Siren's Song

by Heather McCollum

  I try to open my mouth, but my lips won’t obey. Patricia pulls me down, and I feel the thump of my butt on hard stone tile as I plop to the cold floor. “My, my, Jule, you’re heavier than you look. Just stay here for a minute.” She laughs then. “Not that you could go anywhere anyway.”

  My eyes want to shut, but I force them to stare into her perfectly made-up face. Her hair is in a tight bun at her nape, her clothes as impeccable as ever. The same woman as always, the woman who helped raise me, comfort me, protect me. My heart thunders. I can’t tell if I’m breathing. Everything feels muted, like I’m under anesthesia. I struggle to move, but my arms and legs are leaden.

  Patricia brushes my hair back from my face. “We’ll have you up in a moment. You can just close your eyes and rest, sweetheart.” She runs her be-ringed, cool hand down my cheek and shakes her head. “You’ve certainly had a hard time of it lately. But everything is okay. I’m here for you. We all are.” She glances over my head and smiles. “She had too much, I think. Such a sweet tooth. You’ll have to carry her. And let’s put poor Carolyn on the couch so she doesn’t look like she’s passed out in a drunken stupor.

  The tips of Carolyn’s leather clogs bob by in my peripheral line of sight, but I’m unable to turn my head to follow them. Patricia stands up and backs away as the large form returns. I fight to jack my eyes open. Just before they shut, trapping me in helpless blackness, a face grows in front of my gaze, filling the entire space I can see. Eric Ashe, of course.

  * * *

  “Izz ee locked tight up in the roooo?”

  “Yeah, buuuuuu, wa if ee…”

  Bits of words filter through the fog clogging my ears and mind. I concentrate on breathing, slow and steady. I feel heavy, like I’ve been asleep a long time. I’m lying on my back on something smooth. My fingertip twitches against my leg. Vinyl, like in a doctor’s office. I inhale, but I don’t smell antiseptic. Instead…mold, herbs, fetid water maybe. My nose tickles, reminding me just how allergic I am to dank, musty places. I scrunch it, trying to shake off a sneeze.

  The bits of sounds congeal into words, sentences. “So what are we going to do?” I recognize Eric’s voice.

  “We’re guardians,” Patricia’s cultured, calm voice sounds much more in control than her son’s. “We will do what we’ve pledged to do, what all our ancestors have pledged to do. We protect the Siren.” Shock and horror grip me. If I wasn’t already knocked flat on my back I’d probably pass out. In and out. No hyperventilating allowed! I need a working brain more than ever.

  “And how, exactly, do we do that now?” Eric asks. Something roughens his voice. I’m not sure whether it’s anxiety or anger.

  “We kill The Cursed, of course.”

  Kill? Kill! I stifle my gasp at Patricia’s casual remark and crack my eyes. God, can they hear my pounding heart? Blurry candlelight glows nearby as I focus through the thin slits. I don’t dare move my head, or they’ll know I’m waking up. Rock walls, maybe a basement.

  “That won’t be exactly easy,” Eric says.

  “Oh, they die just like normal humans,” Patricia says excitedly. “At least, that’s what’s been written. But we’re the first guardians to catch them in a hundred years. Alba is beside herself with envy that we’ve found them. She wants to know every detail.”

  “Technically, Lucas found us—found Jule, anyway.”

  “And now we will do what we must and continue their punishment for the atrocities they commited.”

  “Won’t it look bad…I mean,” Eric’s voice drops. “Won’t we get caught? They all know too much.”

  “Don’t worry,” Patricia says. “I’ll alter Jule’s memories, and Carly’s. It will be a little complicated, but I’ll confuse them enough that they won’t be able to lead the police anywhere. I think I’ll make it look like a suicide pact between Lucas and his sister, once their brother dies in the hospital from a complication.”

  Good God! Patricia has it all figured out! She’s frickin’ insane!

  “Let’s alter Jule’s memory and get her home,” Eric says. His voice sounds louder, like he’s facing me. I concentrate on even breathing. “I don’t like seeing her…just lying there.”

  “You care for her,” Patricia says. “That’s good.” Eric doesn’t respond. “Because I have a plan.” The smile in Patricia’s smooth voice shoots shivers up my spine. Adrenaline rockets through me.

  “Plan?” Eric asks, worry obvious in the one word.

  “All along through history our family has had to convince the Siren family, Maximillian’s family, to let us close, to trust us. We had to move here to follow them, pull you out of school, convince Richard to leave Leesburg High, everything. But…what if the Siren family and our family were one and the same, blood-related? Then we’d be close by default.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So,” Patricia’s voice gets louder and I hear her heels tap on the hard floor as she gets closer. My muscles twitch and I force them to relax. “Jule’s mother is beyond childbearing and, despite my casual insistence that she have more, she only had one child. Dangerous. If Maximillian’s line dies out, the curse is broken. Jule is ripe for childbearing. In fact, her cycle right now is the most fertile.”

  “You’ve been tracking her periods?” Eric sounds as shocked as me.

  “It’s not difficult,” Patricia comments. “Anyway, if she gets pregnant now, we can be there to help her as a supportive family should.”

  “What? Who…” he trails off.

  I hold my breath because if I release it I just might scream.

  “You, Eric, are going to father the next generation of Sirens.”

  “Me? How? I mean I can’t…I—”

  “Will do your duty, son.”

  “You want me to…to sleep with Jule? Now?” The shock and refusal in his voice is the only thing keeping me from trying to get off the table. Panic gushes through me. I have to see what is going on, where I am, if I’m to have any chance of escaping. I don’t move, just crack my eyes further open. Patricia and Eric are about ten feet away, postures mimicking their voices. Eric’s hands are spread as if in shock. Patricia stands with her hands folded in front of her, calm, smooth as always.

  “I don’t think you want her conscious. She doesn’t trust you like I’d hoped. It would have been so much easier if you’d charmed her.” The statement sounds like a rebuke. “But since she won’t even be in the same room with you, I think it best that she’s asleep for this.”

  “And how are you going to explain this?” he waves his hands around. “Immaculate conception? And if she doesn’t know the baby’s mine, what does it matter if our genes are mixed with Maximillian’s Sirens?”

  Patricia frowns. “You will have to make her trust you, and soon. Comfort her when Lucas kills himself. Then sleep with her again. Get her drunk if you have to. She’ll find out she’s pregnant, and you will be the father.” I snap my eyes shut again as she turns toward me.

  “Mom, Angie and I…I can’t just have a baby with Jule.”

  “Forget Angie, Eric. This is your duty as a guardian,” she says as if that dissolves any other factor in his life.

  Eric hesitates. “She…Jule could have an abortion.” He starts to turn to me and I slam my eyes shut.

  “We won’t let that happen.”

  “It’s dangerous. Too much could happen. And I don’t think…she’d never trust me enough. Plus, she’s bound to realize she’s been… I mean, she’s a virgin, isn’t she? She can tell that something’s happened to her.”

  Silence ensues. Maybe she’s realizing her plan is absolutely crazy.

  “How about Carly?” Patricia says.

  “What!? Mom, she’s my sister!”

  “I don’t want you to sleep with your sister. God, Eric, what do you take me for? And she’s not a Siren.” She huffs like Eric’s a total idiot. He doesn’t answer her. “But Carly’s not a virgin, if her diary is to be believed. Mathias stole that from her.” Anger laces Patricia’
s words, and I’m certain now that Patricia was the one to put the spider in Matt’s helmet, not Eric. “I can work with those sensory details and convince Carly that she slept with him again. She’s been hanging out with him so much lately,” she sneers.

  “I’m afraid to ask, but Mom, how are you going to get Carly pregnant with a Siren baby?”

  “Easy,” the smiley voice again. “We take an egg from Jule, fertilize it with your sperm, and plant it in Carly. She has the baby and, voila–we have a Siren baby in our family where we can dote and protect it without having to convince any more of Maximillian’s line to trust us. I’ll be a legend!”

  I hear a noise like Eric scrubbing his hands across his face. “Easy? Since when did you become a fertility specialist? There need to be hormones and labs to do that type of work. Doctors.”

  “Magic, Eric.”

  “Magic can’t take out Jule’s egg.”

  “No, but Alba can. I’ll just give her a call. We’ll take out Jule’s entire ovary if we have to.”

  What?! I’ve got to escape. I hear her step across the room, perhaps to an exit. If Eric goes, could I get past Patricia? Maybe they’ll leave me alone.

  I hear her punch numbers into a cell phone. “Alba, dear, I’m in need of your services.” Patricia laughs softly. “I need you to come by my house ASAP, and bring your surgical instruments.” She pauses. “Well that’s true, but still, Alba, I couldn’t pull off this plan without you. We will go down in guardian history with this. You’re a surgeon, and I just so happen to need one. Hurry over.” She hangs up.

  “Jule will have scars, stitches, Mom. Don’t screw up Carly’s life for this. Look, I’ll…I’ll figure out a way to sleep with Jule.” Eric follows her.

  Patricia pauses. Please! Sanity, where the frigg are you?

  “Eric, we need a Siren baby in our bloodline. I’ll talk to Alba about the best way to do it when she gets here,” Patricia clips. “But if we let Jule carry the baby, I don’t want the timing of the conception left in your hands. You need to have intercourse with her while she’s under. She’s fertile right now. It’s why I chose this time.”

  Eric shakes his head. “No matter how you put it, Mom, this is rape. You want me to rape Jule.” He sounds as shocked as I feel.

  Crack! Patricia’s hand slaps Eric’s cheek. She glares. “Shut up! Honor, duty, and sacrifice! It’s what we know as direct-descendant guardians. It’s why we, me and you, hold the honor of guarding the Sirens.” She sucks in loudly through her narrow nose, as if she’s trying to compose herself. “You will do what you must.”

  “Where? Like, here in this basement?”

  “You can move her to your room if you’d like. But right now you just worry about keeping Lucas and Taylin unconscious until we kill them.”

  I crack my eyes. Patricia hands Eric some type of shot apparatus. It looks like a tranquilizer gun that zookeepers use. “This is enough to take down an elephant. Give it to Lucas. Taylin only needs a regular human dose.”

  “Why even bother?” Eric murmurs. “Why not just kill them now?” He shakes his head as if he realizes how crazy it all sounds.

  Patricia ignores his tone. “I need to stage their suicide. Just give me a couple hours.”

  Eric pauses at a door and unlocks the large padlock. A squeak echoes in the dank air as he pushes the door inward. A light flicks on, but I can’t see past Eric’s large frame. God, what have they done to Luke? To Taylin?

  Patricia shuts the door behind Eric and disappears up the basement stairs.

  I release the hold on my muscles all at once and nearly fall off the table. I catch myself on the vinyl edge and lower my feet to the damp, stone ground. Large lights, like those in an operating room, sit like dark, gaping mouths above me and I realize the table is, in fact, set up like a doctor’s exam table. I jerk away from it awkwardly, my gaze focused on the door across the room. My legs are numb, and I shake them and my arms to get the blood flowing. A quick scan shows no other exits, just the door and the stairs.

  My bookbag sits on the ground, and I bend to grab my mom’s cell phone, but it’s not where I left it. The bags of my magically-made blood sit next to my bag. Maybe Taylin had been working with it when they snatched her. Silently, I step toward the stairs. I jerk and nearly choke when a phone on a table across the room rings a popular Eminem song. I rush across on the balls of my feet and grab it, flicking it open to stop the ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Carly says.

  “Oh my God. Carly.”

  “Jule? Did you find them? Well, of course you did, you’re on Luke’s phone. Where are you? Is everyone okay?”

  I clench the phone in both hands against my face. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t move. So this is what paralyzing fear feels like. My heart pounds so hard I’m sure that I’m going to have a stroke.

  “Jule? What’s going on?” Carly’s questions ring in my ears.

  I wet my lips to unstick them as I stare, unblinking, into Eric’s chiseled features. “Uh…I lost my lip gloss.” My mind feels like it’s firing through molasses. I have to warn her somehow.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “My iced-strawberry lip gloss. I think I left it at my house,” I say. I don’t want her trying to find me. Patricia might change her mind to impregnate her.

  “Your iced-strawberry lip gloss?” she repeats slowly. I hear her starting to breathe faster, but nothing else registers because Eric’s striding across the room to me. He stops before me, waiting to see what I’m going to do, to say.

  I’m nearly panting. Stars spark in my periphery. I talk fast. “And Carly, whatever you do, don’t eat any of your mom’s muffins. Or cakes, or, well, anything. Stay away from her,” I spit out, waiting for Eric to grab the phone. But he just stares.

  “My mom?”

  “Hang up,” Eric says low. “You’ve said enough.”

  “I…I love you, Carly, no matter what, know that… okay?”

  “Jule? I—”

  “Hang up,” Eric demands.

  “Bye,” I say on a shallow exhale and end the call.

  Eric and I stare at one another for a long moment. He takes a step toward me; I dodge but find myself up against the damp wall. “Eric, you know your mom is crazy. I know you do.” Eric grabs the phone out of my hand and hurls it across the room. I jump as it smashes against the stone wall, shattering into a jagged mess of useless technology. “Eric, help me. Don’t listen to Patricia.”

  Eric grabs my wrist and pulls me toward the vinyl table. “You’re not a killer,” I continue. “Don’t do this.”

  “They aren’t human, Jule. They’re monsters,” he says and pushes me down onto the table.

  “They are human, and they are the victims here, Eric, no matter what your Magic Alliance cult has brainwashed you with. Maximillian was insane. He killed his wife, not the three of them. They were trying to protect Deidre.”

  “They’ve told you lies, Jule.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To get close to you.”

  “Eric, if Luke wanted to kill me he would have done it already. He’s had more than ample opportunity.”

  Eric growls low. “I know.” He snaps a thick leather cuff around both of my wrists and locks them securely. “I failed in keeping you safe. My sacred duty.” His eyes rise to meet mine. He looks sincerely upset. “I am sorry.”

  I exhale. “Eric, you can still help me. Don’t…don’t rape me.” Shock flits across his face and it reddens as he realizes just how much I heard. He looks back down and attaches a chain between the metal links on the leather cuffs. “This is like some crazy soap-opera horror movie. And if you go along with it, you’re the villain.”

  “You won’t remember.”

  “I’ll be mysteriously pregnant.” I shake my head. “Your mother is using us. The guardians are using us. Raping me is not protecting me, Eric. Help us get out of here.”

  Eric pauses. He looks down at
his hands. They clench and he lowers them. “I…I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” I hiss, pleading. I swallow hard. “Eric, if you want me to survive today,” I feel my heart shudder at the threat I’m about to make. “If you want me to live to see tomorrow, you will help me, Taylin and Luke get out of here now.”

  Eric looks back into my face. “I won’t let Mom or her friend kill you. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Yes you will!” I shake my head in frustration.

  “Ah, so someone’s awake.” Patricia’s voice stabs through me. She taps quickly down the stairs. “Good thinking, Eric, to strap her in. Although we’ll still have to drug her.”

  “Patricia,” I say. “Don’t do this. You don’t understand. Luke, Taylin, and Matt are the victims. Maximillian was the killer. They’ve been tortured these two hundred years by a madman. What you’re doing is wrong.”

  Patricia smiles serenely. “It’s okay, Jule. You won’t feel a thing and I’ll give you a lovely memory of losing your virginity with Lucas before he kills himself. Once he’s dead you won’t have to fear a madman slaughtering you.” She tsks and throws a glance toward the locked door. “After all, I love you like a daughter.”

  “Like a daughter you’re forcing your son to rape? God! And then you’re planning to steal the baby!” I can’t keep the loathing out of my voice any longer.

  Fury contorts Patricia’s usually serene features. “It’s unfortunate that you’ve been warped by Lucas and his coven, or you might be able to understand how we must sacrifice to uphold our honor and duty. But since that demon has seduced you, there is nothing left to discuss. We will alter your memory of him so that you will be relieved he is gone.”

  God, no! I don’t want to forget Luke’s lopsided smile, his soft, wavy hair, the way his jeans move along his gracefully powerful muscles, and his arms, so strong and warm when he holds me. How could I live fresh and free without remembering the velvet crush of his voice as he whispers into my ear, or the feel of his breath on my skin?

  She glances at Eric, who stares at his shoes. “Perhaps we can enhance your attraction to Eric. That will help you after Luke’s death.”