Curses and Faith by Whitney Hill

Author:Whitney Hill [Hill, Whitney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: paranormal, fantasy, romance, vampire, urban, north, carolina
Publisher: Benu Media
Published: 2022-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13: Cade

The first, last, and only time Cade had been glamoured was when Morris had lulled him to his death, the one kindness his sire had ever offered him and that more to ensure he went quietly. He remembered the spiraling plunge into euphoria, the pleasure of the bite even if he hadn’t known what it was, followed by the sensation of being weightlessly, effortlessly alive…until he wasn’t.

Falling prey to the siren’s song had felt something like that, except rather than the high of euphoria, there was a mellowing, a surcease of anguish. He had everything he ever wanted.

Mentally, at least.

Lya smiled at him in the moonlight. “What are you waiting for, babe? Let’s go!”

He had no idea where they were going, but all he wanted was to be with her. He’d follow her anywhere. And he did, passing long decades in a dream until a richly blended scent of earth and herbs and woman reached him.

Lya’s blood.

He stopped following her. She wasn’t bleeding in the dream.

She turned to him again. “What are you waiting for?”

It came to him like the snap of a broken bone. This wasn’t right. This was very, very wrong. He shook his head. “No. No, this isn’t real.”

“Of course it is.” She pouted. “As real as you want it to be anyway. Isn’t this what you want most?” Her hands slid up and over his chest as she went up on her toes to kiss him.

It almost worked. Almost.

But as his hands skimmed over her, he found her wearing the sort of low-cut bodice gown women had worn in his original time…nearly five hundred years ago. Well before Lya could possibly have existed.

The dissonance clanged through him.

“This isn’t right,” he whispered. The scent of blood came again, stronger, alongside the salt scent of both the sea and Lya’s sweat, despite the moonlit field he saw. She wasn’t here with him. She was elsewhere and hurt and struggling.

The siren’s song.

Memory hit him like a slap. He’d summoned the siren, with the words Mami Wata had given him. Simple enough, even if it’d been ages since he’d spoken ancient Greek. He’d tried offering her the elves, but she hadn’t wanted them.

She’d wanted Lya, and she’d sung him to his second death to get her.

The last of his contentment slid into sick horror as he realized he’d be aware when the sirens started eating him, assuming they didn’t spit out his undead flesh and simply drag him under to drown.

But he wasn’t drowning. No water was filling his lungs. If anything, it felt like he was floating, or…being carried? Then a jolt. He was flat again, and the dream started again.

He followed Lya under the moonlight.

More decades passed, until again the rich scent of her blood came when she wasn’t bleeding in front of him, only this time it was on his tongue. Then filling his mouth. Then he was choking on it as someone massaged his throat.

This. I want this. I want her, the real her, not this phantom.

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