Page 39 of The Scent of Salt & Sand

“Everything has changed!”

“No!” she sobbed brokenly. “You said love means accepting me completely! Please, please just sit with me.”

As she spoke, the creature that had been Melody reached toward him, as if to embrace him with her arms of scales and her green hands—hands that Dean saw were no longer human, but tipped with pointed claws, as sharp and deadly looking as her fangs, which glistened dangerously at him as she smiled a cruel parody of the beautiful expression he had come to crave—come to love.

“Come on,” she coaxed, her sweet, familiar voice suddenly grotesque as it came from the hideous maw. “It’s okay, Dean. Come here to me. I would never, ever hurt you.” Still baring her teeth in that terrible smile, she moved to him, reaching to take his hand.

“No! Stay back!” he shouted.

Adrenaline surged through his body as his survival instinct kicked into overdrive. Dean lurched back suddenly, violently, to avoid her grasping touch, and the lip of the rooftop balcony caught him hard in the back of his thighs, knocking him off balance. Frantically, his arms windmilled into empty air as he tried to regain his balance, but there was nothing—nothing at all except a horrible plummeting sensation joined eternally with an otherworldly, inhuman sound that filled his senses, blanketing him from reality.

Dean fell.

He didn’t feel the pain of landing on the concrete sidewalk two stories below. He didn’t feel anything. All of his senses were focused on the creature that used to be Melody as she stared down at him, sobbing and keening into the night.

She does love me, Dean thought. He blinked tears from his eyes, and tried to sit up, but found he had no control over his body. And I love her—unconditionally. He stared up at his Siren, and really saw her.

She was different, and yet she was still Melody. He could see that now, and his fading mind wondered why she had seemed so terrifying to him. Why hadn’t he sat beside her and let her explain? She wouldn’t have hurt me. She would never have hurt me. As the world began to darken around him, Dean understood. Her change had made him react on an automatic, instinctive level, and he hadn’t been able to reason through the fight-or-flight impulse. But encroaching death brought one gift—the ability to see through his reflexive response and find his Melody within the strangeness of the Siren.

With a last, superhuman effort, Dean lifted his arm, reaching his hand up toward her.

Melody’s reaction was instantaneous. She leaped to stand on the lip of the balcony, and then she jumped.

“No!” He tried to shout, but the word came out as a whisper.

But she didn’t fall to the pavement and land broken and dying beside him. She landed lightly, gracefully, in a crouch several yards from him.

“I won’t come near you,” she sobbed. “I’ll get help!”

She started to turn away, but he managed to lift his hand again, reaching toward her. “Don’t go,” he whispered through the blood that frothed from his mouth.

She came to him then, falling to her knees beside him. “I—I can’t change back—not while I can’t control my emotions.” She bowed her head and tears pooled with his blood. “Forgive me. Please forgive me.”

Dean fought against the rising tide of darkness narrowing his vision. I can’t leave her like this.

“Melody,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

She lifted her head.

He turned his hand to her, and she took it gently between hers. Her sea-green skin was warm and soft, and her claws rested carefully, harmlessly, against his fingers.

“I love you,” he said.

A sob tore from her throat, and she shook her head, the copper tendrils swaying around her. “No, you can’t. This is what happens when a human loves a Siren. I thought I was different—I thought we could be different. I was so, so wrong.”

Dean tried to smile, but he couldn’t feel his mouth—all he could feel was a deep, dangerous cold creeping through his broken body. “I do love you. We are different.”

“You’re dying because of me,” she cried.

“And yet I will love you forever.” His body spasmed then, and he coughed as blood filled his mouth. His vision dimmed even more as the world around him began to fade. “I—I thought you were a sea goddess the first time I saw you. I was right.”

She bent to him, resting her head on his chest as she held him and sobbed. “I love you, Dean. Always.”

“Then find me again, my sea goddess.”

She lifted he head so that he could look into her eyes. They blazed with an inhuman emerald light that suddenly filled Dean with the sweet solace of hope. “I swear to you on the blood of my immortal ancestors that I will find you, Dean Kent, and when I do we will never be parted again.”

“I will hold you to your oath for an eternity…”