Page 14 of Wicked Tides #1

Vidar

The past is a ghost we shall never be rid of

~Titus

“You hear that, my son?” my father said, standing at the bow of the Mother’s Fang with his finger pointing toward a small inlet. “Those desperate cries?”

The fog had settled on the placid waters of the bay, making the eerie songs that echoed against the rocky cliffs that much more haunting.

But the sounds I was hearing were not the ones sailors talked about.

The suffering noises singing from deep within the inlet were the very noises hunters enjoyed the most. Agony. Despair. The tune of monsters defeated.

I looked down at the figurehead, a wooden wolf holding a bell between its teeth, but it was as still and quiet as ever.

“The bell isn’t humming,” I whispered.

“No, those sounds won’t make the bronze hum.”

A smile spread across my father’s lips, shrouded by his untrimmed mustache.

Greasy hair was pulled into a thin ponytail, but I’d learned long ago that there was no one to impress on a hunter’s ship.

My father would clean up when we returned home lest he face the wrath of my mother who hated the smell of the sea on him.

Not a hair had grown on my face yet, but soon I’d be like him, rough and resilient like the two generations of hunters before me.

And this was my chance to finally be a part of a chase. I clutched my cutlass tight and stared into the hazy bay where the broken sails of ruined ships breached the surface of the water like drowning men with their hands stretched toward the sky.

Seeing the ship graveyard just fueled my resolve. It was one of many that tainted the borders of ship lanes across the south sea, but it was the first I was witnessing with my own eyes. It was a violent sight to see wooden maidens of the sea broken, ruined, and forgotten.

The Mother’s Fang had seen many hunts and had succeeded in killing more sirens than any other ship in the region. Now I was on it and learning the trade. I squinted into the fog, anxious to find one of the fiends. I’d never seen one alive.

My father gestured to his men. As the wailing grew louder, the crew grew more silent.

I watched the movements of his hands, reading his words.

He was ordering the men to drop anchor. I could see the land close by.

The rocks were sharp and black, perfect for tearing into ships that had sailed off course, but my father knew better than to skim the shore.

We stopped in the deepest water of the bay and slowly, the men lowered the jolly boat into the water, being careful not to make much noise.

Amongst the loud, pained cries coming from the foggy shore, I doubted we could be heard, though.

“Come, now,” my father muttered, turning me to face him. “Look at me, boy.”

At fourteen, I was a head shorter than him, scrawny, and my hair was a tawny shade like my mother’s.

Where he was covered in scars, I was smooth as a baby’s bottom.

He’d seen everything and I’d seen nothing.

This was my moment. I stared up into his dark brown eyes and saw my boyish face looking back.

That was about to change. Boys ran the farm and took care of their mothers. Men braved the sea.

“We row to shore, slow and quiet,” my father explained. “You keep your wits about you and you stay close, you hear me? And no matter what, you keep that necklace on.”

I nodded once and lifted my fingers to prod at the little pendant under my shirt. Every hunter had one. Without them, the songs were just as deadly to us as they were to any man. It fascinated me that a tiny pendant, forged to be hollow and light, could provide so much protection.

Excitement made my fingers twitch against the hilt of my blade, but I wasn’t an idiot. Foolishness got people killed. Recklessness lost them limbs. The crew of the Mother’s Fang was smart and it was why they were the best.

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 on a 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.

Jack pulled back the hammers on his pistols and I slid my cutlass from my belt, trying to remember my training.

My father turned to another crewman. “Light a torch.”

Fire. The only way to communicate when the fog was thick.

I watched as the crewman pulled one of three sticks from his cloth satchel and a fire steal from his pocket.

The other men encircled him, weapons out.

If someone were to attack, they’d go for the torch bearer first before he could light a flame that could be seen from the ship.

But then the silence was broken by a deep woman’s laugh that seemed to bleed from the wind itself. My father stepped in front of me and pulled out a pistol to fill his other hand.

“Come out, witch!” he challenged.

From the black rocks appeared the vague shape of a woman.

She emerged from the dark stone itself like she was made of volcanic slate, but as she stepped down, her skin shifted and changed like an octopus shedding its camouflage.

She became the color of the fog with deep shadows encircling her eyes and darkening the tips of her clawed fingers.

She was nude with a dusting of silver across her skin that gave most sirens away.

Long, hip-length tendrils of inky hair hung down her back and over her breasts.

I watched her stalk down over the jagged rocks with bare feet as if she was floating.

She was as beautiful as a nightmare disguised as a dream. Tall, feminine, and shrouded in an icy chill that pierced right through my guts .

The woman tsked her tongue, her black eyes unblinking as she slowly shook her head.

“What a cruel trick, Woelf,” she said, her voice seeming to dance all around me.

“Hemsbane in the blood.” She glimpsed the body parts scattered on the beach.

“Sacrifice a few worthless worms just to hunt us down.” Her lip curled into a wicked smirk when she looked at my father again.

“But as you are willing to sacrifice your people, so am I willing to sacrifice mine.”

My father let out a chuckle just as the torch lit fire behind us. The bearer stood, clutching it in his hand and glaring at the fiendish woman before us. Her black eyes flitted toward the orange flame and her jaw hardened with irritation.

“What a filthy thing,” she hissed. Then her vision caught the glint of firelight on my father’s cutlass and her eyes narrowed. “Softscale. How I’ve missed you. Still with your poor sister’s blood in the metal, I assume?”

My father was past succumbing to the taunts of a siren’s words.

“And soon with yours as well, Reyna.”

“Please, Woelf,” she feigned fear. “Do not hurt us. We are just so starving. I beg you.”

Her words faded into laughter like she couldn’t keep it together. And then her gaze fell to me.

“A child. I’ve never liked the taste of them, but yours? I might be able to stomach it. Or perhaps I’ll let him watch while I gnaw your skin off your bones… and then I’ll be merciful and do him quickly.”

My father squeezed his sword but remained calm, standing his ground. I was determined to do the same, but I could not dismiss the fear wrenching my heart. Confidence was terrifying and Reyna had enough to make any man quiver in his boots.

“So? What were they?” Reyna continued, gesturing to the remains of the slaughtered men across the beach. “Volunteers? Murderers? Rapists? No worse than you, I suspect. ”

“Spare me,” my father finally responded, raising his pistol toward Reyna’s head. She didn’t even flinch. “It doesn’t matter who they were.”

“I suppose it doesn’t. They died slowly either way. And the hemsbane did the trick…” Her smile flattened and her dark gaze seemed to get even darker. “But not to all of us. What a clever plan, shrewd Woelf.”

Suddenly, the alarm bell from the Mother’s Fang echoed through the night.

The men looked back with alarm, but my father kept his eyes firmly on Reyna.

Movement caught my eyes in the rocks as more bodies emerged from the black stone.

Sirens, every of one them as frightening as the next.

Their flesh changed in texture and color to match Reyna’s silvery-white hues.

Hideous beasts. Black widows in slick, cold skin. And they were all there to devour us.