Water and Blood

by B. Kristin McMichael

  Whitney had done her best to listen as much as she could, but she had been raised to protect day humans. When he talked easily about draining the blood of drowning day humans to feed, she knew she could never truly understand him. He made it sound like it was fine to kill them since they were dying already, but every fiber in her body said dying or not, you had to try and save them. It had been a fun fleeting thought of being part of the night human world again, but it was just that, fleeting. Her best course of action would be to keep herself a secret and continue her life without the sirens.

  “So last night you said we need water and blood to survive. Is that all?”

  Realization set in on Sam’s face. He hadn’t spoken a single thing about actually living as a siren.

  “Yes. Basically, that’s all you need.”

  “Then I can live anywhere, right? You said all merpeople live near oceans. Is there a reason for that?” Whitney proved she had been listening, at least kind of.

  “Yes, all you need is blood and water, but you don’t want to stray too far on land. If for some reason you don’t get to water within twenty-four hours you become itchy. After forty-eight hours you become dehydrated. Even if you’re drinking water, you’ll still feel thirsty and your skin itches like crazy. It’s not like a day human who gets lost and goes without water. You won’t just die; you’ll die very slowly, and you’ll feel like you’re drying out the whole time. You’ll lose energy to move and try to find water, but death will take weeks if not months. You’ll suffer like that, unable to move, with your body feeling like you can’t itch it enough, while you dream of water.”

  Okay, that sounded horrible.

  “Got it. Stay near water,” Whitney replied. “Does it have to be ocean water, or can a lake or river work?” She needed details. That’s what she met up with him for.

  “Rivers and lakes are fine, but I don’t know more specifics about them. Being that you want to stay a secret, mer really don’t travel far inland. Out in the ocean if someone sees a siren, most of the time they just assume they see a mirage. The ocean is huge, and no one actually has seen a mermaid up close. In a river or lake, they’d know what they’re looking at.”

  That made sense. On to the next question.

  “And blood. How do you feed? Who do you feed on?”

  This was a good point and one that Whitney needed to learn. As a skinwalker, she could go to any blood bank and ask for a pint of blood. With mermaids having to remain a secret since they shouldn’t exist in the night human world, that made getting blood there a no-go. And she wasn’t about to start killing day humans.

  Sam laid back in the water, letting his body float to the surface, and his blue fin flicked a little bit. The motion of his tail made her smile. It was hard to tell with his sun-kissed skin, but Whitney thought his cheeks might have been a bit redder.

  “We’re siren,” he began. Whitney didn’t lean back to join him. She really needed to figure this one out. If she needed blood to survive, she had to know how to go about getting it. It wasn’t like she could feed on Sam for the rest of her life.

  “And …”

  “We can put people into a trance by singing so that we can lure them into the water and feed on them.” Sam floated next to her but didn’t look up.

  “And …” There was more, Whitney could tell.

  Sighing, he finally sat up. He wasn’t fooling Whitney with such a simple answer.

  “I teach swim lessons to feed on people. Normally a siren will find a drowning person, or lure someone into the water to kill them. One human can last months. It’s simple that way. I prefer not to draw any notice to us on land, and forbid the siren I take care of from doing that. We feed only a pint or two on several humans at least once a week instead.”

  That was a lot of blood. Whitney now wondered how many dead day humans were out there because they were lured off to the sea.

  “And you can’t just come clean to the night humans and use donated blood?” Whitney knew this was impossible. Sam had explained what she already knew. The sirens were on the losing side of the night human wars. They weren’t supposed to exist, and if they came out of hiding, they would be killed for it.

  “That’s what I was explaining before. Sirens are forbidden. It’s death on sight for us. Any siren found, whether they’re two or seventy, are sentenced to death by the governing night humans, and they are free game for hunters.”

  Whitney stared at him in shock. She had heard of hunters growing up. They were abnormally strong day humans who felt it was their duty to rid the world of bad night humans. They were given leeway to hunt those the night human councils deemed dangerous, but that was all she knew about them. Skinwalkers weren’t dangerous to day humans. Whitney had never been on that side before. It was strange to find herself sitting where she was. Even worse was to find out just being a siren made her a “bad guy.”

  “That’s why I don’t let the sirens kill around here. It keeps us free of hunters.” Sam seemed more confident in his admission of how he fed.

  “I just sing a little and then I can feed on anyone I want?” Whitney asked. She needed more details, especially on something so essential to her life again.

  “Oh no,” Sam quickly replied. “You’d do best to not sing at all until you’ve had lots of practice controlling it. Singing the wrong thing could lead to you accidentally drowning someone. Or, you might put them in a trance permanently. Singing is something you’ll need lots of practice at before you try it on a day human. And even then you’d have to be careful to not drain them when you feed. You’ll have to have complete control of your night human side. Siren instinct is to kill. To just drink is something you have to practice at.”

  Whitney flapped her arms in exasperation. She didn’t want to kill or hurt anyone, but she couldn’t go get blood the normal way. What was she supposed to do?

  Sam caught on easily to her frustration.

  “So … what? Do I just feed on fish until then?” That must have been why fish didn’t repulse her now. She was one of them.

  Sam laughed. “No one feeds on fish. Fish are cold-blooded animals. We have to feed on warm blooded animals, like mammals, and I don’t think you’d find a mer that was willing to eat anything but human blood.”

  Whitney threw her arms up in the air. He was making it impossible for her. What was she supposed to do?

  “Until I can teach you how to control your siren singing and feeding, I’ll feed you. We probably should do that now before we head back.”

  Back? Whitney didn’t get an ounce of her questions answered.

  “Don’t worry. You owe me several meals, so we can come back here tomorrow, too.” Sam seemed to understand her frustration.

  He pushed off from where he was sitting and swam under into the deeper water. Whitney followed and bumped into him when he stopped, positioning himself upright. Steadying her, Sam pulled her up to eye level with him. Her head broke the surface, and she sucked in her breath as she floated close to him. Sam pulled her closer.

  Sam was beautiful as a day human, but as a mer he was exquisite. His dark hair was now slicked back and almost black in color. His upper body was lean but muscular in all the right places, including abs that any bodybuilder would have died to have. Lines swirled up his body, marking his normal tattoos to make more of a bold statement. All his music fans would have died from a heart attack if they could see him as a siren. She didn’t know rock star Sam could get any hotter. Whitney’s heart beat fast as he held her close.

  Sam raised an eyebrow as if to say he saw her staring at him.

  “Umm, what do I do?” Whitney asked, stalling and hoping he thought her hesitation was from confusion, and not from checking him out.

  Sam grinned. “You didn’t seem to have a problem feeding last night. Maybe I’m not holding you close enough.”

  Sam’s arms tightened around, pressing his body to hers as her cheeks burned red. She was positive he saw, but instead of teasing her more, he tilted his hea
d, exposing the vein in his neck. As embarrassing as it was to be held close, it was what made it all easier. Whitney didn’t think and just let her body move on its own as she bit down.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sam balanced on the rocks behind Whitney as she made her way back to the cove from the day before. Confidently she climbed around the rocks until she got to the edge where they needed to go under. She didn’t wait for him to catch up as she stepped forward and fell into the water. Sam waited for a second for her to surface before he realized she was already heading toward the opening to the tunnels underneath the rock. He dove in behind her and caught up as she made the first turn correctly.

  Initially, he had been worried about how she would adjust, but he should have known better. Whitney was nothing like any day human he’d ever met. She was special. There wasn’t a single thing to worry about. She was a natural.

  She turned again and kept going forward without looking back to see if he was following. Not just special and confident, but also smart. Sam wanted to show her the merworld she was now part of, but was secretly happy she couldn’t fully join the sirens. If any of the other males found her, he would have to fight to be her mate. For now, she was just his and his alone.

  Whitney made it to the cove perfectly, but didn’t go farther up the sand bank to sit down.

  “Okay, I listened to your stories yesterday, and while informative, they didn’t help me with anything. If you want me to survive as a siren, I need to learn how to actually survive. Like, how do I actually do stuff?”

  Her hands were on her hips as she lectured him. Amazingly, her tail kept her perfectly straight up and down. It took most sirens years to be able to float without using their arms for balance. Not Whitney.

  “Fine,” he replied, and she looked confused, as if she was ready for a fight that wasn’t coming. He liked being able to throw her off balance even though he couldn’t do it physically, because she was good at being a siren. “What do you want to start with?”

  “Um.” Her confidence was temporarily gone. “I need to learn how you keep legs around water. That would be a good place to start.” The latter sounded like it was more to herself than him.

  “True, that would be helpful.” Sam moved past her to the shallow water and walked up on the sand before sitting down. It was a bit teasing to do so, but then again, it also felt like showing off. A large part of him wanted to show off and get her attention. He wanted her to like him as much as he was falling for her.

  “Yes, just like that,” Whitney said as she watched him from the deeper water. “How do you do it?” She swam only a little closer but kept deep enough to be able to swim around.

  “I just tell my fin to go away and that I need legs,” Sam replied. It really was that easy once you could do it.

  Whitney scrunched up her face. She looked like she was trying. He liked that expression. Who was he kidding? He liked all of her expressions.

  “And?” she prompted him.

  “And that’s it. You’ve been a mer for less than a week. I don’t think that side of you is really ready to listen to your inner self-telling it to go away. Didn’t you used to be part cat?”

  Whitney seemed to try again; then she gave up before swimming closer to sit in the shallow water beside him rather than shout across the ten feet between them.

  “Yes.”

  “When you were in your human form, could you still feel the cat inside of you?”

  She seemed to ponder that. By the looks of it, she never considered that her cat was a part of her, so that explanation wasn’t going to work.

  “Okay. Guess not,” Sam replied before she could. He could read the answer on her face. “The best way I can explain it is that the siren side you see is a part of me, and the human side is the other part. When I transform, I’m both at the same time, and when I’m just human, it is still there. The siren is still beneath the surface. You can use your singing to lure people whether you have a tail or not, just like you can tell your tail to go away.”

  “And what if it doesn’t work like that for me? I’m not exactly the same kind as you,” Whitney said as she bit her lip. Sam tried not to look at her lips. He was using all the self-control he had to not try to kiss her as it was.

  “I’m sure it will work the same for you, but you might have to wait a little bit. It normally can take weeks before the two sides of you settle into a familiar place. The best way I can describe it is that you have two different halves to you—your day human side and your mer side. When one is there, the other isn’t. The mer side is so new that you can’t control it. It will get better. I promise.”

  His words seemed to have a good effect; she had stopped biting her lip, at least for the moment. He wasn’t that sure what else she was going to want to know about, or if he could even teach her. Being a siren was just part of who he was. It was strange to have to think about everything and explain it. But then again, it was fun. He had never met anyone like Whitney, and he was going to do his best to make sure she survived the merworld he had accidentally put her in.

  Lying back in the shallow water, Whitney let the water bounce her up to the surface. She bobbed around a bit as she thought. She tried her best to imagine her legs, but there was still a fin. She didn’t need to look down to know that; she could feel it. After a few minutes, Whitney gave up and sat back up. She would have to spend time at home in the bath trying to will her fin to go away when it was wet. Maybe she would have more luck while alone than being watched, and she was being watched. Sam hadn’t taken his eyes off her since they entered the cove. Besides, she needed to use the private time with Sam now to ask all of her questions.

  “So yesterday …” she began. Sam was watching her still. She saw something in his eyes when he looked at her, but she wasn’t sure what it meant. “When the waitress spilled the drink on me, how come it didn’t soak into my clothes?”

  Luckily, they had a different server at the restaurant today. Whitney was relieved. The other one made her nervous, like “plotting behind her back on how to get rid of her” nervous. Whitney had dealt with her share of girls that didn’t want her to be friends with the guy they liked. It was always strange to her because all the guys back home weren’t allowed to date her. Skinwalkers had to date day humans, and since she was one of the only female skinwalkers, it meant no dates from the guys she was really just friends with. That didn’t stop all the other girls, though. Whitney had learned to ignore it, but a waitress accidentally spilling water on her was a bit more dangerous these days. She was glad that Sam had some tricks to save her from going all fishy.

  “Oh, you noticed that?” he asked innocently.

  “Um, yeah. I didn’t sprout a fish tail in the restaurant, so yep. I noticed that.”

  Sam shrugged. “Being part of the sea makes us able to control the motion of water when on land.”

  “So, in other words, you can go inland and just summon water to you?” It was confusing to Whitney, and she needed to understand it better. She wasn’t looking for an excuse to live away from the ocean. She didn’t want to be trapped, but she was pretty sure she could never leave it now.

  “No, we can’t summon it. We can control it, manipulate it.”

  Sam demonstrated as he pointed to the water in front of him, which moved up just as he directed it with his finger. Soon it was standing straight in the air. Whitney leaned forward and touched the water. It was still wet, but just standing there. Her hand breaking through it didn’t make it move back to the ground like she expected.

  “Cool. Can you teach me?”

  “Not until you find the balance between your siren and human side.”

  Whitney pouted. All this Zen talk wasn’t fair. She was being thrown into the siren world, where she was expected to hide, not just from day humans but the siren also, and she could do basically nothing. It was like she would be better off becoming a hermit in a cave the way Sam told it. If she did that, at least then she might go all perfect with her siren
side like he talked about.

  “Fine. Then what can you teach me?”

  “Can I continue from yesterday?” Sam asked. He was serious.

  “Um, no. That stuff, while great, doesn’t help me. I can’t be part of your merworld, so as much as it’s an interesting story, I need more real world stuff. Like what about the mer at school? How many are there? Who are they? How do I avoid them?”

  Sam nodded at her questions like he hadn’t thought of them.

  “I suppose that’s fair. There are just over three hundred sirens at our schools. Most of them are at the high school with a few in the junior high. All of the teenage sirens come to land to learn a bit before going back. We don’t have schools on the island.”

  Whitney’s mouth dropped open. She was expecting something like twenty or thirty. Not three hundred. She began to count in her head. There were five hundred students in each grade, making the high school just about two thousand students. Three hundred of those students were mermaids. Unbelievable.

  “Okay. Now I’m not sure if you can give me all those names, and I’ll remember them.” Three hundred was beyond what anyone could remember. She wasn’t certain she knew the names of three hundred students in the school.

  “Well, it’s easier than that. All the people I hang out with are sirens. All the people you hang out with are also. And anyone you catch calling me Prince Sam is a siren, too.”

  Whitney felt the blush creep up her cheeks. She didn’t know he had heard them call him that. Her friends were all sirens. That was something she needed to ponder a bit.

  “Wait a second,” she said as the blush went away. “If my friends are all sirens, and so are yours, why aren’t they all friends?”

  Sam laughed. “How do you know we aren’t all friends?”

  “Because I’ve heard my friends talk about you and your friends all the time. I know they don’t like you guys.”