Page 25

CHAPTER 24

F rom atop a boulder at the water’s edge, Taryn hesitated to follow Eoin into the pool. She had a bird’s-eye view of the fight and it looked to be going sideways.

If Creed were a prizefighter, he’d have lost the championship belt to a knockout in the first round. The vicious blow caught him unawares when he went to Narissa’s aid as she went down. The crack of her head against the ground was sickening, and despite his claim of not caring, Creed did. A whole helluva lot. In his rush to check on Narissa, he exposed himself to danger, and Odessa quickly took advantage.

If asked, Taryn couldn’t explain how she understood the Succubus’s intended move, but she felt it clear to her bones. Closing her eyes, she drew water from the grotto. She reshaped it into five-inch-thick, foot-long spikes by changing the molecular structure of the water to ice.

She’d created five before Brenna’s Siren trilled a warning and launched herself at Odessa’s back. And when Taryn looked up, it was to see the Succubus bearing down on her.

“Stay back, Brenna. She’s too strong,” she hollered.

Her warning served to fuel Brenna’s anger, and she attacked with vigor. The precious extra minute gave Taryn time to construct two more ice stakes.

But Odessa was done being nice. With one of her lethal tentacles, she tossed Brenna into the cavern wall, stunning her to stillness.

Pulling up her element, Taryn directed the water to chuck her icy weapons at Odessa. But she only managed five before she was facing down seven feet of enraged beast.

“Has anyone ever said that you resemble Ursula from The Little Mermaid ? But only if she lost a fight with a weed whacker and her glam team quit halfway through,” she taunted.

Odessa hissed. Her unwavering, sly-eyed stare slithered under Taryn’s skin and stayed there.

Digging in her heels, she held onto the last dregs of her courage. “No? It’s just a tragic coincidence?”

“You are insignificant, you fool!” Odessa raged.

Taryn pointed with one of her stakes. “See! That’s what I’m talking about right there. I bet you’d manage a passable rendition of Poor Unfortunate Souls if you weren’t such a tightass.” Summoning all the magic she possessed from a cellular level, she threw the deadly ice shard.

Once again, the Succubus effortlessly batted it away.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you, girl,” Odessa said in her creepy-ass serpentine way.

A cold fist clenched around Taryn’s heart. Was Fintan slipping away? Fear for him reignited her fighting spirit, and she hurled her final stakes.

She never noticed the extra limb. Hell, she didn’t know the bitch could sprout so many! But one lashed out, and the fucking thing fileted her like a trout. It sliced through her abdomen with its claw extruding from her back. Sheer agony wrenched a scream from her throat.

Odessa grinned, savage and gleeful. The sadistic cow yanked Taryn, prepared to deliver the kiss of death. She managed a token resistance, gurgling a feeble protest.

“Did you really think to best me, child?”

Fetid breath gagged her.

“Ursula called. She wanted her look back, but then she realized you’re only the budget version—ahhh!”

She shrieked as Odessa twisted her claw, shredding organs, muscle, and bone.

Focus, Taryn. Please, for the love of ? —

“Why focus?” the Succubus purred. “Ah, you forgot I can read your mind.”

The hideously forked tongue slithered between Anglerfish teeth and licked the blood from Taryn’s lips.

Internal bleeding. Never good.

Dizziness assailed her, and a haze blanketed her mind. She fought the feeling.

It was now or never.

She blanked her thoughts, gripped the amulet, and ripped it off Odessa’s neck in one smooth move. With the last burst of elemental magic, she flung it into the water’s waiting embrace, commanding the current to rush it away.

“Find Ardghal,” she breathed as one final whisper.

Ardghal’s body jerked. Once in response to the water encapsulating his amulet, and again to the abrupt snapping of Taryn’s and his bond.

Above him, the remains of the ceiling were illuminated, and Eoin systematically disintegrated the boulders. Through the shimmering waters, Bloodstone’s necklace fell, drifting ever closer as Odessa’s tentacle chased it.

A gap in the stones provided a view of the scene above water, and with dread in his heart, he looked upward.

A careless toss of Taryn’s lifeless body proved Odessa considered her nothing more than yesterday’s garbage. The pain was a thousand times worse than Elizabeth’s defection, and it lacerated his soul. It wasn’t only his grief or rage; it was Fintan’s. Odessa now had to contend with their mindless fury, animalistic in nature, and beyond anything but a need to destroy.

The amulet’s chain was almost within Ardghal’s grasp, and he curled forward, elongating his arm to reach it first. As his fingers brushed the metal, electricity shot through him, straight along his spine to his tail, healing the damaged vertebrae, muscle, tendons, and tissue. He pressed the disc against his breastbone and welcomed the current. His cells quickly absorbed the amplified elemental magic through the water and earth supporting him.

He was born to a full blooded Siren princess in this grotto’s water, and his first physical incarnation died here. The amulet had been crafted by a loving father, Bloodstone. A demigod, who, by hanging the chain around Ardghal’s neck, had gifted him the ability to walk on land. Father had allowed him to bridge the divide between the two worlds, sea and soil.

Ardghal was the only Fíorghin Scairdeanach .

The Trueborn Surge.

And he was back to full strength.

The energy didn’t stop at healing. It surged higher, resonating like a pulse through the grotto, through the walls, the water, the bones beneath. The power of the amulet embraced him and reached inward, where the threads of Fintan’s soul still clung to what they had once shared.

For the first time since his death, Ardghal stood alone inside himself.

Whole.

Singular.

Their split wasn’t gentle. It was fucking brutal.

Beside him, a muffled gurgle sounded, and he recognized it as Fintan’s scream. It echoed through their bond as it snapped and tore like a sail in a storm.

And then, silence.

Ardghal’s jaw clenched, and for a sickening moment, he feared the worst. He sent a feeler through the water, searching for Fintan’s heartbeat.

Nothing. The worst had happened.

Reaching inward, he withdrew vitality from his core and pushed it into the chest of the sightless man beside him. The chambers of Fintan’s heart pulsed once, twice, and on the third beat, he gasped and sputtered as he sucked in water. When he would’ve struggled to the surface, Ardghal gripped the back of Fintan’s neck.

“Breathe, boy. You’ve Siren blood. The water is your friend, don’t fight it.”

Panic receded from Fintan’s eyes as he processed the words. “We’re separate?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ardghal said roughly.

He didn’t mourn their separation, because he’d always known it had to come. They had walked as one for too long. Now, there would be two princes to rule again.

His fingers closed over the Bloodstone amulet, fully fused to his chest.

No chain.

No clasp.

It pulsed like a second heart.

And the grotto responded.

Stone fell away. Magic bent to him. And he rose, not swimming but ascending, propelled by elemental reverence.

As his head breached the water’s surface, Odessa turned.

Her expectant expression froze as fear claimed its place, and she faltered.

Peter had done him a service by scattering the journals—each laced with ancestral spells—to the four corners of the earth. His action, resulting from his gift as Seer with knowledge of this future event, had prevented his sister’s power grab.

The Siren rite of power reclamation was always intended to restore to Ardghal what he’d lost. With his amplified water magic, the resonance-based spells, and ancestral bonds afforded to him by his lineage, he once again possessed what he needed to destroy his enemies. Odessa among them.

“Taryn!” Fintan’s anguished cry filled the space and echoed off the rocks.

But Ardghal couldn’t let himself be distracted. He had a job to finish.

“Come to me,” he compelled Odessa. Into his voice, he wove seduction and royal decree. Her DNA made it impossible to resist. Like a marionette, with movements the opposite of fluid, she stepped upon the pool’s stone lip. “For your actions, your life is now forfeit, Odessa Sullivan.”

“Your power was supposed to be mine,” she said raggedly. Her death was imminent, and she knew it. Yet her anguish left him cold.

“It was never going to be yours,” he snapped. “Your mind was clouded by your insatiable thirst for more. But the amulet wasn’t made for you.”

Father had constructed it of his demigod blood, Siren placenta, and the enchanted waters of the grotto where Ardghal’s parents had secretly met. The amulet was always unique to him. When Elizabeth removed it from his chest, she dislodged his spirit and sent his body back from whence it came, resting in its watery grave, waiting to be revived.

With his sacred object returned, he was once more immortal and ruler of his Siren clan, as meager as it was.

“Will ya give me a chance to say goodbye?” she pleaded.

“To whom? No one living or dead will mourn your loss.”

“My sisters, my brother, and my parents are all here.” She pointed behind him, and he didn’t need to look. The weight of the deaths she’d caused was heavy in the air.

Taryn among them.

“They’re here to see justice, Odessa. Not to mourn your passing or guide you to the next life. There will be none for you.”

From the corner of his eye, he spotted Taryn hovering beside Fintan, who was bent over her bloody, broken body, sobbing. Ardghal’s rage at Taryn’s senseless murder boiled to the surface. His arm flashed out, and he gripped Odessa by the neck.

“Jaysus!” Eoin gasped from beside Brenna. “Did ya see how feckin’ fast the fucker moved?”

She and Narissa were once more in their human forms, looking worse for wear.

“Return to the house,” Ardghal ordered them, not unkindly. “You shouldn’t be here for this.”

“I’m stayin’,” Fintan said dully. “And I’d be thankin’ ya to let me be the one to dismember Odessa.”

“It’ll take more than your anger, boy. Go.”

Creed wasted no time lifting Narissa and teleporting away, and after a tearful look at Taryn, Brenna allowed Eoin to do the same. As he waited for his order to be obeyed, Ardghal sensed the struggle within Fintan. He allowed him the time he needed.

“Taryn’s here with ya, boyo,” Peter said gently. “You’ve the ability to see her spirit if you’re of the mind.”

Fintan lifted his head, his gaze disbelieving as it landed on her beside him. “Why were ya so foolish, Taryn-Taryn?” he cried. “I told ya you couldn’t fight a Succubus, not as a mere witch.”

Tears shimmered in her mournful eyes, and her loving smile was heartbreaking in its intensity. Ardghal’s vision blurred, and grief nearly cleaved him in two. He forcefully shifted Odessa to view the tragedy she’d rendered.

“Was it worth it?” he snarled. “All the lives you’ve taken in your endless quest for more… was it fucking worth it?”

“I—”

He snapped her neck before she could utter another word.

It wasn’t, and nothing she could say would right this wrong.

With a deep inhale, he said, “Fintan, I need to finish this, and you need to go now or die here.”

“I’ll die here. With her.”

Frustration at the foolish romantic drivel made him fling Odessa’s body harder than he needed, and her skull cracked open on the stones at his feet. Stalking to Taryn’s body, he picked her up and carried her into the water. He’d braced himself for the impact of Fintan’s expected attack, but still, he staggered under the weight.

“What the fuck are ya doin’?” Fintan shouted.

Ardghal faced him, Taryn locked in his arms. “Think, boy! The waters are enchanted, as are the boulders she helped me spell.”

Hope, that ever elusive bitch, flashed in Fintan’s pain-darkened eyes. “You can save her?”

“I can try, but you need to go.”

“And if I don’t?”

A disbelieving laugh escaped him, and Ardghal stared at him in wonder. “Did you get your arrogance from me, then?”

“Aye. Seems likely.”

“Remember what I said about ya dying?” He waited for Fintan to nod. “My Siren song is the strongest of our line. It will burn up your DNA as I intend it to Odessa’s. You can’t survive it, Fintan, not now that we’ve split in two.”

“What about Taryn?”

“She’ll be safe where I place her. You won’t,” he said.

“Was it always goin’ to play out this way, then? Were the ancestors right when they said she’d be my downfall? They meant her death, didn’t they?”

“No. They fought my resurrection. They always knew it was coming if Taryn handed you my amulet.”

“Save her. Please,” Fintan begged.

“That’s the plan, Fin. Now, for her sake, go.”

Ardghal waited long enough to ensure Fintan’s teleport before he sank to the depths of the grotto floor and placed Taryn’s body on the bed where he was born. Her multi-colored hair floated around her, creating an eerie visual with her too-still visage and bloody body.

“Rest, love.”

After returning to the surface, he relied on the water’s buoyancy to keep himself afloat as he twisted his upper torso back and forth, summoning what he needed from within the mini-tide he created. The energy flowed through him, building as it joined with the magic inside his cells. Throwing back his head, he released a single note, increasing the volume as his power took hold.

His Siren’s song, a utilization of hydro-acoustic resonance, created a soundwave strangulation in Odessa’s bloodstream. The vibration shook her body where it lay, gaining in intensity with each accelerando, his voice climbing from baritone to tenor, and then soaring into an otherworldly register, piercing and florid, like a male coloratura, until Odessa’s body collapsed under the weight of his final note.

Stepping from the water, he crossed to her empty husk. Dispassionately, he stared down, mourning the loss of her potential as his descendant. The good she could’ve done in the world would’ve far exceeded that of her evil self. But that was the problem with greedy Sirens when the lure of more was too strong to resist.

Fortunately for him, his father had anticipated Ardghal’s nature and added a failsafe into the amulet. Through metal, blood, and stone, Father allowed Ardghal to transition from human to sea creature to Incubus without the demon taking control. He’d instilled his wisdom and patience in his hybrid son, teaching Ardghal the importance of both in addition to empathy and compassion.

All things Odessa had sorely lacked.

“What will ya do with her now?” Peter asked.

“Burn the remains and scatter the ash away from the sea. She doesn’t deserve a proper burial for her crimes.” Ardghal glanced at him, noting the sorrow and regret. “Do you believe me wrong?”

“No. I’m mournin’ me bright, wild-child sister from our youth. After she killed her first, she was dead to me.”

“You think my judgment fair?”

“Aye, my liege.”

“So it will be done.” He touched Peter’s shoulder, making him solid. “Prepare her body for the bonfire. I’ve a need to see to Taryn.”