Salt & the Sovereign: The Siren's Curse 2 (The Elemental Origins Series Book 8)

by A. L. Knorr

  There were sounds of pounding feet and slamming doors. More yelling. They were coming for us.

  “No, we can’t. They’re Atlanteans. Now, run!”

  As she made a courageous wobbling sprint in the direction of water, I saw three men running across the garden toward us. One veered to follow Fimia, and the other two came for me.

  “Take them alive,” called another, older voice from an upper window in the manor. Though I’d never heard him shout, I thought that voice sounded an awful lot like Loukas. “Do not let them get away!”

  Twenty-Three

  The two coming toward me slowed as they saw that I wasn’t running like Fimia. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do, but I scooped up a fist-sized rock from the fountain feeding the knee-deep pools flanking the garden’s main walk. The rough weight of the stone in my hand gave me a little more confidence, and that fed my angry fire.

  I stole a glance at Fimia, running but still so weak, and my anger bloomed into something terrible and bright.

  “Time to go back inside, little one,” drawled the bigger of the two men, taking the time to roll up his sleeves as he sauntered forward. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  One look in his cold, dark eyes told me he didn’t much care one way or another if he hurt me, and his shark-like grin only made me madder.

  “But I want to hurt you,” I growled, hefting the stone. My tone took on multiple pitches as my siren voice blossomed and bulged at the base of my throat. I couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d wanted to. “Don’t take another step or I’ll show you how much.”

  The man just laughed, but to my surprise the other, a burly man in khakis with a dark beard, actually stopped dead in his tracks. I homed in on his face and realized from how blank his expression had gone that he was actually human. My heart tripped with hope.

  I dared to ignore the other as he advanced, still smiling, and focused my words and attention on the bearded man.

  “Help me.” My siren voice pitched up, burgeoned and deepened. Leveling a finger at the other man, I commanded the human, “Stop him.”

  The Atlantean’s shark-face had just enough time to register an ‘oh shit’ expression before the big bearded human tackled him from behind.

  Both men hit the paving stones of the garden path hard and then they were grappling and rolling across the ground. The Atlantean would dominate, but he’d been caught off guard and the bearded man drove his meaty fists against his colleague like pistons. Win or lose, Sharky’s smile was losing a few teeth.

  There was a wounded grunt as Sharky threw an elbow into bearded man’s face, and then the two of them tumbled into the pool beside the path. Water splashed everywhere and the two men became a single soaked, thrashing mess. In the precious moments I’d bought, I turned and bolted after Fimia.

  “What are you two doing?” Loukas belted from the same door the men had emerged from. Looking over my shoulder, I saw another sturdy man in a madras shirt with oily blond hair. He squeezing past Loukas, his eyes fixed on me.

  Loukas shouted while shaking his cane in the air and leaning on the doorjamb. “Stop them, you idiots!”

  “Peter is a freakin’ accountant!” the blond bellowed by way of explanation as he took off across the grass. He leapt a hedge while closing the gap between us much too quickly for comfort. A wild thought flitted through my mind at this strange statement. So, what? Atlanteans didn’t like numbers, so they’d hired a human?

  Ahead of me ripped a high, feminine scream. My head jerked up, scanning for her in the shadowy darkness. Fimia shrieked again, closer to me this time, angry and scared all at once. She’d been caught. I could make out her thin struggling form against a broad-shouldered hulk with his arms wrapped around her.

  Spinning suddenly toward the Atlantean hot on my heels, I hurled my rock straight at his face. He gave a startled cry and tucked his head down. The rock cracked against the edge of his eye socket and his feet tangled underneath him. He went down. His hands were too busy with his face to catch his fall, but he twisted, skidding on his shoulder across the grass.

  I skipped out of the way and sprinted in the direction of Fimia’s struggling figure. Hurdling over more narrow pools and an iron bench, I skirted a thick and thorny rose bush.

  “Release her,” my siren voice boomed.

  It was worth a shot, but the Atlantean did no such thing.

  He was shorter than me, but his heavy, slab-muscled arms had no problem hauling Fimia around. He directed a chilling laugh at me as he dragged her back toward the abandoned wing with the lab in the basement. Fimia’s overgrown nails feebly clawed toward his face, and her thin legs squirmed and kicked under the lab coat.

  “Let go!” I roared as I threw my body into a charging punch that took him across the ear. The shock of the blow radiated painfully up through my wrist and into my arm.

  He let go of Fimia as he staggered backward, clutching at the side of his head and swearing bitterly.

  Fimia fell flat on the grass. I rushed to her and reached down to haul her back to her feet.

  “Run!” I gave her a little push that sent her stumbling toward the water again.

  The large man recovered more quickly than I’d anticipated, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of his furious face before light and pain exploded across mine.

  I didn’t lose my footing from the blow, but it was all I could do to keep upright. I tasted blood in my mouth and spat to clear it.

  My senses were clearing, and I gave a step or two as he began to advance on me. I felt the rose bush catch at the back of my arms.

  The Atlantean glared at the bloody spittle on his fancy leather shoes. Then he gave an ugly snarl as he rushed at me. I gasped a quick breath and spun just as his outstretched paws made to grab at my face and neck. He barreled past me and I sent him on his way into the rosebush with a backward kick into his meaty posterior. His growling became a shriek of pain as he crashed into the thorns.

  Looking into the gloom toward the rocky coastline, I made out Fimia picking her way over the jagged rocks. Waves pounded against the craggy shore, calling us both to the safety of the water.

  I turned to see the man, still trapped in the thorns, glaring at me as he savagely ripped at the branches and creepers which entangled him.

  Just past him was the iron bench.

  I rushed toward him, my shoulder bent low. His feet bound together in the rose bush’s thorny hold, as my shoulder check sent him tumbling backward. He crashed free of the rose bush and smashed face-first into bench. His head snapped backward as a metallic clang rattled the frame of the weighty bench. His body went as limp as a stringless marionette, his face still pitched up against the bench.

  Hearing the slap of wet shoes on grass and angry shouts had me diving for the shadows. The mechanical sound of a pistol chambering a round galvanized me into action. I bolted, clearing the low wall in one leap and skittering over the rocks like a crab.

  My siren hearing picked out Loukas’s voice, now almost pleading. “I need both of them back! Both! Do you hear me? Once they’re in the water you’ll never catch them!”

  Layers of skin came off my palms and knees as I scrambled over the rough terrain. Loukas may have wanted us alive, but the fact that a gun was out meant they might be too angry to follow orders. What do you do with a gun besides shoot it? And how many people were a good enough shot to intentionally shoot to maim? My own breath was a ripping sound in my ears, my heart a writhing, panicked muscle. The sound of that gun was like flames licking at the soles of my feet.

  Clambering over the last of the big rocks, I spotted Fimia at the water’s edge. The lab coat flapped around her body like soiled, ghostly sails. She was clearly torn, looking back and forth from the shore to the water and back again; she didn’t want to leave me behind.

  “Fimia,” I hissed as loud as I dared, scuttling across the rock. “Go!”

  Her eyes, huge with terror, found me as I thumped down onto the pebbly sand only a dozen strides
from her. The sound of footsteps was so close behind me that I was afraid to look back. My limbs shook with shock and exertion, my muscles burning.

  “Go!” I called a little louder, glad to be off the exposed surface of the rocks. “I’m here now! Swim!”

  Not looking back was a mistake.

  Pain exploded across the back of my head. The blow sent me face-first into the pebbly sand. So there was something you could do with a gun besides shoot it.

  The world reeled as colorful lights popped like New Year’s crackers behind my eyes. Nothing I saw made sense. The sound of waves crashing seemed to come from everywhere. I tried to get up, but the world was crooked. I stumbled and fell, hitting the beach, which my confused mind thought was in the other direction. I expected the fiery, tearing pain of a bullet at any moment, but a fist took me hard in stomach instead, knocking the wind out of me. The world was a spinning blur of blacks and blues. I gasped for air.

  “I got one!” a voice shouted above me, and a second later I heard that same voice give a shocked cry. There was the sound of something heavy splashing into the water.

  Still dragging in wheezing breaths, my clearing eyes saw one of the Atlanteans standing over me with Fimia on his back, pounding her fist over and over into his face. The gun was nowhere to be seen. They yelled in unison.

  As the siren raised her hand again, I saw the jagged end of a broken pen jutting from the bottom of her fist. The same hand holding the pen sported three ragged fingertips where her overgrown nails had broken off.

  The pen-punctured Atlantean flailed his arms and managed to get a handful of Fimia’s lank hair in his fist. He dragged her pathetically small frame off his back and threw her onto the ground. His cheek was a mess from the stabbing pen, but his eyes were wild with rage as he lunged. His hands closed tight around her thin neck, squeezing off Fimia’s cries.

  Reaching for something, anything, I took a fistful of sand and hurled it into his enraged eyes.

  He snarled as his hands left Fimia’s neck to paw at his face. She collapsed onto the beach. With whatever strength Fimia had left, she rolled over and scrambled toward the water.

  I kicked out, driving my heel into the side of his knee. The Atlantean lost his balance and toppled, cracking his head on a boulder. He hit the ground like a sack of rocks and didn’t move.

  Still a little unsteady, I used the rocks for support and levered myself to my feet. My vision was finally clearing, my equilibrium returning. A dull ache spread across the back of my head and I reached up as I ran toward the crashing waves, wincing at the lump growing there.

  Fimia glanced back one last time, saw I was behind her, and dove. Her bony back disappeared as she plunged into an oncoming wave. The crack of a pistol sounded behind me. I was already running when another bullet buzzed past me like a hornet from hell, disappearing into the rolling waves.

  An instant later, I did the same.

  Three sets of wide eyes stared at me. Targa clutched a pillow against her stomach, wrinkling the fabric with tense white fingers. A sheen of sweat glistened from Antoni’s wide brow while one arm rested around Targa’s shoulders, his hand gripping her upper arm tightly.

  Several long moments later, Emun was the first to move, taking a sip of water from the glass on the table beside him.

  “What if they’d caught you?” Targa wheezed on dry air, and at the sound, Antoni reached for a glass of water also and handed it to her. She drank, greedily.

  “But they didn’t,” I replied. “We made it back to Okeanos alive and in one piece.”

  “Those maniacs,” Emun ground out, “dissecting sirens.” He rubbed a hand over his face as though trying to wipe away his repulsion. “It’s sick in the head.”

  “Yes and no.” Antoni replied.

  Targa looked sideways at him, taken aback.

  “Dissection is necessary for science,” Antoni explained. “It’s not that part I take exception to. It’s the abduction, abuse and holding of a siren in a tank that’s the crime.”

  “And the murder of the siren they made a diagram of,” Targa added sharply.

  “You don’t know for certain that they murdered her,” Antoni answered, keeping his voice neutral.

  Targa shot him a withering look. “I know you’ve been trained not to make assumptions, and that’s good. But consider that sirens live a very long time. Do you think it likely they captured one and she died of natural causes a short time later?”

  Antoni let out a long breath. “No. It’s not very likely,” he said, quietly. “You are probably right.”

  “If you think that’s bad then you’re not going to like the rest of what I have to say,” I said, reaching for my own glass of water. Just the exercise of going back into the details of my memory was enough to make my mouth and throat feel parched.

  “It gets worse?” Targa choked out.

  I took a gulp and set the now empty glass back on its coaster. Settling my back against the couch, I prepared to tell the last part of my story.

  “It gets worse.”

  Twenty-Four

  My mind was racing the entire journey home; even the effects of the salt on my nervous system was not enough to soften all the questions or erase all the tender bruises. I pulled saltwater into my mouth and swished it around to soothe my swollen lips. We had to swim slower because of Fimia’s condition, but the Mediterranean tidal flow helped us along.

  I never had gotten to see Jozef. Was he really out, or was Claudius keeping us apart? Had I been told to wait as part of a trap? Gabriela had seemed nervous. Was it because she’d been told to lie to keep me there? What would have happened if I hadn’t followed the sound of water? What was the end goal for Loukas? How long had he been studying sirens? Questions gnawed at my mind like rats.

  I escorted Fimia to the freshwater pools and instructed her to drink and bathe while I asked another siren to bring her food, and then I went to the Hall of Anamna to think. I felt that somehow my predecessors might lend me some wisdom. My heart was filled with lead. I missed Jozef, and was greatly troubled by the events that had passed, which added a concerning dimension to the issue of our dwindling numbers—both the halls and valleys of Okeanos seemed empty.

  “Sovereign,” came an urgent cry from the direction of the throne room.

  Running from the Hall, I emerged from behind the throne and took the steps down to where one of the Foniádes stood, her expression fraught.

  “What is it?”

  “Atlanteans,” she whispered. “They’ve passed the inner border and they’re headed this way. Straight to Mount Califas, like they know it’s our very heart.”

  “Rally your sisters,” I bade her. “We may have a confrontation on our hands.”

  She shook her head, her eyes misting.

  “What?” This defeat was so unlike a siren, let alone one of the Foniádes, that I couldn’t process it. “Speak.”

  Her voice trembled. “There are so many,” she whispered.

  I could only stare at her. It took me far too long to find my voice. Scenes from Sisinyxa’s battle flashed through my mind, illuminated as though by lightning. But this was no longer the ancient world. Battles like that did not occur now. It was the twentieth century, and we were not warriors, trained the way our ancestors needed to be.

  I swallowed down the irrational fear that history was about to repeat itself.

  “Under or over the water?”

  “Both,” she replied.

  I kissed her quickly on the cheek and then made for the stairway leading to one of the natural terraces on Mount Califas. The droning of distant engines reached my ears, carried on the wind and coming from the northeast.

  My remaining sirens and Foniádes were scattered across the surfaces and bays of Mount Califas and the inlets beyond, watching. Seeing them all outside at once like this really hit home. So few?

  Someone’s upturned face caught my eye and she said something to the siren nearest her upon seeing me. A cry went up and every siren began
to move, making her way toward Mount Califas’s beaches beneath me.

  Then I saw them, a collection of dark dots on the horizon, the sounds of their diesel engines growing louder by the moment. Their shapes and details began to clear. As I counted them roughly, the blood pumping through my heart turned icy cold. There were at least thirty of them, ships and vessels of all sizes, from small bright yellow inflatable zodiacs to sharp, fast, evil looking boats with what look like actual guns mounted on the front.

  Sirens emerged from the waters below. They sprinted over the beaches and climbed the rough-hewn and worn stairs leading up to the various entry points of our underworld. My eyes scanned the sirens beneath me, climbing and running to get closer to their Sovereign, and then I moved.

  Taking the steps and cliffs as fast as I could manage, I dropped to a lower point on the side of Califas, one that overlooked the beaches where the squadron of boats were headed. My sirens had begun to gather there.

  No one said a word as I joined those remaining, probably less than one hundred sirens, from the thousands who had lived in Okeanos when I had arrived alongside Polly those many years ago—and the tens of thousands who had lived here when Sisinyxa ruled.

  We watched as the lead boat closed the gap, now able to hear its hull slapping the waves, and see the men and a single woman standing on the deck.

  Claudius himself stood foremost, and I was reminded of the way Nestor had led his own attack all those thousands of years ago in these very waters, on these very beaches and spits of rock.

  My sirens and I could not fight this force. To send my citizens to attack would be certain death. But if we stood, unflinching, prepared to talk in a reasonable manner, perhaps we could stave off violence. This became my goal––that if it were possible, every siren would survive the day.

  Claudius gave a signal that the boats should slow, for now they approached dangerous territory for their hulls. The rocks and tides were treacherous here. The boats first slowed, then stopped, their engines droning as they awaited their orders.