by Krista Walsh
Stop it, ordered the part of his mind that was still his own.
He struggled to regain control, determination fighting against the desire to give in. Even as she urged him to give up, he forced himself to move forward, inch by slow inch. His muscles strained and sweat dripped down his forehead to fog his vision.
His fingers touched the chain, and as though her song had created some connection between them, the metal seared his skin through his soaked gloves. The stench of burning flesh filled his nostrils to complement the icy odor of the river, and his stomach revolted.
He swallowed the bile creeping up his throat and closed his hand around the chain. He breathed through the agony and squeezed his other hand around the sizzling metal, crying out as a fresh burst of heat slashed through his other palm.
Ligeia backed away, but he moved with her. She sang louder, but he heightened his screams to drown her out. A back-handed blow cracked against his cheek and his sunglasses skittered across the ice.
Gabe squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden glare of her blue glow against the snow, and lunged at her. He wrapped the chain around her legs and pulled tight, not loosening his hold until he heard the rattle of chains and a crack in the ice as she fell.
“No!” she screamed, and the glaze of fear in the single word blocked out the worst of Gabe’s pain.
With her song now interrupted, the connection between them broke and the chain cooled in his hands, a balm on his burns.
“Release me!” she cried. She began to sing again, but fear laced her melody with a stuttering tremor, preventing the magic from crawling back into Gabe’s veins.
He blocked her out and crawled across the ice on his knees and elbows, maintaining a death grip on the chain to keep her from untangling herself. He pawed at the snow for his sunglasses and had to glide across a good dozen feet of ice to find them. When he slid them back on and turned around, he saw that while she’d sung, the army of the siren’s victims had reached the spot where he’d lain. Frozen now, some still stood with their arms outstretched, prepared to grab him.
He heaved a breath of relief and returned to Ligeia’s side as she stopped her song. Her skeletal face had reformed into her sculpted beauty, and tears ran down her cheeks even as she hissed at him.
“I say now as I said before — I will not return to that man.”
“Looks like the decision is out of your hands,” Gabe replied, and his words came out husky and cracked. His throat ached from the bruises he was sure her grip had left on his neck, and his back screamed with each movement as the wool of his shirt brushed against the scratches from the ice. He clamped the shackles around her ankles, then tugged off his gloves and stared at his hands, at the angry red smears and yellow blisters on his palms.
In spite of it all, he had caught the siren.
He stared down at her face and watched as her anger crumbled into horror. She pressed her one free hand against her heart.
“I beg you,” she said. “If you will not release me, then kill me. I do not want to go back to him. I will not go back beneath the water.”
Her fear squeezed Gabe’s heart, and for a moment he considered her plea. He was within his rights to do what she asked. It was exactly what he had planned. She had killed seven men and he had sworn to finish her swiftly. He glanced down at the frozen river, at a chunk of ice lying near the gap, and thought of how simple it would be to smash in her skull or drive the sharp edge through her heart. A few quick moves and she would be gone. Her blood on his hands, the terror on her face his to remember. Making everything he believed about himself a lie.
He’d set out to help people, not to hurt them, and he didn’t believe he could start now.
Had John suspected Gabe wouldn’t be able to kill her? Had he been so certain of the outcome because he’d guessed that Gabe’s conscience would revolt at the idea of taking the life of this beautiful disaster? His deal with John hovered in the back of his head, and he knew his options had become as limited as hers. He couldn’t bring himself to kill her, which meant John would get what he wanted.
“Sorry, lady,” he said, “but I made a deal, and you’re part of the bargain.”
She opened her mouth and belted out a note so sharp that Gabe had to cover his ears. She sang until her breath gave out, and then she began again.
Gabe reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of pizzeria napkins. Without ceremony, he thrust them into her mouth, then closed the last manacle around her other wrist. She struggled the whole time, but the chain held tight.
Once he was in no fear of her moving, he rose to his feet and stared out over the masses of men huddled on the ice. Awareness had begun to seep into the eyes of a few, and he didn’t want to be there when they came out of their trance.
“Go home,” he told them, with no idea if they could hear or understand. Then he bundled the siren in his arms, and rifted back into his apartment.
The last thing he noticed before the rift closed behind him was that the snow had stopped falling.
***
Heat blasted from the radiator in the corner of the room, and Gabe’s fingers burned as his circulation returned. Not even his Gorgon-Fae blood was able to withstand the length of time his skin had been stuck to the ice and frosted metal. He held his hands over the grate, and his eyes rolled toward the ceiling with a mix of pleasure and pain.
His cellphone on the kitchen table pinged with incoming messages — probably Percy — but for now he ignored them. He couldn’t take the risk of moving his attention off Ligeia long enough to fill his friend in. Not when he had no idea what other tricks the siren kept up her sodden sleeves.
Ligeia lay on her side across the futon’s lumpy mattress. She watched him with a blank stoicism, her shoulders pulled back and her eyes narrowed. In spite of her undignified position, she held herself like a proper society miss, far from her own time.
Gabe had tucked a blanket around her, and she shivered beneath it. He thought it strange that she should only be affected by the cold now that she was away from the river, but he turned up the heat and grabbed another blanket from the closet. Instead of gratitude, he received a further narrowing of her eyes.
That was fine by him. He hadn’t brought her home to make friends with her. In fact, he didn’t want her invading any more of his world then she already had, but he hadn’t trusted her former admirers to leave him alone while he waited for John to show up. As soon as he thawed out, he would place the call and the jinni could pick her up from here. Another hour and this would be done.
Ligeia’s soaked dress pooled water beneath her, which was dripping into a second pool on the floor. Gabe resigned himself to the fact that he’d need a new futon once she was gone. Possibly just the nudge he needed to get rid of the springy old thing, but he’d miss it. They went way back.
The siren’s blue glow had faded away, and if it weren’t for the outfit and the sharpened teeth that showed around the gag stuck between her lips, anyone might have thought she was completely human. Albeit with a strange choice in hair color.
He’d replaced the napkins with one of his father’s handkerchiefs, and while it didn’t prevent sounds from coming out around the cloth, it kept anything she tried to say, or sing, from being distinguishable.
Once the goosebumps faded from his arms, Gabe stripped off his coat and sweater and pulled a dry sweatshirt over his head.
Each time he passed by his cellphone on the table, he debated picking it up.
What was holding him back?
The question buzzed through his mind without an answer.
He’d finished his part of the deal almost without a hitch. Other than the injuries John’s wolfhounds had already caused her, Gabe had left the siren relatively harm-free. Her wrists had stopped smoking under the chains, and although the skin there looked red, it didn’t appear too damaged. Not nearly as damaged as the frozen, drowned men she’d left on the bank of Wishrock Harbor.
All he had to do now was hand Lig
eia over. New Haven was safe, Clare’s money had been earned, and a pizza-and-beer reward awaited him with Joe at the pizzeria. Or maybe he’d splurge and go for his favorite gourmet pizza. With Claire’s checks, he could afford both.
He reached for the phone, dialed the first three numbers, then ended the call and set it back on the table.
Ligeia’s voice resounded in his memory, her certainty that he worked for John warning him against putting all his stock in one side of the story. There was also the question of what else he had inadvertently promised the jinni.
He cast the siren a sidelong glance. She was staring with a furrowed brow into the corner of the living room where his family boxes sat. Nothing in her expression reminded him of the woman who had begged for death, and he wondered if that had been an act. Or if she was acting now, and inside she was petrified of what would happen to her next.
One way to find out, he thought.
A stupid way, he argued with himself. He could ask her all the questions he wanted, but nothing would stop her from starting her song the moment he removed the gag.
Allegra’s disapproval hovered above his conscience, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hand her over to John until he made an effort to get a few answers.
Damn that succubus.
Although, if he were honest, his curiosity was for himself. There was a reason his friendship with Percy had lasted as long as it had. Not only did the man make him laugh, he also encouraged Gabe to scratch his itch of wanting to learn more about the world he was a part of. Right now, his desire to know the truth was outweighing his desire to end the case.
He let out a deep breath and dropped down on the edge of the coffee table. Ligeia’s gaze, her eyes still a haunting, vivid blue, shifted to glare at him.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and when she sniffed, he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. The room still smelled of burned skin, and fresh blood stained her dress from their struggle. “All right, I’m not going to hurt you again. If I take out the gag, are you going to sing at me?”
The sly upturn of her eyes told Gabe that she wouldn’t hesitate to do exactly that.
“If I promise to hear your side of the story, and that I won’t hand you over to John until you tell it, will you still sing at me?”
The smile faded into uncertainty.
“What if I give you something to eat? Will you sing at me then?”
Hesitation, consideration, and finally she cast her gaze downward and shook her head.
“I’m going to hold you to that. Any singing and I’ll knock you out before you warble three notes, is that clear?”
A nod.
Gabe’s fingers trembled as he leaned forward and untied the knot at the back of her neck. In his string of stupid decisions over the last couple of days, this one could turn out to be his stupidest yet.
When he removed the handkerchief, Ligeia smacked her lips together to wet them and jiggled the chains around her wrists.
“Perhaps you could remove these as well?” She enunciated her words like someone who had trained to speak clearly, and there was none of the wildness in her voice that he’d heard only a half hour ago. As though it were a different woman sitting on his futon than the one who had tried to kill him.
Gabe chuckled dryly. “I’m a gentleman, not a saint. Those stay on for now. Although I can try to remove the old ones if you want.”
She dropped her gaze to the floor and stared deeply into the warped, uneven boards. For a minute, Gabe wondered if her mind was stable enough to have any kind of rational discussion or if trying to talk to her was a pipe dream, but finally she said, “I spent so long chained to the earth for one man’s greed. Am I cursed to pay for all eternity? Balance must be set. I will not return to the darkness.”
Her voice came out soft and fragile, and Gabe’s anticipation rose.
“Explain to me what happened,” he said, keeping his voice as soft as hers. “You’ve killed a lot of people, and I can’t let that go, but maybe if you tell me why you’re doing this, and why you did the same thing back then, I can help you. Somehow.”
He didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep when another promise hung over his head, but the emotion in her eyes caught hold of him. The blue swirls of her irises bore into his soul, possibly searching for his honesty, for reassurance that he wasn’t speaking just for the sake of delay.
Gabe’s phone pinged and he cringed at the sudden noise, afraid that any distraction might startle her into changing her mind and putting up a fight.
A memory flashed in his mind of him and Rick running through the woods behind their house. He was twelve years old and Rick was fourteen. Rick had drawn to such a sharp stop that Gabe had tripped on his foot and spilled into the rough forest debris. His sunglasses had skittered across the ground. He’d squeezed his eyes shut, and Rick had rested his hand on his shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he’d said. “You can open your eyes. I’ve got your glasses right here.”
When Gabe had opened his eyes, he’d been greeted by the murky shade of the woods through the darkened lenses. He pulled his glasses on and saw why Rick had stopped.
Up ahead was a doe. She stared at them from only a few feet away, having paused for a drink in the stream. Beside her stood her fawn, its white spots faint against its gray-hued coat.
“Be still or she’ll run,” Rick whispered. He dropped down cross-legged in the dirt, and Gabe settled down beside him. The deer watched them, its ears flicking at every slight sound.
“This is boring,” said Gabe.
Rick nudged him in the ribs with his elbow. “It’s not. It’s trust. Just watch.”
Rick had always been the more patient brother, the calmer one.
They’d sat there for minutes until the doe bent her head to the water and continued drinking. The fawn stumbled toward them on awkward legs, and mom looked up, her ears twitching. Gabe made to raise his hand, but Rick nudged him again, silently telling him to stay still. The fawn stopped in front of Rick and leaned in to sniff him.
Slowly, as though he barely moved at all, Rick reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the bag of apple slices their mother had sent with them for the hike. He took one out of the bag and handed it to Gabe. He kept another one for himself, laying it in his palm.
Rick held out his hand, and the fawn hesitated, then grabbed the apple. It swallowed the fruit down before pawing at the ground and dancing over to Gabe to guzzle down the second piece. When no more treats appeared, he turned on them and ran back to his mother, who sprinted with him into the forest and disappeared.
Gabe laughed, the awe that had kept him silent vanishing with the last flash of amber hair, and Rick turned on him with a grin. “See? Trust. You’ll never earn it unless you take your time and prove you deserve it. Amazing what a bit of patience can do.”
Even at fourteen his brother had been wiser than his years. Unfortunately that hadn’t stopped him from slipping on some wet rocks only a few weeks later.
But the lesson Rick had taught him remained firm in Gabe’s mind as he sat in front of Ligeia. His thoughts were calm for the first time in days. His breathing came slow and even, and his heartbeat was steady.
“What would you do if I told you?” she finally asked, tilting her head to catch his gaze. “Would you let me go? You know you cannot. We would be at an impasse, as we are now. I do not see the benefit of putting off your decision. If you choose to hand me over, I would rather return to my prison as soon as possible. This taste of freedom will only make the darkness that much harder to bear.” She stared at him. “If you really want to help me, I ask you to kill me instead.”
“I could have killed you a hundred times over since I brought you here, and I’ve chosen not to,” he said. “Give me a reason to keep you alive. Tell me what you meant by resetting the balance. You tore this city to pieces two hundred years ago. What could it possibly owe you?”
Ligeia’s lip curled back in a snarl. “I w
as no threat to this town. I did what I had to do to survive, to fit in, to help where I could. I was kidnapped by my friends and chained to stone. I watched the wave wash over the dam with a speed I hoped — prayed — would break my neck and kill me quickly.” Her anger melted into an expression of such deep sadness that Gabe felt the desire to hold her hand. He clasped his fingers together and let them hang between his knees instead. After a brief pause, her throat bobbing as she swallowed, Ligeia raised her gaze to meet his. “And all of these things happened because I was loved by the wrong man.”
18
A tremor took Ligeia over, cutting her words short. Gabe pulled the blankets closer around her neck, then rose and went into the kitchen.
She tensed once he disappeared from her line of sight, and he kept an eye on her as he grabbed an unopened bottle of whiskey, two glasses, and the last slice of pizza from the box. If she attacked, he’d have to strike back, and it would be a lot more complicated to explain a statue in his living room than one at the bottom of the river.
For now, he’d at least got her talking. Maybe there was something to be said for positive thinking.
He set the food on the coffee table, tucked his hands under Ligeia’s elbows, and eased her into a sitting position. First he fed her the piece of pizza, bite by slow bite — it was cold, but she didn’t seem to notice — then he poured her a glass of whiskey and brought it to her mouth. Ligeia pressed her lips together and eyed it with a grimace.
“Something bracing to warm you up,” he said.
With her gaze on him, she parted her lips, and he tipped a splash of whiskey onto her tongue. Her eyes widened, and she jerked away from the glass with a scream. The whiskey dribbled down her chin, and she spit out the rest around her high-pitched keening. Her face melted away as she lunged at his chest, clawing at his sweater with her rotting hands.