The Fall (The Siren Series)

by Higginson, Rachel

  The sky would be stormy displaying dark gray thunder clouds with jagged flashes of lightning. The ocean waves would rise high before cresting white and tumbling back to their depthless origins. The ship would float past, hoping to avoid the worst of the storm. The bow would be beautiful and big, the sails weathered white and flapping in the violent wind. I would call to its unsuspecting crew with a song that had been sung by women like me since the beginning of time. And they would come. They would have no choice but to come.

  The storm would build into hurricane force winds and pelting rain, just as the ship hit the deadly rocks hidden beneath the murky water. They crew wouldn’t cry out, they would be too hypnotized by my song. They wouldn’t fight. They wouldn’t try to save themselves. They would just sink… with their beloved ship and everything else on board.

  I would watch it all. I would watch them drown and draw power from their deaths. It was sick. It was cruel and ugly and horrific.

  And it was me.

  I would draw power from their deaths. I would feed off their destruction and the souls that would live no longer. I would take their lives into me and build a force so strong inside me that nothing could stop my Siren song.

  I would use their weakness to turn myself into an unparalleled force of nature.

  I gasped for breath and pulled back, out of Ryder’s reach. A haunting ache filled my chest and my eyes watered from the sheer force of it.

  That felt so real. A memory… or a vision… or instinct. I didn’t know! But it was there, in my head and calling to me. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Ivy!” Ryder shouted at me. He gripped my shoulders and then cradled my face. “Ivy!” He shook me, hard this time. “Please, Ivy! I’m here! It’s just you and me. We’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

  Slowly his words penetrated my crowded head and I sucked in long pulls of breath. My head eventually stopped spinning and the loud buzzing in my ears faded away. But when I surfaced and looked into Ryder’s wide gunmetal eyes I was shaking, uncontrollably shaking. Every piece of me trembled from the outside to the inside.

  Ryder saw the lucidness come back to my expression and yanked me into another hug. His face had been absolutely panicked before he buried my face into his chest. I had never seen him look so afraid. He was always so cool and in control. But his expression was horrified.

  And I did that to him.

  I couldn’t stop shaking, even while he held me.

  “Where did you go?” he rasped. “You were gone, Ivy. I mean, your body was here, but you were gone. Where were you?”

  “In a nightmare,” I told him. “In my reality.”

  He started shaking then and we clutched each other as if our bond was the only thing that kept the other from drowning. He was my life raft and I was his. He was what kept me afloat and me him. I couldn’t leave him.

  But I couldn’t stay with him either.

  “Never go there again,” he demanded. “Never leave me like that again.”

  I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t promise that. I didn’t even know what that was! And I didn’t want to lie to him.

  A fist rapped against the door, angry and forceful. Immediately my heart dropped to my toes.

  “Ivy!” Nix shouted from the other side of the door.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  “He doesn’t know we’re here,” Ryder whispered back.

  “Ivy! So help me if you don’t open this door!” Nix bellowed into the door.

  Chills washed over me. From one nightmare to another. “I need to go, Ryder. He won’t stop. It’s better if I just go.”

  Ryder clutched me to him so fiercely I couldn’t breathe. I thought we had been holding tight before but this was an iron cage in which he meant to keep me.

  “Ivy, open the door.” Nix’s voice had slowed to a scary pace. His words grated on my skin like demon claws slicing open every vein. “Open the door or you won’t like what happens next.”

  I shook my head and burrowed into Ryder’s chest. I was too afraid to open the door. And not for my sake but for Ryder’s. It was one thing to have to face Nix by myself. I’d pissed him off lots of times before and paid for it some way. But I wanted to protect Ryder from this. I didn’t want him to see just how ugly my home life could be or how dangerous Nix was.

  I wanted to keep him separate from this hell.

  The door rattled and bowed when Nix’s foot connected to the outside.

  “He’s going to break down the door,” I winced.

  Ryder kept his arms around me. “Let him.”

  It took several more times for Nix’s foot to force his way through the door. The door had completely cracked and splintered by the time it finally swung open. He did that on purpose. He could have kicked the door in on his first try, but he had wanted to cause damage… he had wanted to show off his power.

  I struggled out of Ryder’s embrace and whirled around to face him.

  Inside I was quaking with fear and anxiety. But on the outside I looked cool and calm. I appeared angry and ready for a fight.

  I had to be.

  I had to make sure he didn’t think he’d broken me.

  Ryder walked up behind me and laid his strong hands on my shoulders protectively. Nix loomed in the fragmented doorway. His dark hair was tussled and wild on his head. His eyes were the same stormy seas that had been in my vision. His jaw ticked with each pulsing heartbeat and his hands stayed curled into tight balls at his sides.

  He might just kill me.

  I decided I needed to speak first. “You can’t do that, Nix! You can’t just break into other people’s houses!” Ryder’s fingers dug into my shoulders while his own anger and fear exploded inside him. My chest panted heavily as I continued, “Are you crazy?”

  “Ivy, go downstairs and get in the car.” I opened my mouth to argue but he screamed at me so forcefully, spittle flew from his lips. “Now!”

  I shook my head weakly. Ryder’s fingers bit deeper into my flesh. He wasn’t meaning to hurt me but I could feel his swelling loss of control.

  “Nix, I’m not-”

  He threw up a hand. His suit, one of hundreds, but still perfectly tailored, ridiculously expensive and absolutely disheveled now, wrinkled across the chest. He looked savage.

  I had never been more afraid of him.

  “Ivy, I cannot listen to your excuses. If you value this boy’s life, you will get in the goddamn car.”

  That got me moving.

  I stepped forward, but Ryder, not valuing his own life, pulled me back. “You don’t own her,” he growled at Nix. “You can’t treat her like this.”

  “She’s mine.” There was no doubt or insecurity in Nix’s voice. He believed those words with every atom and molecule in his ancient body. He spoke them with such unwavering conviction that I felt them echo inside my chest. They wrapped around my black heart and squeezed the hard stone that beat with unwanted life. Hopelessness and despair curled through my body, weaving through my blood and clawing at my bones. “She will do whatever I say, whenever I say it, because she is mine. And this is none of your business.”

  “She will go with you, when she wants to go with you!” Ryder shouted at him. He yanked me behind him and stood ready to fight Nix. I clutched his sides and pressed my forehead against his shoulder blade.

  “She will go with me now because I want her to!” Nix vibrated with fury. His entire body shook with each powerful bellow.

  I whimpered in fear and hated my weakness.

  But Ryder only seemed fueled by Nix’s outrage. “Get out of my house! Ivy will go back to her house when she feels safe. She doesn’t want anything to do with you. Get out of my house. Get out of my face. And get out of her life.”

  “You are a fool,” Nix snarled. “She’s going to kill you. You won’t even know that it’s coming. But she will. She can’t help it and she can’t stop it. You will die because of her and I am going to love watching you waste away.”

  “She likes me,
” Ryder taunted. “So if she kills me when she likes me, what’s going to happen to you? What’s she going to do to you when she can’t even stand the sound of your name or the sight of your monstrous face?”

  I wanted to cheer for Ryder. I wanted to keep my arms wrapped around him and kiss him till my lips were chapped and I couldn’t tell the difference between where he started and I ended.

  Nobody had ever stuck up for me before like this. And nobody had ever stood up to Nix.

  And yet this boy that was confusing and mysterious, serious and sweet, loyal and intentional… this boy that had started out hating me and now protected me from the greatest evil I had ever known… he was my champion.

  He was my hope.

  And then he collapsed in front of me.

  One minute my hands were around his waist and the next he dropped to the floor and started convulsing.

  “Ryder!” I screamed. Panic blinded me and fear choked me so I couldn’t even think. I clawed at his back and somehow managed to flip him over through my hysteria. He stared up at me with unseeing eyes while water poured out of his mouth. “Ryder!”

  Frantic tears overflowed from my eyes. I started mouth-to-mouth, not knowing what else to do. I pumped on his chest and more water spurted from him. It splashed up in my face, since I was hovering just above his mouth, leaving salty residue on my lips.

  “Ryder,” I sobbed. “Nix, stop! Please make it stop!”

  More water. He wasn’t breathing. He was drowning! And I couldn’t help him. I pushed on his chest harder. My arms were aching, and I was afraid I was hurting him permanently, but I couldn’t stop. There had to be an end to this water. Nix was drowning him from the inside.

  But this had to stop sometime.

  He had to be fine.

  “Nix! Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed over and over and over until my voice was hoarse and my lungs ached.

  “Are you ready to come home now?” Nix’s voice sounded infuriatingly calm. He knew he’d won.

  Ryder’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and his skin started to turn as cold as the salt water pouring out of him.

  “Yes!” I cried helplessly. “Please, just stop this. Make him alright!”

  The water stopped immediately. I pumped a few more times on his chest and that seemed to be the end of it. After a few agonizing seconds he wheezed in a gasping breath. I threw my body over him, sobbing into his soaked chest. The salt water made my skin sticky and I inhaled the eerily fresh scent of the ocean. Ryder’s eyes locked with mine for just a moment before they closed. He blacked out, but his breathing evened out. I could hear it rasping in and out of his chest; every few seconds he’d be racked with pained coughing, but he was alive.

  He wasn’t drowning.

  He was alive.

  “Let’s go, Ivy. Enough of this,” Nix ordered.

  Afraid he would hurt Ryder again, I stood up and walked over to the door. Finding my last vestige of nerve, I said, “You can’t control me by killing people.” My voice was a shadow of courage spoken in a croaky whisper.

  His fingers brushed over the curve of my jaw tenderly. I flinched, but he didn’t care. He would do what he wanted to me when he wanted to and I couldn’t do anything to stop him. “I don’t need to kill him to control you, my sweet. The threat is effective enough.”

  I felt bile rise quickly in my throat and I had no idea how I would keep from puking all over his shiny shoes. “You are going to burn in hell.”

  His lips twisted up in a sweet, charming smile. “I have promised to break you. I will keep that promise.”

  I stifled the shiver that wanted to slither down my spine. I was too emotionally exhausted to let him damage me further. “Take me home.”

  His dark eyes twinkled happily at me but his voice quickly turned sadistic when he said, “If you ever disobey me again, you will truly regret it. That is another promise I make to you. If I have to kick down a door to get to you again, I will take you home with me. To Greece. I will take you to my villa where you will stay for the rest of your days. Another promise.”

  “Okay, Nix.” I sounded dead. There were worse things than death and this was one of them. This might not be physical death but it was infinitely more and it would kill me slowly, so slowly I would feel like I was dying until the end of time.

  “Let’s go.” His eyes hardened as he glanced over Ryder one more time. I didn’t dare look back. I couldn’t let myself give into the temptation, even though I needed to. I needed to make sure he was still breathing.

  A sob built in my chest and leaked out my eyes, but I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep it from exploding.

  I walked with Nix down to the street where my mom was sitting in the front seat of his tiny little sports car. She stood when she saw us so I could crawl in the minuscule back seat.

  She took one look at me and didn’t turn away. She just kept staring at me… watching me. It was unnerving, but easy to ignore with all of the trauma and fear spiking through me.

  After I crawled in the backseat, my mom sat down and Nix waited for her to get settled before he closed her door politely.

  “Ivy, you should know better,” she hissed in the few seconds it took for Nix to round the hood. She glanced over her shoulder at me and her eyes reflected hopelessness and heartache. I couldn’t understand her emotions or why she was suddenly showing them to me. “You have to be more careful.”

  Nix’s door opened and he slid gracefully into his seat. He started the engine with a push of a button but we sat there while the engine purred idly.

  “It’s the power,” he announced to the quiet car. “It’s the sea. It’s what you can do and what you will become. It’s why you think you can defy me. You defy all men. That is your gift. And it builds and expands inside of you until you feel like nothing can touch you.” There was a dramatic pause when I thought my heart would tear a hole in the center of my chest and then he said, “But, my beauties, I can always touch you.”

  He pulled into traffic and relaxed into the plush leather seat. A cold silence covered the car, but Nix remained completely unaffected. “With that over, we can now enjoy the rest of our day,” he said with a smile.

  After that, I didn’t think I would enjoy anything ever again. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could and pictured Ryder breathing. I imagined his still body with eyes shut and limbs utterly still after he started breathing again. Everything about him screamed death, except the rising and falling of his chest. I stayed there. I stayed in that moment and demanded that my memories be accurate.

  Ryder breathed in.

  And then he breathed out.

  Ryder had been breathing again when I left.

  Ryder hadn’t been drowning. He hadn’t been dying.

  Tears trailed down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop from sniffling. How did I get here? How did I get to this place and why did I think Ryder could come with me?

  He was only human. He couldn’t fight this. I couldn’t even fight this.

  “How did you find me?” I hadn’t told them where I was going. It had been hours since I left the apartment so they obviously hadn’t followed me. How did they know where I would be?

  Nix let out a velvety chuckle. “I will always find you, Ivy. Always.” He was gentle at first, light-hearted, but then all of a sudden he wasn’t casual. He was absolutely serious. “No matter where you run or try to hide, I will find you. I will always find you.”

  I lapsed back into silence.

  He believed his words today, but I wouldn’t always.

  I could run. I could hide. And he could search heaven and earth and the depths of hell and I would never let him find me. I would never come back to this world or this life.

  Just a little more than two weeks and I was gone. He wouldn’t break down the door anymore and he wouldn’t threaten me or the people I cared for.

  Two weeks until I put this entire horrific nightmare behind me.

  My mind immediately flashed back to Ryder, laying in the mid
dle of his floor, soaking wet and struggling to breathe. I had never really believed I could leave him before. I always thought some part of me would stay or I would take a piece of him with me somehow.

  But I wasn’t so sure now.

  Maybe he was better off without me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Exie picked me up five days later for a Nix-approved outing. I hadn’t left the apartment since he’d brought me home from Ryder’s. He confiscated my phone. He took my laptop. He basically locked me in the house and ordered me to never leave.

  I had never hated him more.

  And the worst part was that I hadn’t even been able to talk to Ryder since I left him blacked out in the middle of his apartment.

  He had to hate me.

  I abandoned him. I invited evil into his house and then I couldn’t save him. And then… I just left.

  I couldn’t even imagine what he thought when he woke up. Did he remember everything? Did he wonder what happened?

  Did he have to go to the hospital?

  I started crying just thinking about it. God, I was so weak. But I couldn’t help it. And apparently I couldn’t help him.

  The memory of Nix drowning Ryder looped in my head. Ryder’s body on the floor, water pouring out of his mouth… I just couldn’t even function most days. I couldn’t breathe.

  I had always been in doubt of how much power Nix had. All my life I grew up thinking we were this big joke. I’d believed that the people I lived with or around were completely delusional; that they’d let ego and legend fuel their greed and excuse their behavior. Even though I thought there was a little bit of truth to their words, I had no idea Nix’s power could manifest like that.

  And I didn’t want to know. I wanted to unlearn everything I saw and go back to the blissfully ignorant life I lived for the last seventeen years.

  But those horrors and impossibilities couldn’t be unseen or forgotten or shoved into little black boxes and locked up tight. Oh, no. Those nightmarish memories were going to follow me until my dying day.