Page 1 of The Scent of Salt & Sand

Prologue

Once, when the world was young and wild, and immortals walked beside mortals, Achelous, the most ancient and feared of the river gods, fell in love with Calliope, the exquisite Muse of epic poetry. Their affair was brief, but passionate. The gods loved with such blazing desire that, as with any all-consuming fire, their love extinguished on a pyre of self-absorption.

This fleeting union bore daughters named Sirens, demigods who reflected their parents’ divine nature. Like their mother, they were preternaturally beautiful, gifted with voices that even the Muses envied, for they also had the ability to mold the wills of men.

From their river god father, they were gifted with the ability to shift their forms, so that they could always find solace in any of the waters of the earth. But their father’s powerful nature was not as easily contained as was their birthright from their more refined mother. Achelous was one of the oldest of the gods—brother to the mighty Titans—so hidden beneath the surface loveliness of Calliope’s daughters lurked a predatory nature, so base a beast that mankind had no choice but to fall prey to them.

Calliope built her beloved daughters a magnificent palace on an island called Anthemoessa. Achelous was devoted to them as well, and convinced Poseidon to allow the Sirens to hunt in the mighty ocean god’s waters.

At first all was well—the Sirens prospered. Calliope was well pleased by the stories told of their beauty and their magical voices. Achelous was well pleased by the stories told of their prowess as huntresses, for in his watery world the weak must fall to the strong.

Time passed and the world changed. Still the Sirens prospered. They learned to hide their true nature under the ruse of beauty, but that ruse only worked as long as their human prey did not glimpse what waited beneath their gentle façade. As with all gifts given by the gods, they came with a price. In order to mate and procreate, the Sirens had to revert to their True Form, and that visage was so terrifying, so fantastically, unbelievably horrible, that humans responded on a visceral level—their minds were unable to comprehend the truth of the Sirens, and they went utterly mad. It became a mercy for the Sirens to kill each time they loved.

Some Sirens rebelled. They weren’t murderers. They only desired peace and the love of a mate, but allowing a human to see a True Form and live proved impossible. If they weren’t driven mad, the men were still utterly changed, and that change put the Sirens in danger of being hunted and exterminated, for though they were the daughters of immortals and as such had the ability to live for centuries, they could be killed if they were beheaded or burned on land.

Perhaps it was because they could not love without death, or perhaps it was because their father’s nature proved stronger than their mother’s, but over the eons the Sirens became comfortable with their design—they perfected their killing techniques, and nurtured the terrible myth that was their story.

Eventually, power did as it is wont to do—it corrupted. The Sirens reveled in their power over men, drawing more and more humans to their remote isle, toying with them, loving them, and ending them.

The wives of slain sailors began to pray. They beseeched Hera, the mother of Olympus. Over and over the mortal women begged the goddess to help them—to contain the Sirens—to end their reign of terror.

Hera heard her worshipers and called on the Furies to aid her. The Furies agreed with the mother of Olympus—the Sirens must be contained for the good of the Mortal Realm, but they also understood that, unlike the monsters and murderers that filled the immortal hell of Tartarus, the Sirens were not responsible for the nature gifted to them by their father. So the Furies decided that they would create a special cove for them at the edge of Tartarus, where they would be allowed to live out eternity frolicking within the confines of the Underworld. Hera agreed, with one slight addition to the Furies’ plan. She, who understood the cleverness of the Sirens’ predatory nature, cursed them. As long as they remained in Tartarus, they would stay eternally young and beautiful, but should they ever enter the Mortal Realm again, they would immediately begin to age, sicken, and eventually die a mortal death. Then, with one swift stroke from the mother of Olympus, the Sirens were banished from the Mortal Realm for eternity.

No matter how lovely a prison is, it is still a prison. The Sirens waited in their forced exile, planning and plotting with the brilliance of a Muse and the patience of an immortal, until one day Tartarus fell ill, and their prison weakened, allowing a glimmer of the Mortal Realm to shine through the veil that separated them from their truest desire—freedom.

Whispers from a world both foreign and seductive slipped through the veil, illuminating their gilded cage with a marvelous knowledge of a new magic called technology.

The Sirens continued to watch and wait as they learned everything they could about the modern mortal world—and as they waited, the tear in the veil unraveled enough to allow a few of them at a time to secretly slip from their prison to the Mortal Realm.

The journey was fraught with danger, which did not end once they arrived. The curse was upon them then, and they aged swiftly, which forced them to return to their prison in the Underworld.

But the Sirens were wise. They had a plan. They had been cursed by Hera—their children had not been. It became their mission—their obsession—to mate with mortal men over and over through generations until the blood that tied them to their mothers’ curse was diluted enough to allow a new breed of Siren to exist, free and powerful once more, in the modern world.

The Sirens understood that it might take decades, centuries even, to produce children who could survive in the modern world, but immortality breeds patience, and the Sirens had become very, very patient.

This time they would be more careful.

This time they would be successful.

This time, no one would stop them.

Chapter One

“What the hell is going on over there?” Dean nodded toward the line stretching down three blocks.

“Mystique,” Kait grumbled.

“Mystique? I thought that club was only open on weekends. It’s Tuesday.”

“They’re having one of their costume parties. They’re all the rage.”

Clueless, Dean shrugged.

“Man, you have got to get a life outside this job.” Kait slowed the police car to a crawl. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Open containers,” Dean sighed as a young woman tripped and toppled to the sidewalk, sending a half-empty liquor bottle shattering on the concrete. “At the very least.”

“They’d have a much better night if they just waited a few more minutes until they were inside,” Kait huffed as she flashed the lights and pulled the cruiser over.