Page 95 of Ensnaring the Siren

There was a section of the room cordoned off by a large, semi-opaque sheet of plastic. She whisked it aside with a rough yank.

Rows of mermaid tails, severed at the waist, hung from meat hooks, their tailfins dragging across the floor, and scales dim and dull, washed out of their usual vibrant color. On a table off to the side was the upper half of one of her podmates, tail cleaved and gone.

Two empty sockets where her eyes had been stared back at Nireed, her hand hanging limply off the table, claws and webbing sliced away. Her flesh was being cut into and divvied up; her organs harvested.

Packaged. Labeled.

It came from low in her belly. A piercing, shattering scream.

Every worker in the room dropped to their knees, covering their ears.

Nireed upended table after table, rage and anguish her only allies as she set upon destroying this evil. An avenging maelstrom. The ocean had been pillaged, her people slain and dismembered like animals, and there would be a reckoning.

Metal screeched as she ripped the processing hold’s door off its hinges and hurled it at a wall, crumpling in on itself.

Shouting above. Running footsteps. Down the stairs, then in the hall outside.

Picking up a four pound can labeled Sea Maiden Pâté, Nireed threw it at the first crew member to darken the threshold, gun drawn. The can hit his head with a wet, meaty crack, and his hand jerked up, setting the gun off.

Chapter

Thirty-Three

Overhead fluorescents shattered, showering the floor in broken glass, the lowermost deck doused in darkness. Surface Dwellers screamed, pathetic creatures flailing uselessly without their precious light, shoving, scratching, crawling over one other, trying to get somewhere, anywhere, away from her. It was so easy to wrench away their defenses, hard plastic crunching in her hands, gunmetal twisted beyond repair.

Some made it to the stairs.

One fisherman, braver and more foolish than the rest, covered their retreat, shooting wildly from the other end of the hallway. She let them have their glimpse of freedom.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

No conservation, just fear.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Click. Click. Click. Click.

Siren Song rose from her throat, filling the tight quarters, taking the crew into her thrall. Their fear spiked, a most delicious, pungent scent that made her mouth water and her stomach growl. She was agony and wrath incarnate. There would be no escape.

On all fours, she slunk from the fish processing hold, and into the hallway, ensuring the fishermen were truly helpless and well ensnared. When no additional gunfire followed, she rose to her feet, her inner luminescence the only light in the dark.

They would see, as well as hear, her coming.

She stalked down the hallway with her arms outstretched, ripping deep gouges in the walls, the metal groaning and screeching as it tore. With each step she gritted her teeth, bare feet passing through shattered glass and metal shards; it was but a fraction of the pain clawing from her chest.

The bottlenecked crew froze in place, unable to move, their hammering hearts a symphony of fear and dread.

A flicker of movement to her left, and a familiar, friendly scent, drew her to a stop. Lorelei stood in the threshold of a doorway, a fisherman trembling in her grasp, and a puddle of urine pooling at his feet.

Good. They hadn’t hurt her.

If they had…

Rage filled her anew, red and blindingly hot.

Striking fast, Nireed lunged at the last man to fire a gun at her, dropping the thrall she had on him. He tried taking a swing, but she grabbed his wrist and wrenched him around sharply, knocking his feet out from underneath him. He twisted and kicked and screamed as she dragged him across the floor toward the fish processing hold. She could’ve continued subduing him like she had the others, but she chose not to.

She allowed the struggle.

Lorelei stepped into the hallway behind them. “Nireed, wait! Don’t do this.”

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