Page 27 of Wicked Tides
I was going to be one of the best.
“If you don’t paint your blade today, another day you will, but a move made too soon could get you killed.” He paused, his eyes wandering a bit. “Your mother would never forgive me for that.”
The corner of my mouth twitched at the humor of his words. My mother always smacked him across the head for leaving first before hugging him like he’d been gone for years every time he returned from a long hunt. I couldn’t imagine what she’d do if he got her only child killed.
A hand slapped my back, hardened by the heavy silver rings on the thumb and middle finger.
“Ah,” said a rough whisper. “He’s smart. He’ll do just fine, Woelf.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Gustov. He’d had white hair since I could remember and a full beard that he braided into three ropes. And he was the biggest man I knew, built like a bear.
“I know he’ll do fine,” my father winked.
My heart started to tremble at the thought of going ashore where those awful sounds were coming from. If agony had a voice, that would be it. Shrill, long-winded, and hopeless. They’d sunk their teeth into something horrid, thanks to my father’s brilliance, and now they were stuck on land, in pain and disoriented.
The perfect predators were now the perfect prey.
Myself, my father, and eight other crewmen climbed down into the jolly boat, all armed with blades and pistols while the remaining crew took on the important duty of protecting the ship, our only way out. If it went down, we were all trapped like every other poor soul that had seen the bottom of the ocean before their time. Jack, my father’s best friend, hummed a quiet tune as he rowed, not a care in the world. He was an uncle to me just as much as Gus. The whole crew was family and I was eager to join them. Eager to prove myself to them all.
Once we started moving inland, I felt my mouth go dry. I’d never taken a life, human or otherwise. But taking the life of a singing menace was the greatest thing a man could do. A blade bloodied by the cunning creatures was a blade worth more than gold could pay.
A blade that had taken a daughter of the sea was a blade worthy of a name.
Mine was yet unnamed, but perhaps soon it would earn its place.
The bottom of the boat scraped against the stone in the shallows. It was then that my father gave the signal. Two men stayed back to defend the boat while the rest of us lowered ourselves into the knee-deep water and ventured to the beach. The water swallowed my legs, eerily warm like freshly spilled blood.
A siren’s song could turn a man’s free will to clay, moldable by the one whose voice softened his resolve in the first place. It was said to make a man crazy with lust. With desire. With a need to do and be anything commanded of them. Others said it was like knives in the brain, scrambling all rational thought and turning it into obsession. But the songs of that island were nothing of the sort.
On the black sand beach, the violence already peeked its gory head out of the fog. The first piece of the massacre that I saw was hard to make out. Once attached to a body, the torn-up meat of an arm sat on the sand, its blood weeping down the beach with every pass of the gently creeping waves. The bone was stripped on one side showing the thick insides of torn muscle, tainted with a poison so vicious, it turned the blood to something dark.
My father let out a low chuckle, taking a whiff of the salty air.
“Smell that?” he said.
I pulled in a deep breath and found the faint scent of cinnamon on the breeze, but it was tainted. It smelled old and soggy and corrupted by the metallic hint of blood.
My father pulled his cutlass from his belt. Softscale was an old blade with a handle wrapped in crocodile leather. It had been washed in the blood of fallen men and sirens feared it like rabbits feared wolves, for when the blood of victims was folded into the bronze, it was poison to the bitches. So the legends said, at least, though bronze by itself seemed to do the trick if it cut right. I glimpsed the edge of his weapon as he strode up the beach to the black rocks ahead. Behind me, Jack had pulled out both of his pistols.
The reality of our venture hit me like a handful of sand to the face.
I’d never seen a siren with her body attached to her head.
I was about to find out exactly how vicious they were.
More body parts left a trail of gory crumbs leading up the beach, every one of them stripped to the bone and oozing black blood. Rotten cinnamon invaded my senses with more force and I winced.
The wailing echoed from within the cover of the jagged boulders ahead. The breeze whirled around us. We reached the threshold where sand turned to twigs and pebbles… and it all stopped. The breeze. The sounds. Even my heart.
My father held up his fist and we stopped walking, listening to the sudden stillness. I wasn’t experienced in the hunt, but I knew something wasn’t right. The hair on the back of my neck stood and chills coursed through my whole body. My father sniffed like a dog ona trail and Jack let out a low groan behind me. They knew something was off, too.
“Whole crew,” Jack muttered. “They ate the whole goddamn crew.”
“No,” my father said. “They shouldn’t have been able to.”
I glimpsed his narrowed eyes and my uneasiness multiplied.
From the sounds, the sirens should have been just behind the rocks, but none appeared. I gulped, the sound of my heart pounding against my ears like fists.
