Siren Song

“I expected a little compassion from a former soldier like you, Ms. Karras.”

With some female veterans, you could just look at them and tell. It was in the way they talked, the tilt of their shoulders, or a steely gaze. But Chloe had been so young when she served that she hadn’t kept the military mannerisms and few people ever guessed. She must have looked as startled as she felt because he added, “I know all about you, Chloe. I know why your tour of duty was cut short. The whole decorated veteran thing may not go with your rebellious rock-diva image, but it’s not hard to look you up.”

She wasn’t about to let him rattle her. Not after a set like tonight. She’d been a goddess on stage and she wasn’t ready to come down off that high. “Am I supposed to be impressed that a guy your age knows how to use a search engine? Listen, I’ve mourned soldiers who gave their lives saving people, so I’m not about to shed any tears for these two.” She shoved the photos back toward him. “Might nominate them for the Darwin Awards, though.”

His expression soured and he folded his napkin in a very precise square. “Yet, I hear these boys were big fans of yours….”

Chloe shrugged and took a gulp of beer. Oak barrel stout. Cold, frothy and rich. She let it tingle all the way down before replying. Let him stew. He was pissing her off. “Yeah, well, they were also slobbering losers who didn’t know how to keep their hands to themselves. The last time I saw them at a show, they started a fight and my drummer had to step in. They were pretty much another Navy sex scandal just waiting to happen. So why are you asking me about Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber?”

“Because they were my students,” he said, pinning her in place with those cold, unnerving eyes. “And I know that you killed them.”

CHAPTER TWO

If Alexandros hadn’t known from personal and painful experience how easily a siren could lie, he might’ve been taken in by Chloe’s wide-eyed expression of shock. But as an ancient guardian of the sea, he knew better than to trust any protestation of innocence from a siren.

She was a siren. Every man in the room was mesmerized by her song; even Alexandros had been forced to steel his ancient bones against her enchanting voice. He wasn’t immune to her—much as he would try to convince her otherwise—but he wasn’t about to get taken in. Not again.

“You think I killed them?” Chloe started to laugh, a nervous sound, as if she thought he was deranged. “Dude. If this is some kind of lame pickup line, you’ve really got to step up your game.”

“This isn’t a game.” He grabbed her wrist. He wouldn’t be toyed with.

“Ow! Stop it,” she hissed.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but now he couldn’t seem to let go. It’d been so long since he’d touched a woman that his entire body awakened to the sensation. She seemed to feel it, too. Her beautiful sapphire eyes blinked from beneath dark, smudged mascara, too garish for his taste. He didn’t like the punk-rocker pink hair that revealed itself from beneath her dark curls, either. She was a wild child and everything about her screamed of exactly the kind of chaos he could not abide.

Still, she was captivating. He had to shake off the attraction. Sirens were treacherous but tragic creatures, and if he let himself, he could feel sorry for her. He could feel more than sorry. Yet, all he wanted now was to die in peace, and there could be no peace for him so long as a siren was near.

With her wrist still in his grasp, he became acutely aware of the heated, envious glares of all the men in the place. All she had to do was call them over and there’d be violence. They were all under her spell. Especially her drummer, who had disentangled himself from the arms of another woman, and now looked eager for a fight. But then, what man could stay sane listening to a siren sing, night after night?

Chloe’s voice lowered. “If you don’t let go of me by the time I count to three—“

“What are you going to do? Use your powers to make me take a long walk off a short pier?”

That shocked her. Like most sirens, it’d probably never occurred to her that someone might know her secret. In fact, she probably didn’t know there were any mortal men in the world who could resist her. She might not even know there were men who were more than mortal….

“Look, Captain Asshole, if you don’t let go of me, I’m going to have the bouncers throw you out!”

“I bet they’ll come running, won’t they? There’s not a guy in this place that wouldn’t do anything you asked him to. Except for me. I know what you are.”

“I know what you are, too. Crazy! I didn’t do anything to your students. If you think I’m guilty of something, call the cops. Otherwise, leave me alone.”

“The police won’t believe that you can control men by singing. Even if they did believe it, all you’d have to do is hum and they’d be dancing to your tune.”

This time she didn’t deny it. “What do you want from me?”

What did he want from her? In more ancient times, it would’ve been his duty to bring her to justice. But there was no justice in this modern world, which was one of the many reasons he’d chosen not to live in it any longer than necessary. Now, he just wanted her gone. “Get out of Annapolis. If you’re going to prey on sailors, do it in someone else’s town.”

“Prey on sailors?” Oh, she was a fine actress. Those wide sincere eyes. That plucky resolve as she yanked free of his grip. “I told you, I didn’t kill anybody!”

She had spirit, he had to give her that. She seemed so genuinely bewildered that it almost broke his resolve. She was young, after all, and still coming into her powers. Perhaps she was telling the truth….

No. He’d heard a fatal siren song the night those midshipmen died. Hardening his heart, he took the photos and slid out of the booth. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours to pack up your show and take it on the road.”

“Or what?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

Chloe watched him walk away, her heart slamming in her chest. He knew!

Ever since she’d returned from Iraq and decided to start singing, she’d told herself that her powers were just something she imagined to psyche herself up. To give her an edge on the stage. To make her feel untouchable, like no one could ever hurt and humiliate her again. Or maybe just to convince herself that she deserved to make it big. Didn’t every aspiring music star have some kind of magical charm?

Once, she’d even confessed to her therapist that she thought her effect on men was supernatural, but the shrink had chalked it up to post-traumatic stress disorder—as if she’d conjured up these feelings of power to compensate for all the powerlessness she’d experienced in the desert. But now this complete stranger believed that her powers were real. It might’ve actually been a relief to finally have someone who knew her secret…if only he hadn’t accused her of murder!

Okay, so she wasn’t blameless. Chloe used her charm to get out of speeding tickets and sticky situations. To get men to pick up her bar tab. To get a little extra oomph in the bedroom. And though she’d fantasized about using her powers to hurt people if she needed to, she’d never actually done it. She just wasn’t that kind of person, was she?

When Chloe left the booth, all she could think about was how Captain Alex Shore could know about her powers. And if they were real, why was he immune? She felt edgy. Freaked out. She just wanted to get out of the bar. She didn’t want to deal with Sophia’s protectiveness, but now her friends gathered around her.

“Hey, are you okay?” Sophia asked.

“Yeah,” Jay chimed in, his drumsticks tucked under his arm. “What’d that guy say to you?”

“Nothing. He’s just a jerk. Stop hovering!”

“Okay,” Jay said. “But only because I’ve got some great news! There’s gonna be a talent scout in the audience tomorrow.”

Chloe blinked. “Seriously?” Between drunken binges and late-night partying, her bandmates had always talked about making a demo and sending it to a music exec, but Chloe always put it off. She worried that her magic only worked live. But if a talent scout was going to actually come to one of their shows…this could be their big break. After all the practicing, the annoying promo, she was finally going to get her shot. Even if she’d given a nanosecond’s consideration to leaving town, that was a nonstarter now.

She was staying, even if Captain Tall, Dark and Dangerous wanted her gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Chloe was up early the next morning, restless. Hair in a ponytail, she slipped on a plain tank top over her favorite pair of faded jeans, then climbed over the mountain of pizza boxes in the living room and grabbed her guitar. She considered finding some breakfast, or maybe starting her day with a cold beer from the fridge, but she was too jittery for that.

Settling on the chair by the screened-in porch, she strummed the first few notes of a new song she’d been working on. Soul-baring stuff that made her really uncomfortable. Of course, that’s what music was for, wasn’t it? Maybe it was time to stop hiding from her past. It wasn’t like it was secret. After she’d been rescued, it’d been all over the news….

Chloe and Sophia had been assigned to a checkpoint, part of an effort to respect Iraqi culture by making sure that only female soldiers searched Iraqi women and children. Their position had been overrun and they’d been taken captive. Closing her eyes, Chloe sang the first verse, remembering the chafing sand against her body as they pinned her and yanked her pants down. The burning humiliation when they laughed. Her gut-wrenching revulsion at the sweating men working over her. And the pulse-pounding terror when they put the barrel of a rifle in her mouth to make her stay still.

All the emotions came roiling up inside Chloe now, even the relief at having been rescued before those animals could turn their attention on Sophia. Chloe reminded herself that the important thing was that she’d survived it. Of course, then she’d been discharged. The military didn’t like to bring too much attention to these kinds of things. Chloe hadn’t wanted that kind of attention, either, and unable to stand all the questions, she took her guitar on the road and ended up here, sharing a rented house with Sophia when her tour of duty was up.

Chloe liked their old row house with its weathered siding and back porch. She liked Nap Town, too. Annapolis was quaint and colonial. There was plenty of water. About as opposite a place from Iraq as she could find. Except for the soldiers. Well, sailors, really; she didn’t usually mind them. At least until one of them threatened her. That’s right. Captain Alex Shore hadn’t just accused her of murder, he’d threatened her, and she’d had more than her share of threats for one lifetime….

Whispers at the back of his classroom stopped Alexandros’s hand, midstroke, at the chalkboard. He turned with a stern look, as he had no tolerance for tomfoolery. He was serious about passing on his knowledge of naval history—after all, he’d actually been there for most of it. Just as he was about to propose some form of discipline, the primal notes of a siren’s song shattered his concentration. The chalk in his hand fell away as the sound reverberated through him, sudden arousal threading through his muscles and sinews, luring him.

His students didn’t react. They couldn’t hear it. They might be servicemen, but they weren’t his true comrades. They weren’t tritons; he was alone in this fight. Right now, the power of the siren’s song was driving him mad. He struggled through the rest of the lesson, desperate for class to end, all the while cursing himself for having ever thought that the siren would be sensible enough to simply pack up and leave. How many times in his life was he going to make the mistake of giving a siren the benefit of the doubt?

Unlike ordinary men, he could resist the song of a siren, but he could also hear her from miles away. She had to go. He had to be rid of her. Annapolis simply wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

He followed her voice a few blocks from the Academy and the City Dock, where he found himself outside an old historic row house. He went around the alley in back, where the music was loudest, and the effect on him strongest. He hopped the fence. Chloe was just inside the open back door. Eyes shut, guitar over her knees and completely alone in the most disorderly living room he’d ever seen. Softball equipment spilled over the makeshift coffee table, bills and papers scattered and a stack of empty beer bottles lined one wall. Amid all this, her voice emerged as a haunted, scratchy sound of violation and struggle.