by Krista Walsh
Gabe remembered being a young kid and having flashbacks of the doctor’s life — his first time with a woman, his first time getting drunk. Those memories had twisted his childhood for years until the images had settled into the back of his mind. And the doctor had been a regular human being. Gabe couldn’t imagine the damage a siren’s thoughts would do to his psyche.
He shuddered and ran his fingers over the arm of his sunglasses, reassuring himself they were still in place.
“I don’t suppose you have anything that could help me restrain her?” he asked.
Percy shook his head. “You know me, I work in research, not in weapons.”
Gabe cursed and tapped his fingers on his knee, looking around the apartment for something that could serve as protection. Remembering the knife he’d taken from the mugger, he went over to his coat and pulled the blade out of his pocket. At night, in the shadows of the alley, it had looked deadly. In the light of his apartment, he saw it was nothing more than a steak knife. Not a bad choice for going up against a terrified woman in the dark, but hardly enough to go after a siren.
After dropping the knife in the sink to wash later, he cast another look around and his gaze landed on a box on the other side of the room. His palms went clammy at the idea of pawing through his own memories, but necessity bade him cross over to them. He knelt down and began rifling through the contents.
Old photographs tumbled down from their stack in the corner, family snapshots that reminded him of a life that didn’t exist anymore — moments from another world, crushed when he had failed to pull his brother out of the river. He brushed the pictures aside without looking too closely and found the item he sought.
The sheath was made of worn leather, stamped with the image of a serpent wrapped down toward the point. Inside was a hunting knife, the blade still sharp and clean despite the years of storage. Although Gabe had never used it for its intended purpose, he’d spent many an evening as a young man honing the edge to keep it in good condition. The mindless repetition had calmed his nerves when the world seemed to be spinning out of control.
Just as it had saved him before, he hoped it would do the same for him tonight.
He also hoped he wouldn’t have to draw it.
He ducked his head into the bathroom and grabbed the pack of earplugs from the medicine cabinet, for once feeling thankful to his neighbor for his three-in-the-morning dubstep parties.
He got dressed and slid his belt through the loop on the sheath, securing the knife at his hip. After he pulled his coat back on, he paused in front of the laptop screen.
Percy stopped what he was working on and sank into his chair with his arms crossed. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to. Gabe would do his best to stay out of trouble.
He shut down his computer and turned off the generator, dousing his apartment in darkness.
Gripping the hilt of the knife at his side, he released a slow, heavy breath. His heart kept an uncomfortable rhythm in his chest, but he ignored it. He’d made his choice on how he would move forward, so now he just needed to do it.
Drawing his shoulders back, he raised his chin and clenched his fists at his sides. Then he raised his hand and opened a rift onto the docks of Wishrock Harbor.
***
The docks were silent. The wind had died down and the snow fell in soft, steady waves through the night sky. Beyond the heavy gray clouds shone a hint of the moon, but the light did nothing to brighten the scene. It only added to the murkiness around Gabe.
Power had finally been restored to this section of the grid, and dots of emergency lights glowed from above warehouse doors. The harsh fluorescents hummed from the security booth and the camera buzzed as it scanned the harbor.
From what Gabe could see, he was alone on the docks, and he crossed his fingers that no one else had heard the haunting song through the radio static.
The knife felt solid at his hip, and he held on to it as he stepped onto the ice.
Past the docks, the lights from the shore dimmed, and he kept his movements slow to avoid falling into the water. The wind picked up the farther he moved into the open space, but the gusts remained gentle. It was the closest New Haven had come to a reprieve from the storm in a week.
Goosebumps rose on his arms and his mouth went dry. His thoughts shifted from awareness of his surroundings to a desire for sleep. He longed to lie down and close his eyes, bundled deep under his blankets.
Just for a few minutes.
Beyond that desire was the urge to move forward across the ice. He wanted to know what stood behind the curtain of snow and find the peace he couldn’t find in this life.
The sole of his boot slipped and jerked him out of his daze. Only when his mind was his own again did he realize what had wormed its way into his head, his instincts picking up the warning before his mind became aware.
A blue glow shimmered in the distance.
At first he thought it was the effect of Percy’s software, but when he reached for his glasses to adjust the screen, he realized he’d forgotten his equipment at home. Whatever that blue glow was, it was coming from something out on the ice.
Beyond the block of the earplugs, a hint of the crystalline voice called for him to come closer. Gabe closed his eyes and listened. He made out no words, just the ringing melody of the aria.
He gave himself a shake and slid his way across the river. He had to stay focused. The earplugs would only protect him so far, so he concentrated on any sounds other than her. He listened for the pulse of his blood, the steady ebb and flow as it rushed through his ears, as thunderous as the tide.
The glow ahead grew brighter. At first he thought it was the light getting stronger, but as the figure of the siren stepped into view, he understood she was approaching him as he approached her.
His breath caught at her beauty. Under the thin gleam of moonlight, her face was porcelain, each ridge and curve shaped as if by a loving hand. Her white eyes stared at him, boring into his soul, and in that moment, he regretted that what she would find inside him was inadequate to what she deserved.
Gabe gritted his teeth and clenched his hands tighter, dragging his mind back under his own power. He wrangled his thoughts to the list of questions that had pummeled his brain over the last twenty-four hours, and in spite of every good reason to drop it, he found himself eager to try to get some answers.
“I want to speak with you,” he called over the whistle of the wind, and at the sound of his voice, she paused with her hand half raised, beckoning to him.
The ribbons of her long gown blew out behind her, and her white hair billowed around her head — that same fluid movement as before, giving the impression that she was caught in the current of the river.
He took another step closer. “Maybe we can come to some kind of compromise. All I want is for you to leave our men in peace.”
Her pale lips pulled back into a smile devoid of mirth or warmth. If Gabe had held any hope that she would take the opportunity to speak with him, it disappeared as the corners of her eyes crinkled, marring the smooth perfection of her skin. As though these first lines had cracked the veneer keeping the rest of her beauty in place, her face contorted into an open-mouthed rage. Her white eyes flashed blue, and her face melted into a wrinkled, decomposing skull. Her hands curled into claws as her small white teeth rotted into yellowed fangs.
She threw herself over the gap in the ice with a speed Gabe couldn’t have prepared for and wrapped her hands around his throat. Clearly, seven meals in ten days had worked wonders for her.
He lost his footing and slipped on the ice. The air burst out of his lungs, and her weight on his chest prevented him from gasping for more. Her cold fingers, as icy as the surface beneath him, closed around his neck and squeezed.
She rasped out a laugh and leaned forward to run her tongue along Gabe’s cheek.
“Fool,” she said, and gone was the rich melody of her song, replaced by a grating hiss. “Thinking it would be so easy to pro
tect your mind.”
Gabe reached for his knife, but had barely pulled it free when her knee swept to the side and knocked it from his frozen hand.
The blade skittered across the ice and teetered on the edge of the gap. Gabe’s heart thudded in his chest in loud, painful strokes, and his gaze jumped between the siren’s nightmare of a face — bits of flesh clinging to her sunken cheeks, her nose nothing more than a hole in her skull — and the knife. He prayed he wouldn’t lose the blade to the dark depths of the river.
But even as he wished it, the weight of the hilt tipped the balance, and it slipped with a faint splash into the current.
A sharp burn of tears pierced the corners of his eyes as he returned his attention to the siren. Hot anger spilled through his veins, and he reached for her throat. His rage evaporated into cold shock when his fingers touched metal instead of skin.
Another rasping laugh broke through the block of his earplugs, and he realized he’d lost one in his fall.
“You think you can beat me when one stronger than you believed the same and failed?” she asked.
Gabe looked closer at the wide metal collar and made out a thick chain dangling from it, snapped at the fifth rung. Manacles clasped her wrists, and the sharp edges of two others around her ankles dug deep into his thighs.
Spots entered his vision, and each breath he tried to suck in seemed to claim less air. His fingers tingled with numbness, and his control on them slipped as he grasped at the collar of her dress, the tears in her bodice — anything to gain leverage.
His mind screamed at him to get away and his pulse raced in terror.
She leapt off his chest with a litheness belying her fragile, rotting appearance. Keeping her fingers tight around his throat, she dragged him by the neck toward the edge of the river. Gabe’s mind went blank and instinct took over in his desperation to escape. He twisted his hips to free himself and pushed his muscles against the ice to slow her down. He swung his arms at her body and her face to get her to loosen her hold, but her strength was greater than his.
He curled his fingers into the snow and clawed at the ice to hold himself back. Pain shot into his hands as his fingernails broke and tore, and still he slid across the surface.
Gabe turned his head. One of the siren’s feet came into view as she braced herself, and he swung his leg out toward her. His boot connected with her ankle and she stumbled forward, but didn’t fall.
Without a word, she struck a back-handed blow across his cheek, sending his sunglasses sliding across the ice.
No!
His shout was cut off by the tightened grip around his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away.
She’s going to kill you if you don’t, he told himself, but the idea of using his curse even to protect himself, of taking any part of her into him, churned up the acid in his stomach. Nausea built in his gut as he struggled to breathe.
He thrashed and flailed against her grip, felt her fingers loosen, and wrenched himself to the side to take advantage of the slip. He rolled onto his stomach, but she was too fast and grabbed his shoulders. Her claws dug through his coat and she flipped him onto his back, once more straddling his chest.
He kept his eyes closed, but the grating echo of her laugh crawled into his ears.
Gabe had time for one sharp breath before she plunged his head into the dark, freezing water.
9
The cold water hit Gabe’s face like a punch. He gasped at the shock and lost the breath he’d taken, his lungs filling with ice.
He thrashed his head against the current, his heartbeat so fast and hard he couldn’t hear or feel anything else. His body was numb. The prickles of pain that had passed over his cheeks were gone, his skin already frozen.
His lungs ached, screamed, tore at him for air. He tried to summon his rage to fuel his strength, but his terror of the water overwhelmed him. He struck at the siren’s arms, against the frozen sheet beneath his back. He was aware of the ice tearing into the skin on the sides of his hands and his calves where his pant legs had slipped away, but the sensations came from a distance, too far for him to register the pain.
Think.
The word filtered through his panic. It took him a moment to understand what his brain was trying to tell him, but when the meaning sank in, he slowed his thrashing and forced his thoughts away from his present danger to the bigger picture.
He guessed he only had a minute before the panic returned, but if he didn’t get air in the next few seconds, it wouldn’t matter.
He had to concentrate.
The siren’s hands still squeezed his throat, but their grip weakened when he stopped thrashing. Her weight shifted on his chest, freeing up space around his lungs, and in the moment before she resettled, he threw his hips and dislodged her. Her hands came off him to brace herself for the fall, and he heaved himself out of the water.
The river spilled out of his mouth along with a stomachful of bile, but he allowed himself no time to recover. Bent over, gasping for air, he lurched across the ice away from her, grabbing his sunglasses in one hand as he cut open a rift with the other.
Behind him, the siren raised up on her hands and shrieked at a pitch that could have cracked glass. It pierced Gabe’s eardrum on the side that wasn’t plugged and left his head ringing as the echo bounced around his skull.
As he stumbled through the rift, he heard her charging after him, but he shut the doorway before she could lunge across the threshold.
He collapsed on the floor of his apartment, his breaths coming in rough, ragged gasps. Water dripped from his hair into a puddle on the floor, and tremors wracked his body. He put his sunglasses on with a shaking hand and then crawled toward the futon. Blindly, he reached for his comforter and wrapped it around himself as he huddled on the floor. In the darkness of his apartment, light swirled in his vision, part of it from the memory of the blue glow that had led him out onto the ice and the rest from the shooting stars created by the lack of air.
His chest ached. The taste of river water clung to the back of his throat, and he made it to the bathroom just in time before he heaved up the rest of what was in his stomach. When his insides were empty and his breathing had slowed, he leaned back against the bathroom wall and tightened his comforter around his shoulders.
That had been too close.
He had been stupid.
When it’s your life or hers, you choose yours.
He hated his Gorgon side, the part of him that kept him isolated. Throughout his entire life, he felt like a walking threat to anyone he passed in the street, worried every moment about losing his temper and punching a hole through some guy’s face. He hated the idea of absorbing someone else’s memories into his mind, their entire personality mingling with his until he couldn’t make sense of who he was anymore. But against someone who wanted him dead, it would have been the smart decision.
Idiot.
And yet…
Gabe slammed the back of his head against the wall and then waved his middle finger in the direction of his neighbor when he heard him swearing in protest from the next apartment.
And yet the manacles around her wrists and ankles and the collar around her throat suggested that she was more than just some supernatural creature playing with her food. They spoke of imprisonment. Captivity. As though this wasn’t the first time the siren had set her eyes on New Haven as a perfect meal, but had been stopped before she could complete her all-you-can-eat menu.
Now that he’d escaped from her and his heart had ceased trying to rip its way out of his body, Gabe’s desire to know why she’d been chained, and who had chained her, overcame the last of his terror at coming so close to dying in the way he’d dreaded since he was twelve.
He hauled himself to his feet and braced himself on the bathroom counter until the room stopped spinning and his legs proved they could hold his weight. Staggering into the living room, he tossed the comforter on the futon and peeled off his soaked coat. He hung i
t on the back of the door, then stripped off his sweater and T-shirt and threw them both in the laundry basket.
In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth, then toweled himself dry while staring longingly at the shower, wishing there were a minute’s worth of hot water in the pipes to thaw out his aching shoulders and settle his writhing stomach.
Not wanting to waste the time traveling to warm up, and knowing he wouldn’t find an easy way to fight off his chill here, he would have to get creative.
He pulled a dry sweatshirt over his head, cut the golden-edged doorway to his office, and stepped through.
As the rift behind him closed, the faint glow of his Fae magic fading into his darkened office like a spark, he jumped and cursed on finding a woman standing on the other side of his desk. Her head had been bent down over a sheet of paper, but at his shout, she leapt back with a cry. The pen she’d been holding clattered to the floor, and she held up her hands in front of her, her palms filled with fire.
“By the gods, you scared me, Mr. Mulligan,” Clare Davidson said. She extinguished the fire in her hands, dousing the room in a blackness that seemed even darker than it had a moment ago. A moment later, the light returned as she created a small flame on her index finger and held it against the wick of the candle on his desk. The dim light flared up and spilled onto the blotter, illuminating a half-finished note scrawled on a notepad. “Where on earth did you come from?”
Gabe’s shock had eased as he recognized her, and he gestured to the air. “I have my own means of transportation, but I’m sorry if I scared you. I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here.”
Clare nodded. “Your door was unlocked, so I figured I might as well come in and leave you a message. I know I said I would follow up in three days, but it turns out my impatience gets worse when I have nothing else to fill my time. I hoped you might have an update for me.”