Siren Song

somebody shouting, “Go!” I wasn’t expecting Adriana to launch a high kick at my face with no warning whatsoever.

She was good and she was fast. Whoever had trained her knew what they were doing. I hadn’t realized that sirens were on par in speed with vampires. If I’d still been a vanilla human, that kick would have laid me out flat, maybe even broken my neck.

But I’m not fully human, not anymore. I saw the blow coming and was able to duck, twist, and grab her ankle. Using her foot as a handle, I continued my turn, pulling her off her anchoring foot and flinging her to the rocky ground with a heavy thud. It had to hurt. Hell, it was painful to hear. But she rolled and stood, blood oozing from scrapes where her skin had been torn off by the coarse rock. Ouch.

But it didn’t even slow her down. Before I could even step backward, she was flying at me. She grabbed my arm and tossed me probably a dozen feet. The circle of people parted to let me fly past. On landing, I shook my head and tried to clear the fuzz from my brain. As I stood up, the calf that had been injured the night before informed me there was still glass somewhere in my muscles. The pain was sharp and immediate as I frantically moved left to avoid a kick square in the face. I leapt to my feet from my knees like I was an extra in a Jackie Chan movie and we were off again.

We circled, eyeing each other, looking for telltale movements. Blows flew and were blocked. Feints succeeded or failed.

Soon, the scent of blood filled the air, adding copper to the salt filling my nose. I figured out pretty quickly that “first blood” wasn’t actual first blood. I paused briefly when that happened, but nobody stopped the fight, so oh, well. I’d keep going until someone yelled, “Stop!”

My vision was flowing in and out of hyperfocus, making it hard to think. Fortunately, there wasn’t really time to think, so it didn’t much matter.

The two of us were well matched. She had me in reach. I had better strength, though not by as much as I would’ve expected. We both were well trained. We would’ve been equal if I’d neglected my weight work. This could wind up being a long, painful ordeal with the winner determined by willpower and stamina. Fortunately, I have quite a lot of both.

She moved to sweep my legs, putting all her weight on her left leg. Timing my jump with exquisite care, I went for a flying kick. She turned, taking the blow on her shoulder rather than giving me her back and risking a spinal injury.

The impact staggered her, threw her off balance. It was the break I’d hoped for. I dived at her in a flying tackle, the pair of us hitting the ground with a jarring impact.

I thought I had her, but she managed to pull herself out of my grip and roll away before I could pin her.

I scuttled back, trying to gain my feet, but she was quicker—quick enough to kick me in the ribs as I rose. That hurt. I came to my feet hissing with pain and annoyance, blood gleaming like neon on the surface of glowing skin.

She was on her feet as well. Her expression flickered from startled to grim determination and she moved in to attack.

My eyes shifted into full vampiric hyperfocus. Everything was suddenly so clear. I could see each grain of sand, the pores and flaws in each stone. Adriana’s tiniest muscle movements were grossly exaggerated. I knew what she was going to do almost before she did.

She shifted, throwing a hard punch toward my solar plexus, but I wasn’t there. I’d dropped down and was sweeping her legs out from under her. She went down hard. Her head slammed against the same rock hard enough this time to stun her for a second. In that second I was on her, pinning her body with mine. She started to struggle, turning her head back and forth as she searched for some way of escape. I hissed again, but this time it wasn’t a sound of pain. It wasn’t a human sound at all.

My eyes focused on her neck and the pulse that beat so rapidly, so close to the skin. My sense of self began to fade as the world narrowed to that tiny fragment of flesh. I needed to taste the blood underneath . . . more than I’d ever had to do anything before in my life. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My mouth opened. Adriana’s eyes went wide and she struggled anew, but the sinews in my arms had turned to iron straps and she couldn’t get away.

The vampire within me started to lunge forward to feed and the siren in me was going to let it happen. Clear victory would allow a taste of flesh. But at that last moment, my human conscience forbade it.

People are not food!

Throwing back my head, I howled in hunger that was so strong it was an actual pain. It ripped through every nerve in my body like an electric shock. Pain. So much pain.

But I had to be human enough to say no: human enough not to do this even though another part of myself demanded it. I might be part vampire and part siren. But I was born human and I never intended to lose that part of myself.

I crawled off of Adriana awkwardly, moving painfully to the opposite side of the ring from where she lay. I had beaten my hunger, but I was going to pay dearly for that victory. Rising to my feet, I shoved through the eerily silent crowd to where Hiwahiwa stood beside Ren. I grabbed my clothing without ceremony and turned to Ren. “Get me the hell out of here. Now.” I spoke aloud. I needed food, now, or someone was going to die.

“But—” She glanced over to Queen Lopaka. The queen was still nodding her assent when I felt the world lurch and I was back on the Mona’s Rival—and in the middle of a battle.

15

We materialized into chaos. My eyes burned from smoke and the deck shifted beneath me as an explosion of magic erupted from the door of the front cabin. I watched as a half-charred man flew backward over the rail to slam into the side wall of the cabin of a boat that was tied to our railing.

I felt, rather than saw, Ren vanish. Whether she’d gone for help or just gone was anyone’s guess, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I ducked down, my world still slowed by vampire vision and the need for blood. But my effort at stealth was spoiled when the billowing smoke made me cough. The nearer of the two invaders turned, startled by my sudden appearance and state of undress. Surprise only slowed him for an instant. Still, that instant was enough for me to find my jacket in the pile of clothes and pull out the first weapon that came to hand. I threw the boomer hard, not at him but at the floor by his feet. Covering my eyes, I was rewarded by a flash of heat and light I could feel through my upraised arm and a roar of sound meant to temporarily deafen anyone in range.

I managed to get my gun pulled and safety off quickly enough to step out of the way of the man charging blindly toward me. He might not be able to see now, but he’d glimpsed me before the light show and was attacking based on that knowledge. Not a stupid move in close quarters like these. There wasn’t a lot of room between me and the railing and he was bigger than me.

Still, I had the advantage. I could see. Rather than waste a bullet I might need later, I stepped aside, ducking beneath his outstretched arms. Coming up behind him, I leveled my hardest punch at his right kidney. His knees folded. He probably screamed, but I couldn’t hear it. My ears were still ringing from the boomer.

Hitting the safety, I pistol-whipped him, and he went down. As I shoved him under the railing into the welcoming ocean, I realized that I’d seen him before. At La Cocina. He’d been with George Miller.

What the hell?

It didn’t matter. Well, it did, intellectually. But it didn’t in reality. Because the second man had positioned himself, legs spread and braced between the railing and the cabin wall. Blindly but methodically, he was firing off shots, holding his weapon at waist level. Shoot, adjust an inch to the left, shoot again. Smart. Because if I was blinded, too, he’d get me eventually, based on the limited space. I dropped to my stomach, braced my elbows, and flipped off the safety. Then, just as methodically, I shot him. The bullet took him between the eyes. Gruesome but effective. I was on my knees, getting ready to rise, when a man came around the front of the cabin, apparently checking to see what had happened.

I fired at him, but I was in an awkward position and he was damned quick. I missed. Swearing, he ducked back behind the cabin wall. I had to scramble to get out of his line of fire. The bullet missed me but embedded itself