Page 16 of Wicked Tides
“A living one on our shores,” Gus sighed a breath of smoke. “And to think I been tellin’ myself this whole time it would never stick.”
“We’ll be seeing a lot more of it pretty soon.”
“Don’t feel right.”
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
Collin walked toward us with the siren in tow, a smug look on his sun-chapped face. He took off his hat and tucked it under his arm, revealing brown hair tied into a low ponytail.
“Gentlemen,” he greeted, looking down his nose at a couple of my men as they carried a crate across his path.
Gus was better at pretending he liked someone when he didn’t and inclined his head at the man, taking another puff from his pipe.
“Collin,” he said, ignoring the siren he had by his side.
She looked obedient. Docile. But I knew better than to think a siren could be tamed or even beaten into submission. They feared nothing. Not even pain. I eyed her cautiously, but she continued to ignore everything and everyone around her.
“Getting ready for a hunt?” Collin said.
“Looks that way,” I returned, unable to take my eyes off the prisoner.
“Pretty, isn’t she?” Collin said, stroking a finger across her smooth cheek. Still, she was like a doll.
“I wouldn’t use that word, but she’s definitely eye-catching.”
“Never seen one like her before,” he continued, taking a strand of her unusually reddish hair between his fingers. “Thought she’d pull in a lot of coin.”
At that, I saw the faintest flare in her nostrils. She was hearing everything Collin was saying. She was feeling it. She wasn’t scared, though. The look in her inky eyes was enraged. She was a mountain, quiet and still, with a fountain of molten lava beneath. I narrowed my eyes at her, glimpsing her bound hands to see her clenching her fists so hard she was drawing blood.
“I wish you luck,” Collin said. “The waters are growing sparse and yet somehow more dangerous.” He looked at me with a lazy sense of mocking. “But we all know how you like the storms, Bone Heart.”
I felt the woman’s gaze on me before I saw it. The moment Collin said my name, something in her shifted. Her eyes flicked toward me, dark as night and yet blazing with hate. She knew my name. I smiled internally at the thought. My name had spread far and wide throughout the deep and I enjoyed how it shook the spirits of her kind. I glanced her way and for a second, our eyes met like a hammer against reddened steel. There was the subtlest twitch in her jaw when she glimpsed my chest, which was absent of any jewelry save for a necklace with a few teeth hanging on it.
I sensed it.
Gus sensed it.
The only one too stupid to sense it was Collin.
The woman’s eyes widened like all the rage and hunger had burst inside her. She shoved Collin away, her nails scraping into the fabric of his fancy coat. He stumbled back and she reached up, snapping the leather gag off her face so quickly that no one could stop her. Herfocus zeroed in on me as she spoke in a tone that pierced straight to my soul.
Whether our language or theirs, any man could understand. The voice was one and many all at once. Whispers and seductive tones coiled together to sound as otherworldly as most sirens looked.
Kill them all,the voice said, doing its best to wrap me in its barbed embrace.
I could hear the tones. I could hear what they were trying to do to me, but they would fail. I didn’t wear a silentium like my crew, or any man who hunted the seas as I did. No, I learned long ago that a simple trinket could be snatched right off your neck.
The bronze bell hanging above my head started to hum, the undertones of that terrible voice of hers vibrating through the metal until the air was filled with a haunting moan akin to when the wind caught a groove in a cliff just right. And at that very moment, my chest began to flutter with that same subtle vibration.
All eyes went to the bell when the hum began and then swept quickly back to the siren. In a matter of seconds, my hand was on my blade. I ripped it from my belt and took a wide step toward the woman as her words pounded against my ears. My hand jutted out and clutched her slender neck, squeezing until her voice was cut off. It took three steps for me to have her pinned against another post where I could run her through. I held the tip of the sword to her chest, but before I could thrust it into her heart, I heard the hammer of a pistol cock. I stopped, my eyes catching the metallic barrel only inches from my head.
Fucking Collin.
“Now, I went through a lot of trouble to get this one. You kill her and I kill you.”
I turned my glare on him, baring my teeth when I heard several other guns cock and blades unsheathe behind me. I didn’t have to look back to know it was my crew. The sound of them loading the boats had ceased altogether. I half glanced over my shoulder to confirm andsaw Mullins right beside me, jaw muscles pulsing as he pointed his pistol at the fancy cunt, Collin.
Collin’s throat bobbed as he swallowed and then he masked that nervousness with a sly smile.
