Who: Beverly Reed and Charlotte McBride What: No man has returned from trying to slay the siren near Bev's village; this is why you shouldn't send a man to do a woman's job. Where: Tannhauser, Osiris When: Just after sunrise. Warnings: Just two girls, hunting monsters... so let's say violence.
The siren had been there for three weeks, now. At least three weeks, anyway. That was just when the boys had started to disappear. She could have been there for longer than that, long enough to get her lair set up before she started in on seducing her next meal. No one knew where she'd come from, where her last hunting ground had been before she'd settled into a quiet cove near Tannhauser. They were a fishing village; there were plenty of coves, but she'd picked a quiet, secluded one. It shouldn't have been a good place to hunt at, except that it was also a favorite place for the young men to go to do a little fishing on their own, where the master fishermen of the village couldn't see them to lay claim to their apprentices' catches. Bev's brothers had all gone there, at one point or another, trying to get a decent haul to sell for themselves, or for the family's table.
At first, after the first few boys had vanished, and someone had caught a glimpse of her, all scales on the bottom and smooth human skin on top, with long, flowing hair and a mouthful of sharp fangs, they'd sent for help from the king's men. Soldiers had come, first, guardsmen equipped with earplugs, armor, and nets, to catch her and take her back for some rich man's menagerie. That didn't sit right, with Bev. Maybe she was a monster, and maybe she needed to be taken care of, but it was one thing to kill her. That was clean. It was another thing to keep her captive and either starve her, or sacrifice people to keep her fed, just so that some old man could look at her and get his jollies from owning her. That was just gross.
The soldiers hadn't managed to catch her, anyway. Their earplugs hadn't been good enough to keep them safe from her song. She'd feasted, then. The village had been safe, for a few days. Then it had started again, and this time, the men of the village had decided that one of them ought to just go after her, instead. They were at least smarter than the soldiers. They wouldn't try to catch her, they'd just kill her. They'd gone armed with bows and arrows, with slings, with spears, trying to hit her from a distance. None of them had come back, either, but that hadn't discouraged the younger men, the ones that wanted to be heroes, from trying their hand at it, too. It hadn't stopped two of Bev's brothers, no matter how much her parents begged them not to, no matter how much Bev told them it was a stupid idea and that they'd just end up piles of picked clean bones in her lair.
Normally, Bev liked being right. This time, she hated it.
It was stupid. They were all stupid. If the soldiers hadn't been able to do it, if they'd all been hypnotized by the siren's song, then fishermen and stupid boys didn't have any chance at beating her. No man could resist the siren's song, not and get close enough to be able to kill her. That was why Bev had gotten up early, that morning, before her father and brothers rose to catch the morning tides. Her mother had been up, had watched Bev take the thick hides her brothers wore when they went out to hunt and wrap them around herself, had seen her take up her father's fishing spear, the one almost too heavy for her brothers to lift. She hadn't said anything, not until Bev had started struggling to contain her long, dark hair with a leather tie. Then, she'd taken one of her father's knives and helped Bev slice it off short enough that it wouldn't get into her eyes.
Bev had never killed anything before. As she approached the cove where the siren waited, she had a feeling that she wasn't going to have any problems starting with this.