by Sandra Brown
“Thousands…because their life force kept me alive through the centuries. This time you won’t get your man, Detective. I warned you that no one ever stopped me.”
With that, she signaled the birds to fly back across the room, me their target. I picked up what looked like a metal and leather shield from the coffee table to protect myself. A hawk smacked into it, the impact sending me reeling backward. When I got my breath, I reached for the Glock holstered at the small of my back.
Sirena laughed. “As if a gun would do you any good against me.” With that, she backed out of the room and slammed the door.
I frantically called out to Jake. Sirena’s trying to kill me!
Too bad I objected to shooting animals of any kind. If a bullet would stop them, that is.
So I shot at the ceiling twice. That scared the birds into flapping away. By the time I got to the door, they came for me. A sharp beak tore at my arm, ripping the blouse. I felt talons dig into my shoulder and hit the bird with the shield. The damn door wouldn’t open, so I backed into a corner and tried to use the shield for cover.
Hang on, Shelley!
Where are you?
I released a couple more bullets to the ceiling, but this time they had no effect on the birds.
Right here!
Jake’s foot crashed through the door and his body followed even as the birds were inches from attacking me again. Jake hissed at them and showed them his elongated canines. One of the hawks smacked into the owl. All four predators retreated to their cell. Apparently vampires terrified even them.
“You’re all right.” He grabbed me up in his arms and for a moment I clung to him like I would never let him go.
“Thanks to you,” I said into his neck and then pushed away from him. “Sirena murdered them all, Jake. I can’t let her go.”
I was already out the door, holstering my gun and looking for her when I heard her song coming from the beach to the north. Another victim? I started running, Jake beside me.
“Jake! Stop!” He would be susceptible to her. “You have to go back.”
There was barely enough light from the harbor lights for me to see his face. His eyes were glazed over. Sirena’s voice carried on the wind, seducing him. I could see it happening.
I ran faster. I had to stop Sirena, but how?
She already told me the gun wouldn’t work on her. What then? Jake was running at vampire speed to get to the woman who would end him. As I fell behind, my mind whirled and I focused on the information I’d picked up earlier on the internet.
A siren is fated to live only until a man who hears her song can free himself of her spell.
But Jake wasn’t trying to free himself. I could see him jogging straight from the beach into the lake after Sirena.
My feet hit sand and I screamed, “Jake, stop!”
The siren’s song drowned my words just as she would drown the man I loved. Up to her waist in the lake, she backed toward deeper waters. Her feathered arms stretched toward him.
I plunged into the water after them. “Jake, please, she’ll kill you!” He didn’t seem to hear so I yelled louder. “Jake, I need you!”
He glanced back, and I could see his brow pull in confusion, but as if drawn to a magnet, he continued toward Sirena. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch up to him.
I had to stop him, but how? Could he even hear my pleas over Sirena’s voice?
I concentrated on getting through to him psychically, tried to make him respond to the desperation I was feeling.
I don’t want to lose you, Jake. Please listen to me.
He suddenly stopped, giving me hope.
Until Sirena raised her voice, going for that shattering hot note no man could resist. He continued on, away from me.
My chest squeezed tight. As a cop, I’d seen so many terrible things that tears didn’t come easily, but my eyes stung at the thought of losing him this way.
I’m yours, Jake. Hear me, please. I thought about my gun, about shooting Sirena if I had to. It might not kill her, but maybe I could temporarily put off her siren’s song. You are my life.
He stopped moving. Shelley?
I’m here, Jake, behind you!
I was fighting against the water to get to him as fast as I could. I could feel him fighting Sirena’s influence.
Jake, don’t leave me. Don’t let her take you from me. I can’t imagine going on without you.
My plea got to him and he turned as I caught up to him. I threw myself at him and his arms pulled me up against him where he held me tight.
Suddenly the night was still but for the sound of waves lapping at the shore and a rumble of thunder in the distance. The siren’s song had gone silent.
A siren is fated to live only until a man who hears her song can free himself of her spell.
Lightning lit up the lake as Sirena plunged backward into a big wave and with a scream that scraped up my spine, was sucked under.
With my arms and legs wrapped around him, Jake carried me to shore.
Watching the water, I didn’t see any sign of the murderess.
Jake set me down on the sand, crashed next to me and held me tight as if he would never let me go. “Do you think she’ll wash up here tomorrow morning?”
I was already thinking about how I could explain this to Norelli: I’d called Sirena on the murders and she’d committed suicide.
“One way to find out.”
We huddled together on the beach to wait for a new dawn.
* * * * *
LAST SHOT
Jon Land & Jeff Ayers
This is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story that has just the right mix of eeriness and emotion. ~SB
“How long have you known me, Frank?” Molly Wagner asked the banker seated at the desk before her.
“We went to high school together, Molly.”
“Right. So you know when I promise something I mean it.”
Frank, fellow member of the Class of ’93, wrinkled his nose, the reflection of his bald scalp shining in the cubicle’s glass walls. “This is different. It’s corporate. My hands are tied by the policy.”
“Of throwing people out of their homes.”
“Only when they’re seriously delinquent on their mortgages.” He paused long enough to take a deep breath and fold his hands together on the blotter. “I’ve done everything I can.”
Molly started to speak, then stopped. She’d come up with folders full of financial proof she and her husband, Bob, would get through this, but there seemed no reason to produce them.
Frank rose, a clear sign it was time for Molly to take her leave. “You’ve still got a few months to get current. If you think of anything…”
“I will,” she said, rising. “I will think of something. And I’ll get another job. Maybe this place. I hear they may be hiring.”
Frank looked as if he found that funny. “Here? What makes you think you’re qualified?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
Molly left the bank with file folders tucked under arm, fighting back tears. It was over, done. Time to put their house on the market. No sense delaying the issue any further, so her next stop was the local Rexall to copy a picture of their home taken when upkeep had not been an issue. It had been a fixer-upper when they’d bought it, so she and Bob, no experts at home improvement, had slaved over manuals and videos, adding molding, fresh paint, refinished floors, railings—the list went on. Fifteen years of labor and unwise refinancing all about to go into the Dumpster.
Inside the Rexall, Molly located the photo scanner in the back and thumbed through a shoe box full of old photos, most taken when she and Bob had been mere kids and newlyweds before their son was even a thought. There were prom pictures and high school homecoming, Frank the banker with hair, the picture of which she promptly tore in two, the state college where Bob had proposed near a statue of the school’s bear mascot that creaked in the wind, Molly afraid the whole time the thing was g
oing to fall on them. She flipped past wedding shots and baby pictures of Matthew, the family captured back when foreclosure was something that happened to other people.
She finally dug out a picture of a simple shot of her home taken before the fence posts had rotted out and the house paint had dulled and started to peel. Molly laid the shot on the glass and touched the scan button but nothing happened.
“Excuse me, could you help me out here?”
The photo clerk slid out from behind the counter where she’d been balancing her lunch.
“I can’t get this to work,” Molly said, lifting the scanner top to reveal the snapshot she’d laid on the glass.
That glass was deeply scratched, stained and sun-bleached from years of being left open, contrary to the posted instructions.“That’s ’cause you can’t use this side,” the clerk, whose name tag identified her as Jasmine, was saying. Her voice had an impatient tone to it, bred of helping too many customers befuddled by the machine’s finicky workings.
Jasmine repositioned the four-by-six snapshot on the other end of the glass, and Molly caught a glimpse of her own reflection until the picture covered it. Her hair hung limply. Her eyes drooped and seemed drained of life. But at least the weight loss she’d managed gave her a more youthful appearance in spite of everything else, and she resolved to never put it back on again.
“There you go,” Jasmine said.
Molly closed the scanner top and started from scratch with the controls. She heard a whirring sound riddled with a few clanks that actually rocked the old scanner from left to right and then back again.
It was a Kodak 470 model, capable of doing nothing more than making halfway decent copies of existing photographs. The process took an interminable time by today’s standards but copies here at Rexall Drug were only ninety-nine cents. Price was a prime consideration these days for the Wagner household, ever since Molly had lost her job as a dental assistant. She had thought the dental business to be recession proof, but everything from cosmetic procedures to fillings were down enough to necessitate cutbacks in the nonprofessional staff among which Molly was unfortunately included.
Molly finally hit Print and the Kodak 470 rocked slightly sideways again as a squeaky fan belched heat exhaust from a vent in the rear. A vinegar odor rose from somewhere deep in the old machine’s guts. It rattled, wheezed and clanked one last time before spitting out the final product.
Molly knelt into the heart of the chemical stench and retrieved the copied picture of her house and yard. The paper was hot to the touch, still vaguely moist, and curling a bit at the edges.
“We’re getting a new one, you know,” Jasmine was saying.
“What?”
“Scanner. We’re getting a new scanner. It’s due in any day. About time, right?”
Molly thanked her and headed back out into the parking lot, a bit chilled by the crisp fall air. The town was laden with maple and elm trees that shed their leaves into brilliant pools of sunlight collecting on the sidewalk. She drove home past the array of For Sale signs and pulled into her driveway. Rexall bag in hand, Molly started for the house only to notice that the paint seemed much brighter than it had just a few hours before. Molly realized she’d left her pocketbook in the car and turned to find herself facing a split rail fence that didn’t look dilapidated anymore, the posts and rotting rails having been replaced, as well. Molly was left wondering where the money to pay the bill for her husband Bob’s well-placed efforts would come from, as she opened the front door to find old, trusty Sherman lying stiff and still in the hallway making no move to greet or even acknowledge her.
“Oh, no…”
She felt a profound sadness, worse than anything spawned by greedy bankers or unfeeling dentists. A loyal friend she could always rely on was gone and, unlike a job, couldn’t be replaced. She felt through her bag for her cell phone.
“Bob,” she said, after fumbling her cell phone to her ear, “it’s Sherman. He’s…gone.”
She knew her husband; he’d sob the entire way home. He was always the crier in the house, losing it at movies most men dreaded. Chick flicks had been their one indulgence until Molly had begged off out of a purported lack of interest when lack of discretionary income was truly to blame. But it was strange how absenting themselves from movies about falling in love left them both feeling that they were falling out of it.
Next thing Molly knew she was kneeling by Sherman’s body, and stayed there until she heard the familiar rumble of Bob’s Volvo pulling into the driveway, stroking his fur which felt strangely cold. Molly swabbed at her eyes with a sleeve, sniffling back her tears, and opened the door to find Bob standing there.
She felt him hug her and she didn’t want him to let go, as if his embrace could make everything right as it had when they were mere kids themselves. But they were far from kids now and it couldn’t. His grasp felt flaccid, his hands cold from the poor circulation he’d inherited from his father. A paunch had grown over his once-flat stomach, pushing his white dress shirt forward, and his trousers sagged below his hips.
Bob eased her away and she realized how much his brown hair had thinned and gone gray at the temples. His eyes looked like hers had in the scanner’s glass, only sadder.
“How are we gonna tell Matt?” he asked, his voice childlike. Then, before she could answer, “Wait, what are you doing home?”
Molly tensed. “I just…had this feeling,” she told him, even more anxious at nearly being caught in the truth she’d yet to share with him.
Bob ran his hand through her hair, the gesture comforting in the fond memories it evoked of the days when they’d been truly in love.
“I’ll take care of this,” Molly said. “You can get back to work.”
Bob nodded, having trouble taking his eyes off the dog. “Thirteen years is a lot for a dog, but it’s not enough, is it?”
“It’s never enough.”
He spotted the shoe box full of snapshots on the foyer table and shuffled through them. “Where’d these come from?”
“The closet.”
His smile grew sadder as he continued to peruse the box’s contents just as Molly had in the Rexall.
“You’re right, Molly, it’s never enough. But we’ll get through this. You know we will.”
* * *
The next morning she kissed Bob on the cheek and got Matt settled in his car seat for the drive to day care. The boy was holding a picture of Sherman romping in the front yard a few years before Matt was born; clutching it so hard it was crinkled and dog-eared by the time they got to the school.
“Have a good day at work, Mommy,” Matt said, hugging her after she led him up to the front door.
Molly pushed back the lump in her throat and kissed him on the forehead. She watched him grab his small backpack and dash into the building, obsessed for some reason with never being the last kid to class. She saw the teacher wave and she waved back, smiling.
Then Molly remembered the picture of Sherman, twisted and tattered by Matt’s tiny hands, now lying on the passenger seat. She’d take it to the Rexall and blow it up to eight by ten. Spring for a decent frame as well so Matt could hold fast to it long into the night, keeping the only pet he’d ever known close to his heart and mind.
She drove to the store and immediately headed for the back of the building where the Kodak 470 was kept, drawn to it like an old friend, equally battered and beaten down by life.
“Hello, again,” Jasmine said when she saw her.
Molly nodded and positioned the photo of Sherman on the working side of the scanner. She hit the scan button and the machine started clanking and rocking again, even worse than yesterday. And when she was finally ready to print, the vinegar smell was stronger and laced with something that reminded her of something smoldering on a hot stove.
The machine groaned and Molly could see the first of her print pushing out from the feeder slot in one lurch after another, only to be sucked back in with a sound like an angry cat screech. T
he final product emerged slightly blackened along the top and bottom edges, but otherwise a perfect shot of a younger, romping Sherman.
Molly spent the next four hours in a coffee shop featuring free Wi-Fi and refills, scouring the internet job sites for something remotely connected to her field. There was nothing, not just in the dental assistant field, but anything she felt qualified for period. Time crawled and the coffee kept sending her to the bathroom.
Finally she went to pick up Matt, already composing the day’s workplace lies to share with Bob. She was reciting them out loud, softly so as not to disturb her napping son, when she pulled into the driveway and screeched to a halt.
Because Sherman was standing there waiting. Younger, romping Sherman with tail wagging waiting to greet her. Matt was snoring in the backseat when Molly climbed out and approached the dog.
“Sherman,” Molly said, the name nearly catching in the back of her throat.
The dog came and greeted her just as Sherman had a million times. She nuzzled his mane and located his tag, craning her neck to better read it. Lost a breath and felt her heart skip a beat.
Because the dog’s name was indeed Sherman, and this was the address to which he should be returned.
“It’s Sherman, Mommy! He’s back!”
The new Sherman knew where his dog bed was and recalled the hiding place of his favorite rawhide bone, half-chewed under the couch. Then Molly remembered the Rexall bag she’d left in the car. She rushed out to retrieve it and studied the slightly grainy enlargement against the dog waiting upon her return, right down to the collar and dangling dog license.
Identical.
Next she grabbed the shot of the front yard, repaired fence posts and all, copied on the Kodak 470 at Rexall yesterday. Compared it with the same scene pictured through the front bay window.
Identical, too.
Sherman, or whoever he was, loped into the kitchen and pawed at the door to the cabinet holding his food. Molly looked at him, then at the picture again.
Could this be happening? Was she losing her mind?
No, the scanner had done this. It had clanked and clunked and reproduced the photographs in reality as well as on glossy paper.