IX · Enchantment of a Siren

🎧 Stick Season by Noah Kahan

✵ ✵ ✵

"I've been busy. It would be better if you stopped fighting our kindness, when you are the one who came to us, after help," Zash hissed.

"Well, some things broke in my dorm, your father told me that no matter what, if anything happened, I should go to you and you would solve it all immediately. But for some reason, you've been avoiding me. Should I talk to your father about this, or will you do what he promised you would?" Every words that left the male's lips felt like a curse to Zash.

He tightened his grip on my hip for a second, making me feel way more uncomfortable than I already was, then he finally released me and I nearly let out a sigh of relief. "I'm sorry, Ria, but we'll have to deal with the painting later," he told me, turning his eyes to me, his voice suddenly gentle again. "I have to take care of this, or I'll get in trouble, okay, babe?"

I blinked, feeling his charm get to me again, confusion blinding my mind, as my body began to yearn for his touch again. "It's okay."

Zash smiled, "I'll ask someone to take you to your dorm and,"

"I'll take her," the guy he called Dom exclaimed, his voice deeper than before, making my desire for Zash wave again, frustrating me further.

"You will come with me, to show me what to fix," Zash hissed.

"No, you will know what to do when you get there," Dom insisted and turned his crystalline gaze that was changing from one crystalline color to another, to me. "I've been here for 3 months, I can guide myself around. Do you know the number of your dorm?"

I swallowed, feeling my mouth dry, "9010."

He nodded and turned to Zash, "I know where it is. I'll take her."

To my dismay, Zash hissed at him like an animal, showing those sharp shark teeth of his, as if threatened, "Don't abuse of our hospitality." I stared at him, confused to why his attitude was changing so drastically.

"Hospitality? Is that what you call it?" He mocked. "Do you want me to talk to your daddy or will you do your job, Priest Zashrge?"

Clenching his jaw hard enough to make the vein in his forehead pop up, Zash glared daggers at him for what seemed like an eternity, then his eyes came to me, turning drastically sweet and loving, and he said, "Be very careful with this surfee, babe, he is a dangerous one, the type you don't want to be around," then he came, kissed my forehead and stepped back. "Careful with the teeth, he is the type to bite and kill through it."

With that last warning, he left, stepping away angry. And when he was gone, leaving me solely in the presence of Dom, I suddenly felt sick, not with him, but sick with how Zash had been touching me. It got me crazy for a bath, enough to wash the feeling of his touch of my body.

"Come on, surface dweller," he scowled at me, grabbing me by my forearm with his gloved hands and leaving the hallway.

"Paws off, I can walk," I snapped, annoyed with how I was getting turned on by the roughness of his touch, when he's a stranger. The hottest living being I've ever seen, sure, but a stranger, who apparently is a blood-thirsty vampire, which is a red flag to me. "You are surfee too, jerk."

"Not really, I'm a sky dweller," he scoffed, bringing me around as if I was a bothersome brat, and making me look like an actual brat near him given the unhealthy height distance between us. How tall is this guy?

"Whatever, get your hands off," I growled.

"You need an anchor, since you were dumb enough to walk into an underwater temple without a protection amulet. You should be thanking me for doing this charity, and offering myself to be your anchor right now, as it's still soon and you haven't sank away yet," he hissed as if angered. "So, stop complaining and just walk with me, surface dweller."

"Stop calling me that, my name is Ria," I fought against him.

"As if. I'm not dumb, I know you were smart enough not to tell the freaks here your name, just like I was. That's the bare minimum," the damn bastard mocked me.

I clenched my jaw, "What are you even helping me for?"

Instead of answering me, he grabbed me up, threw me on his right shoulder and began to run up the stairs really surreally quick, and all I could do was hold me onto him, hugging his waist upside down, and feeling very thankful that I'm wearing pants and a tight shirt that does not go down even like this. There's too many creepy perverts in here, I don't want to be a target of their nastiness, at all.

Closing my eyes, I focused on not pulking in this situation, so, I just inhaled his scent instead, but fuck if it didn't worsen things for me. Because of course, he would smell like cocoa, cinnamon, and leather, the three most addicting scents to me. I used to buy candles with those scents and spread around my room, it was the only thing that calmed me down.

I never thought someone would actually smell like both, but fuck if this male isn't messing with my mind. All I could do was bit my bottom lip hard and close my eyes, not to say anything, not to see him, doing my all not to think of what he was making me feel. More than anything, praying in my mind that this was just the affect of the sirens on me, and not an actual reaction to him.

Of course, he would be a goddamn vampire. Fucking, hell, I'm so unlucky it's baffling. I'm so frustrated, that I feel like crying.

After some time, he finally halted, opened a door, walked inside it with me, locked the door, and said, "You can let go of me now, we are in your dorm, surface dweller," his voice was even rougher than before, which was a recipe for disastrous chills going down my spine, the naughty kind.

Cursing myself, I released my arms from my hold on his torso, and the savage bastard threw off him with no ceremony, no ounce of gentleness to be found. Of course, he would be a rude bastard. For my own safety I took ten steps away from, realizing I was still with the backpack on my back and weighting me down.

Not like it was an effort for him, with such a big body, to carry me with my backpack on, I doubt I weight much to him at all, that's how crazily huge he is for a normal-ish looking dude. I mean, he has the height one may expect from an orc or something that naturally huge, not a vampire. It's so ridiculous, it makes me want to laugh and cry.

But then he took a step closer to me and I took one back, suddenly feeling like a mouse under the prey of a python snake, which means Zash was telling the truth when he said this male in front of me is dangerous. He took another forward, I mimicked him but going back, away from him and the danger his representing to me in more than just a way. "Give it to me."

I frowned, "Give what to you?"

"The communicator," he hissed as it it was obvious, but it ain't, as I have no fucking idea what he's talking about.

"I don't have whatever that is," I gasped.

"They may be falling for your shit, but I ain't," he scowled angry.

What the hell? "I have no idea what you're talking about," I yelled.

Clenching his jaw, he glared daggers at me, those crystalline eyes of his going from icy blue to pale lavender and to pale green in a spam of a second, changing entirely of colors in a hypnotizing way. Then, he snapped his fingers and a strange wave of something invisible but strong, palpable, and overwhelming covered the entire room. What the hell?

"Cut the shit out, surface dweller. No one can hear us now."

I've never said so many 'what the hell' in my life, but what the hell? "I still don't understand what you want from me, you piece of shit."

He closed his eyes as if really, really fucking done with me, and I took that personally. "The communicator," he passed his gloved hands over his pitch black wavy hair that's in a strangely similar hair cut to copycat's, which is either a coincidence or a trend around here, and I don't believe in coincidences.

"Repeating, doesn't help," I hissed, frustrated out of my mind. And goddamn it if I wasn't right when I said that the real danger in this world are the hot men; first copycat, then siren boy, and now this monument made by the very hands of the divine, all fucking with me, all dangerous, all lethal. But to their luck, or lack of it, I'm more lethal then them.

Swallowing, so angry his veins were popping on his painfully pretty face, sweat dripping down his light oliver skin, and stress emanating from every pore of his body that I can see, which is basically his head and the top of his neck, where his veins seems close to exploding. "Did you even look at your backpack before you the walkers filled it? Or you're that incapable?"

What the hell is a walker?

"Can't you just be fucking clear?"

"Hell fuck me, she doesn't even know who the walkers are," he all but groaned to himself in frustration, covering his face with his big gloved hands, then he let out a really feral growl, and after taking a deep breath, he put his hands down and glared at me, his crystalline eyes now ruby-ish.

"Glaring at me won't make me understand what you're saying."

When his eyes darkened, turning fully black, as black as his hair, I swallowed, wondering if I had gone too far, but then he spoke again, "I have no idea how you were taken as qualified to be a researcher, when you are clearly the bluntest being alive on Auradoom, but every time you go on a mission, given or chosen by yourself to build your research, the people who fill your backpack, are called Walkers. One of the most precious pieces that you get while taking a mission, is the communicator that will keep you in touch with the tower dwellers. It's a stone, given how you are a low level, you probably got a moonstone."

Well, and here I thought it could get worse.

"I'm an artist, not a researcher," I lied, taking another step back.

He rolled his eyes, "No, you ain't, and we both know that."

Fuck, "How do you know I'm a researcher?" I hissed.

"Progress, at final, even if minimal," he mocked. "The backpack of a researcher smells of osmanthus, cedar, and coriander, even if they are not marked, and it's not something you can mimic, because they do it with the ones they grown on the greenhouse of the tower. Your backpack smells like that, which is a scent I would know in any situation, given how long I have been a researcher for, myself. My master made sure I would memorize it."

Eyes narrowed on him, I grabbed onto the left sleeve handle of mine and sniffed it, and part of my suspicion came undone when I realized he was right. It's a very faint scent, but if I focus on it, I can smell it. "Oh?"

"Oh!" He mocked. "Now, give me the moonstone communicator."

I crossed my arms, stubbornly glaring at him, "I have none."

"Stop lying, I can feel the communicator in your backpack!"

"I have no moonstone," I clenched my jaw. "It's not a moonstone that I have, asshole, it's an amethyst. I didn't knew what it was for, so I just left in the bottom of my backpack, thinking it was some random junk. Or I don't know, a lucky stone and some shit, which now sounds ridiculous, as I seem to be the unluckiest bitch in this world."

Hah, you should see how satisfying it was to see the shock in his face, "Amethyst?" He frowned as if incredulous. "Are you above level 90?"

How can he measure me? "Shit, they measure our levels?"

"Of course, they measure our levels, you fucking idiot. The Tower is the only one that has this measuring system, we study and give knowledge to them through our researchers, while we are their objects of research our-selves. Hell be damned, a clueless girl like you will be eaten alive in there. What the hell are you even doing there? You clearly aren't fit for it!" He snapped. "Do you even know what the measuring is?"

I swallowed, feeling angry with him and myself. But fuck it, man, I barely got any time at all to understand anything with Sera since I got here. I don't even know what I'm doing in here to begin with, even less why I'm supposed to engage in this research. "Maybe you're right," I said through clenched teeth, "but I ain't giving you my communicator. Where's yours?"

"That freak you were about to fuck in here, stole it," he yelled.

"Why would he do that?" I yelled back, angry that he's yelling.

"Because they want to lock me in this hell, and force me to accept their brainwashing. That's why I didn't want to come in here again, fucking shit," he yelled, but it felt like he was angry at someone else and not me.