My thigh was cut from the stampede. Who the smack wears high heels to a baseball game? The depth of the wound didn’t bother me, nor did the sting. What terrified me was someone from my group seeing the blood and finding out what I’d gone to great lengths to hide. One of them would see my blood and know what it was. Panic gripped my lungs, quickening my shallow breaths before I could properly shove down the possible ramifications of being found out.
I started singing the Partridge Family theme song in my head. Jamie was not a David Cassidy fan, the weirdo, so he usually stayed far away from my mental door when I was singing it in my mind.
Something wet trickled down my chin. My worst fears were confirmed. I made sure not to touch my lip, but licked it, tasting the blood I knew was there. Elsa wouldn’t need to ask her questions; one look at my split lip and she’d see the proof for herself.
I sobbed into my glove as the gash on my thigh seeped through my jeans. To my horror, the slice from someone’s heel began to ooze red blood mingled with stars.
Five.
Siren Blood
The crowds were thinning, but only marginally. I closed my eyes and pushed all images of my blood out of my mind. I’d done it before, and Jamie hadn’t noticed. This was more than the tiny slice he’d given his knuckle and transferred to me while he’d been gardening, or the tiny nick from shaving that wasn’t even noticeable after a quick dab of a tissue. I had a split lip and a cut on my thigh that left markings of stars on my clothing. I would have to change somehow, but I decided on figuring that out later. For now, I had to focus on escaping.
“Lucy? Lucy?” came an unfamiliar voice. It was headed upstream from the high-energy exiting crowd. “Lucy? Come here, sweetheart.”
I held tight to the wall and kept my knees pressed to my chest in my hiding spot behind the propped-open exit doors. When the man came into view, I could only see the back of him. It was a bald stranger whipping his head around to try his hand at finding me.
What the crap?
A few more joined him. They were fans with dilated pupils searching out the stadium for me, cooing my name softly like a tease. Elsa was powerful, I’d give her that, but she wouldn’t find me if I could help it.
I kept my head down and sang The Partridge Family’s “I Woke Up in Love This Morning” in my head on repeat, drowning out all other thoughts as best I could to keep my mind safe from her, and to keep errant thoughts of the sparkly blood away from Jamie.
Elsa had always been a wild card, but we’d gambled on her once before and came out on top. Now that I was sitting on information she wanted, I had a feeling we wouldn’t be so lucky this time around. I was scared for Jens. I felt like a coward for running when he told me to, though what aid I could give him against a Huldra on a mission, I couldn’t begin to tell you.
Too many footsteps were pounding back into the building. It was as if they were running out of the stadium, hearing her whistle and charging back inside. Hundreds of people called out for me through the fire alarm’s cries, heightening my anxiety and lessening my chance for escape. I screamed into my fist and slid further behind the door.
I flipped through Elsa’s plan of sending scouts to find me and realized the flaw in the plan: None of them knew what I looked like. She’d probably put in a vague description for them to hunt down a blonde girl with opera gloves on or something. Hiding would only work for so long; I knew I had to escape, and in a crowd was my only option. I wound my hair up in a bun and trapped the mess under my hat, pulling the brim down over my face. The shoes could be a problem, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.
There were still people exiting the stadium, but I ducked out from behind the door and moved with the tide who were on their way back in. My head down and hands shoved in my pocket, I beelined for the nearest abandoned apparel stand and slid over the counter. I yanked a team jacket and windbreaker pants I couldn’t believe were still being sold in this century off the shelf. I needed to conceal the attire Elsa may have used to describe me to the searchers. Ducking under the partition, I slipped the too-large clothing on over my outfit, concealing the star-spangled blood for the time being, making sure my mental door was shut tight. I tried not to look too closely at the new clothes so Jamie wouldn’t be able to describe them to her.
My heart was pounding as I thought through my next move. No sooner had I exited the booth and walked inconspicuously down a hallway did I hear the voice that made my heart leap into my throat.
“Lucy! I’m here!” Foss shouted above the din. His too-large body parted the crowd well enough, but I didn’t dare answer him, lest the others locate me.
I waited until I heard his calls get closer, and then stepped out from the hallway, meeting his eye with a discreet nod for him to follow me. The fire alarm finally ceased, but the crowd was still on high energy.
“Lucy? Are you okay? What happened to your…” Foss made to touch my lip, but I pulled back so as not to permanently stain him with my tainted blood. “What is that?”
I sucked on my lip until I was sure the small split was unnoticeable. “It’s nothing. It’s ink from a silver pen. Did I get it all?”
He examined my face. “Yeah.”
Relief flooded me. “We have to get out of here and then find a way to save the others.”
“This way.” Foss laced his fingers through mine, making my heart race even faster at the scandal of publicly holding my ex-husband’s hand. He led me back toward where the Elsa-controlled zombies were coming from.
“What? No, Foss. Elsa’s that way.”
Foss shook his head. “She moved. Let’s run.”
“Okay.” I gripped him, keeping my head down as we ran with the exiting herd. I was scared, but Foss was strong, so I did my best to shelve as much of my panic as I could.
When we reached the outdoors, Foss led me near where I’d abandoned Jamie, Jens and Britta to Elsa’s devices. I dug my heels into the concrete when I caught sight of Leif’s red hair through the maze of cars all fighting for the same exit. “No! I see them! Let’s go back inside.”
I pulled on Foss, but he didn’t listen. He led me forward, determined to get us closer to the danger. “We’re almost there.”
Foss’s eyes were naturally dark, so I had to really get a good look to see if his pupils were dilated, which I didn’t. I wore gloves, so it was harder to tell if someone had cold hands from being controlled by a Huldra. “Foss, no!” I shouted, yanking my hand from his and running in the opposite direction.
My heart sank when my best efforts were no match for the hulking man well trained in all things physical. He scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder, taking his plunder straight to the enemy.
Six.
Duress
Jens was bound and unconscious in the trunk of the black SUV he’d painstakingly picked out for us. It was the safest thing on the road that could fit all five of us comfortably, making it the perfect choice at the time. Had he known he would have been hogtied on the floor, he might have sprung for a full-sized van or something with even more trunk space.
Britta had been whistled to sleep, and was being rocked in Jamie’s arms as he lost himself to his panic. He knew there was nothing he could do to retaliate against a Huldra, but the primal desire to avenge our mates was strong in both of us.
Leif was sweating at the wheel, clearly upset everything had gotten so out of hand. I was in the back, sandwiched between Foss and Elsa, who each had a hand on me as if I could actually overpower either of them. My wrists were bound with a zip tie on my lap. My lip had stopped bleeding, and I was pretty sure Foss didn’t understand what he thought he saw, so there was still hope my secret could remain my own. I kept the door to my shared psyche shut tight. It was a thing of fortune Jamie was so unbalanced; he didn’t focus on me at all.
Poor Grayson. Poor controlled Grayson didn’t deserve my anger, but he got it all the same. It wasn’t his fault he’d been manipulated into asking me too many personal questions. “What happ
ened in the jail cell in Elvage?” His demeanor was cool as a cucumber in a refrigerator as he turned from his spot in the front passenger’s seat.
“Bite me,” I spat.
“Tell us what Charles Mace said to you.”
Elsa removed my hat and ran her long nails through my hair, scraping along my scalp and giving a slight tug on my curls to communicate that she owned me. I shivered, hating being treated like a pet. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Now, now. Don’t make me force Foss to hurt you. Do you want that on what’s left of his conscience?”
“Leave Foss out of this!” I roared. “I told you guys everything I know about the jail cell! It’s mostly a blur to me, so I can’t explain to you what I don’t remember!”
“Hold her head back,” Elsa ordered Foss, whom she’d given a whistle to basically follow her every command.
Foss complied, his hands gentle as they guided my head to rest on the back of the seat, my chin tilted toward the ceiling. “Shh. Honey, just do as she says.”
I thrashed against his grip, despite the futility. I was terrified, and tried to communicate with my eyes for him to let me go.
Elsa looked down on me with an expression that was a mix between reverence and sadism. She raked her fingernails up my thigh in that way that always made me want to punch her, pacifism aside. Foss kept my head still as she whispered in my ear, “You don’t want to tell me? Fine. I tried it Jens’s way and brought along someone who you could talk to, but you wouldn’t give us what we needed. Now we do things my way.” She licked her lips and whistled in my ear a low note that made my body relax beyond its current capabilities.
I felt Elsa try to pull something out of me like strings of warm taffy from my mouth, but each time she got close to extracting the buried treasure, it snapped back into me, held there by a force stronger than both of us. I wanted to resist her, but my body was limp and my mind like mush for her to worm her way around inside of.
Then like a jack-in-the-box, all my muscles began to shake at once, jerking me in tiny quakes that made me drool and choke uncontrollably as I tried to muster out a scream. It was scary and painful, but I had no power to stop the convulsions.
The next thing I knew, we were pulled over on the side of the road. Elsa yanked me from the car and tipped me onto my side while my body convulsed of its own volition. The last thing I heard before the world went black were Elsa’s screams of duress.
Seven.
The Last Siren
“I told you not to! Do you think I’m just making this stuff up? He made her forget him! You can’t undo that. You can’t just go messing with a person’s brain and expect there to be no consequences!” Jens was yelling from what sounded like through a glass bottle, but as he continued, his presence grew closer and clarified until I understood we were in the same room. “You have no idea the damage you could do to her! Typical Huldra! You don’t like a situation, so you try to manipulate it.”
I was on a bed; that much I could decipher. It wasn’t mine, but it smelled familiar. My eyes remained shut so I could take in enough of the conversation without having to participate. The scent was of oatmeal cookies, which told me I was in Jamie and Britta’s bed. The slight lean to my left told me Jamie was probably next to me, unconscious as I had just been.
“Typical Huldra?” Elsa spat, her voice shrill. “Typical man in love! Lets his duty go to the dogs when it comes to his precious girlfriend being up to something she shouldn’t be.” She slapped her hand against the other for emphasis as she spoke. “You won’t be objective with her! All you see is the moonbeams she shoots out of her eyeballs and the rainbows she dances on like the ditz she is.”
I cringed. Ever since Erin Hanson wrote “ditz” on my locker to cozy up to Linus (still couldn’t figure that one out), I was a little sensitive to the slam. Despite always moving around, I’d been a straight A student. Ditz felt like a jab thrown just to be hurtful.
Elsa spat her words at Jens. “You’re asleep on the job, and if you’re not careful, the thing you love’s going to wind up six feet under!”
Jens’s voice grew louder. “Because you’ll be the one putting her there! That’s my whole point! You’re the danger right now, Els. You gave her a friggin’ seizure because you couldn’t just be patient.”
“Patient? Really? It’s been seven months since Limbo! If she was Foss, you wouldn’t hesitate to interrogate the information out of him by any means necessary.”
“Hey!” Foss objected. It sounded like he was sitting in the chair at Jamie’s desk next to the bed.
“Jens is the best Tonttu has to offer!” Britta said in defense of her brother.
Elsa hissed. “Then Tonttu needs to go back to the drawing board. Your big man’s been compromised by the little man in his pants. Something tells me upstairs Jens hasn’t been calling the shots for a long time.”
Jens was irate. “You don’t even know if she has information you need! You’re acting on a hunch, and you’ll end up killing her over nothing! Newsflash, she has secrets upon secrets. She had no friends growing up, so she doesn’t need to talk about every little thing. Give it time. I’m sure if she is holding onto information, it’s nothing life-changing. I know her. You’re just picking up on her normal vibe.”
I flinched when Jens called me out on not having any friends. He wasn’t wrong, but the declaration still stung. The double flinch came when he put his absolute faith in his knowledge of me. He would lose this gamble, and I shuddered to think of what else that would make him question about us.
Foss spoke up, and oddly enough, his tone was the most even one in the room. “You know Lucy pretty well?”
“Like the back of the fist that’s coming for this one if she’s not careful.”
“And you’ll gamble our safety on that?”
Jens was resolute. “I’d gamble anything on my girl.”
My heart sank. My reasons for keeping them in the dark seemed so right at the time. Surely Jens would still love me if he knew I was part siren now. Right?
Foss kicked his feet up on the bed, nudging me with his bare toe. “Because your girl’s been awake for who knows how long. One of her many secrets I’m sure you know all about.”
I turned my head, opened my eyes and glared at Foss’s superior smirk. “Don’t touch me with your gross bare man feet.”
Foss responded by tracing his toe up my side, hitching it under my shirt and dragging it up to expose my ribs.
My hands were slow on the uptake, but I managed to shove him off with a shudder. Jens slugged Foss’s shoulder and helped me to sit up, knowing just how slow to move me without making the room spin. “Hey, babe. How do you feel?”
“Groggy. Stupid.” I leaned against the headboard, stretching my arms above my head. Jens was staring into my face, but I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye. “I thought not telling you would make it not true. If I didn’t deal with it, no one else would have to. It would just go away.”
Jens sat back, wary. “What would go away?”
Elsa buried her head in her hands. “Out with it, Lucy.”
I didn’t know how to say it. There was such a long pause as I tried to work out the words; I feared Elsa losing her patience and whistling it out of me. “Better I show you.” The windbreaker pants I’d kifed from the stadium slid off easily, confusing everyone with my nonsexual strip-down. “Don’t anyone touch me. Seriously,” I warned Jens, apologetic the most to him. He’d spoken his loyalty with such surety; I knew the sting of the blow would last longer than either of us would handle gracefully.
The blood had dried on my thigh, but the glitter had seeped through my jeans with the bloodstain, making a noticeable four-inch mark. “I was hoping it didn’t mean what I thought it meant.” I hung my head in shame as one after the other, gasps filled the room when each person figured out what the stain was.
“Tell me you spilled glitter on your jeans. Tell me that’s not what I think it is!” Jens backed away from the bed, giving
me a wide berth.
Foss sat up straight, anger heating his stare to the boiling point. “When? When did you come across a siren I didn’t know about? They’re extinct! You and Alrik killed the last one! How could… It makes no sense!”
“I…” My voice suddenly went hoarse, the volume going in and out without my say-so. “Right before Alrik died.” I cleared my throat, aware of the crushing silence that fell just long enough for me to shatter with the truth I should’ve spilled seven months ago. “Alrik and Pesta were fighting, and he was pretty bad off. She had the upper hand, so she ditched him to mess me up for a bit.” The memory smashed me anew. I’d done everything to avoid even the fleeting thoughts concerning that day. “Alrik’s seen me smacked around. He’s seen me hurt on the mission and whatnot.” I let out a humorless chuckle. “She’s good. Pesta knew how to really drive the knife home. She roughed me up a little, but it wasn’t enough to really hurt him.” I touched my forehead with my thumb, tracing the mark she’d placed on me that only she could make visible again. My skin crawled at the suppressed memory I tried never to think about. My voice crapped out on me, deserting me to whisper the final blow. “She put her mark on me.”
Jens was in a land unto himself. His mouth was hanging open with the worst hurt I’d ever seen twisting his adoring expression to the more appropriate betrayal I knew I deserved.
No one moved. I doubt anyone even blinked. So vast was the shattering from the rock I’d dropped through the glass of our world, I knew I’d broken things I could never repair. Part of me knew the arv was unfixable – that I was doomed.
A solitary tear made its way to the crest of my cheek as I focused my eyes on my lap. My whisper was heard by all, so arresting was the silence. “Before you try to kill me, think of Jamie in all this. He didn’t know any of it. I never think about it, so he has no idea. But if you kill me, he dies. He doesn’t deserve that, no matter what I am now.”
Lucy at Peace Page 5