Siren (16 page)

He lay back on the cold sand and stared into the dark between the pinpoints of stars above.

“I have to,” he whispered. “I don’t want to…but I need to.”

Evan rolled to his side and looked at the woman who lay on the beach, offering herself to him, not only tonight, but forever. Offering him…everything.

“Ligeia…I barely know you,” he began, and instantly regretted it.

“You know me more than any man has known me in a century,” she hissed.

“A century?” Evan laughed. “You don’t even look…” His retort was stopped by the press of her lips to his own. When she drew back, she sounded angry.

“Come with me,” she said. “Come with me and raise our child. Don’t make me do this alone.”

“I’ll help you how I can,” Evan began. “But first I’ll need to know your address. Hell, I don’t even know where you live and you say you’re having my baby…”

“I live in your heart,” Ligeia said, and tried to press him again to the sand. “And I always will.”

“I have to go,” Evan said, and pushed away from her to grab at his shirt. He shook the sand free and stood up. “I can’t be with you for this,” he said. “I have to take care of my wife now.”

He stepped clumsily into his pants and felt the dampness of their sex saturate his underwear and then rub back accusingly against his skin as he buttoned his jeans.

Ligeia didn’t move from her prone position on the sand. Her eyes flashed with anger.

“You are mine now,” she said tersely.

Evan shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not. I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. That’s what I came to say tonight. We have to end this. Good night, Ligeia. Good-bye.”

He closed his eyes and couldn’t believe how cold he was being in walking away, but was there any way to walk away that wasn’t cold? When you were done, you were done and that was that. There was really no nice way to couch it.

Evan walked down the beach toward home, while a cold, horrible lump grew in his belly. He forced himself not to look behind him because if he did…he was afraid he would stop and return to her. Was it true? Did she carry his baby? Could she know already? That seemed unlikely. Was she just hoping?

How stupid he had been to have sex with her over and over, assuming that she was using protection. “Damn it,” he cursed under his breath. If there’d been a wall nearby, he would have punched it. The anger—at himself, as much as at her for tricking him this way—grew inside him until the cold sickness melted, replaced by fire. If Ligeia were pregnant, and decided to make an issue about it…

He turned around and looked back at the beach, to where he had left her.

The beach was empty for as far as he could see. The waves rushed the shore in dirty white explosions of foam, and rolled back again, up and down on the sand, the empty sand from here to the shadow of the point.

Evan wiped a spot of water from his eye and shook his head. What was done was done. He prayed his weakness wouldn’t come back at him to ruin what he needed to try to fix. And he needed to start that fixing now.

He turned back toward Delilah and began walking. In a minute, that determined walk turned to a slow and then more urgent jog. He had to get back to Sarah. A kaleidoscope of feelings fought for voice in his heart: guilt, lust, love and hope all mixed into a warring cloud of pain. “I’ll never do this to you again,” he promised aloud, as he ran. As soon as he said it, a piece of him railed, wanting desperately to do it again. He shook his head violently, trying to argue away the desire.

Behind him, a shadow slipped out of the waves to move swiftly across the beach. Far behind, but not so far as to lose sight, a figure fell in step to keep pace with Evan, padding softly, wetly across the sand and up the walking path that led to Fifth Street.

If Evan had not been so lost in his internal war of emotions, he might have noticed that the shadow followed him all the way home.

June 10, 1887

The storm hit with hardly any warning. If the fury of the wind hadn’t howled through the ship like a banshee, the crew might have been more attuned to what happened in the captain’s cabin. But by the time the screaming began, their hands and ears were locked to other tasks. Tasks like keeping the ship above water. Nobody had any interest in visiting Davy Jones’s locker in the dead of night. And running shorthanded in a storm was a recipe for a voyage to the bottom of the sea.

It had been a sullen, quiet evening on the
Lady Luck
as she slipped through low breakers, easily on course to dock by morning. The crew, what was left of it, had watched Travers follow the captain out of the galley. They’d also seen him return a couple minutes later, and silently climb the ladder up top. Reg pushed back from the table and followed the first mate. “I’ll see what’s what,” he told the rest.

Travers stood at the bow of the
Lady Luck
, staring out across the waves. He didn’t say anything when Reg stumped across the deck to join him.

Reg stood next to the first mate for a few seconds, watching the waves, and Travers didn’t volunteer a word. He looked lost in some private war.

“Clouds gatherin’ fast,” Reg observed.

Travers nodded, and a gust of wind blew a long twine of hair across his mouth. “Storm brewing,” he said.

“What’d he say?” Reg asked.

Travers shook his head. “Nothing at all.”

“We need to all corner him,” Reg answered. There was steel in his voice.

“He’s always been a good captain.”

“That was then. This is today. We don’t live in then.”

Travers didn’t say anything more, and Reg didn’t press him. After another silent minute, he pushed away from the bow and slipped back belowdecks.

“Well?” Jensen said upon his return. Reg rolled his eyes and choked a bit for effect as he relayed, “’e says the captain’s always been a good egg.”

Cauldry smirked and hissed. “Tell that to Rogers.”

“So much for talking to the captain,” Jensen grumbled.

“Looks like I’m elected,” Reg announced. “And I ain’t taking no for an answer.” A peal of thunder shook the boat, and the flash of lightning flickered through the dark galley.

Just as Reg stood, Travers yelled down to the men. “All hands on deck,” he bellowed. “We got a storm on us. She’s brewin’ up fast!”

Cauldry and Jensen leaped up and started toward the ladder.

“I’ll get the captain…after we have a word or two,” Reg promised, and left in the other direction.

The ship yawed and shifted beneath his feet as Reg walked the narrow corridor to the captain’s cabin. Another dull thunderclap sounded in the distance, and he felt the planks shiver. Maybe there would be no time to talk tonight after all, he thought. This felt like one wicked
squall comin’ on. He raised his hand to knock on the captain’s cabin, but then paused.

He heard a noise from inside. The kind of noise that made a man feel…like a man. It was high-pitched, and rhythmic. And it absolutely was not the moan of their gravel-voiced captain. Reg pressed his ear to the door, and a slow smile drew across his face as he eavesdropped on the unmistakable sounds of a woman quickly approaching orgasm not far from the other side of the door. Mixed in with her cries were the heavier, deeper but equally satisfied groans of a male.

Reg felt his manhood shift at the sounds, and pulled back from the door. So. The mystery deepened. The captain had brought a woman on this trip. How he had kept her secret from them these past couple weeks he had no idea. Though as he thought back, he realized that Buckley had been absent from the deck more than usual these past few days. The wheels in his head clicked over, and his grin widened. No wonder the ol’ man had been so hard on Rogers about snooping and thieving around belowdecks. He didn’t care about the liquor, he was protecting another kind of vice. He stepped back and leaned against the wall until the faint noises coming from inside the captain’s quarters diminished. The ship dove in a sudden roll again, and Reg took that as his cue.

“Captain,” he called out, at the same time issuing a quick rap on the cabin door. “We got a storm on us. All hands on deck.”

Reg didn’t wait for Buckley’s reply, but turned and walked down the hallway. But instead of heading toward the galley, he quickly stepped in the opposite direction. Reg slipped behind a stack of wooden moonshine crates in the hold, and turned to keep an eye on the path he’d just made. It didn’t take long for the captain’s door to
open. Buckley hurried out, straightening his shirtsleeves, and went up top.

Still smiling, Reg waited a beat, and then came out of hiding. The next time he talked to the captain, he was going to have something to talk about. Something the captain couldn’t brush off.

He tried the knob of the captain’s door, and found it, not surprisingly, locked. Reg wasn’t perturbed. He reached into a back pocket and pulled out a fishhook. He pressed it against the door frame and pressed until the curve of the hook was nearly straight and then pressed it into the slit of the lock. It didn’t take much jimmying to trip the tumbler.

Reg cracked a grin and turned the knob, quiet as could be. Then he pushed it open and slipped inside, pressing the door instantly shut behind him.

The first thing that hit Reg was the smell. The captain’s quarters were rank, that was for sure. At first he thought that it was simply the odor of raw fish, but then another stink revealed itself, and he squinted his eyes and shook his head in disgust.

“My God,” Reg whispered. “Is he raising maggots in here?” The putrid scent hung thick enough in the air to make him gag.

As if in answer, he heard a whining squeal from the dark just ahead. Holding his nose with two fingers, he stepped carefully through the dark toward where he knew the captain’s bunk was. The room was nearly pitch-black; but Reg saw in the dark like a cat. And in a moment, he’d forgotten the stench, as he dropped to his knees to look at the shadowy form on the captain’s cot.

“Sooo,” he said, staring down at the woman. She was naked and tied to the walls. Apparently the captain was worried about his little morsel swimming away. Reg
ran his fingers across her cheek, and found a strip of leather running from the back of her head, down her jaw, to her mouth.

“He’s really making sure you don’t announce yer presence here, eh?”

Reg leaned forward until he was sure the woman could see his eyes. He could certainly see hers; they glittered almost catlike in the dark. “Just you stay quiet and I’ll let you out of this,” he promised. “But one loud word from you and it’s back on, you hear?”

She didn’t move, and he took that as his cue. Reg pulled the gag from her mouth and smiled as she took a couple of heaving breaths. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“So the captain’s keeping you here, eh?” Reg said.

“Do you suppose I enjoy being tied up and left in the dark?” she challenged.

“What would ya give me if I set ya free?”

“Your heart’s desire,” she laughed, softly. “What is it you want?”

“Right now? I want you.”

“Then you can have me,” she said. “But release my hands at least, first. I like to feel the man that I’m with.”

Reg followed her arms with his fingers to the knot of the rope and undid the bindings by feel. After fumbling a bit, at last he freed her wrists, and she drew her hands down to her waist. As she kneaded her skin, the woman began to sing softly, and Reg found himself lost in the whisper of her voice. She sang sweetly, light as air. He couldn’t make out the words, yet they made his heart bleed with desire. He wanted to protect this beautiful creature. To hold her and save her and nurture her. He leaned in to kiss her, and she flicked a tongue across his mouth, and continued to sing.

Reg leaned back and smiled, indulging her. But then
the ship shivered, and he remembered what was going on outside.

“We don’t have much time now,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I know.” She drew him close, and breathed upon his eyes and nose before slipping her mouth over his. She started to kiss him softly, lips warm and full, barely touching, but then grew more urgent, sucking him inside her with an urgency that Reg had never before experienced. She left him breathless, and when she broke away from his mouth and ran her hands down his chest, Reg gasped with an abandon he had only imagined.

“What is your name?” he whispered, as fingers slipped below his belly button to trace the workings of a man with the sensuality that only a woman could provide.

“Ligeia,” she said. “I am and always have been, Ligeia.”

Reg positioned himself back over her and found his entry without help. “I’ll do whatever I can for you, Ligeia,” he promised, pressing himself within her. She gasped at his entry, and then ran sharp fingernails down his back until her hands cupped his ass in a stranglehold, nails pinching so hard that they could draw blood.

“I know…you…will,” she moaned beneath him, and then her mouth was on his, and then she was kissing his neck, and shoulder, and…neck.

And then Reg screamed. Because her kiss was not a kiss, but a bite, hard and mean. He pulled back and slapped at her, but in a heartbeat the sensual creature beneath him was no longer a girl, but a monster, all teeth and claws.

“Stop!” he screamed, but her fingernails ripped his face and bit into his chest like daggers. He punched at her, repeatedly, but he never seemed to hit her in a way that counted; he caught her in the chest and the shoulder, and even once in the jaw, but Ligeia only smiled
each time, showing long teeth that opened in a shark’s smile and dove for his flesh.

She did not miss her mark. Reg pulled away in stinging pain, slapping a hand against the warm stream at his neck with complete shock.

“Why?” he gasped, blood already streaming into and out of his mouth.

“Why did you come in here?” Ligeia said, grinning a crimson smile at him while holding his head in a vise between her hands. “Because I can.” With that she dove back to his neck and sucked at his life like a leech. Reg would have protested, but already the feeling had left his hands, and as he feebly tried to push her away, the pain only exacerbated in his head. And so he leaned back and let her have her way. Just as he would have had her do, for him.

In seconds he was dead.

Ligeia undid the ropes that held her feet for the second time in a week. But this time, she vowed that she would not be a man’s prisoner again.

Never.

She rolled herself over Reg’s body and stepped past the half-rotted corpses of Rogers and Nelson on the floor, free for the first time in more than twenty-four hours. She stretched, and then retrieved a robe that Buckley had given her when they’d first boarded the
Lady Luck
. She strapped it around her waist and decided to go see what men were left.

She would never leave the ship, not while there were men to be played. To be hunted.

She could make things mighty difficult for her previous captor if he had no crew left to run the boat.

Ligeia smiled at that thought, and let herself out of the captain’s chambers. She had spilled first blood, and now she was primed for a chase. As she stepped into the
passageway, she saw her next victim, but as it turned out, he didn’t give her much of a run for her money. He looked puzzled at her sudden appearance, though unafraid. He should have been.

Ligeia grinned, teeth still warm with the iron of Reg. She began to trill a quiet song as she advanced on the man.

“Who are
you
?” First Mate Travers said to the bloody half-nude woman exiting the captain’s quarters.

He never did find out.