Siren's Song

by Heather McCollum

  I shake my head, appalled. “You’re studding out your son, and I’m your brood mare.” My face screws up into revulsion. “That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting!”

  The sting and force of her slap hit me before the cracking sound and I flop back onto the table.

  “Mom!”

  “You little idiot!” Patricia’s smooth face twists into something grotesquely sinister. “You don’t realize what danger you’re actually in, how we’re saving you. That monster,” she jabs a manicured finger toward the back door, “wants to rip you apart, to enjoy your scream, and to dance in your blood. We. Are. Saving. You! So shut up and cooperate. Perhaps we do just need to take out your ovary.”

  My cheek stings and my head throbs. I lie on my back and stare up at the pipes running along the ceiling. There’s no arguing with her. Patricia Ashe is as insane as Maximillian, and Eric’s too weak to stop her. Carly doesn’t know where I am, even if she does listen to me and calls the police. Alba will be here soon and then they’ll knock me out. I feel tears gather behind my frozen eyes. Luke, Taylin, and Matt will die brutally, again. And their curse will continue to torture them as long as my offspring live.

  My meager choices are dissolving. Help Luke break the curse through some trick or loophole, let the curse continue somehow or…break the curse with my death.

  I breathe slowly, in and out, while Patricia prattles on about some higher calling. Yeah, the choices have dissolved, leaving only one. I glance toward the door where I know Luke must be, lying unconscious from the huge tranquilizer Eric just injected into him. His face must be peaceful in sleep, his hands unclenched, his torture muted. Just one more sight of him, that’s all I want now. Just to see him stride toward me, no matter how terrifying it is. That’s all I want now. I wonder…how strong is my song? To call him?

  I open my mouth and inhale.

  “Stop!” Carly runs down the basement stairs with another large form. I close my mouth, breathing heavily at what I was about to do.

  “What the hell is going on?” Matt yells. He’s wearing a hospital gown tucked into his jeans as he races down with Carly.

  Patricia hurls a curse that I wouldn’t have believed she’d ever utter and pulls out a gun. A fricking gun!

  “Matt!” I yell from the table. “She’s going to kill you.”

  Carly jumps in front of Matt, blocking his body with her own.

  “Carly, get away from him,” Patricia commands.

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Carly’s eyes open so wide I wonder if she’s about to pass out. Her gaze takes in me, chained up, and Eric.

  “Luke and Taylin—” I start to say.

  “Shut up!” Patricia screeches.

  “Are behind that door, drugged!” I yell over her voice. “She’s going to kill all of them.”

  Patricia lowers her voice and smoothes her features into her normal calm appearance. “Carly, sweetheart, I will explain all of this later.” It’s as if she’s talking to a small child. “Right now, though, I need you to turn around and go back upstairs. I have some lovely pumpkin muffins in a container in the cupboard. Help yourself. I know you must be hungry.”

  Carly’s gaze flicks to mine. “No, Mom. I want to know what’s going on now.”

  Patricia holds the gun level with Carly. Matt tries to edge around her, but Carly plasters herself against his body. “Okay,” Patricia says. “Jule is the last of Maximillian’s heirs. Her mother is past reproducing age, so Jule is the last Siren able to sustain the curse. If we let Luke kill her, the curse will be broken and those killers will be free to hurt people again.”

  “What?” Matt’s eyes seek out mine. “If Luke kills Jule, then the curse is broken for him.”

  Patricia shakes her head slowly. “No Mathias, for all of you, since she is the last living fertile descendant of

  Maximillian. There are no others, since Isabella didn’t have any other children. If Jule dies, the curse unravels.” Patricia looks at me. “And you knew that. You have the pedigree, but you didn’t tell them? Hmmm…interesting. Perhaps you’re smarter than you act.”

  What can I say to explain? I was scared. I held the information. I thought there was time to tell Luke, tell all of them. “It’s true,” I whisper and Matt looks away, anger aging his youthful features. A look of betrayal. I feel my face pink, but to attempt to explain now would sound hollow. I’ll just have to show him. I turn my head to look back up at the pipes on the ceiling, tracing them with my gaze. All my choices are gone, all but one.

  I inhale and close my eyes as I unlock the song in my chest. The sound billows up on my breath, from my heart, from my spirit, breaking out of my lips. The notes resonate inside the room without words, just a complex weave of sound. It’s like I’m living again after all these days of silence. I release a sorrowful cantata filled with passion, fire, and the sweetness of love despite denial.

  I feel nothing but the song. As it carries about the room blooming into something alive in itself, I open my eyes. Patricia, Eric, and Carly stand motionless, their enthralled faces turned to me. Matt moves toward the door, but before he can reach it, a growl from within, so loud I feel the vibration, stops him solid. I take a breath and push forth my life song, my death song, my fated swan song.

  22

  “We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.”

  ~Che Guavara

  I jump, even though the leather straps hold my arms against my sides. The door lock clicks open, but Luke’s beyond simply turning the handle. My eyes ache from lack of blinking while I watch the chilling dismantling of the iron door. Luke, wild and terrifying, rips the heavy mass from its hinges and throws it against the stone wall.

  “Stop!” Matt yells. Luke’s glowing eyes swivel toward him. “Lucas, stop! Fight the curse!”

  Matt turns to me. “Jule, he’s out of there. Stop singing!” I don’t even realize that I still am.

  I look at Luke. “I love you, Lucas Macleod.” Luke’s gaze swings back to me, piercing me with glowing eyes. Tattoos swirl coal-black over his arms, dragons with oily scales that seem to undulate. He’s chiseled from rock, an inhuman god or beautiful wraith, brimming with barely contained power and rage. “I…” my voice breaks and I swallow, though all moisture has left my mouth. “I am Maximillian’s last descendant. I was going to tell you. I can end this curse.” I breathe deep and meet Luke’s violent gaze. He huffs, his nostrils flaring like some magnificent beast. And I sing.

  “Love…Destroy… Pierce the dragonfly.

  Spill the Siren’s blood.

  Shatter this curse of hatred so you can realize love.”

  My words meld with the notes as I pour my pure gift into them. Bel canto, my mother would say. Beautiful singing, pure tones, weaving and dancing along the scale. As I call Luke with my Siren song, the part of my mind still working outside my song realizes that it was my birthmark all along. Not dragon’s eye or dragon thigh. To break the curse Luke must pierce my dragonfly, the one directly over my heart. I feel my chest arch off the vinyl table.

  I’m half-aware of Matt dragging Taylin out of the dungeon. She sags like a rag doll against his side.

  “Get…Carly…out of here, too,” I sing. Matt nods tightly as he hurtles up the steps with Taylin over his shoulder. In seconds he’s back for Carly, flinging her up as well. She doesn’t resist, her eyes blank as they pivot toward me from her new position.

  “Jule,” Matt calls over my song. He glances at Luke and shakes his head. “He’s too far gone.”

  “Abeo!” I sing in Latin. “Go away!” Since when do I know Latin? I continue to sing, my words sliding with the notes between Latin, Italian, and English. Matt runs up the stairs.

  “Run, yet you cannot fly from me,” I sing, the words flowing like a ribbon of sweet breath from my mouth. But they aren’t my words, even though they come from my lips. Luke steps closer, haltingly, as if he fights to keep his distance. “Your very heartbeat sings of your love.” I r
ealize that my words are from Luke. No, not Luke, from the curse twisting him. And its song has twined with him and with me.

  “Turn away, yet I will not let you deny me. You are my Siren, my very heart, my obsession, my curse and my savior.”

  I sing the woven song as Luke stalks me. A velvet-covered table stands behind Patricia. Luke whisks past her and grabs a knife, returning to my table as I inhale. My gaze goes from him to the ancient weapon. It’s no ordinary kitchen knife. Three blades welded together with a hand-hold in the middle. Jewels sit along the base of the blades. Dragons, just like the tattoos twining Luke’s arms, are etched up the hammered, polished blades. I glance a dragonfly beneath a shield near the base.

  Luke stands tall next to me, arms strong and ready to act. The blades flash in his grip, spinning like a lethal rotary saw. His hand stills, and I notice small red nicks along his fingers. I start a staccato of short, detached notes and the blade halts directly over my chest.

  This is it, the end. My eyes blur and I fight the crippling fear that will mute my song, cut off everything. Will it hurt? Or be painless like the glass slicing along my foot? Will it take a long time? I tremble, tears running hot down the sides of my face. It’s too late for me, but if I stop singing, Eric and Patricia will witness the kill, swear to it and ruin Luke’s final life. I will sing as long as I can and hope he can get out of here in time.

  Commotion at the stairs registers in my periphery. Luke’s hand quivers as one of the blades inches closer. His other hand grabs the neckline of my turtleneck and yanks. My chest comes off the table as the cotton tears, jerking me forward and then dropping me back.

  Taylin’s face appears next to Luke. Her eyes are droopy and she keeps blinking. She’s holding one of the bags of my fake-made-real blood. God, was that just yesterday?

  “Lucas,” she calls over my notes. “Spill this blood, the Siren’s blood.” But he stares down at my chest where I know my dragonfly birthmark sits just above my bra. “Jule, shut up!” she yells.

  I let the song die at the back of my throat and suck in a silent breath.

  “Let go of me!” I hear Patricia scream from the far end of the room. “Eric, get him.”

  “I’m tied, too,” Eric says. Matt must have come back down while I was singing.

  “Blindfold them, Matt,” I yell as I stare up into Luke’s taut features. “Don’t let them be witnesses against him.”

  Taylin shoves the bag of blood in front of Luke. He barely acknowledges it. Instead, the glowing swirls in his eyes focus on mine.

  “I love you,” I whisper. “No matter what.”

  A groaning growl rips out of Luke’s throat as he lifts the razor above my chest. I search his tortured face for some sign of my Luke, but his deep eyes are consumed with the icy glow and glazed with insanity. His strong, tender lips are cinched back taut over gnashed-together teeth, and the arms that had held me and warmed me in the dark camper are flexed with restrained violence. Panic tightens my chest as I realize Lucas Macleod, Luke Whitmore, is gone.

  “Luke?” I whisper, but I can’t find him. The curse rules furiously in the man looming over me, the promise of death in every component of his being. My breath catches on a sob and I realize that my courage has left with him. I shut my eyes and imagine the lopsided grin on Luke’s calm face, the deep emotion of his blue-black eyes, the way his soft hair lies over his forehead in gorgeous disarray. I remember the taste of his kiss, the depth of his whispers and words, the feather-soft slide of his lips along my skin.

  Taylin shouts something, and I gasp as I feel cool liquid gush across my chest. I cringe, waiting for the numbness of shock to wear off, waiting for pain. The metallic tang of blood fills my nose.

  “Did it work?” Matt yells nearby. My eyes open and I stare in Luke’s monster face.

  “He did it,” Taylin insists. “He spilled her blood.”

  I glance down my nose at the bright red splash of blood covering my chest and bra. Rivers of it trickle down my ribs, pooling in the tangle of hair sticking out around my shoulders. I shiver violently from cold and most likely shock.

  “But did it work?” Matt asks again. “It was the fake blood.”

  I look at Luke and move my chin slightly to shake my head. Nothing’s changed.

  “Get away from her!” Eric yells from the back of the room and I wonder if he can see what’s going on.

  “Bloody cursed demons!” Patricia’s cultured voice screeches profanity as she struggles. There’s a commotion at the steps, but my focus is all within a foot of my drenched chest. “Alba! Over here!”

  “I…I don’t know,” Taylin says. “Lucas?”

  “He hasn’t pierced the dragonfly,” I rasp, my eyes still locked with the glowing ice of his eyes. I try to inhale deeply, but my chest expands in little hitched starts and stops. Luke’s hand is suspended over my chest. I see the veins in his forearm, the white clenching of his knuckles. Sweat dots along the upper bridge of his nose as he struggles, a silent battle inside him giving me these few more seconds of life. The spilled blood covers my birthmark, but I know the curse inside Luke knows exactly where it is. A beacon over my drumming heart.

  For a moment time halts in this tiny part of the universe. No one sucks in or exhales. No one screams or curses or talks. No one moves or grabs or kills. As if magic has given us all a moment to comprehend our fates, process our necessary outcomes, devise a plan that hasn’t a chance to work. A magical tease where we think for a split second that this could all just be a cruel blood-drenched nightmare.

  “No!” Matt grunts and grabs Luke’s arm that holds the triple-blade.

  In one effortless flick, Luke hurls Matt across the room without even turning from me. Matt smacks into shelves holding beakers and jars. They crash down over him in a hailstorm of shattering glass.

  Patricia screams. Eric yells. Taylin jumps away from Luke’s unleashed wrath. I step up to the proverbial edge, inhaling fully. The noise in the stone room is deafening, but my song rises up, cutting through the guttural pitches and screeching words, cutting through all the terror and denial. I pour all my love for Luke into the notes that circle up out of me with my final breath.

  Luke’s arm slashes down toward me as a battle roar erupts from him.

  “Nooooo!” shouts out of his mouth at the last half second, and he launches his body over top of the tri-blade knife. My eyes slam shut, and one of the blades stings, grazing across my skin from my birthmark downward toward my armpit. A deep huff comes from Luke as his weight falls heavily over my chest. For a moment I am crushed, unable to breathe, unable to talk. I feel the cool steel of the blade meant for me bruising my skin. Luke’s body twitches and slides enough to allow air to enter my lungs.

  “Luke,” I gasp and struggle to inhale under his weight. I snap my wrists against the leather straps trying to reach him, but it’s useless. I’m useless.

  I feel Luke’s body shift, and his head comes up. He turns his face toward mine and I gasp. His eyes are clear, blue-black, beautiful. Free. Pain pinches his features, but the fury he’d been fighting has vanished.

  “Luke?” I whisper.

  “It is over. I…stopped it.” His voice comes out on a rasp, a sigh of relief mixed with pain. He glances at my wrists and the lock on the chain flips open. “I will wait for you, Jule.” His gaze holds mine for another second before he slides off of me toward the floor. Crack! The sound, of his head breaking against the stone, spikes through me.

  “Luke!” I scream and struggle to jerk the chain out from the leather bindings on my wrists. “Matt, Taylin, help him!” Matt staggers to the table.

  The chain drops and I slide off onto my feet. Luke sprawls across the stone floor. Bright red pools under his head, thicker than Kool-Aid, thinner than paint. One of the three sharp blades protrudes from his chest.

  Taylin rubs against my chest and I wince at the sting. “He pierced the dragonfly,” she says and glances at him. “But instead of stabbing you through, he angled it at the la
st second to slide past you…and skewer himself on the other side.”

  “He…he won’t die,” I insist as I kneel down to cup his face. “He can’t kill himself! It’s one of the rules of the curse.”

  “Either the blood we made worked, or just cutting your birthmark worked,” Taylin says. She stares at me, pain crushing her features. “I saw his eyes, Jule. The curse was broken for him.”

  Carly is on the other side of me, wide eyes, a towel in hand. “Help him!” I yell at her. “Do something!” My hands itch with drying blood. They flutter around the blade sticking out of Luke’s chest.

  “It’s his right side!” Carly shouts and jams the towel around the base of the knife to stop the bleeding. She presses two fingers against his neck. “Strong pulse.” Her eyes meet mine. “If we get him to a hospital, he shouldn’t die. It didn’t hit his heart. He’s probably passed out from the pain.”

  Carly reaches for her cell phone. “No!” Patricia yells from where Alba has untied her. “No outside authorities. Get away from him, Carly,” Patricia hisses. “Let Alba look at him. If you don’t think he will die,” she nearly spits, “Alba can help him better than you. You too, Jule.”

  As Carly lets up on the pressure, Alba starts to come forward, but hesitates.

  “What are you doing, Patricia?” Alba’s calm voice barely registers. I lower Luke’s head into my lap at one end. “Back up, Jule,” Patricia insists.

  “I’ll hold his head. I think he cracked it.”

  “Get. Back!” Patricia screeches. She’s holding the gun she had earlier.

  “Mom!” Eric yells. “You need to stop. Put the gun down!”

  “Stay back, Eric,” she says. “I don’t want to accidentally shoot you.”

  I stare into Patricia’s face and I barely recognize her. The evil twist of her lips, the sharp spark to her eyes, the flaring nostrils. I throw myself across Luke.

  “No, Patricia! The Siren!” the little doctor shouts at the same time the gun explodes.

  Fire rips through my back and chest on the other side. Did I fall on the knife, too? Pain and what feels like lava burn a wide path through me. I surrender my energy and sag across Luke’s chest. His blood and mine mingle. My eyes close against Luke’s neck. The shouts and screams dissolve. I lie there and wait to slip away to…well, I’m not sure. I’ll find out soon enough.