Chapter Six
The mission certainly had taken an entertaining twist. It seemed his hostesses were unaware this hellcat possessed excellent auditory senses, which meant he heard every word of their interesting conversation. Enlightening, and hopeful. It seemed Jenny wanted to leave with him. She just harbored a few minor doubts. Doubts he’d work at putting at ease. After all, convincing ladies to give in to his whims was a specialty of his.
He was quite surprised at the hospitality offer, almost as much as Jenny was. He’d heard rumors of the way things worked around here. Siren Isle had quite the reputation. Lured men were used as studs and while they guested—in some cases for life—were kept segregated from the sirens, their daughters, and any other female guests. To call this place matriarchal was an understatement. The sirens truly had no use for males other than their cocks and semen—the creamy kind, not the sailing kind.
To have one of the original sirens, or so legend had it—the legend speaking of four sisters born of some sort of ocean god—invite him to stay with a protégé of theirs was frankly unheard of. Which meant he’d better tread carefully. While he might find himself attracted to the green-haired chit, this was one time when seduction might serve to make things more deadly rather than less.
Knowing this didn’t stop him from checking out her plump ass that wiggled as she walked ahead or him tossing her his best panty-dropping grin when she caught him peeking. The red in her cheeks surprised him. Sirens weren’t known for their shy and virginal responses.
The trail they followed proved pleasant, lined with bushes and foliage boasting giant colorful blooms with exotic fragrances. While not quite paved, it was close, with seashells pounded into the ground to give it a cobbled feel. The usual symphony of birds, natural to most jungle habitats didn’t exist here, and he briefly wondered at the lack. Actually, there was a lack of any animal life; no drone of insects or rustling of leaves as something small and furry skittered away. Stretching his senses, he sniffed, and his kitty seemed flummoxed at the lack of scent from anything it considered prey.
The strange hole in the ash clouds allowed a beam of pure sunlight through, the how and why a mystery as far as Felipe knew. Some legends said it was the remnant of an ancient spell, cast by a mighty wizard to please his siren lover. Others that it was a hole in the hellzone atmosphere caused by too much cleanliness. Whatever the cause, the warm rays were pleasant, especially for someone who’d only very, very rarely been granted permission to visit the mortal side.
As to their destination, it wasn’t hard to figure out. A massive cone-shaped mountain rose from the center of the island, an old volcano by its appearance, with frozen black streams of rock twisting and lumping down its sides and crisscrossed with more seashell paths leading to dark openings.
Fuck me, they are taking me to a cave. He’d hoped they joked. When the path split at the base of the mountain, the ladies halted, and Raidne kissed Jenny noisily on both cheeks whispering—but not low enough for him to miss—“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
“That’s not a long list.”
“Exactly,” Raidne replied with a husky chuckle. To him she said, “Watch yourself, cat. You are a guest only so long as you behave. Step out of line, and minion on a mission or not, we’ll have your heart for breakfast. Roasted and sliced on crackers with a smear of caviar.”
Mmm, if it weren’t his organ she spoke of, the snack would have sounded great.
With a smile and blown kiss of goodbye, the siren who’d just threatened him literally, skipped off while humming.
“That is one seriously freaky lady.” He’d not realized he spoken aloud until Jenny said, “Yes, she is. And even better, she means every word.”
So not reassuring.
Turning to his hostess for the night, Felipe tried to veer the conversation to something less disturbing than the image of a beautiful woman with cannibalistic natures. “Where are we going?”
“My home. It’s up this way. I chose a cave toward the top of the volcano because I enjoy the view of the ocean, especially when a storm rolls in.”
Holding aloft her skirts with one hand, and showing off trim calves covered in an odd pattern of green scales that shimmered in the light, she nimbly skipped along the steep trail. Felipe had to hurry to keep pace. She’d not kidded when she said the top. Good thing he kept fit or he would have found himself huffing and puffing when they finally reached the aerie’s entrance. That kind of external manifestation of exertion was only acceptable when naked and fucking. Other than that, a male had to maintain the appearance of being a big, tough bastard—even if inside he was a pussy cat.
In front of the gaping maw, which he assumed served as her front door, was a wide-open space, a patio of sorts. It featured, of all things, a pair of chairs, one an Adirondack, the other a carved wooden rocker, both facing the horizon.
Felipe paused to gape. “You weren’t kidding about the view.” Magnificent didn’t come close to describing it. The dark waves of the Darkling Sea rolled, the crests of some peaks frothing white, the dark and light contrasting with the reddish hue of Hell’s skyline.
Jenny turned a dreamy gaze outward. “Pretty, isn’t it? I love to sit out here and watch it, imagining.”
“Imagining what?”
“Nothing a man like you would find interest in,” was her curt reply as she spun away and led the way into the dark hole cut in the mountainside.
Felix truly didn’t want to follow. He really didn’t enjoy confined spaces. Couldn’t he remain outside in the fresh air where there was plenty of space? He could sleep in the chair. He didn’t mind. He’d slept in worse spots in the past—the cat carrier Ysabel stuffed him in whenever they traveled came to mind.
Remaining outside, though, smacked too much of cowardice, and besides, he didn’t want Jenny to have time to change her mind. Keep ’em off balance so they don’t know what hit him, an expression Lucifer liked to use and that, oddly enough, worked most of the time.
Be a man and not a fraidy cat. With a scowl, and a curse for the demon lord who made him do the most annoying things, Felipe followed. Into the belly of darkness he strode, walked a few yards, stopped dead, and stared, utterly stunned. “I have to admit I wasn’t expecting this.”
People heard the words, “lives in a cave” and immediately the image conjured involved rough walls, a dirt floor, stalactite ceiling, oh and the kind of cold and damp that made you wish for sunshine.
In this case, the only part that applied to his predefined notions was cave. Yes, they’d entered a giant hole in a volcano and walked a few feet down a hallway with smooth walls except for the glittering line of seashells embedded in it. The tunnel opened into a large cavern, like majorly large, with a ceiling that domed high overhead.
And this was where his perceptions had to shift. The stone might have proven cold if not for the myriad rugs covering the space, from the massive oriental one set between a pair of almost matching blue couches to the rag-tiled oval contoured one under a carved wooden dining set to the cream-colored shag nestled alongside the four-poster bed.
I wonder if I’ll get to sink my toes into that in the morning. Guess it depends on where I’m sleeping tonight and with whom.
A massive flat screen television hung above a fireplace. Within the massive stone-carved hearth, flames danced and crackled while sconces lit the space with a warm glow from their evenly spaced positions on the walls.
An open kitchen area was set against the rear wall boasting stainless steel appliances, driftwood cupboards, and a massive island, the granite top alone bigger than his bed at home.
“Nice place,” he uttered, even if it seemed inadequate. The girl was living in the lap of luxury. No wonder she seemed hesitant to leave it all behind. Heck, he’d show reticence too given space went for a premium especially in the inner ring of Hell.
“Thanks,” Jenny said, not meeting his eyes. “Most of it we salvaged from the ships that wash against the rocks.”
Less wash and more like crashed. “The water doesn’t ruin it?” he asked vaguely, gesturing to the television.
“Depends on if we get to the wreck before it sinks.”
“What do you do with the extra stuff?”
“My aunt Teles manages an online Helliji account where she auctions off the items we don’t need or she barters it for stuff we want. We’re not exactly on any trade routes, so getting essentials takes a bit of work.”
“And this is all yours?”
“Yes. It’s not as big or opulent as my aunts places, but I like the cozy atmosphere.”
He almost choked at her use of the word cozy. Cozy was his one-room bachelor pad with its Murphy bed which, when in its upright position, allowed him to use the built-in drawers for storage and had a drop-down shelf with a cushion for a couch. Felipe could have afforded a bigger place, but didn’t bother. He rarely spent time at home, preferring to roam and get into trouble. Or spend his nights in someone else’s bed.
“Are you hungry?” she asked as she left his side to enter the kitchen area. Opening the fridge, she began to pull out food, which she placed on the island, a heap of vegetables he noted with a wrinkle of his nose.
“Yes.”
“How do you feel about seafood?” she asked, turning to finally face him.
“Love it. Do sirens eat it?” Or did they consider them family? Wait, he was mixing them up with mermaids.
There was a misconception in the mortal realm about sirens and mermaids being one and the same. Hardly. Sirens, who were more closely related to birds than aquatic creatures, lived on land and collected what they needed from the ocean. They looked and lived like humans, except for the fact they aged very slowly, could sing a man into doing whatever they wanted, oh and were cold-blooded killers.
Mermaids, on the other hand, were half woman, half fish, living under the waves of the ocean. They, too, took their bounty from the sea and were also cold-blooded killers, but they didn’t use song to achieve their goal. Their methods were more savage. His one encounter with a mermaid who’d accidentally ended up in the Styx didn’t leave him with an urge to meet one again.
“Of course they eat fish, as do I.”
“You speak as if you’re not one of them?”
She rolled her shoulders. “I’m not technically.”
“But you live here and call them all aunt.”
“Only because of circumstance.” When she would have stopped there, he stared at her pointedly until she continued. “My turn to spill my life story, I take it? It’s not very interesting. I was abandoned here by my mermaid mother when I was young. The sirens felt sorry for me and took me in to raise as one of their own. They seem to think my affliction might be siren-based.”
“What affliction?”
From where he sat, Felipe noted no imperfection. On the contrary, Jenny possessed an exotic beauty that he’d rarely encountered, a wild purity he found insanely attractive. Just ask his semi-erect cock and his inner kitty, which would have loved a chance to lick her with a raspy tongue from head to toe.
“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have a fish tail. Which was quite embarrassing to my mother who was considered to have one of the more beautiful ones in her school.”
“I thought I heard mermaids were all women, which means the fathers are—”
“All human or, in some rare cases, demons. But the only thing we usually inherit from our fathers is their eyes. Mermaids give birth to the next generation. Which means tails and seaweed hair.”
“Your hair is green,” he pointed out.
“But it’s hair that set me apart. Then there was the whole can’t-breathe-underwater thing.”
“So you’re different. That’s still not a reason for a mother to abandon you.” He found his temper rousing for her, angered that anyone could abandon their child over small things that shouldn’t matter.
“Oh, I’m sure if it had just been that, she might have kept me, but then there was the biggest problem of all. When I speak or sing, things either die, maim, or kill themselves. Something about my voice sets them off.”
Other than a huskiness and tenor a touch lower than most women, he’d not noticed an issue with her speech. He actually thought it was kind of sexy. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“So I’ve noted. And you’ve no idea why?”
“No.”
“A shame,” she said with a sigh as she withdrew a wickedly long knife and began expertly chopping her pile of vegetables.
“Why a shame?”
She threw him a pointed look. “Did you not hear what I just said? People freak when I speak. And when I sing, I can literally kill.”
“If you ask me, that’s a pretty cool power. A lot less messy than what I have to do to get some respect. Breaking out the claws to mete out some justice and a lesson in manners means getting blood on my fur and sometimes cracking a nail.”
“So you take a bath. I don’t see the big deal. At least you have the choice of who gets hurt.”
“Did you just tell me to take a bath?” He didn’t have to pretend affront. Did she truly know nothing about his kind? “I’m a cat, woman! The only time we go near water is to hunt. And even then, we prefer to lure our aquatic snacks to a shallow place where we can grab them and drag them to shore.”
“If you don’t bathe, then how do you stay clean?” she asked with a cute wrinkle of her nose.
“When I’m in my human shape, I can handle a shower. It’s when I’m not that I run into issues.”
“So what do you do?”
“For one, I try to stay out of messy situations. But when I can’t avoid them, and I get some blood or something else on my precious feline’s fur, then I’m licking for hours. Which, I might add, is not much fun. Do you know how gross it is to hack up hairballs?” Felipe shuddered. “Not to mention it clogs the pipes when I spit them out in the sink.”
It started with a shake of her frame, a tremble, then turned into full-on laughter.
“It’s not funny,” he stated in mock affront.
“Oh yes it is,” she said in between chuckles. “I’d take hairballs and clogged plumbing over more damned roasted seagull for dinner any day. The sirens hate to see things go to waste, so whenever I’d play outside and got too noisy, we’d end up with whole flocks of visiting seagulls dropping dead.”
“Is that why there are no birds on the island?”
“Partially. But, even before my arrival, there was little alive on this island other than the sirens and their captives. I asked Raidne about it once, but she couldn’t explain why. While we can maintain aquariums, anything else just ends up dying.”
“So no steak? Or venison or mice?”
“Nope, not unless we salvaged some from a wreck. But we do have lots of fresh seafood.” She no sooner said this than she open a cupboard door in the island, stuck her hand in, and withdrew it, holding a massive, mottled green/brown lobster. “Would you like butter sauce with it?”
Would he ever.
A while later, his belly full, and utterly content—the green-haired Jenny could cook!—Felipe finally voiced the question plaguing him. “Tell me to mind my business if you want, but I have to ask. If your mother didn’t want to keep you, then why not send you to live with your father?” As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back, especially since he couldn’t miss the flash of sadness that hit her eyes. “I’m sorry. That was too personal,” he quickly added.
“No. It’s okay. I mean it’s natural to wonder I guess. You do know mermaids are all female, right? Like sirens, they require humanoid males to beget children.”
“Yeah, I’d heard, but how does that work? I mean you’d think their, um, plumbing wouldn’t be compatible.”
Laughter crinkled the corners of her eyes, and her lips took on a delightful smile he would have loved to kiss. “They’re not, in their sea state. Which is why there are dry caves at the bottom of the ocean. Mermaids snatch drowning sailors and bring them to these air pockets and keep them as their mates. When the tide is high, if a mermaid allows her tail to dry, then for a little while, she appears completely human.”
“And babies arrive nine months later.”
“If lucky, the mermaids get pregnant and give birth to a new mermaid. Or at least that’s what is supposed to happen. It didn’t in my case.”
“You took after your father and came out too human.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“My mother never said who my father was. She left the school one day to explore the ocean. When she returned, she was heavy with child and wouldn’t say who got her that way. When I was born in the ocean, I almost drowned before they realized I didn’t have gills. For years, my deformity meant I had to live in the caves. I guess the shame proved too much for my mother. One day, I went to sleep, and the next time I woke, I was sitting on the shore of Siren Isle.”
A child abandoned and orphaned, kind of like him. Her story echoed his in many ways, except Felipe’s mother had loved him until something bigger and badder killed her. He’d lucked out when Ysabel found him as a kitten and took him in, just like Jenny had with the sirens who’d adopted her.
“Have you ever tried to contact your mother to find out why? Maybe she had a good reason?”
“Nope. Nor do I intend to. I much prefer living here on the isle with the sunshine and acceptance than in the dark caverns where I was constantly belittled.”
“I can’t blame you. I’m a daylight-loving kind of guy myself, even if my usual sunshine is the bright glow of Hell’s sky.”
Curled up on the couch across from him, Jenny presented a pretty sight. At ease, her green locks tumbled around her tucked knees in tempting waves. Felipe couldn’t recall a more relaxing evening, and odder, he spent it conversing with someone of the opposite sex. Usually his conversation with women was short and to the point along the lines of “My place or yours?” and “Let’s get naked.” But with Jenny, he quite enjoyed learning about her, and, in an unusual twist, he imparted personal details about himself.
“What’s Hell like?” she asked, interrupting his musing.
“What’s Hell like?” he repeated. “Depends on which part of it. In the inner circle, things tend to remain orderly. Lucifer might like the results of chaos, and the sin revolving around it, but he doesn’t enjoy living with it. Only his most trusted minions and allies are allowed to live in the inner ring. It’s the least decayed of all the civilized zones. The streets are swept clean of ash numerous times a day, and Lucifer’s guard keeps the criminal types in line. But the farther you move out, especially once you reach the fourth and fifth rings, the more society degrades. It gets harder to impose civilized rules, and the living conditions aren’t exactly as favorable.” Skirmishes broke out often as the damned and demons jostled for position and power. Buildings, no matter how new or renovated, aged quickly, an odd symptom of Hell that meant the construction and renovation business always had work.
“It sounds fascinating, but frightening at the same time.”
“It is. But even amidst the ugly, there’s beauty to be found. I once heard the Dark Lord say, how would we recognize perfection if it were not for the flaws that highlight it? In a sense, Hell does exactly that.”
“An interesting perception.”
“Apt as well. Does your curiosity about Hell mean you’re willing to return with me?”
“Yes. No.” She shrugged. “You’re asking me to make a life-changing decision. It requires thought.”
“If you say so. I see it more like an adventure.”
“And let me guess, you always jump at the chance to experience new things?”
“All the time.”
“And how has that worked for you?” she asked.
“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” was his reply. He didn’t mention the close calls and loss of a few of his nine lives. Curiosity was a dangerous thing.
“Do you think I’d fit in?” she asked, twirling a strand between her fingers.
Would she? Jenny possessed a purity to her that Hell often lacked. Not to say all its denizens were out-of-control murdering thugs, but they weren’t in Hades because they’d lived a one hundred percent pristine life. Then again, some came close. Heaven’s rules of entry went past strict on to ridiculous at times. But that wasn’t her question. “I think the rings have a place for everyone, even a mermaid who can’t swim.”
“I can swim,” she retorted. “Just not for long underwater.”
“So you’re no good at holding your breath.”
“I bet I can hold it longer than you.”
“Prove it,” was the only warning he gave her before his tomcat impulse finally overrode his common sense. Before she could ask him what he meant, he’d landed on her couch, pulled her onto his lap, and devoured her luscious lips, stealing all her breath.
What he didn’t expect was for her to steal his control.