Elementals 2: The Blood of the Hydra

by Michelle Madow

  But there was still a lot of good I could do. And right now, that meant catching the siren.

  “You all should put your earplugs in,” Kate instructed. “I know we’re not there yet, but we don’t know how far her voice carries. It’s best not to risk it.”

  We put in the earplugs first, and then the earmuffs that we had for the shooting range. Since the combination of the two protected our ears from the sound of gunshots, we figured it would be enough to protect ourselves from the siren song. After all, in The Odyssey, Odysseus’s men had passed the sirens by plugging their ears with beeswax. This technology was far more advanced than that.

  We couldn’t talk much, since we couldn’t hear, so I joined Chris and Danielle at the front of the boat, looking out as we soared over the water. Danielle had her elbows resting on the railing, her face lifted up, her hair blowing in the wind like she was a mermaid. Chris had his arms outstretched, like he was flying. They both looked like they belonged out there.

  With the headphones blocking the wind, it was more peaceful than ever. I took a deep breath and lifted my face to the sky, inhaling the fresh, salty air. In this moment, it was so easy to pretend that we were five normal teens, skipping school to enjoy a day on a boat.

  Then I saw a movement in the corner of my eye—a hand pounding on the window.

  I turned around and saw Kate, her face contorted, screaming something as she used her free hand to bang on the glass. I couldn’t hear her, but she was yelling so hard that a vein popped out of her neck. She pointed at the steepest cliff, and while I wasn’t great at lip reading, it looked like she was begging us to go that way.

  My eyes met Blake’s, and we nodded in agreement about what was going on—Kate must be hearing the siren song. Which meant that the siren was still here. It would have made sense for us to go straight for her, except for one problem—the direction that Kate was pointing led to a grouping of jagged rocks, the water crashing around them. Docking the boat there would be impossible. The rocks would shred it—and us—apart.

  Instead, Blake steered the boat away from the cliff. Kate pounded harder on the window, yelling and pulling at her wrist that was cuffed to the beam. She pulled so hard that the metal cut into her skin, blood dripping down her hand and onto the floor. She kept screaming, and as we drew closer to the shore, she reached out with her other hand and held it out to the cliff. Her face scrunched with determination, and a few small rocks broke free from the cliff, crashing into the water.

  She was trying to use her power.

  I’d never seen the extent of Kate’s power, but I always had a feeling that hers could be the most dangerous of all of ours. After all, she could potentially cause earthquakes, or cave-ins, or landslides—she could create disaster on a mass scale. But Kate was the most peaceful of the five of, which was why I’d always suspected that she’d been given such a strong ability. She would never use her power to destroy.

  But a Kate who was desperate to reach the siren? I couldn’t be so sure. We were far enough out in the water right now that she couldn’t do much damage—she was too far away from her element to control it—but Blake was bringing the boat closer and closer to the shore. We had to get Kate under control. If we didn’t… I didn’t want to know what she might do to get us to that cliff.

  I grabbed the last earplugs and earmuffs from the bag, held them up to show Chris and Danielle, and pointed to Kate. They nodded and hurried over to her, grabbing her and holding her down. She yelled something I couldn’t hear and struggled against them, but it was no use. She was the smallest of us all, and she stood no chance against them. But that didn’t stop her from trying to fight.

  I was wrestling the earplugs into her ears when suddenly, she stopped fighting us.

  “What happened?” I asked, although my voice sounded muffled and strange—I could only hear it in my head. Kate moved her lips in reply, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. So she grabbed her phone with her free hand and typed something on it, showing it to me.

  We’re out of range of the siren song. You can all take your earplugs out now.

  I moved to remove my earmuffs, but stopped myself. “How do we know you’re not trying to trick us?” I asked. “What if you just want us to take off our earmuffs so we hear the siren and drive towards the cliff?”

  She smiled and grabbed the extra earplugs from my hand—the ones I’d been trying to force into her ears. She put them in, covered them with the extra pair of muffs, and typed something else on her phone.

  I was telling the truth—we’re out of range of the siren. But good job being cautious 

  I showed the others the messages, and we all removed our earmuffs and earplugs. Once sure that she was telling the truth about being out of range of the siren, I unlocked the cuff around Kate’s wrist and called on my power to heal the places where the metal had cut into her skin.

  “For a moment there, I thought you would saw your hand off to get to that siren,” I said, checking her wrist and ensuring that it was completely healed. “What did she say to you?”

  “Oh, just that she knew all of the secrets of the universe—everything from the past, present, and future—and that she was on our side on the war against the Titans and would share all of her knowledge with us if we met her at the bottom of the cliff.” Kate chuckled, as if it were ridiculous. “Telling you about it now, I know it was a lie. But something about the tone and cadence of her voice… I don’t know.” She shrugged and looked off into the distance. “It made me believe her.”

  We neared the shore, and Blake steered the boat towards the closest dock. It belonged to one of the huge houses on the outskirts of town. Judging by how the house had no lights on, how the snow around it was untouched, and how their boat was covered up, I guessed the house belonged to one of the many retired couples who only stayed in Kinsley over the summer.

  Blake tied up our boat, and we gathered our weapons, hopping onto the dock. “Are you glad you listened to the siren song?” I asked Kate. “Because you kind of… well, you freaked out back there. You tried to use your powers on us. If we hadn’t been so far out in the water, who knows what you would have done?”

  “Except that we were out on the water, so I knew going into it that I wouldn’t be able to do anything to hurt you,” she said, sounding absolutely confident that she was right. “Barely anyone has ever heard the siren song and survived. If I hadn’t tried, I would have regretted it forever.”

  Chris jumped off the boat, landing right next to us. “The two of you can chat about this later,” he said, securing his gun in his holster and looking up at the looming cliff. “Right now, we have a siren to catch.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Compared to locating the siren, capturing her proved rather simple. We hiked up the trail to the top of the cliff, with our earplugs and earmuffs on. We surprised her by coming at her from behind, and before she knew we were there, Chris shot her with a tranquilizer bullet full of gray energy. She was on the ground in seconds. Lucky for us, the siren’s greatest weapon was her song—not her physical strength. In fact, with her porcelain skin, long wavy hair, tiny frame, and huge eyes, she looked more like a doll than an ancient monster. She was so petite that bringing her from the cliff to the training room in Darius’s basement was a breeze.

  We only removed our earplugs and muffs once she was bound to a chair inside the shooting range and shut inside. The range had a soundproof glass window, so it was the perfect place to keep her contained.

  “She looks so… sweet.” Chris shook his head, examining her through the window. “Are we sure she’s actually a monster?”

  “She had Kate convinced that she would tell us the secrets of the Universe if we crashed our boat into a cliff.” Blake crossed his arms, glaring at the siren. “She’s a monster, all right. She was in Kerberos because she sided with the Titans in the Second Rebellion. Don’t forget that while we’re questioning her.”

  “Speaking of,” Kate said, joining us and glancing
at the siren. “How exactly are we going to question her?”

  “We’re going to go in there and use enough gray energy on her that she’s confused enough to answer our questions without a second thought,” Chris said. “Did the siren song mash up your brain or something? Because that was all part of our original plan.”

  “But when we came up with the plan, we weren’t counting on our hostage being a siren,” Kate pointed out. “To get information from her, we need to be able to hear her. Which means talking to her without the earplugs and muffs on. Which means—”

  “We can’t talk to her without getting hypnotized by her song,” Danielle interrupted. “So all of this was for nothing.”

  We were silent as the reality of the situation sunk in. We’d done such a great job of capturing the siren. It was so easy… maybe too easy.

  But we’d gone through so much trouble to get her here. There had to be a solution to this problem.

  “Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing…” I said, an idea forming in my mind. “Kate, what about her song made it so hypnotizing? You said it was the tone and cadence of her voice, right?”

  “Yep.” Kate nodded. “We can’t let her talk to us. And we can’t ask her to write out her answers to our questions, because with her hands free, nothing would stop her from pulling off our earmuffs and forcing us to listen to her.”

  “So what should we do?” Blake asked, reaching for his gun. “Shoot her in the heart, and then wait for another monster to escape that we actually can question?”

  “We might not have to do that.” I eyed up his gun, relaxing when he let his hand fall away from it. “The siren’s voice is hypnotizing because of its tone and cadence—not because of what she’s saying. It’s the quality of her voice that makes people believe her. So… what if we took that away from her?”

  “How would we do that?” Danielle looked at me as if I were a complete idiot. “Unless you know a spell like the one Ursula used on Ariel in The Little Mermaid to take away her voice?”

  “Nothing that complicated.” I purposefully ignored how Danielle was making fun of me, since we all knew that real witches didn’t use spells. “But I have had the flu before. And as a singer, I know that the worst part about the flu is that it ruins my voice—sometimes for the entire month.”

  “And my brother has the flu right now…” Kate smiled, her eyes lighting up. “He’s so contagious that he spread it to everyone in my extended family who hadn’t gotten a flu shot. They’re calling him ‘Typhoid Steven.’”

  I looked through the glass at the siren, who was just beginning to stir, and said, “I think it’s safe to bet that they don’t give out flu shots in Kerberos.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It didn’t take Kate long to go to her house and come back with a plastic bag full of used tissues.

  “Gross.” I backed away when she got close with the bag, even though I’d had my flu shot.

  “I need to do this quick,” she said, putting on her earplugs and earmuffs. “I looked it up, and the flu virus will only remain active on these tissues for fifteen minutes. It took me five minutes to get here, so I have ten minutes to get that siren infected.”

  “Five minutes?” Blake smirked. “Did you—the perfect rule-following student—speed?”

  Kate lifted the earmuff away from her ear. “What was that?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, although the thought of Kate speeding was pretty amusing. “Go infect that siren.”

  * * *

  Two days later, the siren’s porcelain button nose had turned red from all of her sniffling and sneezing. We’d untied her from the chair, since she didn’t pose a physical threat, and she was lying on the floor, her arms splayed out around herself. She was so sick that she could barely eat the food we’d given to her, because she had to keep taking breaks to cough, sneeze, and blow her nose.

  “I thought that once she got the flu, she would look more normal,” Chris said. “But nope. She’s still totally hot.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Too bad she’s an ancient monster who lures people to gruesome deaths.”

  “Tell me about it,” Chris agreed. “So, what’s the plan from here?”

  “We see if it worked,” Kate told him. “You’ll come into the room with me—you’ll be wearing earmuffs, and I won’t. I’ll chat with the siren. If her powers work on me, use your power over air to stop me from doing anything destructive to myself. I won’t be able to do much to fight back, since the room is empty of anything connected to the earth.”

  “And if her powers don’t work on you, then the five of us can go in there and question her,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Kate smiled. “Let’s hope that’s what happens. Because I really don’t feel like killing her and capturing another monster.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Just like we’d hoped, now that the siren had the flu, her voice had no power over us. Which was how the five of us found ourselves gathered around her in the shooting range, with her bound to the chair again. And despite all of her sobbing and wailing, we refused to let her go.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she pleaded, struggling against the ropes. “I don’t know anything. Just set me free and I’ll go far away from here and leave you all alone. I promise.” She widened her eyes and looked at each of us, as if appearing all innocent would be enough to make us believe her.

  Danielle sat down and leaned against the wall, trying to balance the tip of her knife on the ground. It kept falling to its side. “Your powers don’t work on us now,” she said, barely paying the siren any attention. “The faster you tell us what we want to know, the faster we’ll let you go.” This time when she let go of the knife, it stood straight, balanced on the tip. “Wow,” she said, staring at it with her mouth dropped open. “I didn’t actually expect that to work.”

  “It only worked because I helped.” Chris laughed, and the knife floated towards him, the handle settling in his grip. “Now,” he said when he turned to the siren, the tip of the knife facing her. “I don’t want to use this on you, but I will if I have to.”

  “Seriously?” The siren laughed, tossing her long hair behind her shoulders. But the laugh quickly turned into a cough, and she took a few wheezing breaths to collect herself. “You would never use that on me.”

  Chris lowered the knife, which proved the siren’s point.

  “He might not.” Blake grabbed the knife and stepped forward, towering over the siren. “But I will. We need answers, and since you tried to kill us when we were out on the ocean, we don’t owe you anything. Now, we’ll ask you nicely one more time—how are you and the others escaping Kerberos? And how do you come back after we kill you?”

  “How could I possibly know?” she purred, fluttering her eyelashes at Blake. “I’m just a lowly siren. All I wanted was to return to the world to sing and relax near the water. You could join me, if it would please you. All you would have to do is let me go and come with me. We could be such wonderful company for each other, don’t you think?”

  “It’s trying to play you.” I rushed forward to stand next to Blake, clenching my fists to control the heat coursing through my veins. “Don’t believe a thing it’s saying.”

  “How sweet.” The siren smiled, still focused on Blake. “Is your girlfriend jealous?”

  Blake smirked and flicked on his lighter, balancing a ball of fire on his palm. “What would I want with a life near the water?” he asked, the light reflecting dangerously in his eyes as he stepped closer to the siren. “Fire’s my element.”

  Before he could get any closer to her, droplets of water formed above the fire and rained down on it, extinguishing it. “Let’s not show off too quickly,” Danielle said, her voice tight. “Give it a chance to talk on its own first.”

  “Can you please stop calling me an ‘it?’” the siren hissed, her eyes narrowing in the first monstrous display we’d seen from her all day. “I have a name. Thelxepeia.”

  Chris laugh
ed, and the siren bristled at his reaction. “There’s no way we’ll be able to pronounce that,” he said. “So… we’ll just call you Tina. It’s close enough, right?”

  Tina frowned and stuck her chin in the air, apparently not happy with her new nickname. Then she sneezed and rubbed her nose on her shoulder, ruining whatever snobbish effect she was going for. “Stupid mortals,” she said, sniffing again. “As if you’ll ever be able to get anything out of me.”

  “I think it’s time to use that knife now,” Danielle said, reaching to grab it from Chris.

  “Not so fast,” Kate jumped in. “We have other options.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Danielle raised an eyebrow. “Such as what?”

  “Gray energy.”

  I did a double take, making sure it was Kate who had said those words. It was.

  “Do you even know how to use gray energy?” I asked her. “I thought you were against using it.”

  “I was,” she said. “But I’m also logical. We have a serious problem on our hands with the portal to Kerberos weakening, so we need to know how to use every possible weapon at our disposal—including gray energy. I’ve been practicing.”

  “Impressive.” Danielle stood up and brushed imaginary dust off her leather pants. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “Then I guess you underestimated me.” Kate straightened her shoulders and leveled her gaze with Danielle’s. “Come on. Let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After an hour of forcing the siren—Tina—to drink water infused with gray energy, we had nothing to show for it but a confused, tired siren who still hadn’t given us answers to our questions. I was beginning to think that this was hopeless. But we hadn’t given up yet.

  Danielle held Tina’s head as she tipped up the glass of water, forcing her to drink. “Now, let’s try this again,” she said, dropping her hand down to rest at the hilt of her sword. “How did you get through the portal from Kerberos, and how did Orthrus come back after we killed him?”