Song of the Sirens (23 page)

She lifted a hand in the shape of a
claw. Long, sharp nails, still moist from the water, curved downward with a
gleam.

I raised my eyes. The talons prepared to
swipe down and cut through my petrified body.

The whisper grew louder, shaking against
the mental barrier. I couldn’t have imagined a whisper could screech, but the
shrilling cry pried through my senses and tried to rip apart my thoughts until
I begged for death. This wouldn’t happen. The barrier remained firm and strong,
and this irritated the siren. She resorted to a real scream.

I jerked, pressed my palms against my
ears, and clenched my jaw. Tears formed as the siren’s madness pushed her to
spend all of her energy to break me down. Her cruel endeavor to overcome
Riley’s power throbbed through my skull.

Just when the whisper transformed into
the shrieks of a banshee, her arm swooped down.

What was I doing?
I could move
.
The siren’s song didn’t inebriate me with terror. I had a rare power inside of
me, and I couldn’t waste it.

I stumbled backward.

In the nanosecond it should have taken
to feel the jagged ends of the beast’s talons slicing through my flesh,
something unexpected happened. The woman paused with hand still in mid-air. Her
wide eyes stared with both surprise and anguish.

Dark, thick blood oozed from her gaping
mouth and trickled through razor teeth and down cracked lips. It dripped from
her chin and splattered against the sand. I glanced down at the enlarging
puddle of toxic blood. The poison pulsated against grains of sand before
fizzling and bubbling into a dark gray color.

I swallowed and returned my eyes to the
woman’s face. She looked down, and in a sort of confused way, patted her nude
belly. Without a wound there, she scratched at it, as if it attempting to get
to the source of her pain. Light marks appeared where she scratched. Scratching
quickly turned into clawing, and the light marks changed into bleeding gashes.

She looked up as panic seized her. She
returned her gaze to her belly and moaned. She returned to clawing through her
torso, slow, then frantic. Overwhelming amounts of blood spilled from her guts,
and a larger amount gushed out when she grabbed onto a piece of her intestines
and yanked.

I gagged. The smell was as foul as the
sight.

The visceral reaction became stronger. I
jerked forward, but tried to refrain from sudden movements, which might draw
attention back on me. I didn’t want to hurl chunks again.

The siren burrowed into her
self-inflicted wound with blood-drenched hands until she grabbed something. She
pulled and yanked out a silver arrowhead. Holding it up to her face, she
examined the small piece of metal, which turned into liquid and expanded over
her skin. It seemed to grasp onto every drop of blood, and once it met the red
fluid, turned gray and pulsated.

Soon, her entire corpse throbbed harder
and harder until she fought against her body. She looked back at me. Ignoring
her own pain, she took a step forward. No matter what pain cleaved through her,
she wanted a meal.

The whisper turned chaotic as the siren
squirmed. Her veins pushed up to the surface and writhed as if millions of
worms ate their way out. The blisters and boils on her neck and chest ruptured,
leaving streams of pus. The smell of rotting death worsened.

I covered my mouth and nose, then took
another step away.

She jerked several times before opening
her mouth to let out a blood-curdling cry.

I held my breath, clutched my ears, and
dropped to my knees.

The siren fell in a heap of a boiling
mess in front of me. I made the mistake of glancing at the pile of
deteriorating flesh and bones as it bubbled. I heaved at the grisly sight and
putrid smell. I never smelt anything like this.

I couldn’t squat on the beach and barf
while a race of insane, flesh-eating zombie mermaids rampaged across land. I
had to run because the sirens had reached us.

I stumbled to my feet and glanced over
the surface of the waters. Riley emerged and swam toward shore. Before I caught
my breath, Riley rose from the water and ran against the force to the beach. He
was stark naked with a bow in his hand, and a leather strap quiver over his
shoulder.

“Get to the house!” he commanded as he
ran toward the corpse.

I shook off the shock and pushed the
frenzied thoughts out of my mind. I shivered, turned, and ran toward the house.
Twice, I glanced back over a shoulder as I puffed and silenced a cry to get to
safety as fast as possible.

In the first glance, I saw Riley kneeling
down over the body. A minute later on second glance, both Riley and the heap
disappeared.

I didn’t have time to stop and look
around, or to wonder how the siren made it past the mermen and swam this far. I
staggered over small sand dunes, which compressed and flattened out beneath my
weight, causing loss of balance. I fell once, and scraped a knee against the
coarse sand.

When I reached our property, I swung
open the little white gate. It creaked on the hinges and slammed against the
fence, bouncing closed as I ran up the back steps.

Racing to the back deck, I grabbed the
door handle. With a quick scan of the dark horizon, I slipped inside and locked
the door. I turned off the lights, leaned against the wall, and looked out the
window through a small slit in the curtains.

As I regulated onerous breathing, I
scoured the scene over and over. I cursed the wretched darkness, and the sea!
There was no sighting of Riley, or anyone else for that matter. I guessed that
was a good thing, though.

I went over the very recent event,
trying to remember whether I actually locked the door before going outside,
because it was unlocked when I came in. I muttered incoherently and kicked
myself because I couldn’t remember. The last thing I wanted was an ambush from inside
my house.

In the dim room, I heard a creak in the
floorboards. I gulped and tightened my eyes, as if closing them would make
everything go away. I only registered my breathing, the howling winds, and a
god-awful second creak as someone approached.

Making a decision to take back control,
I prepared to annihilate, or at the least fight off the whispers.

The whispers? I didn’t hear the song.

With that thought, I opened my eyes, and
swung toward the direction of the hallway light.

I screeched and jumped, nearly slamming
my back against the wall. A deep yelp returned my reaction.

My father held a hand to his chest and
said, “My goodness! What are you doing, Anita? Are you all right?”

I fought the urge to throw my arms
around Dad’s neck and seek refuge by telling him everything. He hadn’t fully
recovered, and unleashing a giant can of crazies might send him spiraling into
a worse condition.

As long as he didn’t hear the whispers,
he was safe, right? As long as the siren’s song didn’t conquer him, I fought for
the both of us. They wouldn’t get their tattered claws in him again.

I relaxed. “I’m sorry. Did you hear
anything?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I was out like
a light on those pain meds. I just woke up to use the restroom and I saw you
standing here. What are you looking for out there?”

He craned his head to get a view.

“You didn’t hear anything?”

He looked at me. “No.”

I sighed. “Okay, you should get back to
bed then.”

Dad agreed. While he returned to his
room, I ran around the house and secured all the windows and doors. I grabbed a
butcher knife from the kitchen and went to my room. I listened to my father’s
snoring as I passed his room in the hall. Good, he was already asleep.

I turned off all of the lights with the
exception of the hallway light. No one who looked in could see a thing in the
darkness.

Clutching the knife at my chest, I
walked into my room. I turned to close and lock the door, but jumped when I
faced someone. I opened my mouth to scream.

They wrapped a palm over my mouth,
closed the door, spun around, and pushed me against the door so that I couldn’t
wriggle away. Before they raised another hand, I lifted the knife.

The intruder grabbed my wrist and pinned
me. He leaned against my body and looked straight into my eyes. He shook his
head and whispered, “Don’t make any noise.”

I heaved against him. Unintentional
tears slid from my eyes and trailed down Riley’s hand. I hovered on the verge
of crying, having faced death several times now.

“I’m going to let go, don’t scream,” he
warned.

I nodded as best as I could with my head
trapped against the door. Riley loosened his hold on both my mouth and wrist.
He removed himself. I stretched a hand over my stomach and the aching tremors
beneath it.

I wiped away tears as Riley hurried to
the window and looked out before closing the curtains. Riley pulled out the
desk chair and sat down. He wore swim trunks and nothing else. He must’ve kept
them somewhere on the beach or buried them in the same place for the times he
came out of water and walked land.

Shaky and traumatized, I inched closer
to the bed in front of him and sat on the edge. I kept a tight grip on the
knife handle. I wasn’t giving this sucker up for the world.

My breathing was choppy when I asked,
“What, what’s going on?”

No matter how hard I fought to gain
control of my emotions, I couldn’t help it. Tears welled up in my eyes, clouded
my vision. I remained motionless, and hoped the tears drained into tear ducts.
I hoped Riley didn’t notice them in the dark room.

Riley was on edge, he couldn’t sit
still. He fidgeted with his thumbs and tapped his foot against the rug. He ran
his hand down his face, then jumped to his feet.

“Riley,” I hissed.

“Don’t worry. She’s dead.”

“No others?”

“Not that I detected, but that doesn’t
mean they’re not here, just that they aren’t using their song.”

I sat on the bed, leaned over, and
hyperventilated. “Why didn’t you just kill them all when you had the chance?
Why did you let them live, even if you thought they would die out and no one
could unleash them? Why didn’t you throw them into the lava or a volcano and
watch them burn and die if you were worried about their disease spreading!”

Riley stood, took one step, turned, and
dropped beside me. He placed an arm around my shoulder. I instantly stiffened,
and I tightened my hold on the knife handle. There was a lingering question
about which side he stood on when it came to caring for humans.

“It’s going to be all right. I’ve killed
several already. There can’t be more than one or two left, if any.”

“That one almost ate me!”

“Shh,” he coaxed.

“Don’t shush me.”

I regained composure enough to lower my
voice, remaining mindful of my slumbering father. Bringing him into
forethought, I craned my head and listened for the sound of his snoring. A slow
pattern of heavy snoring carried through to my room. For once, I welcomed the
loudness of his snoring.

I spoke in a more even, calmer tone.
“You know, when they had me, I couldn’t move or scream, but I knew what was
going on and I tried to fight it. All those people they ate alive felt the
terror of it, humans from the past, and all of my dad’s friends on that boat.
We have to kill them, all of them, before they spread their disease, hunt down
humans, and get even more out of control. How do we kill them?”

Riley jerked back, baffled that a human
woman intended on destroying something that she couldn’t actually fight. “You
leave that to me.”

“How many died on your watch?” I barked.

He stiffened.

“How do I kill them?” I asked with a
determined voice.

Riley pulled out small arrowheads from
his quiver. They sparkled with a silver glow. “This stone is very rare and very
valuable. As long as water is near us, we can heal, unless we’ve been
completely mutilated and devoured, like being eaten by a shark, for example.
But, there’s something else that kill us.

“We realized these special stones mix
with our blood and dissolves. It latches onto our blood cells and solidifies
into some weird, gelatinous thing. Our king had us sweep the ocean and land for
these. We brought them back to hide and guard. Protectors have access to them
in case something like this happens. We never use this stone against our own
kind, but we can use it against the sirens.”

He took my hand, unlatched my fingers
from around the knife handle, and dropped three into my palm.

“That knife could hurt them, but it
won’t kill them. You can’t get close enough to kill them unless you sneak up
behind them, or shoot these from a distance. Once they know you’re near,
they’ll call out to you and lure you in with their song. When they figure out
the song doesn’t work on you, they may keep trying for a little while before
attacking. Not that I recommend hunting them or going against them. In fact, if
you see one coming, run the other way. Of course, you already know these
things.”