Song of the Sirens (11 page)

The man with the blue tail pushed out
his chest, met Riley’s eyes, and boldly replied, “We must do anything to push
the sirens back into the cave and sacrifice ourselves for the good of the
city.”

A wave of horror shocked me. What would
the bite of a siren do?

Riley dismissed the men. They sprinted
away, leaving a dwindling trail of hazy light from their tails.

Riley never removed his hand from my
wrist and pulled me toward our safe place. I imagined it to be another glorious
building made of sparkling stones and covered in fertile vegetation, but our
destination was anything but.

We swam through darkness, the light of
the vessel and the illumination of the city a good distance behind us. Only the
glow from Riley’s tail showed us the way. I had no idea where we headed and
couldn’t see a thing beyond the radius of the glow.

We slowed down when we approached a
stone wall. I looked up and around, and concluded the rock was quite large. The
outward appearance was dull and normal compared to the city.

I lifted a hand to touch the rough
exterior before Riley pulled me down.

As we reached the base of the rock, he
tugged on my arm, moving his hands from my wrist to my arm to my waist. He
moved me through a narrow opening first, and I blindly swam through. I reached
out to feel my way, scraping my hands against the sides of what I assumed was a
tunnel.

I moved my body to fit through the
twists and turns. A blue light appeared at the end of the pathway. As I
approached, the light became stronger, and I no longer needed to feel my way
around.

The tunnel was four feet in diameter and
lined in moss. After one last twist, I left the pathway behind. I swam up
toward the light. Since Riley hadn’t grabbed my wrist, I suspected I headed in
the right direction.

I breeched the surface of rippling water
and stared up. The ceiling of the dome cave pulsated with a blue haze, perhaps
other bioluminescent water creatures.

Water filled the majority of the
twenty-foot cave. Gentle waves slapped the edge of a surrounding ledge. To the
right, my father rested on a shelf. Two mermen, waist deep in water, floated
near him.

The men had their own specific features
just as any human had, but they were beautiful like Riley. Water compressed
their dark locks against their head and face. Water beads slid down their
throats and toned torsos. Below the water, their tails glowed with color. With
danger salivating at my heels, my mind seemed to focus on their exquisiteness
instead.

Each man kept one hand in the water and
the other on the ledge near my father. They watched me in a peculiar way. Their
faces remained stern with narrow brows and pressed lips, but their eyes sparked
with restrained curiosity.

Had they ever seen a human before?

“You can breathe in this cave. Conserve
your oxygen,” Riley spoke behind me.

I removed my mask, resting it on the
crown of my head, and spat out my mouthpiece without removing my gaze from the
mermen.

Their expressions softened only a
smidge. They recognized me as a human, instead of a weird creature covered in
technology. Still, I was a human and I had a feeling our close encounter should
never have happened in this situation, or otherwise. Did they resent us? Were
they afraid of us?

By the short list of abilities I knew
they possessed, and knowing they had many more, I knew they had little to fear
from us.

Riley moved around me and toward his
men. “I’ve got it from here. You know what to do.”

The mermen nodded, offered a lingering
glimpse at me, and without a change in their facial expressions, dipped back
into the water. I looked down and followed their light until they disappeared
into the tunnel.

I swam toward my father. He rested on
his side, facing the water with his mask and mouthpiece in place. Aside from
the soft movement in his chest, he didn’t stir.

I gulped and fought a sting of tears. I
didn’t want to ask the question, knowing the wrong answer would seal my death
as well. I couldn’t survive knowing my father wouldn’t.

I placed a hand on his shoulder.
Uttering his name didn’t seem possible without tears, either. Devastation
rocked my gut. Negativity was a difficult thing to master control over,
especially in a situation where a decent outcome seemed to dwindle without
hope.

“Keep his gear on,” Riley said. “He’s
not conscious.”

Tears slipped. Thankfully, water beaded
down my face and no one would be the wiser.

Riley twisted his torso to face me and
brushed a thumb across my cheeks. Well, he proved to be a perceptive creature.

My lower lip quivered as a raw ache
crawled down my throat and splattered against my chest. I bit the inside of my
lower lip enough to draw my thoughts away from impending tears.

“He’ll be all right,” Riley said.

I knew those words were of little
comfort, sweet words offered in a time of crisis to keep me going. Mermen were
stronger than I was by far, and this young commander of powerful aquatic
creatures was more focused than a hysterical human girl.

I exhaled and rubbed my father’s shoulder.
I felt as though I was one second away from shaking and yelling to awaken him,
but unconsciousness didn’t work that way. After all, he wasn’t asleep.

Riley surprised me when he took me by
the waist, spun to his right, and hoisted me up onto the ledge near Dad’s head.
I gasped and grabbed onto his cold, broad shoulders. I scuttled backward, until
I hit the wall.

Water swirled around Riley, lifting him
up so that we met at eye-level. We stared at one another. He tilted his head to
the left. I couldn’t read his stoic face. Was he angry, worried, afraid?

I refused to look at my father and
wander into meaningless thoughts about death and becoming an orphan. I pushed
my mental capabilities toward something constructive, and useful, such as what
in the hell was going on here. Understanding the unexplainable took center
stage, unless I spiraled into an inescapable vortex of emotional woes.

A weak glow entered the cavern. Within a
second, a merman breeched the small pool behind Riley.

Holding my breath, I focused on him.
Riley turned to follow my gaze.

The merman, young and fit, bowed at the
chin.

“What is it?” Riley asked him.

The man glanced at me. Warning,
curiosity, and caution lingered on his face.

“Go ahead. It’s all right to speak in
front of her.”

The merman locked eyes with Riley and
said, “We can’t be sure if all the sirens have been captured. We trapped the
majority in Theoisis, but we believe two, perhaps three, fled.

“The horns have not sounded in ages, but
they’ve awakened the city tonight. Our people lock themselves inside their
homes in this severe crisis, and are to remain alert until further notice. Men
surround Atlantis to prevent intrusion and to prevent anyone from leaving. They
are armed and prepared for any approaching sirens. The king is on his way.

“Dolphins have been called to aid us,
and in the light of morning we will send out troops to scour the ocean and send
messages to other cities. We risk our lives for the people, and do so with
honor. Only one merman has been infected, and he has voluntarily been roped and
chained to a gate pillar. You and the king will decide what do with the
unfortunate soul.”

Riley sighed and dropped his head. I
knew what would happen to that poor soul.

“He attempted to crush her head against
the boulder, but she clawed through him. We wrapped his wounds, and the
bleeding stopped. The blood attracted throngs of sharks. They remain at a far
distance, as they always have from our city, but the primal call of blood is
too strong to ignore. Nature may force them to enter the forbidden domain.”

“Keep working.”

The merman nodded, dipped back into the
water, and left.

“What’s the forbidden domain?” I asked.

Riley turned around. “The water near and
in our city is off limits to predators. They never enter the domain because
they’re aware of us, fear us, but bloodshed may push them to enter and attack.
Right now, the city is encompassed by a dome that prevents anyone from entering
or leaving.”

This entire situation wasn’t good for
any of us, I gathered.

I glanced at the glistening, pulsating
ceiling. Rubbing my arm, I leaned forward and away from the wall behind me. I
didn’t want to touch whatever that was.

Riley looked up, and then at me as I
lowered my gaze. Our eyes met, and he commented, “Those are glow worms. They
feed off bacteria and salt, and excrete glowing mucus and oxygen.”

Ew. Thousands of worms hovered above us.

“What will happen to my dad?”

He didn’t respond. His eyelids didn’t
flutter, nor did he twitch. Riley swam back to the ledge, raised himself out of
the water, and hovered over my father.

Water beaded down his saturated hair and
body. Riley’s lean torso melted away into a shimmering green tail. The scales
caught bits of light from tiny, glowing creatures, which nested above us in the
crevices of the cave roof.

An expression of concern sparked Riley’s
face as he quietly looked over Dad’s body, as if he could tell what was wrong
and diagnose him with a simple observation.

“Is he going to be all right?” I bit my
lower lip and held back impending tears.

Without a word, Riley scooped up water
and cupped it over my father’s chest. As the glow returned, the water in his
hand swirled. The small cyclone increased and called out to the water in the
cave. The liquid moved up and over the ledge as the sound of bubbling water
reverberated against the walls. As an amorphous blob, the water trickled up the
cliff and crawled over Dad’s body.

It gathered and entered the cyclone’s
movement, adding to both mass and intensity. The water seeped into my father’s
clothing. I suspected the liquid seized his organs and intended to heal him,
just as it had done for my body.

After a few minutes of intense light,
the glow died and the water splashed back into the pool. Dad’s body relaxed,
but he didn’t open his eyes.

I darted my eyes from Dad to Riley.
“What happened? Why won’t he wake up?”

“It’s all right,” Riley said, calming me
with a hypnotic tone. “I did the same thing to him that I did to you. But, the
siren had her claws deep his mind. He’ll need a lot of rest. I’ve balanced out
the gases in his blood and adapted his body to the pressure. This’ll allow both
of you to return to the surface without the pain, or death, caused by the deep
sea.”

I exhaled. “What now? Go back out there?
What the heck is going on?”

Riley pressed his lips together. Before
he opened his mouth to either answer or evade the question, the water beneath
us gushed up and outward into a wall-to-wall vortex. The liquid crashed against
the rocks, climbed up, and remained suspended. The sound of a waterfall filled
the room.

A sturdy and broad merman emerged from
the center. The water raised him up and over the ledge several feet away from
us. A pristine golden crown was woven into his silver hair. He glared at us
with intense blue eyes, a narrow nose, and rigid lips. He constricted his
square jaw.

His body was obviously that of a man in
shape, and shadows fell over the dips and contours of muscle. His torso tucked
away into a glistening silver tail streaked with gold. He clutched a tall,
thick trident. The trident widened into three, sharp prongs, which faced the
ceiling.

The man held a commanding presence and
incited both awe and fear. I almost dropped my lower jaw.

I swallowed and glanced at Riley’s
reaction from the corner of an eye. If he shifted into a defensive posture,
then the stranger was a foe.

By the looks of the man, he could be no
other than royalty. When Riley slipped back into the water, faced the merman,
and bowed at the waist, his actions proved my assumption correct.

“What has happened?” the man asked. His
low voice boomed and rocked the cave, anger evident in his tone.

Without making a sound or movement, I
watched the interaction between the man and Riley.

Riley kept his head bowed and his eyes
lowered. “My king, the sirens live.”

“What?”

The water gushed with more ferocity,
reflecting the king’s anger.

Riley explained, “We thought the sirens
would die out without food in Theoisis, but they continued to live. They called
out to this mortal and her father. They used him to loosen and remove the
boulder entrance to the labyrinth tomb. The warriors and I raced to the site
just in time to prevent total chaos.”

The king dragged in a breath. His eyes
flickered over us humans. “And what about them?”

“My king, they are innocent and kind
mortals from the above world. They don’t know what’s happened. They were
trapped on the ocean floor when we severed the siren’s song. In order to save
them, we’ve brought them here while we scour the ocean for any remaining
fugitives. We will return the mortals to their boat above water once the sirens
have been secured.”