Our Bloody Pearl

by D. N. Bryn

  But Kian’s claim can’t be true. Dejean would have told me if he had lost his father to sirens, wouldn’t he? Dread curls in my gut. He never spoke of his father, even when he mentioned his past. Maybe it’s true. Maybe he was hiding it from me.

  My attention snaps back to Kian as she continues around the side of the tub. I move away from her in shaky, stiff motions, my body refusing to work as it should. “Get out,” I repeat my earlier words, low and panicked this time.

  “You don’t want me here, I know,” Kian says. “And I will leave. But not without you.” She doesn’t follow me around the edge of the tub. Instead, she squats down, drawing something out of her pocket. “You remember this, don’t you?” Between her fingers rests a little rectangle. She flips the top of it open, and a spark of lightning jumps between two wires that stick out like spines.

  I can feel the blood drain from my face, a tingle running along my skin. I thought she had lost it after the first week.

  “This voltage won’t kill you, of course. But you know how unpleasant its shock can be in the water.” She smiles in an all too familiar way that makes my insides turn to ice.

  I can’t stay in the water. Though she holds it far above the tub, the excruciating shock of the lightning already tingles on my skin, threatening to draw my gills closed and force the air from my lungs, to make my organs curl and burst. But moving to the floor means letting go of my only advantage.

  My hands shake, and I can’t pull my gaze away from Kian’s sparker. Every muscle in my body clams up, resisting motion, my scales clinging to the water. But I move on fear alone, edging toward Dejean’s sponge. I watch Kian, wait for her to lower the sparker to the water, to tell me how stupid I was to think I could escape the punishment. Her arm dips. Panic floods through me and I move faster, yanking myself out of the tub in a gasping rush.

  Kian grins, letting the spark dance between the wires of her device again. Shuddering, I turn my face away and dig my hands into Dejean’s fabric. The tub’s water still clings to me. The thought of losing it makes my scales itch, but it’s nothing compared to the burn Kian’s sparker can inflict when I’m wet. Twisting along Dejean’s sponge, I let the water seep away.

  Kian shoves the sparker back into her pocket with a snort. Her smile quickly forms again, vicious and terrifying. She prowls toward me.

  Scrambling onto my elbows, I snarl at her. My vision swims, black spots invading from the sides. I drop back onto the sponge, trying not to look vulnerable. One corner of my wound seeps fresh blood, soaking through my damp brace. I feel faint again; from fear or blood loss or both, I don’t know. My gaze shifts to the little drawer furnishing beside the back door, but Kian steals my attention.

  She moves toward me, her brows pulled together. “You don’t have to fight this,” her words are unreasonably soft, the sort I’ve not heard from her before. Somehow this is worse than her usual tone, like an endless void stretching beyond my reach, cutting me off from the rest of the world. “You don’t need to resist me,” she says. “I can be kind too, if you give me a reason.”

  I don’t know what her concept of kindness is, but it is not the same as Dejean or Murielle’s. It isn’t real.

  For once my anger adds to my fear, rising a deafening hiss in my chest. I bare my teeth, tensing every muscle in my body. But darkness still clings to the edges of my vision, weighing me down, slowing my movements. If I’m to fight, I need to be awake. Kian stands between me and the furniture with the little drawers. If I can only get close enough…

  Shoving off Dejean’s sponge, I burst toward it.

  Kian tackles me as I leap, forcing me to the ground with her hips. We roll once. I snap at her skin, but it slips out of reach. I try to dig my nails into her arm and she twists like an eel, moving from my grasp without letting me go. The world drifts in a fog of color and darkness, the flickering of the lights and the beating of the rain adding to the dreamlike haze.

  Kian’s elbow rams into my shoulder. A burst of pain follows, and my vision grows darker as I fight to breathe. She slams me against the ground and twists until she’s on top of me. Her hands come to my mouth and nose, squeezing them shut. I grab at her arms, but I don’t have the strength left to both claw her and gulp against her hold at the same time. My chest tightens, lungs empty, and my gills burn, pleading to be used. But I have nothing to push through them, nothing to offer.

  The abyss of darkness rises around me, pulling me down. My body seems to give away, my back crumpling into the floor as the ceiling spins into itself. My fingers trail over Kian’s wrists, but they’re too distant, almost intangible.

  “Give in,” Kian whispers, her words echoing. “You can make the pain go away.”

  I squirm harder, my body crying out for something, anything to keep me conscious for one more moment. Compared to this pain, any version of kindness Kian might offer seems reasonable. The inner voice taunts me, competing with my mind as I scream for air.

  Dejean isn’t here. Dejean doesn’t care. He’s using you, just like Kian. The thoughts feel smothering, the world beyond them fading in and out, a blurring mess of truths I can’t reach. The rush of the ocean echoes in my head, blood pumping through my ears as I drift off. The sea. I love the sea. And I love Dejean, whatever his reasons for helping me. He’s been kind, and asked nothing in return. He is not Kian.

  I let myself go limp, closing my eyes.

  Kian’s hold on me loosens. Air returns to my chest, and it’s all I can do to breathe in tiny, subtle gasps. I relax further, as though I’m struggling to regain consciousness. My senses feel dazed enough that I think perhaps I am, but the fierce sting from my gills makes up for it, like a vibrant slash of color in a sea of gray.

  My fingers brush the side of a metal object; One of the tubes that makes faraway things close. I give myself another few breaths. Grabbing the tube, I smash it into the side of Kian’s head. She howls, her body falling away from me as she brings a hand to her head.

  I lunge at the drawers. My vision slips, my fingers bashing into the wood. The ocean pounds through my ears again, but I hear the grinding of my nails beneath it. I grab the top two draws, yanking them free. Their contents spill onto the floor with a distant clatter. I think some of them hit me, but I feel the effect after it happens, an awkward disconnect between my blurred vision and my other senses.

  Kian’s boots echo: behind me, around me, through me, I can’t tell anymore. I swear I feel her breath chill my neck, but it’s only a stray gust through a window banging open. I grope across the ground, my hands hitting trinkets and bandages and little circular bottles. I knock over a small box, and round pills spill out, about the shape and size of the blood replenishers that saved Dejean after Storm bit him. Shoving two in my mouth, I swallow them before they can disintegrate.

  I feel no different.

  Kian’s boot slams into my ribs, shooting knives through my chest. I fall onto my side and wrap my arms over my head, pain spreading from the area in flaming pulses. She repeats the kick twice more, working strangled cries out of my lips. Once she stops, I whimper and go still.

  Kian’s hand grips the back of my neck, pulling me upward. She scoops her other arm under me, and my head spins as she lifts. It’s the same position Dejean carries me in, but from him it feels safe, considerate, dignified. Kian’s grip is like a cage, her every movement bruising. I think she leaves my tail to dangle, but I’m not sure. I can see nothing but a blur and flashes of the house in between darkness.

  I make out the shifting lines of the front door, and suddenly the rain pelts me like tiny wet rocks. Thunder cracks in the distance, but the shadowed form of the house’s peaked top hides the flash of light that follows. I want to reach for it, to pull myself back somehow. But I manage only a weak lift of my fingers before the darkness takes me again.

  I hit the seat of Kian’s land machine with such a thud that my senses return for a moment, blood pounding in my head. Kian looms over me. I struggle as she wraps a box of wire over my mouth,
knocking her back with my hands. She grabs those next, locking them in a set of metal cuffs.

  A new dose of fear washes over me as they bite into my skin, cold and heavy. I won’t go back there. I won’t let her chain me to that tub again, away from the ocean, away from my pod. But I don’t know how to fight her like this, barely hanging on to consciousness. It’s all I can do to keep from blacking out.

  Kian leans forward, brushing a thumb along my forehead. “If you had been obedient to me, as you are with Dejean, you could have had everything you wanted. We could have both won,” she says, her words soft yet seething with bitterness. She shoves my head away. “But you were selfish. You made me work for it,” she spits, turning.

  The rain clashes against the top of the metal machine, covering her footsteps. I drift, woken by one door slamming closed and the other yanking open, as though both happen simultaneously. Time means little. The machine roars to life, rolling back before shooting forward. It bumps along the ground, tossing me in the seat. I do my best to close my eyes and ignore it. I will survive this. It’s just a ride, like the one I took with Dejean the day he first brought me to his house.

  But it doesn’t feel as simple as that. It feels like my muscles are being peeled off the bone as each joint shakes apart. It feels like my ears are being pushed to their limits with the shrill noise of the machine and the clatter of the water falling from the sky. It feels like fear.

  Very soon, I dry out. I itch and burn all over, the raw rims of my gills agonizing. Even the saltless rain outside calls to me. I close my eyes and try to fix my attention on an escape plan. Nothing will stick in my mind long enough to make sense. When I can think, I’m pulled back to the pain spreading throughout my body everywhere above my vacant tail, darkness stretching between one moment and the next.

  Lights appear, hazy behind my eyelids. I force them open to the blurred lines of buildings. Glowing yellow orbs hang from poles along the street, forming halos out of the pouring rain. The harbor? The streets are empty of life, but for a single form standing in the shadow of a tall truck, one arm dangling. I squint, looking for a face in the darkness. Instead, it’s the void that comes for me.

  I jerk awake again, my head clearer this time. Tree branches and black clouds cover the stars, my muddled surroundings an endless stream of thick foliage. Gone is the harbor. We’re going somewhere else, deeper into the island, or perhaps all the way across it.

  The searing pain of my dried-out state distracts me from all rational thought. My gaze wanders to Kian, a tremble running down my shoulders. I need water. I feel as though I’ll crack into little pieces and disintegrate if I’m not given something soon. She knows this; she must. She pushed me near death from the lack of it before.

  A whimper rises in my throat, and I stare at Kian in desperation. She gives me a look I can’t read in the darkness. Her hand appears out of nowhere, knocking into the side of my head. My vision wavers, pain sparking everywhere at once. A cry rises in my chest, but it comes out hoarse and rough.

  The next moment, a slow trickle of water drips across my face from a cup she holds above me. I tip my head toward it, closing my eyes. A bump from the car sends the rest of the water splashing onto my head. I gasp in relief. It doesn’t take away the pain, but it’s enough for now. I go limp against the seat, letting my consciousness drift.

  I jerk awake as Kian rolls the machine to a stop and shuts it off. Outside, the trees give way to sand, and sand to sea. The waves crash with the ferocity of an attacking siren pod, sending foam far up the beach. A large dinghy rests just out of the water’s reach, four people keeping it still. Beyond the wall of rain, the faint silhouette of a ship bobs in the harbor, the distinct shape of the stacks on the stern and the elegant curve of the bow painted into my memory forever.

  A pit forms in my gut, like a blow to the stomach.

  The Oyster.

  [ 14 ]

  THE OYSTER

  If I want to hold on, is it best to tighten my grip, or to let go?

  METAL SCRAPING METAL startles me as Kian exits the machine. The wind slips through the open door, blasting me with a bucket’s worth of saltless water. It vanishes again just as quickly, returning to its incessant pounding on the walls of the machine.

  Darkness threatens to creep back in. I focus on my breathing, trying to keep the taunting void of unconsciousness at the corners of my vision. Dejean hovers before me. A rush of joy rises in my chest. I reach out to him with my chained hands, the weight clinging to my trembling arms. My fingers go straight through his cheek, and he vanishes.

  My hope plummets. A trick of my mind, that’s all it is. Dejean’s on the other side of the island, with Murielle and Simone. My helpless mind spirals through terrible questions. Does he worry over my safety? What will he think when he finds me gone? Will he wonder after me at all?

  Time passes slower than usual as Kian walks around the machine, shouting instructions at her crew. I see Dejean again, in the waves, in the rocks, in the trees. In the first he’s distraught, and in the second he fumes with anger, but I cannot make out the expression on his dark face as he stalks toward me through the forest, only the stiff arch of his shoulders and his powerful, staggering stride.

  I shy away from Kian as she opens the door on my side of the machine. She picks me up roughly. My stomach turns, but I don’t protest. If I have any hope of escaping, I need to conserve my strength until I’m above deep water.

  She carries me to the grounded dinghy and sets me inside. Pain laces up my back from the bruises, but the gentle drop hurts little compared to her usual punishing slam. She underestimates me. My soul pulls toward some dark abyss, its jeering rush spinning my head. Perhaps she’s right. I don’t feel like a terror of the sea when my desperate cling to consciousness flails more than it succeeds.

  But with the visions of Dejean fading, my focus sharpens. Pushing through the haze, I curl onto my side and poke my head over the edge of the boat. Theirn catches my eyes with a firm look.

  “Stay quiet. She’s…” he pauses, seeming to search for words. “In a mood.”

  I give him a very tiny nod. We may be enemies, but we both know how dangerous Kian grows during times like these, to humans as well as sirens.

  Theirn returns the nod. “I’m sorry,” he adds. “That captain, Gayle—you seemed happy with him. But I couldn’t…” His face falls and his words fade into the rush of the rain in the wind and the pounding of the waves.

  A part of what he says tugs at my heart. But the pity he harbors won’t stop him from knocking me straight back into the darkness if he thinks I mean to escape. Theirn or not, I have to get away. I’ll have to time this very carefully.

  Two women work on the other side of the boat, preparing the steam machine that will push it forward. I’ve never seen either of them before, but the third member’s voice rings like an echo in my ears.

  Chauncey.

  He stalks toward Kian as she rummages through the driving machine’s main compartment. “You have your ship and your fish. Pay up.” The storm conceals his face, but he hovers a hand over the hilt of his thin sword.

  Fury hits me with a blast of wind off the unforgiving sea. Dejean left the Oyster in Chauncey’s care, to sail up to Luciole Rock. Yet he ran instead of protecting his first mate, and here he stands, the Oyster floating just off the coast.

  “Traitor,” I hiss under my breath, my word lost in the storm. Dejean and I have no sign for it, and it tears a bitter hole in my heart at the thought of needing one.

  Kian hardly pauses from her work, snapping over her shoulder, “You promised me the siren, but you failed to deliver.”

  “There were complications!” Chauncey exclaims, stopping beside her. “But I got the Oyster out of the harbor without stirring up trouble. That’s worth half of what you agreed on, at least. Hand it over.”

  In the darkness, Kian goes still with the chilling quiet of a predator preparing to attack, to kill. Then her shoulders relax and she laughs a high, sharp so
und that matches the storm. “This is a good day,” she says, motioning at Theirn. “Toss him his reward.”

  Theirn lifts his brow, but says nothing. I flinch out of the way as he reaches past my head and grabs a bag from the chest beside the mast. He hurls it at Chauncey. The traitor struggles not to let it slip through his fingers in the wet and the wind.

  As he tightens his grip on the bag, Kian yanks his sword out of its holder at his belt and sticks the sharp end through his stomach. She twists and then tugs upward. His guts spill and he crumples to his knees, his eyes wide. None of Kian’s crew so much as flinch.

  A peculiar satisfaction grows in my stomach. Chauncey deserved this. Though his damage is already done, I’m glad he’s no longer a threat. But now the scent of his blood whips toward me in the winds, mixed with the sharp, briny smell of the sea. I chance a whine, trying to catch Kian’s attention without appearing too assertive.

  Chuckling to herself, she yanks somethings hot and bloody out of the hole she made in Chauncey’s stomach. She cuts it up into finger-sized pieces and shoves it through the bars of the little cage she muzzled me with before the ride here. My instincts fight, fear tugging me away from her, but I force myself to take the meat. My weakened body needs this blood, and even the smallest slices taste fresh and potent and wonderful. A kidney, I think.

  As though triggered by the nutrients, the pills I took at Dejean’s house kick in. The last curls of wooziness retreat from my mind. My muscles still ache, tender with bruises and shaky from use, and the pounding of my ribs and gills refuses to subside, but I move easily once more, as though a weight has been lifted off my body. Maybe I can get out of this after all.

  But Dejean appears again, stalking at the edge of my vision, and my hope fades. I’m still hallucinating. Whatever trick this is, it hasn’t rid my mind of the fatigue-induced intrusions. I go limp, peeking out over the side of the boat. The world seems to collapse, a chaotic gale encircling me as a weary dark cloud settles within.