by Ann Gimpel
“Might be a she.” Zoe tried for humor but didn’t get very far.
“What do you mean, kid? Or keyboard, for that fact?” Karin asked. She skewered Zoe with her copper eyes. “Do you know where the cacophony is coming from?”
Zoe shook her head. “Nay, and ’tis way worse.”
“Worse than what?” Karin pressed. “Must mean this isn’t new. Why didn’t you mention it before?”
“Same thing I asked,” Ketha said in a dour tone.
“Not important.” Aura wrapped a protective arm around Zoe. “Let’s see if we can track where it’s coming from.”
“Aye. You can all flog me later,” Aura muttered. Wind whipped the words away before anyone could have heard them. She opened herself as far as she could to the other women’s magic, merging, blending, weaving strands together. The concentration helped. She imagined the Shifters’ magic forming a shield between her and a headlong plunge into madness.
A shudder racked her, followed by another. Until the thought formed, she hadn’t realized how frightened she’d been the music presaged a descent into a place where her wits would desert her. Permanently.
The music stuttered, almost as if it sensed it faced more than her. Who knew? Maybe it did. The discordant notes engendered an eerie sensation; she laid it aside and dug deep. Whatever this thing that had dogged her was, now was the time to force its hand.
So long as it doesna rear up from behind some psychic veil to smother us.
“Stop it.” Her coyote’s voice rang with censure.
Zoe choked back a tart reply. Her bond animal was correct to condemn her. So were Ketha and Karin. She should have—
A piercing squeal followed by a series of thumps halted her descent into self-pity.
The anchor chain.
When she peered over the edge of the hanging balcony, she saw two people hunched over the anchor’s housing three decks below. Bundled as they were, it was impossible to determine who’d drawn the short straw.
“I don’t get it,” Aura muttered. “The music’s coming from two separate places.”
“No,” Ketha corrected her. “Three. Below the hull, from inside the ship, but several decks down, and from there.” Raising a mittened hand, she pointed at the Antarctic mainland, swathed in ice and gray misty clouds.
“I don’t think so,” Karin said. “The primary source is out there.” She jerked her chin at Antarctica’s land mass. “The rest is reflection meant to confuse us.”
Zoe focused on glaciers cutting into the thick ice sheet at intervals. They might have been beautiful, if she’d been able to see the colors in the ancient ice. The song’s pitch and cadence altered abruptly. No longer angry noise, it transformed into a fetching melody. One Odysseus might have lashed himself to the mast to avoid as he skirted the Sirens’ island.
Recco angled his head to one side. “Is this what you’ve been hearing?” he asked Zoe.
She opened her mouth to tell him not exactly, except words gushed from him before she could figure out how to explain what seemed impossible.
“If it’s the same thing”—his voice vibrated with awe—“it’s beautiful. We have to—”
“Oh no, we don’t,” Zoe spoke up, frightened to her bones for Recco. She wanted to break free of the line she and the other women had formed but didn’t dare. Their magic was stronger together, and the current version of liquid notes was far more lethal than its forerunner had been.
Sweet. Seductive. Mysterious. Alluring... Zoe shut off the flow of her thoughts before she wrenched free and dove over the rail to merge with the beauty vibrating around her.
“Go inside.” Karin’s voice was laced with compulsion and directed at Recco. “Make sure the other men don’t pay any attention to the music.”
“Why?” Recco smiled softly, his chiseled lips parting in a hard-to-resist expression. “I’m a vet, remember? I understand how to communicate with things that can’t talk. Whatever this is, it’s approachable. I’d know if it meant us harm.”
“Inside. Now,” Karin echoed, upping the ante on her compulsion spell.
Recco turned and unlatched the door, sliding through.
“Jesus.” Karin blew air through her clenched teeth. “For a minute there, I didn’t think he’d obey me, and I funneled enough magic into my spell to fell an ox.”
“Just because he went inside doesn’t mean he’ll stay there,” Zoe muttered.
“Oh, he’ll remain for a while. At least until my magic lets go of him,” Karin retorted. “Meanwhile, we have a tiny window and a whole crapload of things to figure out.”
“Only one creature has such an effect, but how could Sirens be here?” Aura demanded, her voice rough.
“Exactly what I was wondering.” Zoe bit off the words to keep from sinking under the spell of the music. It sounded like Beethoven, or maybe Brahms, absorbing, soothing. All she had to do was let down her guard, and all would be well. The music would wrap around them, take care of them, make sure they found shelter...
Ketha tightened her hand around Zoe’s upper arm hard enough to hurt. “You’re not helping.”
“Sorry.” Zoe shook herself from head to toe to regain focus.
“This...thing. It wants something from us,” Karin said.
“Yeah, like our humanity.” Ketha curled her lips into a snarl, baring her teeth in a gesture reminiscent of her wolf.
Zoe ground her teeth together to keep them from chattering. The implications of what was unfolding froze her to the marrow of her soul. “The music, it didn’t change until we got here. Must mean there’s a reason for us to go ashore.”
“Where, ashore?” Aura demanded. “The island or the mainland?”
“I’d vote for the mainland, although I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Not that it matters. Viktor and Juan will never go for it,” Ketha said.
Zoe wasn’t so sure about that. Recco yearned for a face-to-face with the music’s source. Longing had streamed from him—until Karin cloaked him in her spell. The men aside, Zoe was having a hell of a time not giving in to the music’s charisma. Was it worse for the men? She dug the Siren myth out of her memory.
Dangerous creatures, they lured sailors into shipwrecks along Greece’s rocky shorelines. No one agreed exactly which islands they inhabited, but no one disputed their existence. Sirens in myth were always half female, combined with feathers and avian lower bodies. They played a variety of musical instruments, the lyre being favored. When a man heard their song, he had to follow the music. Once it happened, he was lost—
“One of those maps on the wall at the back of the bridge marks the location of all the research stations down here,” Aura said. “I say we go inside and study it. If there was a settlement nearby, maybe something important is there. Something we can’t afford to overlook.”
“And I say we sail on by,” Ketha countered. “Worked for Odysseus.”
“I don’t know about visiting any more outposts,” Karin broke in. “The last places we’ve stopped have all turned into disasters.” Her tone grew fierce. “We lost Rowana. I do not want to sit over another of your bodies and bid your bond animal farewell.”
“None of us want that,” Zoe agreed. She straightened her back. Her body had been bent like a bow angled toward where the music was strongest. The tune shifted to something lively like Grieg. No less compelling, though.
“Even if we go ashore, what will we find?” Aura demanded. “A modern-day version of the Pied Piper of Hamblin playing a flute in an ice cave?”
“If ’tis flutes you’re after, I vote for Pan.” Zoe broke away from Ketha and Aura and tugged the door open. The heat of the bridge stole her breath but jostled her brain back into action.
She waited until the other women were inside and made a grab for Ketha’s arm. “Wait a minute. You wanted me to come up with mythical creatures, obscure combinations—”
Ketha spun one hand in a “get on with it” gesture and unzipped her parka with the other.
“Sirens. Of course.”
Karin’s voice cut like a knife before Zoe could get any words out. “They were women and birds.”
“Precisely,” Zoe said. “’Twas what I was about to point out.”
Shock twisted Ketha’s face into uneven planes. “Surely you’re not suggesting the tissue samples we’ve been looking at come from Sirens?”
Zoe shrugged. “I have no idea. Cellular identification is your bailiwick, sweetie.”
Aura clapped her gloved hands together. “The map. Let’s look at it first.” She moved briskly past the small anteroom into the bridge. “Crap! Goddammit!”
Zoe hurried forward. Viktor stood at the wheel like a man transfixed, the sole inhabitant of the ship’s command center. Recco, Daide, and Juan weren’t anywhere to be seen. Neither were the seven other women. Or the small group they’d picked up from Arctowski research station.
Ketha crossed the space in a few strides. She pried Viktor’s hands off the wheel and magic flashed, turning the air around them blue-white.
“Come on, Vik.” Ketha grasped his shoulders and shook him. He continued to stare straight ahead. She whipped back a hand and slapped him hard enough to leave a red mark on his cheek.
A shudder racked him, and he clasped Ketha’s gloved hands. “You’re dressed for outside. Why?”
“Because you sent some of us out there to lay eyes on the strait. Don’t you remember?”
He squinched his green eyes shut, and then opened them, forehead creasing into worried lines. “Yeah. Now I hear you say it, I do.” He looked around the bridge. “Where is everyone?”
Zoe, Karin, and Aura had closed on them. “I suspect they’ve launched a Zodiac,” Aura said. “We have to take the other one and follow them.”
“A Zodiac? Nah. Someone has to remain with the ship.” He dragged a hand down his face, distorting his features. “Why do I feel like I’m coming off a two-week drunk?”
Zoe scanned him with magic. Relief coursed through her. At least the ones who’d left hadn’t spelled him into zombie-land, which left the music’s source as the most likely culprit. “Because the thing making the music wanted you right where you’re standing.”
A growl emerged from Ketha, followed by another, and she closed a protective arm around her husband.
“What music?” Viktor frowned. “I thought I might have heard something, but it was gone so fast, I was certain I was mistaken.”
“Thank the goddess, it doesn’t want you.” Ketha looked as if she’d tear anything threatening the man she loved from stem to stern and feed the bits into a fire.
Viktor shook loose from her grasp. “What doesn’t want me?” He snapped his fingers under her nose. “If I’m going to launch the other raft, I need to know what’s going on.”
Zoe sucked in a jagged breath and felt like she’d swallowed glass shards. “The quick and dirty version is I’ve heard this bizarre music since we defeated the Cataclysm. It wasn’t all that annoying—or frequent—in Ushuaia, nor anywhere on this voyage until a few days ago. Then it was discordant, blaring, jangling. Hard to push aside. So I was grateful it didn’t bother me verra often.”
She stopped to take another breath. “Once we got here, to this stretch of water between the continent and Siple Island, things changed. Suddenly, the noise shifted to music.”
“We think it’s Sirens. Or something related to them,” Karin said.
“Sirens?” Viktor raked a hand through his hair. “Like in Greek mythology? The ones who promise knowledge and your every dream fulfilled—just before your ship pitches up on rocks?”
“Same ones,” Ketha concurred.
Viktor skinned his lips back from his teeth. “Maybe it’s me they’re after. I did lose a ship to rocks at the front end of the Cataclysm. No music, though. Not much fanfare. Only a storm straight out of Hell.”
“If they wanted you, we wouldn’t have found you here at the wheel,” Karin said, sounding grim.
“Anyway,” Zoe went on. “Ketha came to me a couple of hours ago wanting archaeological information about creatures straight out of myth. Sirens fit the bill since they’re women, and birds too.”
Viktor angled his gaze at his wife. “I thought you were studying tissue samples from those things we killed on the deck. The weird animal mixes conjured up by the wizard—or whatever he was—from Arctowski.”
“I was.”
“I’m not seeing a connection between them and Sirens, but it doesn’t matter. If the others really left the ship, we have to follow them before whatever lured them draws them beyond where we can bring them back.”
A tortured moan tore from Aura. “Juan. He has such a good heart—”
“And a hell of a lot of strength,” Viktor interrupted. “Get those layers zipped up and I’ll meet you at the gangway if the other raft is gone. If it’s not, we need to turn the ship inside out hunting for everybody.”
“Won’t be a problem. They’re not here.” Aura’s voice was brittle with anxiety. “I checked with magic a moment ago.” She pounded one mitt into the other. “I swear, if anything harmed Juan, I’ll make it sorry it was ever born or hatched or transmogrified.”
“Haven’t heard that word in a while.” Karin shot a pointed look at Aura.
Viktor zipped his flotation coat to his chin and grabbed a hat and mittens from a small, open cabinet behind him. “Gangway. Five minutes tops.” He bolted out of the bridge.
“Sometimes I’m glad he spent those years as a Vampire,” Ketha mumbled.
“Why would you say such a thing?” Zoe jumped in to defend Viktor.
“It makes all this supernatural crap an easier sell.” Ketha latched her parka together and hustled toward the door at the back of the bridge.
Zoe glanced at the glowing instrumentation. All the dials and gauges looked like so much gibberish to her. They’d dropped anchor, and presumably Viktor would have made any needed alterations.
“Get moving,” her coyote prodded, an undercurrent of something she couldn’t interpret in its voice.
She hastened after Ketha, Karin, and Aura. “Do you know what’s doing this?” she asked her bondmate. “Is it truly Sirens behind the music? We’re a long way from Greece.”
The coyote hesitated long enough, she figured it was one of those questions it wasn’t going to answer. Risers flashed by beneath her feet. The ship still canted from side to side as waves slapped its hull, so she grabbed the handrails on both sides. Now wasn’t a good time to trip and add an injury to all their other problems.
“I’m not certain. Its magic is strong. More potent than the sorcerer we fought during the last skirmish.”
Zoe’s stomach twisted into a hot, painful knot. The bastard who’d first boarded their ship and then blown up a research station, trapping Rowana and several others in a magical hell, had been plenty powerful.
“Zoe! Move it!” blasted her from below, and she realized she’d come to a stop halfway between Decks Four and Three.
She hurtled downward, muttering apologies, and pushed through the door Karin was hanging onto.
“Is the music still hammering you?” Karin’s question held sharp edges.
A sinking feeling joined all Zoe’s other misgivings. “No,” she said dully. “I can’t hear it anymore, but then I wasn’t paying attention until you asked me.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. They felt hot, gritty, and tired. As if she hadn’t slept in weeks. “Where did it go? It can’t be gone.”
Karin’s normally kind expression twisted into something harsh and feral. “No. It only means it’s busy. The song did its job. Over a dozen of us raced to its summons. It doesn’t need us anymore.” She hesitated. “I’d venture to guess we were spared because we were the ones whose magic could have fought against it.”
Bile splashed the back of Zoe’s throat. She swallowed, and it burned going down. “By that token, ’twill will give us hell if we try to land a raft.”
Karin’s copper gaze turned to burnished amber, reminiscent of her wolf’s eyes. “You’re quick, w
oman. It’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about you.”
They reached the gangway. Ketha and Aura were already at the bottom, and the raft with Viktor manning it was pulling into view. The ocean heaved in great gray waves washing over the gangway’s platform. It creaked and swayed alarmingly.
Viktor tossed a rope to Ketha, who wrapped it around a cleat.
“Not so tight,” Viktor yelled, and Ketha made adjustments. Viktor motioned, and she and Aura tumbled into the raft as it moved up and down in the swells. Seas like this had nearly been the death of Viktor. His raft had flipped, and he hadn’t been wearing a life vest in rough waters. Magic had been afoot then. Magic that had whispered in his ear, telling him to swim toward the ocean bottom.
Magic was afoot, now too. Dark, fell power full of greed.
Zoe did her best to clear her mind of negativity and followed Karin down the ladder. A Karin muttering in Gaelic as she timed her leap into the raft.
“Hurry,” Viktor shouted at Zoe. “Sea’s getting worse.”
Worse was one word for it. The one she would have chosen was impossible. She’d never been the best of sailors, and her chest constricted with fear as she watched the raft bob four feet above her head before it plunged into a trough.
“We can do this,” the coyote said. “We have to. Turn things over to me.”
Zoe could barely breathe around the thick place in her throat. She was shaking so hard, it was an ordeal to remain on the platform, but she didn’t think her legs would carry her back into the ship, either.
“Give me your body,” the coyote shrieked. “Now.”
Certain death was imminent, that, life jacket or no, she’d sink beneath the frigid waters of the Antarctic Ocean, Zoe relinquished her control over her human form. They wouldn’t be shifting, but her bond animal would be the one pulling the puppet strings that determined what happened next. It was a leap of faith, but she trusted her coyote. Loved it beyond measure.
Her body flew through the air and landed hard in several inches of water on the bottom of the Zodiac. Karin grabbed her by the arm and pulled her onto a pontoon. “Finally. I thought you’d never get the nerve to leave the platform.”