The Siren's Code (Siren Legacy Book 3)

by Helen Scott

  Bursting through the front door, she was surprised to find everyone waiting on her. Blush reddened her face as they all turned to stare at her.

  “Are ye all right?” Ellie’s Scottish accent sang to her as she found a place to get set up.

  “Yes. Just had to get this.” She waggled the laptop that had been tucked under her arm, before setting it down and opening it up. “Any news on my family?” She glanced at Thad.

  “Seems Jimmy had been sneaking out every night to go to see a local bookie. Horses are his preferred way of losing money right now. He already owes the guy I spoke with upward of five thousand dollars.”

  “Damn it.” She sighed. “Typical Dad.” Tapping aggressively at the keyboard, she was able to pull up the files that she had on the Eclipse building. Mostly it was public record stuff, plans that were put before the city council before the construction was started, permits, that kind of thing, but there were a couple documents that were private memos from the company archives.

  “Seems that your father attracted the attention of a man, whom I am altogether too familiar with, whom I’ve been trying to track down myself.” He spoke in low angry tones. The change in Thad’s voice caused Robin’s head to snap up. Rage contorted his features. It was only then that she noticed Cin was missing from the assembled group.

  “Who is that?” she asked, trying to figure out what could have made him so angry.

  “Norman. Leonard’s brother.”

  “The Scout? Why are you looking for him?” Panic shot through her. She hoped Thad hadn’t brought any unnecessary attention on them. That would be the last thing they needed.

  “The Scout?”

  “Yes. Norman. He’s referred to in any and all paperwork as The Scout. It’s only because I heard Randall use his first name that I know who he is.”

  “Well, he tried to kidnap Cin. His brother is in a cage under us right now, and hasn’t been giving us any of the information we’ve so nicely been asking for, so I figure maybe I can get some payback on Norman and get the info we want at the same time.”

  All the blood drained from Robin’s face. “The Surgeon is here? On the island?” Her heart beat an erratic rhythm in her chest. She tried to catch her breath, but she couldn’t seem to breathe deep enough.

  “Robin? Just breathe. He’s locked in a cage that not even a fury can break into, or a siren break out of, for that matter. He can’t get to you and doesn’t know you’re here.” Alec’s voice grounded her a little, but the images flashing through her head were ones she hadn’t thought of in a long time.

  When Randall had first taken her, he had The Surgeon evaluate her. The man had killed countless people in front of her, treating her like an experiment, testing how quickly she could sense impending death, how far she could sense it into the future, if the volume of her scream meant anything. He told her what he had been looking at after each section of the testing was concluded.

  The fact that she was so connected with death also made him find her attractive, something he didn’t bother to hide, even flaunted it in front of her. There was nothing she could do to escape, to unsee what she had seen. Once the testing had been completed, she had been given a job working in proximity to Randall, eventually becoming his assistant.

  Not that she was going to share any of that with them. Maybe with Hal one day, but only if she needed to. It was her personal torment. No one else needed to be involved.

  “I’m fine.” She forced the words out, her voice sounding shaky to her own ears. “So Norman was tracking my dad?” she asked, focusing on Thad. Everything seemed too sharp, too bright. If the people she cared about weren’t in danger, she would just go back to the cabin and hide out there. That, however, wasn’t an option.

  Thad nodded, watching her with those eerily light-blue eyes of his.

  “Well, if he was the source and what we saw at the safe house was correct, then I think my initial guess was probably the right one. They are at the Eclipse building.”

  “Okay, you lived there. How do we get them out?”

  “Nimue thinks she can handle the magical wards, but I’m still trying to figure out what to do about the alarm systems.”

  There was a pause as the group thought, before Ellie piped up. “I may be able to help wi’ that.”

  “No.” Alec shook his head.

  “Alec, love, I wouldn’t even need to be in the building.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing the world doesn’t depend on what ye like, then, isn’t it?” the petite Scotswoman said with a smile, teasing her fiancé.

  “Can someone explain?” Robin had no idea how Ellie could help.

  “I can control electricity and lightning, but I’m still workin’ on the last one.” She smiled warmly at Robin, the skin around her eyes crinkling with mirth. “I could take all the electricity that the building would be usin’ an’ divert it, or store it. Would that help?”

  Robin tapped her chin in thought. “Only if you can prevent the backup generators from kicking in?”

  “Shouldnae be a problem.”

  “Then yes.” Robin’s heart felt lighter. Now at least, they had one problem solved. “Now, how do we find Hal?”

  “I tried to scry for him while you were getting your laptop, but wherever he is, it’s warded with magic, so we can’t sense him.”

  “Okay, so magic can’t sense the area . . .” Robin’s mind was going a mile a minute, trying to figure out a way around the problem.

  “Just look for the areas magic can’t sense and then search those.” Aster’s voice came from across the room as she leaned against the door.

  Robin didn’t even realize she had appeared. The woman was sneaky and as sly as a fox. “You’re a genius. I assume you guys can do that?”

  Alec looked at Ellie.

  “I think we can reverse engineer one of Granddad’s spells. Ye ken the one with the water and map?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded enthusiastically. “If we do a world map, then that could give us a list of locations to start with.”

  “While you guys do that, I’m going to reach out to a couple of my darknet contacts. It’s been a while, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t enjoy hearing from me.”

  It may have been years since she had any contact with them, but those guys wouldn’t turn her away, especially if it was a plea for help. Jkall and Rider were out there somewhere; she just had to track them down again. They were masters at finding lost things. If the brothers could give her a list of sites, then Jkall and Rider would be able to tell her which one was the right one.

  “Darknet?” Dem looked at her, one eyebrow raised in question.

  She took a breath as she prepared to explain. “Darknet or darkweb is an area of the Internet that isn’t registered in search engines, usually to find things or people. You have to use a peer-to-peer server. Basically, everything is encrypted and the only way to find stuff is to kind of manually search for it, going from computer to computer.” She got blank stares all around the room. “Say I want to send Aster a message. I would have to encrypt it if I wanted it to get to her, but I couldn’t just encrypt it once.

  “The first message would go to Nimue, who’s closest to me. She would decrypt the first layer and send it on to Alec, who’s next to her, and then Ellie and then Dem and then Thad and finally Aster. Each one of you would have a layer of encryption to break before you could send it on. The number of layers should correspond to the number of computers it has to pass through before it gets to its final destination. It’s called onion routing.

  “There is no centralized web server, no search engine. You have to crawl from node to node to find what, or whom, you’re looking for. There are a lot of illegal services and activities around on there, but you have to know how to access them. I’m not sure that made any sense to any of you. Basically it’s a super-secret way of keeping prying eyes out of your business, usually so you can do something you’re not supposed to be doing.”
>
  “Secret sneaky shit, got it.” Alec nodded at her.

  “Well, when you put it like that, it makes it sound much less impressive.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. She was starting to understand Alec’s humor.

  “So these contacts you have can help you?”

  “Yeah. I don’t actually know who they are in real life, but that’s part of why the darknet works. You give me some locations, and we can figure out which one is the right one.”

  “I’ll go get the maps.” Ellie stood and walked out, with Alec hot on her heels.

  Robin looked over to find Aster already gone and Dem and Thad sharing a hushed conversation, before they both got up and left.

  “This is all very interesting. It’s like magic.” Nimue’s voice was full of awe.

  “You know, if I remember correctly, there is a quote out there about technology being indistinguishable from magic once it’s advanced enough, or something like that.” She smiled across at the other woman.

  The Lady of the Lake was sitting next to her, watching her crawl around the darknet as she tried to track down her old contacts from when she was a teenage girl who was too smart for her high school and up to no good. Her life was so weird.

  An hour or so later, she had tracked down Jkall but was still looking for Rider, when Alec and Ellie came rushing back in. Dem and Thad had departed long ago, and Nimue was asleep on the couch next to Robin. Ellie held two or three soaking-wet maps.

  “What happened?”

  “We found ye some locations!” Ellie grinned.

  “Um, why are the maps wet?”

  “Well, that’s because this wee spell uses water infused wi’ magic.”

  Her Scots accent was stronger when she was excited, Robin noticed. It was pleasant to listen to, but now was not the time to be distracted by that. “Okay, so what are the locations?”

  Ellie spread the first map onto the table. Picking up the laptop so it didn’t get wet, Robin settled it on her knees, the battery warming her legs even through her jeans. A map of the world was now spread in front of her.

  “You can see tiny pockets of dry.” She pointed to at least thirteen different locations.

  This was more than she was hoping to give Jkall.

  Another map flopped down on top of the first. This one centered on England. “You can see there are a few different locations here.” Ellie pointed at three dry spots this time. Robin could narrow one of those down herself as the estate or the cave where Randall had been keeping Nimue. The other two were still up for grabs, though. One was on the Isle of Man, and the other was up in the Hebredes just off the coast of Scotland.

  Ellie repeated this process with a few different maps. Apparently, they had ruled out a few of the locations based on their previous experiences, but there were still almost ten left. She sighed. Jkall was not going to be happy with her. She knew she was going to end up owing him a favor, which was a dangerous place to be.

  “I’ll send the list over to the contact I was able to reconnect with, and we will see what we can find.”

  Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she encrypted the list before sending it off. While she waited for his response, she found a picture of the man who had controlled her life for the past nine years, and began to see which airports were closest to the areas shielded by magic. Hacking into their surveillance feeds wasn’t as easy as she had hoped. The firewalls and other security measures that had been put in place while she was sequestered in the Eclipse building were slowing her down. Things had changed while she was away, and she wasn’t happy about it.

  Running the photo of Randall through facial recognition software, she compared it with the feeds she was able to pull from two airports, only to come up with bupkis. Theoretically, that knocked two possible sites out of the running. She began working on accessing the next location’s security cameras, but paused when she got a message back from Jkall. The decryption took a few minutes, and she waited with bated breath.

  Finally, the photo of Randall she had sent to her hacker friend popped up with a still from a security camera next to it. Her old boss was trying to hide his face with sunglasses and a hat, but he wasn’t paying attention to where the surveillance cameras were. The location tag indicated that he had flown into Athens. Another message popped through. This time it only took a minute to decrypt. It was another photo of Randall, on the docks, getting on a yacht, along with a cruise permit. The course was indicated as a trip around the Aegean Islands.

  They had it.

  “I know where he is.”

  Chapter 21

  Poseidon had been raging against the purple robes for a while now, trying to unleash his fury on anyone around him, which was precisely why Hal was staying out of sight. The purple robes had been chanting low and slow since the god of the sea had arrived. He hadn’t even noticed it at first, but he was relatively sure they were getting louder. Not loud enough for him to understand what they were saying, though, which was frustrating.

  He was sitting against the back wall of the cave, the musty damp smell of the cave encircling him. The tile mosaic was spread out before him, with Zeus’ face staring out from the center circle, surrounded by smaller circles containing all of the major gods’ faces, around which were even smaller circles containing the symbols of the favorite minor gods. Circles like this one had often been created in temples, with the god the temple was dedicated to pictured in the middle. If that held true, then this should be a temple for Zeus.

  When he was a child, the temples had been everywhere, but not all had the circle. Only priests and priestesses of the highest order could request one to be created in their temple, and even then, it was no guarantee the god or goddess would show up when summoned. After all, they couldn’t deal with every minor grievance a human had. That wasn’t who they were.

  Hal had been praying in his head to any god he thought would listen, trying to make sure Robin and Nimue were safe. He had even prayed to Zeus, asking him to come down to his temple and lay waste to those who desecrated it. There were no responses, though. He suspected it had something to do with the barrier. No god liked to be insulted, and the big Z-man was probably one of the most sensitive about it.

  Opening his magic up and letting it flow out into the world around him, Hal looked at the markings keeping them trapped in the circle. The enchantments that surrounded them were intricate and almost impossibly complex. They all had a flaw, though. He just had to find it. He knew it was possible, but it would probably take more time and concentration than he had.

  Someone was watching him; the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.

  Looking up, he met Samuel’s eyes. The man’s hair was the same jet black as Poseidon’s, and his eyes were liquid quicksilver. The penny finally dropped, and Hal realized he was one of the god’s sons. Maybe the only one. He hadn’t heard any recent rumblings of the god having children, and Samuel couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old. Reaching out with his magic, Hal found that the other man possessed skills of his own. Filaments of magic extended from the other man’s body. They were just as strong as his own. Maybe Samuel was a grandson, then, or maybe it was just because Poseidon’s powers were not what they once were.

  Pushing up off the floor, the stone scratching his palms, he slowly made his way over, hoping that he didn’t draw too much attention from the purple cloaks or from Poseidon.

  “I’m Hal.” He extended his hand to the younger man, hoping that they could work together to escape.

  “Sam,” the younger man said as they shook.

  “You a descendant of the big guy over there?” Hal kept his voice low as he spoke.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Kinda, but not really.”

  Sam quirked an eyebrow, but before he could respond, one of the purple cloaks shouted,

  “You! Stop talking!”

  Hal wanted to laugh. It wasn’t like they could come in there with them, or they would be overpowered, so what exac
tly was their plan?

  “Or what?” he called out. Since his short conversation with Sam had already brought him to their attention, he wasn’t about to back down.

  Another purple cloak stepped out of line, approaching the one who had spoken. The silver mask winked in the dim light.

  “High Brother, I know this man. He stole my property and kidnapped an initiate.”

  “This man?”

  “Yes, High Brother.”

  There was only one person who could lay that kind of claim against him.

  Randall Fields.

  “You wish to challenge him?”

  “If you would allow it, High Brother.”

  Good. Hal wanted a challenge. This man made his blood boil. He had almost killed Alec last time, not to mention putting Robin through hell and kidnapping Aster. If it was a one-on-one fight, then he knew that the mortal stood no chance. His gut twisted at the thought of facing them all. There was no way he would win. Not even if all three of them fought. Poseidon didn’t have his trident, and Sam didn’t look as though he knew how to throw a punch even if his life depended on it, which it very well might.

  Opening up his senses, he began examining the magic that allowed them to be held there. The summoning circle barely had anything left. Getting the three of them there must have used up most of its remaining juice. The symbols painted on the floor and walls were another matter, though. The power pulsing through them was strong and would be hard to crack without drawing attention. He had been hoping Sam would be able to assist him, but now it looked like he was going to be fighting Randall Fields, instead.

  His purple cloak fell from his shoulders, and he tossed the silver mask to the ground. Hostility radiated out of Randall as he approached the edge of the circle, wearing nothing but a pair of black shorts and a T-shirt.