Drink Deep (13 page)

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Authors: Chloe Neill

BOOK: Drink Deep
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I parked on the street in front of the sleek, silver building that housed the landing pad and walked inside. A security guard took my name and then sent me to the elevator.
The doors opened at the building’s top floor, a giant asphalt circle with an “H” marking the center. The pilot met me with a wave—the only way she could communicate given the vicious wind and noise from the smallish helicopter, whose rotors were already spinning.
She motioned me toward the door, indicating I’d get headphones when I got inside. I nodded and made a run for it, ducking farther than I probably needed to avoid the rotors, but why take a chance? When I was buckled in, headphones installed, we lifted off, and the city disappeared beneath us.
Forty-two roaring minutes later, we approached the island. I hadn’t expected it to be visible until we touched down, but the helicopter’s lights bounced off a breaker of white—the bony hulls of ships that had been dashed upon the edges of the siren’s island.
Thank God we hadn’t come in a boat.
The island was covered in trees but for two small clearings—one that held a structure, probably Lorelei’s home, and a smaller area closer to shore. We touched down there. The pilot switched off the rotors, and pulled off her headphones.
“This is spooky,” she said, peering out into the darkness, then looked at me. “I’ve got to make another flight in a couple of hours. You think that’s enough time for you to do whatever you need to do?”
“I certainly hope so,” I said, then climbed out of the copter. I glanced back at her. “If I’m not back by the time you need to leave, call my grandfather and bring out the troops.”
She laughed like I was kidding.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t.
A path led into the woods, and I couldn’t help thinking about Dorothy and Little Red Riding Hood and all the others who had dreaded that walk. But the pilot had a schedule to keep, so I needed to get the show on the road.
I took one step, and then another, until the clearing disappeared behind me and I was ensconced in a forest alive with noise. All manner of animals not yet bedded down for the coming winter shuffled through the underbrush, and the canopy of trees above the path created a fretwork of moonlight on the ground.
Recalling I was a vampire—and a sharp-sensed predator myself—I let my senses off th [sendiv>e leash. My night vision sharpened. I could smell damp soil and the faint musk of animals in the trees. Acrid smoke and the greenish smell of fresh resin drifted down the path from what I assumed was Lorelei’s house. Someone had been chopping wood, maybe.
The night was alive with things most humans would rarely see or consider, an entire world that turned while they were unconscious. Would it frighten them, I wondered, to imagine how much went on while they were oblivious?
I walked for a little less than ten minutes. The path moved gently uphill, and I emerged onto a plateau that, during the day, probably would have afforded a beautiful view of the lake. I considered it a good thing my father didn’t know the property existed; he’d have razed Lorelei’s house to make way for a luxury lodge.
The house glowed in the middle of the clearing. It was low, with walls that alternated between curvy glass and long swaths of wood. The house spread low across the earth like it might simply have grown there, like it might melt back into the ground if you turned your back long enough. A tamped dirt path led across the grass to a giant wooden door I assumed was the main entrance.
I stood at the edge of the woods for a moment and savored the irony. A few minutes ago, I’d been afraid to enter them. Now, I was dreading the exit. Sure, I was supposedly immune to Lorelei’s siren call, but that didn’t exactly calm my nerves. I’d seen the boats at the shoreline. What had happened to their captains?
In the silence while I waited, I heard the singing for the first time. It sounded like a low dirge of mourning, sung by a woman with perfect pitch and a sensual tone.
The siren.
I closed my eyes and waited for a moment . . . but nothing happened. I didn’t feel compelled to stalk her, or live out the rest of my immortal nights on her island. Other than feeling a little lightheaded from relative lack of blood—horrible timing on Frank’s part—all was well.
I blew out a breath, walked toward the door, and knocked on it.
No more than a second later, a heavyset woman in her fifties or sixties opened the door, her eyes narrowed. “What?”
Surely this woman, who wore a T-shirt and cut-off stretch pants and held a feather duster in one hand, wasn’t the siren of the lake. But the singing continued from somewhere in the house, so this couldn’t have been her.
“I’m Merit. I’m here to see Lorelei.”
She seemed unmoved by my interest and stared blankly back at me.
“I’m a vampire from Chicago,” I told her. “I need to talk to Lorelei about the lake.”
Without a word, she shut the door in my face. I blinked back shock, then gnawed my lip for a second, considering my choices.
I could barge into the house, but it was a rule of etiquette that vamps had to wait for an invitation before entering someone’s home. It wasn’t going to do much good if I pissed off the lake spirit by breaching protocol.
Alternatively, I could pout my way back to the helicopter and advise the pilot she’d have plenty of time to get to her next appointment.
Since neither of those options would solve my current problem, I decided to go for option three—stalling while gathering a little intel. Quietly, I tiptoed across the small portico and peeked into a window.
I got only a small peek at wood and stone before I heard a voice behind me.
“Ahem.”
I jumped and turned to find the woman who’d opened the door standing behind me with a suspicious expression and a menacingly wielded feather duster.
“Lovely home,” I told her, standing up straight again. “I was just curious about the interior design. With the wood. And furnishings.” I cleared my throat guiltily. “And such.”
The woman rolled her eyes, then flipped her feather duster out like a composer directing an orchestra. “I have been authorized to invite you into the abode of Lorelei, the lake siren. Welcome to her home.”
Her delivery was desert dry, but it got the point across. I followed her inside.
The interior of the house was as organically designed as the outside. The window looked onto a two-story living room. One wall was made of rounded river stone, and a trickle of water spilled down the rocks and into a narrow channel that ran through the middle of the room, where it disappeared into an infinity-edged trough on the other side.
A curvy woman sat on the floor beside the channel of water, trickling her fingers into it. Her hair was dark and pulled into a topknot, and she was dressed simply in a shimmery gray T-shirt and jeans, her toes bare. Her eyes were closed, and she sang out low and clear.
I looked back toward the woman with the feather duster, but having done her duty, she was gone.
“Are you Lorelei?” I quietly asked.
She stopped singing, opened her eyes, and looked up at me with eyes the color of chocolate. “Honey, if you’re on my island, you know there’s only one person I could be. Of course I’m Lorelei.” Her voice carried a hint of a Spanish accent, and a lot of sarcasm.
I bit back a smile. “Hi, Lorelei. I’m Merit.”
“Hi, yourself. What brings you here?”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“About?”
“The lake.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You think I had something to do with the water?”
“I don’t know whether you did or not,” I admitted, kneeling beside the channel so we could speak at eye level. “I’m trying to figure out what happened, and you seemed like a good place to start. It’s not just the lake, you know. It’s the river, as well.”
Her head shot up. “The river? It’s dead, too?”
Neither the question nor the look of defeat in her eyes comforted me.
“It is,” I said. “And the river and the lake are bleeding all the power out of Chicago. The nymphs are growing weaker.”
Wincing as if in pain, Lorelei pressed her fingers to her temples. “They aren’t the only ones. I feel like I finished up a four-day shift and a two-day bender. Weak. Exhausted. Dizzy.” She looked up at me. “I didn’t cause this. I’d hoped the nymphs might have the answer, that they’d become too involved in some kind of unfamiliar magic, but that the magic could be reversed.”
“They thought the same thing about you.”
“That’s no surprise,” she dryly said.
“You don’t get along?”
She barked out a laugh. “I grew up near Paseo Boricua. Born and raised in Chicago by parents from Puerto Rico. The nymphs aren’t exactly a diverse crew. They see me as the odd one out. An interloper in their pretty little world of magic.”
“How so?”
She looked up at me curiously. “You really don’t know, do you?”
I shook my head, and she muttered something in Spanish. “The lake turns black and I get the vampire right off the assembly line,” she said, then cast her own apologetic glance. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Lorelei sighed and dipped a hand back into the water. Her features relaxed a bit, as if touching the water soothed her.
“Being a siren isn’t like being a nymph,” she said. “They are born into their roles; their mothers are nymphs, as well. A siren’s power doesn’t work that way.”
She pointed to a table across the room. Propped upon it was a dark, iron disk about six inches across. There was writing on it, but it was too far away to read.
“
Piedra de Agua
,” she said. “The water stone. The siren’s magic is carried within it.”
I frowned back at her. “I don’t understand.”
“To own the stone is to
become
the lake siren,” she said. “To trigger its magic, you must request the stone, but it only accepts certain owners. Once it’s yours, it’s yours until the next owner comes around.”
“So you chose to be a siren?”
Lorelei looked away, staring down at the water. “Technically, I had a choice to accept the stone and its burdens, although my options were limited.”
“And the boats at the shoreline?”
She looked back with pride in her eyes. “I chose to accept the stone, but I work things a little differently. I’m the siren of the lake, and I have to sing, but I picked the most isolated spot I could find. Rosa and Ian, my husband—they help steer the sailors back to the mainland. The damage to the boats I can’t do much about.” She smiled a little. “But everybody’s got insurance.”
I couldn’t fault that logic. “How long do you have to serve as siren?”
“The Lorelei before me—we all take the name to keep the myth alive—lived here for ninety-six years. Of course,” she said with a burgeoning smile, “she was forty-two when she became siren, so that’s not a bad perk.”
Because I had a sense it might help, I offered up my own story. “I was made a vampire without my consent. To save my life, but it wasn’t something I’d planned. That came as a surprise.”
She regarded me with interest. “So you know what it’s like to rewrite your life. To weigh who you were against who you must become.”
I thought of all the things I’d done and seen over the last year—the death, the pain, the joy. The beginnings . . . and the endings.
“Yes,” I quietly agreed. “I know what that’s like.” That thought reminded me of my purpose. “Lorelei, if you didn’t cause this, do you know who might have?”
“If the nymphs aren’t involved—if this wasn’t caused by a water spirit—then I think you need to look more broadly.”
“Such as?”
She looked away, guilt in her expression.
“Lorelei, I need to know. This isn’t just about the nymphs. Our Houses are at stake. Humans are already blaming vampires, and if it goes any further, I can guarantee the registration law will pass.”
“There’s only one group as tied to the natural world as we are,” she finally said. “We find our solace and our awe in the water. In the flow of it, the power of it, its ability to cleanse and destroy.” She closed her eyes. “They find their power in the earth. They treasure it—the woods, the wilds.”
My stomach sank. “You’re talking about shifters?”
“The Pack is in Chicago, isn’t it?”
“Because we asked them to stay. They wouldn’t do this.”
“Did you think they’d attack your House?”
Technically, only a handful of vengeful shifters had attacked the House, but I took her point. “Of course not.”
“You can’t turn a blind eye to who they are or what they’re capable of. You are aware of the chemistry between nymphs and shifters?”
“It’s hard to miss.”
“It’s because of the chemistry between earth and water,” she said. “A kind of elemental union. Maybe the water’s sickness is because there are too many shifters and nymphs in one city.”

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