The Fall (The Siren Series)

by Higginson, Rachel

  The Fates closed in around me. Veda stood to my right with her child-sized fangs proudly on display. Enid was to my left in a dress the same color as her eyes and Isadora stood behind me. They didn’t look at me once; their eyes still roamed the crowd looking for something… or someone. I followed their focus, hoping to figure this mystery out, but all I saw were wild partiers impatiently waiting for their chance to buy innocent girls.

  My mother stood off to the side, engaged in conversation with Thalia and Echo. She glanced at me every few moments and shot me an indiscernible look. I tried to decipher it the first few times, but after a while I gave up. I had more important things to worry about.

  Nix called the party to order and the men crowded forward and pushed as close as possible to the small stage Thalia had erected at the edge of her patio. A fire pit blazed in front of the auction block, big and imposing. The message was clear: no passing the fire. Or else.

  And the men obeyed the rule. Nobody wanted to miss their chance at all this plunder for simply overstepping the boundary.

  I took another steadying breath just as Nix began the program. Evaleen walked to the middle of the stage first. Her makeup had been touched up and her body stood straighter than before. She showed a quiet spirit that had been missing for too long. I was proud of her up there. She neither preened nor cowered away from the aggressive males bidding on her.

  The bid started off huge and just kept going higher. The men grew rowdier with every increased bid. She was the perfect opening act to this side show. Finally, Nix reminded them that there were plenty of women left to bid on and some of them dropped off. By the end of it, Hades had won with an exorbitant price and Eva was escorted to the side of the stage and eventually back into the house.

  As I predicted, Hades stayed put, enjoying the revelry with the rest of the drunken men. This was a good sign. I took another calming breath.

  Ana was next. She limped to the middle of the stage but stood proudly in the middle of it. She had covered her bruises as best as possible but she still looked horrible. It was obvious she could be beautiful… but she just was not. Ky/Ares had pounded the absolute crap out of her with his fists. There was nothing elegant or lovely about limb-length bruises.

  I thought she would be looked over. I thought maybe Ky would be the only one that bid on her. After all, she looked used. But I had underestimated the depth of depravity that was possible in men like these. Apparently all that bruising was a turn on for some of them. Ky had stiff competition between Thanatos, Erebus and Chaos.

  In the end, Ky won by shouting, “I’ve already courted this one, Gentlemen! Get your own slave! It’s not hard to make them look this… enticing!”

  The men around him broke into hysterical laughter while I nearly dry-heaved. Sick. They were sick.

  The Fates somehow noticed my disgust and took a step into me. Isadora put a warning hand on my shoulder that chilled me to the bone. I could feel her power beneath my skin, buzzing in her palm and echoing in my blood. I hated the creepy-crawly feel of it. I hated that it felt so intense and capable. I wanted her to be the watered down version of godhood the rest of us were.

  Ana was escorted off the stage and back into the house while another girl was brought to the auction block. I watched Ky to see if he would follow her, but he called for another glass of Eli’s wine and settled in to watch the remainder of the show.

  The edges of the patio shimmered behind Nix and I strained to see why. The moon hung high in the sky and bathed the dark yard beyond the bright fire-lit patio with an eerie glow. I could see something materializing beyond the stage, in the darkest places of the yard. I wanted to wait to see if I was hallucinating or if something was really about to appear but then I panicked. What if whatever it was would ruin my chances to help Evaleen and Anaxandra? What if this was my only moment to make something happen.

  So I ignored the shimmering distance and hummed a low melody. I started soft and gentle. I had never done this before, so I wanted to err on the side of caution. But I also needed to make an impact.

  The Fates hardly noticed at first. My voice was soft and melodic floating on the breeze to one of Ryder’s love songs that had always affected me in significant ways whenever he performed it.

  I could feel a ripple of something move through the crowd. One second everyone’s attention was fixed admiringly at the girl on stage and the next they were all taking glances around the crowd, trying to find the source of the alluring sound.

  Veda, snapped her attention to me with the precision of a guillotine blade dropping down. “What are you doing?”

  Panicking slightly, I raised my voice and warbled my way through another pretty section of Ryder’s music. I didn’t hum it this time but I didn’t sing the exact words either. I just used sounds to carry the song through the air. This time the entire party turned to me. Both men and women had heard the hauntingly enthralling notes. Anxiety sliced through me with their attention focused so sharply on me. I had been worried about what I would do to others before, but I hadn’t really thought about what they would do to me.

  In all the legends the song was supposed to work with the water to drag unsuspecting sailors to the bottom of the ocean. But there wasn’t any water here. There wasn’t a shoreline separating me from them. There weren’t any stories about what the sailors could have done to the Sirens had they reached them.

  Nebraska was about as landlocked as any place could get. I realized a little belatedly how perfectly screwed I was.

  But I couldn’t worry about myself. This was all about my friends.

  I sang some more. Nix’s dark eyes found me immediately and his face turned purple with rage.

  All at once mayhem broke out. The Fates closed in around me with lightning snapping back and forth in their fingertips.

  “Stay back!” Isadora shouted in her ancient accent.

  The men clambered to get to me. They fought each other, they trampled each other. They pulled weapons and the sky grew stormy overhead. Blue lightning streaked across the sty in bright strips of warning. The air crackled and fizzed with the combined power of the gods and goddesses gathered. My own skin tingled from the sheer force of it pressing against me.

  And then there was the intensity that had built inside me. My lungs seemed ready to burst with sound. My heart pounded triple time in my chest and my breathing became erratic. I was possessed with something terrifyingly strong. More notes floated out of my mouth, ones that I hadn’t even called for.

  “Enough, Siren,” Enid ordered from behind me.

  Nix pushed through the crowd in a desperate attempt to get to me. I watched him put his hands on several men that crowded his path. The men dropped immediately at his touch, writhing and convulsing on the paved stone, salt water spitting out of their mouths.

  The Gigantes joined the chaos and shots popped into the crowd while they stormed toward me with their lumbering gates. They were too tall, too big to be stopped. Nix wielded his power on a few of them and they dropped with their next step, but he didn’t seem able to get to them all.

  The Fates were pushing me toward the house, but whatever foot traffic had been in the house now tried to get out. We were stuck in the center of everything. I felt myself trip and stagger in my high heels but each time a Fate would catch me and order that I stop singing.

  I couldn’t though.

  That was the problem.

  Pandora’s box had been opened and I couldn’t wrestle it shut again.

  I tried screaming through the sound, I tried closing my mouth… holding my breath… covering my face with my hands, but nothing worked! I couldn’t stop this.

  The sound of cars crashing around the front of the house pierced through the night. My first thought had been of Ana and Eva but soon more bodies sprinted around the side of the house, joining the mob willing to kill to get to me.

  The only thing that separated them from me was the lightning in the Fates’ hands. People couldn’t pass their deadly bounda
ry. Not that they didn’t try, they just had their threads cut sooner than they planned. Bodies dropped from the lightning, from the gods fighting other gods, from men with guns and weapons, from men beating each other to the death.

  This was gruesome and horrific and I hated myself more than ever before. I hated myself. Granted most of these guys were evil anyway, but the newest in the crowd were innocent people that had been drawn off the street. And I didn’t want to be responsible for anybody’s death!

  “Stop her!” Nix shouted over the roaring shouts and gun shots.

  “We’re trying!” Enid yelled back.

  “Stop singing!” Veda growled at me. She sounded viciously inhuman and I wanted nothing more than to take her advice.

  But I couldn’t!

  Finally, Nix reached the edge of the Fates. He grabbed the guy in front of him and put two powerful hands on the back of his neck. The man’s face turned a violent shade of red before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he succumbed to the god of the sea in a defeated heap on the ground at Nix’s feet. Veda moved her lightning covered hands and stepped out of the way just as Nix leapt into our tight circle.

  “You’re a foolish girl,” he growled at me.

  I had a moment of panic in which my eyes darted around the backyard hoping for a different way of escape and found none. In the four seconds that it took Nix to wrap his huge hand around my throat I witnessed two things. The first was that Exie stepped up onto a stone retaining wall and gave me the thumbs up with a pained expression on her face. If I hadn’t been so completely hysterical from the mayhem I had created, I would have felt relief. The second thing I noticed was a woman standing in the dark yard. While the patio had started on fire from the toppled torches and decorative fire pit, the woman stood apart from the chaos and watched us.

  A silk scarf covering her face just under her eyes prevented me from seeing her actual face. The scarf’s color was a brilliant bright blue that matched the color of her incredibly vibrant eyes that were so luminescent I could see them from here. An ankle-length, sheer white headdress covered her floor-length black hair. They whipped around her body with a wind that I couldn’t feel. She dressed in the same kind of Grecian white and gold dress that Eryn had worn, only this woman’s entire stomach was exposed. Her skirt sat low on her hips and her bandeau top tight across her chest accenting her flat, but scarred, stomach. From where I was, her age and identity were indefinable, but I knew without a doubt I had never seen her before.

  She watched me with interest, neither aggressively nor passively. Something ignited in my blood that was much like warning but also like hope. I couldn’t identify the emotions or understand why I felt them from her.

  It didn’t matter anyway, because in the next second, Nix’s hand injected his power into me. My lungs filled with water immediately and I choked up salt water onto his tuxedo-clad forearm. For one second I breathed through the water as if I had gills and belonged in the sea. I sucked in a deep breath that filled my entire body with peace. Physically I still choked and gagged on the forced sea, but internally I felt a greater power that protected me. Then the blackness came and my eyelids fluttered closed.

  Behind them I saw piercing blue eyes from an unknown woman. They transformed into gunmetal grays that promised a life beyond this hellish existence. And then I felt nothing but peace.

  Peace and hope. I had done a good thing today. Ana and Eva had managed to escape. And now darkness waited for me, a break from this world, and a reprieve from the nightmare.

  I embraced it easily.

  I floated away into some nameless place and let the world I would soon return to wait for me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I woke up slowly. So slowly.

  Every part of my body hurt. My muscles were sore, my head swam and my lungs burned with every ragged breath I took.

  I reluctantly opened my eyes as the last events I could remember came flooding back to my memory. Ana and Eva. The slave auction. Singing. The pandemonium that resulted because of it. Nix’s hand around my throat. The mysterious woman. And then nothing.

  But I also remembered Exie giving me the thumbs up. That had to be a good sign. That had to have meant that my plan worked.

  I blinked at my ceiling and my fingers slid through the silky comforter that covered my bed. I had been changed into sleep shorts and a tank top and my feet were free from the binding heels that I’d worn last night.

  Somehow I was home.

  But after that stunt… for how long?

  “You’re awake,” Isadora’s lightly accented voice cut through my foggy haze.

  I blinked up at her as she hovered over my bed. Her face was all jagged lines and sharp planes. Her milky eyes were more lucid looking than they had been in the past. A strange taupe color swirled in their attentive depths.

  “What happened?” I croaked.

  “Why don’t you tell us?” Enid asked in a cruel tone from my other side.

  Veda crawled up the foot of my bed and sat back on her heels with an equally predatory expression. I had the thought that they were about to kill me.

  And I closed my eyes and breathed relief.

  “I can’t remember,” I said instead.

  “Then we shall refresh your memory.” Enid leaned forward and depressed the mattress by resting on her hands. “In the middle of a crowded party, stacked with already aggressive males, you started singing. And then you didn’t stop. Eleven Greeks died yesterday. Four civilians came off the street and managed to get seriously injured. And two slaves managed to escape through the chaos.”

  I released a slow breath.

  “What was your plan, Ivy?” Isadora asked harshly. “Did you plan for the Greeks to turn on each other, for them to destroy each other? Or was your design to involve the civilians?”

  Veda snorted a crack of laughter. “Your goal was for the slaves. You tried to help the slaves.”

  A triumphant smile twisted my lips and I said in a croaky voice, “Maybe it was all of those reasons. Aren’t you the ones so interested in my power? Shouldn’t you already know what my plan was?”

  A jolt so excruciating powered my body to bow into the air. Isadora’s hand wrapped around my bicep; I felt every ounce of her ancient supremacy. I quaked through the electrified agony. My spine wanted to snap in half and my lungs still burned as I gagged on the torture.

  “Your plan failed,” she told me calmly when she’d released my arm from her death grip. I collapsed back to my bed with everything inside me aching. “The Greeks that died were of unimportance; mostly Gigantes with guns and a few of the lesser demigods. The civilians are of no consequence to us. And the girls will be caught soon enough. Your plan failed.”

  The only words I cared about involved Eva and Ana and I held onto hope that they would not be caught. Sunlight streamed through my window so they had at least made it through the night. The daylight would work in their favor. They could do this. They could disappear.

  “I didn’t have a plan,” I lied.

  Isadora reached for me again and I had no strength to fight her. My mother walked into the room; I could see her in my peripheral vision.

  With arms crossed she said, “If you mark her you will answer to Nix.”

  Isadora sneered at me. “She will answer to Nix first.”

  Veda looked down at me with that childlike, but not at all innocent expression. “We can cut your thread at any time.” From her pocket she produced a white string that glowed in the daylight. She stretched it taut between her fingers and held it up for me. With a flick of her finger the string bounced and vibrated, and with it my breathing whooshed from my lungs. I gasped for oxygen; I thrashed my tired, sore body in an attempt to suck in something to my deprived chest.

  Eventually the shaking string slowed down and breathing came easier. The message was clear: they controlled my life.

  I shook my head. “Why did only lesser demigods die last night?”

  Veda narrowed her slanted ey
es at me. “You know why.”

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  “Because gods cannot be killed.” She bounced off the bed and headed for the door.

  That was the only answer I needed. Something niggled inside of me that her answer had frustrated the three Fates more than any other thing that had been spoken. I didn’t even know why I asked her. I didn’t know what importance that had over my life.

  I wasn’t a goddess. I was a Siren. Lesser than a lesser demigod.

  And I hadn’t intended to kill anyone last night. I hadn’t thought to hurt the gods because I knew that wasn’t possible. All I had wanted to do was save my friends.

  In that at least, I had succeeded.

  After the Fates left, my mother came and sat down next to me on my bed. She didn’t say anything to me. She just sat there with her arms crossed and her eyes downcast.

  “What day is it?” I asked her with that same throaty voice. I had no doubt that I had almost drowned last night, that Nix had performed the same trick on me he used on Ryder. My lungs were paying the price for that now.

  “Wednesday.” My mom fidgeted on the bed. “You were only out for fifteen or so hours. It’s still early.”

  “Where’s Nix?”

  “Hunting Anaxandra and Evaleen. He left last night with Ky and Crete after the chaos settled down and they realized what happened.”

  “How long? How long do they think they were gone before you noticed?”

  My mom hesitated but finally answered, “Three hours.”

  I closed my eyes, wet with relieved tears. My breath shivered in my lungs, but it was from the effort not to cry for happiness. That was amazing. Three hours was amazing.

  “They won’t get far,” my mom said softly but with so much conviction I felt all my previous happiness deflate. “He’ll find them.”

  I shook my head. “They’ll be smart.”

  “It won’t matter.” She sighed tiredly. “He’ll find them. There’s no escape, Ivy. Freedom is an illusion that only humans get to have. We are prisoners… forever.”