Their Siren

Chapter One

Hannah

I blew my hair out of my face with an exasperated sigh. I’d erased the same line, three times already and that was just this afternoon. There was something wrong with me I was pretty sure of it. I had never had a problem capturing an image before. But here? Here I couldn’t draw for shit. It was like the image distorted as soon as I tried to put it to paper and it didn’t matter what median I used, paint or pencil. I couldn’t capture anything.

Sighing heavily, I leant back against the warm wood of my chair, scratching mindlessly at my hair as I took in the shambles of the picture I had been working on. Geez. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t even capture a simple landscape? Some artist I was. I laughed at myself quietly, although it seemed louder in the emptiness.

For some people having weeks of this type of solitude would be torture, for me? For me it was bliss. A final deep breath before I was plunged into the world of commitment my parents had chosen for me. Before I took up a position I never asked for, never even wanted, within my family’s auction house. The worst part? I wouldn’t even be around the actual art or anything remotely interesting, I would be stuck behind a desk updating the website, listing the lesser items on auction sites. It was my idea of hell. My parent’s idea of hell? Well that would be me being happy, I was pretty sure of it. There could be no other reason why they wanted me to leave my life behind, no they had done more than make their wishes known, they had demanded I leave my life behind. It wasn’t an easy life, teaching art to under privileged kids didn’t exactly may the big money, and my home was a tiny studio apartment with second hand furniture, but it was my life, and I happened to like living of spaghetti and left overs. I loved my life.

I had been free, I still was free technically at least for the next five weeks at least. Then I would play the dutiful daughter. I would settle into the mundane, earn a salary and no doubt be bombarded with a stream of perfectly nice boring men, none of whom I would have anything remotely in common with.

I had to close my eyes, even alone I refused to cry about my situation. It wasn’t so bad, it wouldn’t be so bad. If I kept repeating it to myself maybe, just maybe I would start to believe it.

My eyes opened and widened briefly as they fell on the hot tub, raised above the hardwood decking. I hadn’t packed a swimsuit, hell I didn’t even own a swimsuit being slightly on the larger side, but that tub had been calling my name for weeks, and it wasn’t like there was anyone around to see if I slipped in in just my underwear. I worried my lip between my teeth, wearing underwear was the same as wearing a bikini, right? They both showed the same amount of skin, hell I was betting my underwear covered more skin that most swimsuits, I wasn’t exactly miss flashy. Without thinking I pulled my t-shirt over my head, letting it drop onto the decking at my feet. I would pick that up later, my shorts followed suit, pooling around my ankles as I fumbled to remove my trainers. Then I stood, casting wary eyes around me to make sure there was no one in sight and slipped into the hot bubbly water. My skin which had erupted in goosebumps in the cool summer evening air, half from the chill , half I was sure of it from the embarrassment of being half nude out in the open, instantly relaxed and the bubbling water washed over me and I couldn’t help the contended moan that escaped my lips, it was an almost sexual sound. But then the feel of the jets against my naked skin was almost sexual.

Leaning my head back against the cushioned side, I finally relaxed, my limbs weightless and my unnaturally red hair floating about me like a bright red halo. A girl could get used to this, it was like whole body meditation. A girl’s mind could really clear when she was relaxed. Maybe things really wouldn’t be as bad as I thought they would be.

The buzz of my phone shattered the dream instantly. It must be seven o’clock. The time my dad had taken to ring me. For anyone else it would have been fine but my dad? We didn’t exactly have the closest of relationships, He was rigid in his beliefs, and those beliefs were outdated and had no place in the modern world. We had butted heads more times than I dared count. But he was my father and I would always pick up the phone to him. Eventually, anyway. Even if I groaned every single time. Plastering a smile on my face, my mum had always told me that you could hear if someone was smiling over the phone, so I always answered the phone with a smile even though it was silly.

“Hello dad”

“Hello Poppet” my father’s voice as usual was quiet.

My eyebrows disappeared into my hairline and I had to scoot my back against the side as I struggled to sit up straighter. Poppet? My dad hadn’t called my poppet, in years. Once it had been his name for me but that had all changed on my eighth birthday, supposedly eight was the age where a girl was meant to grow up. To put childish things away and start acting your mums age. I grinned, not that I had taken his direction, even now twenty years later I still rebelled in my own small way. You just had to look at my choice of hair colouring to know I was giving the proverbial finger to someone. That someone just happened to be my father.

“Nothing strange to report?” Well that was my dad all over, no how are you, no how’s your day. Straight in. and it was the same question he had been asking me for a week solid.

“Dad” I sigh heavily, using my free hand to move a wet tendril of hair out of my face. “I’ve told you, I don’t even know whose house this is”

And that was the truth, I hadn’t met the owners who were travelling or whatever else the super-rich did during their summers. The only person I had had any contact with was their house keeper Mrs. Fletcher and she hadn’t been to happy when she found out she had given the job to a woman, and a young woman at that. Some mistake where she had misread my email. I’m pretty sure she would have turned me away at the door, bags in hand if there had been any other option but there wasn’t, so my contact still stood.

“Everything here is strange to me” I conceded after several seconds of silence, “The homes of the super-rich are totally out of my comfort zone”

He clicked his tongue, his way of showing his disapproval. A sound I was more that used to hearing. Dad had always been pretty vocal on his disappointment of me growing up. “That’s not what I mean Hannah and you know it”

I paused, “Dad I don’t know what to tell you, the house is great. They have a great selection of art and a monster aquarium but there’s nothing else, and even if there were pictures or personal items, I couldn’t tell you who’s house this is, I signed a confidentiality agreement remember”

A noise caught my attention, it was almost as if someone had pushed open the front door, which was impossible seeing as I was in the habit of locking it anytime, I was in the house, too many nights of watching slasher films. No way was I going to be the victim of some knife wielding monster.

“plus, dad my contract ends the day before they arrive home, I will never get to meet them”

“Hannah” His voice was low, which meant he was going to say something I wouldn’t like, he always got this type of gravelly pitch then, like if he made himself sound more authoritarian, I would listen. I almost giggled. Poor man seemed to live in eternal hope. Sorry dad today would not be the day I suddenly became that daughter.

“This is important, there must be something”

Sure, there were rooms I hadn’t explored, rooms where locked doors kept their secrets, but I wasn’t about to pick a lock and go snoop. Even if I could pick a lock. I was a lot of things but nosey wasn’t one of them.

“Dad I’ve got to go, think someone’s at the door” it wasn’t a complete lie, it had sounded like someone at the door and I did need to investigate. I ended the call before he could protest. Tossing the phone onto my discarded clothing, I froze. One leg dripping on the decking, the other still in the tub. A man stood in the doorway, impossibly tall and with a look on his face that made my blood run cold, his lips pulled back over teeth that were impossibly sharp. Grazing against his lips. Eyes crazed and black. I gulped down the scream in my throat. Why were his eyes black, no whites to be seen? Like looking into a black pit of death.

I couldn’t help stepping back as he took a step forward, his eyes roving over my half naked body. But I had forgotten where I was, my foot slid from me, sending me crashing back. There was a moment of pain and then nothing as the water closed over my head.

Julian

Having to come home early totally sucked, I needed those fans, I needed their adoration, their screams, the scent of their attraction hitting my nostrils, but I couldn’t deny it, there was a sense of relief, of home coming as I pulled up outside the house, I shared with my brother.

It was our refuge, the place we didn’t have to hide what our who we were, and the proximity to the ocean and our very own small but private beach only made it that much sweeter. The water was a part of us, we couldn’t live without it. Even if we had decided to go against all the rules and live our lives in a very public way, we still needed the water to survive. and we needed privacy to enjoy it.

“Home”

Alexander stirred in the seat next to me, rubbing brown eyes as he blinked rapidly to try and clear his head. It was always strange to me, how looking at him was the same as looking at myself. Sure, we sported different hair styles, and his hair was a touch lighter than my own, but it was still looking in the mirror.

As usual, his first reaction was to check his sleek back phone and I had to hide a sigh, looked like I would be getting the bags out of the car and into the house whilst my brother, the social media king updated his numerous accounts. It drove me insane, but I knew deep down that our raise to fame, came in part because of his online presence and that the singing was only part of it.

Still it would be nice to have a hand now and then.

Shoving the door open with my foot I dumped the bags unceremoniously in the hall and had to pause. There was some one here. Someone female. The scent of her hit my nostrils like a grenade knocking me back as if I had been hit with physical blow. I could feel my heart hammering against my rib cage as I took a tentative step inside scanning the wide hall. Nothing was out of place. The house sitter our house keeper had employed was obviously doing his job right as I couldn’t see a speck of dust anywhere, everything looked as we had left it but that scent. That overwhelmingly tantalizing scent was everywhere, like vanilla and dark chocolate, sweet but rich. There was no doubt there was a woman in here, which meant one of two things. Either a crazy stalker fan had broken in. in which case where was the house sitter? Or the house sitter himself had invited a girlfriend over, which was expressly forbidden, and he had broken his contract. We had strict rules on females in the house, no human females under the age of fifty, after that age our pheromones didn’t affect them as badly. Hell, even some preternatural females went a bit crazy around us.

Either way the house sitter was in breach of his contract.

I tossed my keys into the crystal bowl left on a side table, Alex would pitch a fit but let him bitch. Any normal person would have fisted their keys to use as a weapon, but I wasn’t any normal person. And I didn’t need a weapon.

I was the weapon.

And I was pissed. Alex always said I had a bad temper and that was probably true but having someone invade our home. Our sanctuary? That made my blood boil in a way that made it hard to control my other self. They were about to get the scare of their lives, I could already feel my eyes changing, solid blackness rapidly eating the warm chocolate brown that was my human eyes. A smile curled my lips, my teeth, lengthening as my anger grew. I knew I should calm down, that I would scare any human woman half to death if I went in all guns blazing with my face half changed the way it was, but I enjoyed my anger. I relished it as part of me.

Stepping into the kitchen, the light ocean breeze hitting me through the open doorway I paused, only for second before I ducked out onto the decking, a snarl erupting from my lips and stopped dead in my tracks. It was like being hit in the gut with a sledge hammer.

The woman was poised with one leg out of the raised hot tub, red hair stuck to her forehead and shoulders in wet tendrils. The breath left my body in a whoosh as I took her in, every inch of her on show for my eyes. I could hear my brother call my name behind me, the sound of his feet as he raced towards me, but my eyes saw only her, in her modest white underwear that hid nothing from me in its wet state.

And then she slipped, her eyes wide with terror.