Song of the Sirens (21 page)

The helicopter jerked, and we along with
it. I opened my eyes and gripped the guard’s hand. He yelled to me from the
helicopter to move those last few feet.

“You can do it!” he coached. “Just a
little farther and everything will be all right.”

He said those words to console, but he
had no idea. Things would not be all right.

I shook my head and climbed the rest of
the way before grabbing the guard’s hand. He pulled as I crawled into the
helicopter. He unlatched the harness. The guard behind me climbed in right
after, and I suspected the man on board must’ve made his way up because we
moved forward.

I sat down. A guard buckled me in,
draped a blanket over my shoulders, and placed earmuffs over my head so I
wouldn’t go deaf.

Dad rested as still as ever, strapped
into the stretcher with a blanket covering him from toe to mid-chest. A man
worked on him, checking his pulse, his respiration, and attached probes and
monitors.

I looked up at the men. They all looked
the same in their helmets and uniforms. They spoke, and nodded, and gestured,
but it didn’t register.

The second guard crawled in and closed
the sliding door.

As we swirled in the air, I caught
glimpses of the deck below. I craned my head around the guard who took up the
majority of my visual area.

Panic struck my chest, cleaved and
ripped through to my heart. I wanted to scream, but Captain Jack wouldn’t have
heard me. I wanted to flay my arms to get his attention, but by the looks of
his suddenly blank demeanor and absent gaze straight ahead, I knew in the pit
of my belly that the siren had him in her mental clutches.

If I told the guards to turn back, we
would all die. Either the sirens consumed us, or the storm annihilated us.

I shook. The guard in front of me pulled
out a wool blanket and draped it over my shoulders.

How could I be a coward? Why couldn’t I
speak up?

I swallowed hard. I wanted to feel the
pain. I wanted to somehow share in the captain’s approaching anguish.

The siren crept up behind the captain.

I hated her. I loathed her kind, and I
abhorred Riley’s kind for not killing the beasts off in the first place. They
could’ve prevented this entire nightmare.

The lights flickered, showing temporary
glimpses of the siren’s decrepit and withered body. She walked naked on bare
feet, covered in blood, which glistened when the light flickered against her
body.

I wanted to alert the guard, but that
complicated things. They would know sirens existed or that some strange woman
had been on the boat. I couldn’t give any answers, and they would delve into
the mystery and pry apart secrets that would kill them.

Through the spray, she looked up at me.
I was too far from her to discern her expression, but I felt it must’ve been
one of both contempt and content. She stood behind Captain Jack and raised her
pointed talons as the lights flickered one last time. The helicopter lights
wandered away as the winds grew. Everything below disappeared in the blunt
darkness.

I clenched my eyes. Against my will, I
imagined Captain Jack’s screams. I imagined her fangs ripping through his neck
and tearing him apart, and I envisioned the endless gushing river of blood
staining the deck.

Warm tears leaked out between my lids
and chilled on my face. I prevented myself from hyperventilating as I kept in
the sobs and rocked myself.

By the time I reopened my eyes, I felt
faint and subdued.

I stared at my father and hoped he would
survive.

The guard leaned in and yelled, “Are you
all right?”

I merely stared at him with what I
assumed was a very blank expression on my face, stoic and void of any real
answers. I forced my head to bow in an ever so slight manner.

A small part of me was relieved, and
that seemed selfish. My father and I were safe, though he might not survive.
The research team and the crewmen were nothing more than bait now, or meals.
Moreover, I would hold onto a dark secret that would challenge my mental health
for the remainder of my years.

I gripped the ends of the blanket at my
chest and hugged it tight across my back. It dawned on me just how cold I was.

I heard the co-pilot radio in the
situation. They successfully picked up the injured man and headed in. Then, he
radioed the captain. The sizzle of static taunted me, promised me this was not
the end, and ridiculed me for not speaking up when I had the chance.

The co-pilot tried again, and again
without a response. He looked at the pilot and then over his shoulder at us. We
all knew something went wrong, but they couldn’t hover around forever in this
weather. They could at least save us and figure out what happened later, or
return to the boat after dropping us off.

I looked away from my father’s body,
across the concerned face of the guard in front of me, and out the window and
into the darkness.

The darkness fed them, those malicious
sirens. It cloaked them. They were as good as free to swim the breadth of the
ocean, consuming anything within a mental reach. Riley was only one merman. The
warriors of Atlantis were few. What prevented the sirens from reaching land and
escaping into the world?

I hung my head. Staring at the blanket
over my father, I acknowledged the truth and focused on another dire
consequence of tonight.

People didn’t often survive the sudden
pressures of water. The chances that he would survive were slight. I would soon
be an orphan plagued by a nightmare. My life was screwed.

Chapter Fourteen

I drifted off to sleep during the long
ride back to land. For the first time in a long time, my dreams didn’t drag me
into the siren’s world. I didn’t dream at all, for that matter.

I cleared my throat and sat up. The
guard in front of me watched me, which wasn’t as creepy as the siren’s song.

“We’re here,” he said as we landed.

The morning rays welcomed us. A sunrise,
something I rarely enjoyed or appreciated, had become a miracle. Until this
moment, I doubted I would see the sun again.

Some clouds wafted along, and a faint
wind rattled the trees in the distance. Thank goodness we were no longer on the
open sea in a faceoff with a storm. The thought hurtled my mind back to Captain
Jack’s fate. I pushed the thoughts aside before I started crying.

I unbuckled and took direction from the
men. I stepped out of the helicopter after the guard, who immediately took me
of out the way as the others pulled out the stretcher and unhinged the legs
with wheels. They pushed Dad through the doors near the helicopter pad and into
the hospital building.

In no time, the medical staff hooked my
father into the barometric pressure chamber to ease out the toxic gases that
they thought built up in his bloodstream.

I didn’t know what the guards knew about
our situation, so I didn’t say a word. Riley’s power fixed the problem of bends
for me, and I knew he did the same for Dad. Barometric pressures weren’t the
reason why my father wouldn’t wake up.

I slouched into a seat in the waiting
area and bit my nails. What a nervous habit. They were tattered and dirty, and
practically gone after tonight.

Two doctors worked with Dad inside the
room, while a small group of night shift nurses buzzed around with papers,
pagers, and medication.

At the nurse’s station, two of the coast
guards spoke with the staff. Each one took a turn to glance at me, and I met
their gaze with a stoic one of my own.

The guard who watched me during the
entire ride walked up to me, and sat down next to me. I didn’t meet his eyes.

“Are you holding up, all right?” he
asked.

I nodded, and refrained from adding,
“Yeah, whatever, dude.”

“I think your dad will be just fine.”

He wasn’t a doctor. What did he know?

“So what happened back there?”

I shrugged.

He paused. “It would really help us and
the doctors to know what happened.”

I looked away and down at the floor. “He
was sleepwalking, and unlatched the submarine. I tried to stop him, but we both
went down into the water.”

He mulled it over. “How long were you in
the water?”

“I dunno. It was cold, and it felt like
forever.”

The man stretched for answers, but I had
few and far between. When he realized he wouldn’t get anything more, he left
and reported to the nurses and doctors. Then they took their turns with me. I
told them all the same thing.

I told them my father possessed a
serious case of sleepwalking and wouldn’t wake up. I followed him, attempted to
undo everything he did. He ended up unlatching the submarine. I naturally
followed his behavior and donned scuba equipment, fearing the worst.

The worst happened. We went down with
the sub. Had we not been wearing the scuba equipment, we would’ve drowned. So,
I twisted the truth a little.

They questioned us about surviving that
long in the cold waters, and managing to go unseen for so long. I shrugged.
What could I say? The only thing in my head had to be survival. The time lapse
could’ve been far shorter or longer than I remembered, because time warped
everything.

When the test results came back, the
doctor concluded my father didn’t suffer from the bends. Duh. I could’ve told
him that.

The staff moved Dad to a room in the ICU
to monitor his progress, and I went along. The ICU staff nurses brought in a
squeaky, old school, folded bed on wheels. They made the bed, and when I sat
down, I hoped the mattress didn’t snap back together and crush me inside.

The dim lights, the muffled
conversations outside the sliding glass doors hidden by a curtain, and the
constant beeps of monitoring equipment lulled me into sleep. As I laid there
facing Dad’s bed, I attempted to stay awake in case anything happened.

I was tired, and sleep claimed me.
Unfortunately, every time I succumbed to a wonderful and heavy slumber, visions
of the sirens jarred me awake. Their black eyes, sharp teeth and talons, and
bloody lips haunted me.

At one point, I even dreamt a siren
hovered over my father. The low light gleamed from her claws, as she smiled at
me before opening her mouth to take a bite.

That dream shoved me back to reality so
hard that I lurched up and didn’t dare think about sleeping again. I thought my
heart pounded so hard against my chest that it bruised a few ribs.

I groaned and whipped my head around to
make sure the siren wasn’t here. The room was empty. Only the vast amount of
wires, plugs, and machines created stagnant shadows in their presence.

I groaned, stood to stretch, and pulled
out my notebook to scribble some more details in the form of a crazy story.

The nurses brought breakfast, which I
devoured through tight lips. I didn’t want to speak to anyone about anything
now. I just wanted silence, and above all, to walk out of this hospital with
Dad in good health, but I prepared myself little by little for the worst, for
the more likely.

I stood by my father’s bed when the
doctor left the room.

I didn’t expect a visitor, so when
someone knocked at the door, it startled me.

Riley appeared. He closed the glass door
behind him, and closed the curtain to conceal us.

“Go away,” I muttered, keeping my eyes
on my father.

“How is he?”

“I said go away.” My voice strengthened.

Riley ignored me and took a few steps to
stand on the other side of the bed. He was too far to swing and hit. I sighed.

He looked down at Dad’s sleeping face
and shifted to take his hand.

I fumed and slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch him.”

“I can help.” Riley took his hand again.

“You’re a part of what did this to him,”
I hissed.

“I didn’t do this. Please don’t blame
this on me.”

“You guys had the chance to destroy them
back then, and last night. Instead, you just shoved them into a cave, twice.
Didn’t you learn a lesson? They didn’t die then, and they won’t die now.”

“Please, let me help.”

“How? How can I trust you? She killed
Kent, and the captain, and probably everyone else.”

Riley kept his focus on my father’s
face. “My first priority is my people. I tried to protect the others. I guess
this is partially my fault. Protecting my kind also means protecting our
secrets. I tried to move your dad away to keep him from going there, but it was
too late. They lured you to them because you were close. I tried to protect
you, but you made things difficult by asking questions and getting pissed when
I didn’t answer.”

“You could have told me the truth from
the beginning, genius.”

He scoffed. “And would you have believed
me?”