Our Bloody Pearl

by D. N. Bryn

  [ 15 ]

  THE WEIGHT

  The longer I bear it, the heavier it becomes. I let go.

  MY EYES JUMP from the sirens whipping through the waves to the blocker now sliding toward Kian’s door. On a higher deck, Dejean struggles to reach me, defenseless against the songs of my kind. I stretch for it instinctively, stopping just before my fingers leave the cover of the desk. It continues to slide, passing me by. With a soft click, it hits Kian’s boots. Panic wells in my chest as she reaches down, clashes of wind and water the only sound breaking the tense silence.

  Silence.

  It washes over me then, a stifling, clinging uncertainty. I saw Teal out in the waves. That was no hallucination; my eyes are tuned to spot sirens. But no song drifts into the cabin, not even the low rumble of a pod preparing their chorus. An eerie hush reigns, filtered by the muffled storm and the creaking of the ship. Even the crew above us works noiselessly.

  The thump of erratic footsteps breaks the quiet and the cabin door swings inward. Dejean’s boots come into view beneath the crack of the desk.

  The meager glimpse blisters my soul. I have to see him. Clenching the open tide in my hand, I poke my head out. Kian slips her gun from the little carrier on her belt and aims it at Dejean.

  He lifts his unrestricted arm high into the air, his other hand raising as far as it can, palm out. His weight bears heavily on one leg, and he wavers as the ship careens. The indecision on his face unites exhaustion and fear. His eyes drift around the room, barely focusing. But they find me.

  I sign to him, “Stay,” adding quickly, “Get her talking.”

  An idea forms in my mind, but I don’t know how long it’ll take me to rig it. Tackling Kian here and now would be easier. I could knock her to the ground, driving Dejean’s knife into her heart, and hope her gun doesn’t go off in the process. My plan offers a more permanent solution though, if only Dejean can stall. I shove the knife into a notch in the deck and begin to work.

  “Please, I have to know Perle is safe.” Dejean sounds desperate. Pleading. Scared.

  Kian laughs, a sharp, terrible sound. “You named the fish,” she says, all humor vanishing in an instant. “You can’t possibly care about them! You think they won’t turn on you? The moment you stop benefiting them, you’re dead. You drop that charade of kindness and they’ll rip your throat out.”

  My hands stiffen. Slowly, I glance out.

  A pinch in Dejean’s forehead draws his brows together, his gaze dropping to the ground. When he finally looks up, he focuses on Kian. “It’s not a charade.” He says it with certainty, as though he knows nothing truer.

  My wonderful human.

  Kian’s lips twist and the jagged scar that runs across her jawline trembles in the low lamplight. “You don’t know, do you?” She lowers her gun ever so slightly, taking a step forward. “I was there, the day the sirens killed your father,” she says. “He was torn apart by a pearly white siren, just like that one you so accurately named. It gleamed in the moonlight, ripping out his insides like they were candy.”

  The confidence slides off Dejean. He stumbles once under the tilt of the floor, his unrestricted arm stretching out to the side to catch him. His eyes fall to me, shock and turmoil lighting in them.

  I yank my head back into the safety of the desk before Kian can follow his gaze. Don’t think about him. I shake my head, gripping my tide. Concentrate.

  “I’ve picked up more sirens than you could count in the last year, colors from across the spectrum,” Kian continues. “But that fish is the only one with the iridescent white coloring. What do you think that means?” Her question requires no reply, because the answer comes in the tremble running through Dejean, his feet slipping once more.

  “How…” He clears his throat. “How do you know?”

  Pain blossoms deep within my chest, a gnawing that swells as it bites down, threatening to eat me alive. One thought echoes in my mind. Kian was right. Dejean won’t want me now.

  But I force the thought down, binding up my pain with one sharp grimace. It doesn’t matter what Dejean thinks, or why. All that matters is sinking this ship and rescuing him in the process.

  I focus on my tides, on the final wires I’m rerouting. My metal cuffs clang softly together as I connect the second wire to the first wire’s place. It sparks, a pure, engulfing blue piercing through its core. I hurl it toward the back of the cabin, just above the stacks rumbling a few decks below.

  Kian takes another step toward Dejean, shadows flickering across her scar. “I watched. I—”

  A burst of thunder cuts off her words as the tide morphs into pure, blue light. There’s not enough time for a solid thought to form in my mind, but the torrent of dread that runs through me is prompted by a question I wish I’d asked. To me, an explosion is the burst of power from a wave, and crash of steam out a stack, the flicker of lightning across the sky. It occurs to me now that Murielle’s human explosion may be something larger and more powerful than that, something that would wreck us along with the ship.

  Panic rips through me in time with the growth of the tide’s glow, swelling outward in a perfect sphere of crackling lightning. I hear nothing as it comes for me; not the wind or the sea, not even the sound of my own heartbeat. I try to lift my hands to my face, to shield myself in some way, but compared to the expanding flare, my motions are like the growing of coral amid the darting of fishes. Then, a hand’s width from my tail fin, the massive orb of light stops.

  Its sound changes to a dull thrumming, splintered rays of white running through it in crackles. It turns in on itself, as though sucked back by a turbulent whirlpool. In one last swirl of light and a flash of blue, it returns to its original shape; a small lifeless blue stone, the metal of the tide that once contained it now blasted apart or burnt away. The stone hovers in the air for a breath before dropping.

  Time and life return.

  The parts of the ship the light touched have vanished—wood and metal and glass and fabric gone as though they never existed. In their place lies a gaping spherical hollow, cutting out part of the deck for two floors in each direction as well as a great chunk of the ship’s stern. Wind rushes in, followed by rain.

  A blue siren washes through the opening in the deck beneath us, emerging with a sailor between their teeth. The shouting from above echoes screams from below. The ship tilts and spins, floundering among the crashing swells. It’ll sink, sure as the sun will rise, but the cavern I made in its side still sits above the waterline, waves crashing through it with each swell. We may yet escape this.

  I cling to the side of the desk, sticking my head out. Kian’s gaze fixes on the gaping hole in her ship, unblinking as she clings to a furnishing attached to the wall, her pistol gone. Dejean clutches the other side of the desk, a million emotions fighting for control of his face.

  “You… blew a hole… in…” Awe fills his features for a moment before slipping into anger. “You could’ve killed yourself!”

  “Blame Murielle,” I hiss, only bothering to sign her name alone. It shuts him up, and I fling my chains toward him as best I can without sliding out from the side of the desk. “A little help?”

  “I’m never trusting you with anything again,” he mumbles, grabbing my wrists. One look at the lock and he shakes his head, glancing back the keys hooked to Kian’s belt.

  The shriek of a siren pierces my ears as Gray falls from the deck above, a pirate squirming beneath the clench of their teeth. They both slam into the edge of the cabin’s floor and drop out of view. Kian chooses that moment to launch at Dejean.

  My heart ricochets through my chest. She slams him against the side of the desk, and the wood creaks as they wrestle. I grab for Dejean, but the arcing of the ship throws their locked bodies across the room.

  “What have you done!” Fury strains her voice, and she punches the underside of his jaw with such force that his head raps into the deck.

  I throw myself at them, using the roll of the ship and the ra
in-slick floor to my advantage. “I did this.” A protective rage turns my words to a snarl. I grab her, sinking my teeth into her arm. Warm blood seeps through my mouth as she screams a low predatory sound. She jerks and knocks me off with an elbow to my bruised ribs. Twisting, I grab onto her leg.

  The ship rocks fiercely and a violent groan runs through the decks. It comes to a sudden halt, the wood vibrating beneath us as it screams. The ship goes still. A rock. Without the forward power of the stacks, we ran straight into it. The rocky projection’s smaller crags bite into the edge of the deck beneath us, glimmers of white water crashing off it as a wave hits and then rolls back, revealing the broken body of a large, dark-colored siren and a trembling human clinging to the stone.

  Everything in the cabin shifts from the vessel’s sudden stillness. Trinkets fling across the space, and the metal Kian weighed my tail down with during my captivity grinds along the floor. As I slide, I grab a ring hooked into the deck, clinging to it with such might that my fingers go numb.

  Dejean scrambles for a similar hold. He misses. Flying past me, he hits the wall of the cabin without a sound. He crumples to the floor, the key to my chains grasped in his limp fingers. The air goes stale.

  “Dejean!” I lift my voice against the noise of the storm, but a gale rushes through the cabin, drowning out my hoarse cry. He stirs, his eyelashes fluttering. Some of the tension releases from my chest.

  It returns in a rush as Kian lunges toward him, the knife he gave me clutched in her hand. I fling myself at her, catching her by the legs. A voice in the back of my mind tells me to be cautious. In her unstable state, she’ll stab me just as soon as look at me. But I must keep her away from Dejean, the need as imperative and urgent as the rapid pumping of my heart.

  She twists toward me, but the ship shudders again. We roll, and my hip knocks against a large, metal object. The weight. The straps Dejean and Simone used to lift it float back and forth in the thin layer of water covering the floor, still attached. I snatch them.

  Ducking away from Kian’s blade, I tie the straps around one of her ankles, binding her to the metal. The crude knot won’t hold forever, but when she lowers her guard to release it, she’ll have my teeth at her throat. She kicks at my stomach. The strap holds, jerking her foot to a stop and drawing a pained grunt from her lips. With one hand, she brings her knife toward the strap.

  Fire in my muscles, I fling myself on top of her, shoving into her wrist with both my palms. The bulk from my chains works to my advantage and the weight of them overpowers her, pinning her hand against the deck. The knife clatters away, vanishing into the sea. If I can get my jaws around her throat…

  But shifting my weight will remove my hands from her wrist. I must be quick. As she struggles against me, I bare my teeth and hiss, preparing to make my move.

  Kian forms a noise that sounds more siren then human. “Do it.” Her scar wrinkles as her mouth pulls into a snarl. “Finish the job.”

  I want to, desperately, fiercely, the terror and anger I’ve built deep inside churning up in a rush. But the look in Kian’s eyes gives me pause. It reminds me of Storm, of the hurt and hatred so many sirens harbor for the humans, a loathing buried deep within. The ripped edge of her normally tight collar billows in the wind, exposing the side of her neck; skin I’ve never before seen.

  The sight jolts my insides. Scars, like the one on her jawline, old but still generous. They run in long stripes from her neck far down her chest, the skin around them contorted and stretched. The teeth of a siren.

  I saw his father die the same time as my own. Torn apart by a pearly white siren, she’d said. She’d never implied they’d tried to eat her too.

  But something had.

  The boat creaks a thunderous sound. My head snaps instinctively to Dejean, and Kian’s free hand slams into my gills. Choking, I crumple on top of her, blinding pain shooting up my neck. The world turns violently as she throws me off. My head knocks the deck. From the hole in the back of the ship, the blurry form of a tan siren leaps toward me. I kindle a spark of hope, but a swell catches them, dragging them deeper into the deck below.

  Kian crashes down on me with the force of a wave.

  “How can you be so kind to him, after what you did?” she shouts, slamming my face into the deck. Her mouth brushes my ear. “You should’ve finished the job.”

  “It wasn’t me!” I whisper the words, wanting to scream them, wanting to be sure they were true. I never murdered the human children… did I? It seems like such a ridiculous question, something I should have been paying attention to all my life. But I don’t know. I don’t know.

  My panic fades into an empty reconciliation. Kian’s a monster, yes; Kian and Jaquelin and Storm and many others. And so am I.

  But not anymore.

  The violent sound of snapping wood pounds through my head, and the ship seems to drop out from under me. My back hits the cabin deck as it jerks to a stop again, sharp pains shooting up my shoulders. The support won’t last long, though. The crumbling Oyster will sink, whether I manage to remove my chains or not.

  Twisting my whole body at once, I slam my cuffs against the gash I bit into Kian’s arm. She grunts, her hold on me loosening. Another hit makes her crumple, and I roll out from under her. Water shoots into the cabin, scooping me up and slamming me into the wall beside Dejean.

  I grab onto the open cabin door to keep from being carried toward Kian on the retreating backwash, clinging to Dejean with one arm. He looks dazed, his body cocked awkwardly. It seems to be all he can do to hold to me as the ship sinks lower once more.

  “Dejean.” I don’t scream or cry; I just speak his name, drawing on everything he means to me. A dim smile softens his face, eyes almost sparkling. He opens one of his hands to me, revealing a key clutched so tightly it’s formed its shape in the skin of his palm.

  I take it, unlocking my chains in a rush. They fall away and hit the deck with a sharp clank. The sound turns to a rattle, a low, terrible vibration that seems to shake every bit of the ship. Through the gap in the end of the cabin, a stream of sirens vanish into the sea, fleeing. And for good reason.

  The ocean beyond us is calming; the rain gone and the wind a low whistle. But the ship is coming apart all the same.

  The deck slides as the Oyster sinks. The end I blew open goes first, dipping straight into the water as the side of the cabin where Dejean and I sit lifts precariously. Kian shouts at me, her words muddled, her eyes wide. She claws at the straps I used to tie her to the weight, but the metal block slips faster than she can manage. It plunges into the rising water, dragging Kian with it.

  Before I can stop myself, I roll across the deck. I catch hold of the edge of the desk with one hand and grab Kian’s wrist with the other. She grips me tightly in return, terror almost masking the bitterness in her gaze. The sea smells so strongly of blood that the scent washes over me with each gust of wind. The water creeps above Kian’s hips and up her chest.

  There is one thing I know for certain: I don’t want to help her, but if I don’t offer her a choice, I’ll regret it. So many have already died from the enmity she feels, sirens and humans alike. The tang of the blood turns my stomach, reminding me of those I’ve killed myself. I remember every angry line of Storm’s face, but the humans’ features are drowned in the sea of indifference I once held. They were just invaders, murderers with no hint of honor, and an easy meal. Yet it’s their pain I feel now: Dejean and his mother mourning a man who never harmed me, and a young girl with a neck and chest torn apart.

  I can hate Kian. I can make certain she never ruins another life, siren or human. But she still deserves a choice—the choice Dejean gave me—to let forgiveness change her, and not death.

  “I can help you.” She won’t understand my words, but I whistle them in a soft, questioning tone.

  The last flicker of light from inside the ship shimmers off the scar on her jawline. “Now you think you can be nice to me?” She gives a bitter, low laugh, void of humor
. “I know what you’re doing. I know your kind. You’re no different from humans,” she snarls. “Both of us are monsters.”

  I tighten my grip on her wrist as the water licks at her chin. “We don’t have to be.”

  A spark flares in Kian’s eyes. Her nails dig into my wrist.

  I shriek as she claws her way up my arm, drawing blood with each new grip. Let go of her, let go of her. But I can’t.

  With one last burst of motion, she reaches for my gills. Her fingers tighten around them. Pain blooms in their wake, turning my vision to stars. My piercing screech breaks through my skull. I throw her off.

  As her hands fall away, the ship drops completely into the water, plunging us toward the depths. Kian sinks downward through the opening in the side of the ship, dragged by the weight at her ankle. She tries to bend, to reach for the straps, but the force of the water presses against her. Bubbles cascade from her mouth, creating a ring around my vision.

  She chose this. Perhaps much of the pain she inflicted was a result of her past, but the targets of her rage stretched far beyond the pearly siren who scared her as a child. Beyond sirens, beyond her enemies, all the way to her own crew. Perhaps my offer came too late, but I doubt she was ever willing to accept it at all.

  The ship slides away behind me, leaving the contents of Kian’s cabin drifting through the calming waves as it spirals deeper. Sirens dart around it, a few picking at corpses, others watching me with curiosity. None of them touch Kian. Somehow, they know better. They know this is a death she chose, drowned by the same weight she had pinned to my tail not so long ago.

  Beating my arms slowly, I watch Kian drop, her hands outstretched. Her body grows smaller and weaker until the dark waters consume her. She’s gone. Captain Kian, my night-terror, is nothing more than a corpse, soon to be pinned to the bottom of the sea. It should bring me joy, or contentment, or in the least, relief. But still, I feel nothing, as though the world is no different than before.