Siren. Part 9

"Ligeia, don't..." he began.

"Don't you want this for always?" her voice murmured in his brain like a foggy echo. Her hands had grasped his own and worked them against the soft, tight skin of her b.u.t.t with a wanton disregard for propriety. She moved his hands up from the gentle slope of her a.s.s, and then brought them between their bodies until she guided his fingers to cup her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Don't you want this?" she echoed again.

Evan felt as if he were on a bad drug high; her voice reverberated over and over in his brain like a bad trip. "Don't you want to take me every night like this?"

"Yes," he answered without thinking. "Yes. But..."

"Then just say yes, not but," she said.

Evan touched Josh's medal on the thin chain around his neck as his mind flashed to an image of his son's room, yellowing pictures on the wall, Psychedelic Furs poster tucked in one corner like a guilty pleasure hidden beneath the garish poses of more "today" popsters like Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas and Snow Patrol. He saw a vision of Sarah, pa.s.sed out in their bed like a corpse, the only suggestion that she still breathed being the moisture at the side of her mouth, shimmering slightly, ever so slightly that you'd have to stand for moments watching it to see in the gentle cascade of midnight breath.

Leave his memories of Josh? Leave his home-his sad, desperate crypt of a home with Sarah?

"No," he answered at last. "I can't, I-"

Ligeia's eyes flashed in the night and she shoved him away from her with his denial, set him adrift in the ocean.

"No, don't-" Evan cried out, but then she returned to him in a heartbeat, and drew him close.

"You can't stay adrift forever," Ligeia whispered in his ear. His neck tremored at the briefest rush of her lips. "You have to choose a direction and swim," she said. "But tonight..." She kicked against the loud roar of the surf, and started to drag him in the direction of the sh.o.r.e. "Tonight I will choose for you."

Evan relaxed, slightly, and felt his heart yearn suddenly for the sh.o.r.e.

"Tonight, but not forever," she warned.

Chapter Twenty-One.

"What am I gonna do?" Evan complained.

"I don't see the problem," Bill answered, raising a pint and miming a toast. "You've got a wonderful wife who loves you, and you're f.u.c.king a sea devil in the ocean to boot. I'd say you've got the horns by the bull."

"You're a jacka.s.s," Evan spit. "You know I don't want to hurt Sarah."

"And yet you drop your clothes on the beach virtually every night to get down with a chick who basically you know only by name and the feel of her t.i.ts," Bill retorted. "Where does she live? How old is she? What does she like to do on a Sat.u.r.day night? What's her favorite food? Who are her favorite authors? Favorite movies? I'm not going to ask favorite positions, because I bet that, you could answer."

Bill tilted back the beer and slammed it back on the table as he burped. "Answer me a single one of those questions and I'll let you off the hook. But you can't, can you?"

Evan didn't answer. He looked away and watched the bartender serve two blonde women at the long wooden bar that cut O'Flaherty's in half. They giggled and shimmied onto their chairs with a unified motion that suggested they were performing a ritual. Evan knew where that ritual would lead in three or four more hours when the hour grew late. They were here to score, and tomorrow, they'd be comparing notes and laughing about the inadequacies they'd uncovered in their latest conquests. And next week, they'd be here again, same place, same time, same modus operandi. No commitments, no change.

"No, I can't," he admitted. "I know almost nothing about her."

"I know a lot about her," Bill said. "But you don't want to hear it."

"f.u.c.k that," Evan laughed. "You think I'm boning a freaking piece...a piece of mythology," he laughed.

Bill looked at him and the crags above his nose looked deeper than normal. Bill wasn't old, but the mark of thousands of days in the seaside air and subsequent nights in the bar had begun to leave their toll. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do. And it scares the h.e.l.l out of me."

"Look," Evan said. "I found a woman who loves the water." He grimaced. "Granted, for reasons which we won't go into here, that, in and of itself, makes me queasy, and it's all kind of amusingly ironic, but that's not the part of her that I have fallen for."

"You don't have to talk about that part," Bill suggested, raising his gla.s.s. "Although, if you have pictures..."

"f.u.c.k you, you recalcitrant. No pictures. But I could describe the way her a.s.s curves right into the small of her back like..."

Bill put up his hand. "Enough!"

His friend shook his head and had another sip of beer before he continued. "I know you guys have had a rough year, but...I just don't know what to say about you cheating on Sarah. I mean...what has she ever done to you?"

Bill held up a hand before Evan could answer. "I know the lure of a hot chick by the ocean, don't you think I do? But...I think you're going to get hurt. I think Sarah's going to get hurt. I think your d.i.c.k is going to get hurt. And I don't want to be around to see any of that, ya know? Especially your d.i.c.k."

Evan opened his mouth to answer and found he had nothing to retort.

Bill shrugged his shoulders and drained the second half of his pint. "Sometimes it sucks to be your friend. You get the chicks and I have to tell you not to score. It's just not right. I'm the single guy."

"Yeah, well, that's because you talk to the likes of them." Evan motioned at the blondes at the bar, but he realized as he turned that they weren't on their stools any longer. And a moment later, he understood why.

"Hey there," one of them said to Bill, running a hand over his broad shoulders. "My friend and I were just wondering, how would you like to join us at the bar for a quick drink? Her name's Christine, and she is just in for the week visiting. I wanted to show her some local color, you know?"

Evan figured that color was probably pink, and it didn't really matter whether it was local or not, but he didn't blame Bill too much when his friend held up an index finger and suggested, "I'll be back in a minute..." before leaving with the girl who seemed at least ten years his junior. Whatever. Evan couldn't throw stones, after all...he was getting fish on the beach.

"What the f.u.c.k am I doing?" he asked himself, pulling a long swig on his beer as he watched Bill stumble across the room to ease his a.s.s onto a bar stool in between the two unnaturally bright-haired bottle blondes.

Evan hoped Bill didn't have a lot in his wallet, because he figured, at the end of the night, whatever was there, was going to be gone.

That said...it was hardly the time for Evan to be parochial. He put down his gla.s.s, dropped a twenty on the table and started out of the bar, clapping Bill on the shoulder as he went. "Good luck," he murmured, but didn't stay to hear the answer.

He was headed toward the beach and he knew what kind of luck he needed to be successful there. He just needed to show up. Evan took Fifth Street toward the ocean and prayed in his heart and his groin that Ligeia would be there, once again, to greet him.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

June 9, 1887 The Lady Luck cut through the water like a knife through red meat-quiet and clean and lethal. Captain Buckley held the wheel and his fingers sweated as he pressed it to the right, praying that Ligeia would feel his intention. He was headed toward sh.o.r.e. It was time to dock, and she was always more amorous when they were near the land. Not docked...then she grew distant. But just before docking...she was amazing. Desirable, delectable...decadent. It was almost as if she had the urge to "sp.a.w.n" when she approached land. Given her pedigree, maybe that was exactly it, Buckley thought.

He had left her in the cabin, retied and gagged after she finished gnawing on the thighbone of Rogers. It was probably the last day until he had to dispose of the thing. The cabin had begun to smell too strongly; the men would get suspicious. And she had a new recruit for her hunger regardless. The body of Nelson now lay in his cabin unblemished, except for the blood that had pooled and congealed beneath the wounds. The cabin reeked with the stench of iron now, both old and newly bled. Buckley knew that it was time for Ligeia to move on to her new meat, though he didn't relish the disposal duty of the old.

Buckley wanted to talk to her about her killing habits, and come to some agreement on when and how and who. He wished she could communicate with him, logically, in the same way, but he understood the limitations she faced. For one, he kept her gagged. For another, she wanted to kill him and didn't speak even when the gag was removed. Plus, she was nocturnal it seemed; when he was awake, she was ready to sleep. They were at an impa.s.se, he thought. They were opposites and opposites attract. Buckley loved his twisted, torturous girl, and he aimed to make every moment of her captive journey desirable. Perhaps, eventually, she would grow to love it.

"All you have to do is ask," he murmured, quiet beneath the gravity of a growing insanity. "I would give you anything." The fact that she'd killed two of his men briefly troubled his mind, but he answered himself. "There are some things that don't lend themselves to examination. You just have to follow your gut. My gut says...you will always be mine, 'til death do us part."

Buckley smiled as he envisioned the nude girl lying on his bed right now, waiting for him in the shadows. He turned the wheel and guided the boat toward the distant light of sh.o.r.e. If he'd been paying any attention, he might have noticed that he was alone on deck; his crew had quietly disappeared. They had turned their sights to a different mission. Of late, they had become concerned with the hidden cargo of their captain, though they weren't sure on what it was. But it was not hard to realize that their leader had become preoccupied with something else. And it was time that someone found out exactly what the captain was up to. Because...it seemed as if the ship had become a dangerous home for its crew. Rogers had disappeared. And then Nelson. And now Taffy.

In the cargo hold beneath their oblivious captain, the remaining men appealed to the first mate. They gathered in a circle around Travers. The faint light from a handheld lantern cast orange shadows on his face. Travers looked like he were burning.

"He is keeping something from us," Jensen insisted. "He doesn't speak except in mumbles and cryptic phrases all day, and then he disappears below. Meanwhile, our mates are disappearing. Don't you think it's just a wee bit strange? We're a fishing boat with a secret hold. And men are starting to 'fall off the deck' every other day. I don't buy it. Something about our cargo is dangerous."

"What would you have me do?" Travers asked. He'd been with Buckley for the better part of six years, and the Lady Luck felt more like his home than the tiny flat his wife kept up in the half a year he was away from it. He'd always felt safe here, but he had to agree with the men. Things weren't feeling so secure anymore.

"I say we go up top right now and demand that he tell us what's what," Reg said. The beefy crewman beat a fist into a broad ham of a hand. "If we all go together..."

Travers shook his head. "That's called mutiny," he said. "Or, at least that's how Buckley would see it. If you go at him with a gun, he's not going to roll over, he's going to fight." The first mate pursed his lips a bit, considering.

"Let me try to approach him first," Travers suggested. "I'll feel him out quietlike tonight. Not combative. I've been with Buckley a long time. He's tough, but deep down he's a good man, I think. If there's something worse than bad luck in all this, well, I think he'll give me some warning."

The captain remained quiet at dinner, though Cauldry had actually managed to season a stew that didn't taste like well-worn shoes. Jensen suggested that the fill-in cook looked good in an ap.r.o.n, and Reg made the sign of the devil at the both of them. "Don't start with any of that stuff," he complained. "We have enough unnatural going on around here."

Cauldry cuffed his younger brother and motioned for Reg to shift over on the long plank they used as a dinner seat. He pulled out a pair of dice from beneath the dark stains of his once-white ap.r.o.n (he may have learned how to cook, but he surely hadn't learned how to be neat at it) and tossed them on the table.

"Any takers?" he asked, and at that, the captain, who'd stayed silent through all the tomfoolery, stood, nodded at the men and left the galley. The chatter stilled as the men all watched Buckley walk out. Then they turned, again as one, to look at Travers. He rewarded them with a tortured smile, nodded himself and rose.

"I'll see what I see," he promised, and followed the captain.

Behind him, the voices of a nervous crew letting off steam rose again. But there was a forced element to it, as if they were trying just a little too hard to act naturally free and fun.

Buckley's cabin door was just closing as Travers reached it.

"Captain, a minute?" Travers called, and put his hand on the door to stop it from closing. "I'd like to talk to you."

Buckley's face poked around the narrow gap. The captain raised a brush of a salt-and-pepper eyebrow and simply said, "What do you want?" He didn't let the door budge inward an inch.

"Could I come in for a moment, sir?" Travers asked. "I'd like to talk to you in private."

"Not now," Buckley answered, gruff as ever.

Travers heard a thump from behind the captain, and pressed again. "It will just take a minute, sir, but I'd like to talk out of earshot of the men."

Again the thump, and the captain shook his head, violently. "Good night, Travers," he said, and began to push the door shut. Travers didn't let it close immediately. He wondered about the thumping behind the captain. Could somebody else be in the cabin? Just as he framed that thought, he heard something else from the dark behind Buckley's head.

"Ehhhhhiiieeeahhhhh," came a thin, wavering sound, just barely audible. It could have been a ghost or a girl-it was high-pitched and forced...yet, strangely soothing for all its intensity.

"Good night!" the captain shouted savagely, and pushed his shoulder into the door.

Travers staggered back from the door, shocked at the captain's response. He'd never acted like this before. He leaned against the wall across from the dark wooden frame of the captain's cabin and mused.

Buckley had absolutely not wanted him to enter the cabin-a place where Travers had gone many a time for private chats. The first mate stared down at the floor, and noted a couple dark spots just in front of the captain's door. As he looked closer, he noticed more of them, a faint trail that led across the planks and toward the stairs to the deck. He crouched down, and touched the larger of the spots, moving his finger back and forth across the wood. It didn't feel wet, not anymore. Still, when he pulled back his finger, it looked to be stained a dull, gritty red.

From beyond the captain's door, again he heard the high-pitched sound, followed by the low but unmistakable bark of Buckley.

The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d had someone in his cabin! Travers performed a quick mental survey and confirmed that the entire crew-what was left of it-was currently behind him in the galley. "Hmmmpfh," he said to himself, and slowly followed the trail of spots up the ladder and across the deck. They disappeared before he'd gone but a couple steps; the sea was constantly spraying the boards above deck.

But he'd seen what he needed to. They had led from the stairs in a straight line toward the edge of the ship.

The captain had carried something from his cabin to toss overboard. Something that leaked. Something dripping a liquid that looked an awful lot like...blood.

"Hmmmpfh," Travers said for the second time, and looked toward the dark hole leading back belowdecks. Somehow those stairs didn't look as friendly and welcoming as they normally did.

Home wasn't seeming quite so sweet tonight.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

San Francisco rose like a wraith city out of the bank of fog. The drive across the Golden Gate Bridge was dreamlike-the world below faded to invisibility, while white streamers of fog slipped through the steel cage of the bridge's arch work with lazy speed.

"They call it the City by the Bay, but it should be the city in a cloud," Sarah laughed.

"It'll burn off by lunchtime," Evan promised. "It's supposed to hit eighty today."

"I hope so," she said. "I want to go to the park."

One of Sarah's favorite places in the world was Golden Gate Park-when they were first married, they had spent many hours there walking the long, winding paths, sipping tea in the small cafe overlooking the water in the j.a.panese Tea Garden and exploring the scents and vibrant colors of the rose garden. The park was an amazing expanse of winding walking trails that led to the de Young Museum, a music concourse, Stow Lake and botanical gardens. Eucalyptus trees stretched to the sky throughout, refreshing the air of the place with a fresh, vibrant tang. After a day of walking, you could end up on one end of the mile-and-a-half-long rectangle at the tie-dye capital of the world, Haight-Ashbury, or at the other, down near the beach. Sometimes they'd have dinner at the Beach Chalet, right there on the edge of the sand to close a perfect day, watching the sun set over the ocean, as the chill of night swept in. Some places had three or four seasons during the year; San Francisco could have three or four seasons in one day.

"Well, fog or no fog, first stop is the wharf," Evan declared. "I'm dying for some crab!"

Evan always called "first stop" as Fisherman's Wharf-where they would grab a claw or two of crabmeat from one of the vendors along the sidewalk. Then, fortified with the tender, rich meat, they'd browse past the line of wax museum/T-shirt shops/boat-ride tourist traps, and walk up past the cable car drop-off to Ghirardelli Square for Sarah's weakness. Chocolate.

San Francisco was all about the food for them in the first few hours, as they snacked and shopped and slowly made their way to Chinatown, where they'd lunch on dim sum.

Today, the wharf was quieter than usual...the fog still lay heavy on the street, giving everything a gray, indistinct, dreamlike feel. Sarah held his hand as they walked down the sidewalk, taking in all of the tourist shops selling cheap fleece jackets to combat the unpredictable cold spells. You never knew if two hours from now the weather was going to warm up or drop twenty degrees when you were down near the bay.

They walked down to one of the piers and Evan got a cup of crabmeat, but Sarah strayed from her usual and asked for a crab cake.

"Cake?" he ribbed her. "What is this, a birthday party?"

She leaned up and kissed him on the lips with a knowing look in her eyes. "No," she said. "Anniversary."

"Huh?"

"I figured you forgot but...our first date was twenty-four years ago today."

"It was?" Evan frowned, trying to remember.

"Lout." She punched him. "Glad it made such an impression on you. I used to get cards and fancy dinners on this date to commemorate it, but now"-she sighed dramatically-"he doesn't even remember."

"No wait, I do, I do," he said, starting to nod.