing were those things for me—what I’d been made for.

  He shot me.

  The bullet grazed the side of my head, but I didn’t even bleed.

  “Try again,” I invited. “Keep shooting until the bullets are gone.” I unbuttoned the first two buttons on my blouse. “Look Ma, no Kevlar. Try my heart.”

  The stench of his fear filled the room and I could see his pulse thundering in his throat, the terror on his face as he fired the gun. Watching the bullets as they tore through my flesh, my body healing as it was damaged.

  “What are you?” he gasped, the gun falling from his shaking fingers to clatter on the desk.

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” I said, cheerfully quoting Hamlet.

  “Someone will call the police. Shots fired in this neighborhood…” he muttered ineffectually.

  “Your neighbors aren’t home. They’re businesses as well. No one will know where the shots came from. And did you forget? I am the police. Where’s Kelly?”

  “Down…downstairs.”

  “Show me.”

  “Don’t kill me. I’ll leave her alone.”

  “Show me where downstairs.”

  “If I show you…”

  “I’m not the kind of devil who makes deals, Larkin.” I slammed him against the wall, my forearm pressing into his throat. “But you belong to me. For eternity. Think about how you want to spend it. It can either be as a nameless, faceless, one of the damned or I could take a particular interest in your afterlife.”

  “This isn’t real,” he muttered, spittle clinging to the corners of his mouth. Then he changed tacks. “It wasn’t my fault. I’m sick. I need help.”

  “And help has arrived.” I leaned in, my weight pressing harder against his larynx. I could crush it, but I wasn’t ready for him to die yet. I wanted him to feel every single thing he’d done those girls. Images of walling him up alive in the basement washed over me. I knew then I didn’t need him to tell me what he’d done with Kelly’s body.

  Something new surged hot and sweet, fire and sugar, and it exploded from my fingertips to wrap around my prey like a hundred boa constrictors. They wriggled up into his nose, his eyes, and when he opened his mouth to scream, down his throat.

  Scream he certainly did. Until his voice cracked, and all that was left were harsh little barks of terror.

  Dr. James Larkin was a victim of his own crimes.

  This was exactly what I’d intended for him. Contentment filled me as he writhed and begged, clawed at imaginary walls and wailed at his fate.

  “You recover quickly,” the Cross said as he stepped from the shadows. “Pain seems to inspire greatness in you.”

  “As it does in all of us.” I wasn’t even surprised by his presence this time. “Look what it made of you. I wonder, if I hadn’t fought with your mother if you’d be the hard, blade of death—an unstoppable assassin. Or would you be using your voice to bring glory to the gods, singing and weaving tales of great deeds?” I looked up at him again, my gaze dragging over the wide rivers and tributaries of raised and puckered flesh. “You were a beautiful child who would have grown into a devastatingly beautiful man. Would you have so vigorously sharpened your weapons, or dulled them on women and accolades?”

  His eyes flashed with a hate so pure it was almost lovely. “And now, no woman would have me unless I use my voice to blind her to my face.”

  “Then they are stupid women, Assassin. Scars are proof of strength. They are the grooves that the razors of pain and suffering leave in their wake after defeat. A man with no scars is a man who has not yet been tested.”

  “Sex is not my weakness, Darkyrie.”

  “No, not sex. But your want of me.”

  “Even after what I’ve done?”

  “Especially after. Your punishment pushed me here. I’m closer to ascending. I have a piece of me I always felt was missing. Thank you.”

  My words were chosen just to elicit that reaction—that rage mangling his already twisted features. I couldn’t help the smirk that curved my lips and I didn’t want to. No, I’d never allow him to bring me so low again.

  “You’re quick to betray your lover.”

  I’d already established that Grimes wasn’t my lover. So he couldn’t know about what had happened between us unless he’d been there. “Did you stay and watch us? Creep back inside…”

  “I wanted to watch you suffer. Just as you’re doing to this scum on the floor.” He indicated where the good doctor still whined and flailed.

  “If that’s what you tell yourself. Do you like watching other people’s intimate moments because you have none of your own? No touch, no connection… You’re completely alone.”

  “No, I’m not. I have you,” he growled.

  I could practically taste the bile that coated those words like venom and it warmed me, made my heart race faster like a dose of Belladonna. It was just as poisonous, but I still wanted a sip.

  “And when you kill me, then you’ll be all alone.”

  “Then I can die.”

  “You weren’t thinking about death when you were watching me fucking Grimes. Did it make you hard, Killer?”

  “Watching you break was what made me hard.”

  “Then do it again.” I licked my lips, waiting for his next move.

  “I fully intend to. As soon as I find something else you care about.”

  “I suppose then that it’s good thing there’s nothing I care about.”

  “Lovely little liar,” he said and pushed me against the wall, as if I’d bother trying to flee from him. “You care. You care so much you reek of it. You care about the people of this city. You care about Grimes. You care about your father. You fucking care, all right.”

  I tilted my chin up. “Those are the things I’m programmed to care about. You can’t hurt Jason. He’s a god. So is my father. As to the people of this city, the second you hurt an innocent, we’re no longer on equal footing. You’ll no longer be the hunter, but the hunted. You’ll belong to me and I’ll take you to Hel.”

  Redefine what belongs to you, my father had said.

  “Not without Sleipnir you won’t. Hel is closed to you until you ascend or have the bridl
e.”

  “Who says I don’t have the bridle?”

  “Me. I’ve been with you every second, every moment. I would have known.”

  “Who’s the sick fuck now, Cross? You hate me so much, why aren’t I dead? Instead, you just watch me. You’re like a rabid dog choking himself trying to break free of his chains and when he gets free, forgets how to bite. Are you going to bark or bite?”

  He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back hard. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “So would you.”

  “You better pray I don’t decide to test that theory.”

  “More barking, still no bite. I don’t think you’ve got it in you, Killer.”

  “This happens on my schedule. Not yours. I’ll bark, as you put it, for as long as it pleases me. And when it ceases to please me, I’ll bite.”

  “I don’t think anything pleases you. That’s why you’re scared to kill me. Hating me is the only thing you can feel.” I looked him up and down again. “Hating me and hating that you want to touch me.”

  “The only way I want to touch you is to wrap my fingers around your throat and squeeze.”

  “So do it.”

  “In time, Darkyrie. In time.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After the Cross pulled another vanishing act, I called an ambulance for Larkin because in his current state, I couldn’t just leave him in his office. He might kill himself and then I’d be minus his soul. Unless I took him to Hel, but I couldn’t find Hel without Sleipnir.

  He’d have a bit of a respite with the amount of Thorazine they’d shoot into his system, but I had eternity to make him suffer and this was convenient.

  Even after my run-in with the assassin, I felt better than I had in weeks. I felt centered. Powerful.

  I decided to drive by the Capri. Maybe I’d have a chance to get back in the killer’s head, although it seemed as if he were already in mine. That felt like such a violation to know that my thoughts were either open to him, or so predictable… I pushed that out of my head. That kind of thinking would have me frayed at both ends again, unraveling like a cheap rug.

  Whoever this killer was didn’t matter past catching him. He couldn’t be more powerful than me. I was a goddess—even before ascending, I was a demi-goddess. I had to remember that.

  After this last attack, I was surprised it was still open and as far as I knew, no news outlets had gotten hold of the story. None of the employees had gone to the press. That was off.

  I nodded to the desk clerk as I walked in and flashed my badge.

  “The other cop is in 310.”

  “Thanks,” I acknowledged, wondering if it was Jason.

  I headed up the stairs and knocked on the door before I opened it. It wasn’t Grimes. It was Stratovich. He was sitting in the corner, his back against the wall, a Marlboro hanging out of his mouth and he was drinking something from a styrofoam coffee cup that was probably more whiskey than coffee. “Captain?”

  “Where were you?” he asked, like I was a kid who’d stayed out too late. His broad shoulders were slumped and his eyes drawn and haggard. I’d never seen him like this.

  “I was dealing with another situation. A girl from Kami’s.” A partial truth was not a lie. I didn’t like lying to Captain Stratovich. He was another of the humans that I admired. He was hard, to be sure. He had his own demons, but he tried to be a good man.

  This case was gnawing on his soul. The bodies were stacking up so fast and I knew he felt responsible. I sank down beside him.

  “He knows who you are, Brynn.”

  I exhaled heavily, debating how much to tell him. “I know that.”

  “I should call the Feds in.”

  “Don’t do that. I can catch him.”

  “I think you’re the only one who can. That’s why I haven’t called them. If you don’t catch him, it’s not only my job, but the lives of everyone in this city. Do you understand?”

  Did Stratovich know the killer wasn’t human? How did one even ask that? I sat silently and when he offered me the styrofoam cup, I took a drink. Yeah, it was a splash of coffee for color and had a smooth burn the rest of the way down. Not rotgut shit either. Expensive.

  “You know I wasn’t born here. I grew up in Czechoslovakia. A small village called Aynkava. People there have different beliefs than what you do in the States. Both simpler and more complicated.”

  “My father believed in old legends, too.” I said after he’d been quiet for some time.

  “My babicka, she told me stories of men who ran with wolves. Who could fly. Who took brides from the village girls and draped them in all the treasures of the night. Black velvet for the night sky, spun silver laces for their bodices to represent the moon, and crowns of night-blooming jasmine for their hair.” He took another drink and refilled the cup from a flask in his jacket. “After their wedding night, they were returned to their families, still dressed in their finery, but their skin once pale cream was tanned leather, shrunken around their bones like they’d been buried in peat moss for a thousand years.” He looked at me, his eyes dark and haunted. “You’re not laughing at me yet, Hill,” Stratovich admonished.

  I remembered what I’d told Larkin earlier. That there were more things in heaven and earth…

  “I’d never laugh at you, sir.”

  “My babicka had daguerreotypes of the last crop of brides. Prague, 1840.” He handed me a thin, metal plate and the images on it burned into my brain.

  It could have been a copy of our crime scenes. The victims with jasmine in their hair, their skin like unwrapped mummies…

  “Why didn’t you show me this before?”

  “Because it’s crazy. I just told you that your killer is a vampire. Or thinks he is.”

  “Just because we’ve never seen something doesn’t mean it can’t be real. Something is killing these women and I’m going to catch it.” I didn’t want to tell this man who hunted killers all of his career that there really were things to fear in the dark. Knowing him, he’d want to hunt them, too. And he’d get himself killed in the process. “The last victim was still alive. What did she look like? Was her skin like this?” I pointed to the daguerreotype.

  “No. Her skin was almost blue. Loss of blood, she wouldn’t accept a transfusion or any other treatment. Harris got pictures.”

  “Was she O positive?”

  “I don’t know. Is that the link between the victims?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I think so. I won’t know for sure until I talk to Jenna.”

  “He’s singled you out. You’ve got a target on your back.”

  “No. He does,” I promised.

  “You’re a good cop, Hill.”

  I handed the daguerreotype back to him. “And you’re a good man, Captain Stratovich. Don’t ever doubt it. Your babicka will be proud of you.”

  “She’d kick my ass if she were still alive. She told me never to show those to another soul. Unless I return home to Aynkava.”

  “I think you should show Jenna. She likes daguerreotypes.” And she liked Stratovich more than she was willing to let on. “She may have a scientific answer for you.” I wanted to make up for killing Sickert. He’d been her friend. I took something away, even though he was a piece of shit, I wanted to fill that hole I’d made in her life with something better.

  Stratovich’s phone rang. “Stratovich.” His mouth tightened and I knew it was bad news. “Yeah, I’ll get a uniform over there.”

  “What happened?” I asked when he hung up.

  “Tommy Anderson didn’t report for duty. He can be a fuck up, but a no call no show isn’t like him.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “No, I want you on this case. All you’ve got until we catch him.”

  Shit. “What if it’s related to the case? You said yourself that he’s fixated on me. What if he saw that altercation where Tommy got in my face?”

  “That would mean he was still in the motel while we were processing the scene.”
<
br />   “He went to all the trouble to lay such a precise scene for us to find, Captain. He fancies himself an artist. Wouldn’t he want to see what the masses thought of his work?” I was talking out of my ass now, but I needed to get inside Anderson’s apartment before anyone else. Sickert might have left of left some kind of clue that could point to me. He obviously didn’t trust me and he’d want insurance if things went poorly—as they had.

  “Fine. Tag along, but then I want your ass back in the field on this case.”

  “Sir? If something has happened it might be best if you stay as far away from it as possible. At least until you get the whiskey off your breath.”

  He closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall. “Fuck.”

  “I’ll call you when I know something.”

  This was a lot to process. It had never occurred to me that we could be dealing with a vampire, but it made a strange sense. I needed to talk to Jenna still to find out the vehicle for the blood loss.

  And I needed to find Dominic San Angeles. If MS-13 was hooked up with a demon boss, it led me to believe that other gangs would be hooked up with supernatural benefactors. I wondered who the vampires would be. The Bloods? The Bloods and MS-13 were currently at war.

  So maybe the gang connection had more to do with it than I’d previously thought? I still wasn’t kicking it up to some gang task force. They knew nothing about this new underworld.

  But first, to go to Tommy Anderson’s and wipe the place clean.

  I felt no guilt about doing that. I hadn’t been able to save him, but I’d avenged his death. That was all I could do.

  I half expected the Cross to show up again, but he didn’t. I wondered if he was watching me right now, if he was with me? It warmed me to think about him watching Jason and I together. It was a violation, a trespass, but the part that turned me on was that he couldn’t help himself.

  Briefly, I wondered what it would be like to have them both. Fiery need exploded like a bomb. The dichotomy of Jason’s beauty with the Cross’s pain, it was delicious imagery. Especially thinking of them together for my pleasure, the Cross spilling his suffering inside us both…