by KB Benson
“I have to be stronger than this,” she whispers. “I can’t be weak. I can’t be…” her voice falters.
She rests against me for another few minutes. Instead of the resignation I expect, however, a fierce indignation crosses her face as her brow furrows. The intensity rolls off her like the waves crashing to shore, the waves that no longer call her name. Iris slowly pulls her body away from mine. She hesitates for a moment, teetering on her feet, my arm hovering behind her just in case she needs it.
“I’m stronger than this,” she whispers. “I’m stronger than you. You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you.” Iris repeats her mantra twice before taking a step on the sand, her foot bearing down into it with hidden strength. Her lips continue to move even though the words have fallen silent. Iris takes step after step up the beach, not appearing to head anywhere specific, simply to prove she’s not weak. After I follow Iris about twenty feet, I interfere.
“Let me help you,” I say just above a whisper. Her face is determined to fight me, but her body sags against mine as I wrap my arm around her waist.
Iris squints in the sunlight, the creases on her face showing more signs of aging. We walk to the edge of the beach where sand touches forest and I set her down between two tree roots sprouting from the ground and coiling to life in the open. Iris drapes her arms across the roots and lays her head back.
I stare at Iris, her limp form melting into the sand unconscious. She has no one.
My thoughts flash to my own family—guilt swelling in the pit of my stomach. A family I lied to. Last night my mom called worried sick after watching the news report following the slaughter. She and Peter were still out of town, but they’re ending their trip early and heading home now. She’d drilled me with questions, verified my location over and over, and made me promise I was safe… and that I would stay safe until she could get home to me.
“You know,” Iris’ voice cracks, “when we fed on Icarus, it wasn’t like this. There was no moral question about it. Icarus fell from the sky into the water—his life was already over so we took him. If anything, his last thoughts were happy.”
I don’t say a word, letting Iris’ muddled thoughts run wild. I’m not sure she’s actually awake anyway—her eyes are clamped shut as her mouth breathes over the words.
“I don’t know where we went wrong. When did we become evil? We weren’t always evil—my family wasn’t always evil. Evil.” She shudders. “I tried to make it that way again for Todd, and even for Stewart, but it was already different. That’s why I couldn’t do it… I couldn’t do it.” Her voice fades out.
This time I can’t help but ask. Iris has been totally honest with me, but hearing the names of her victims spill from her lips—and the names of people I knew—it’s suddenly real. “Do what, Iris?”
She sniffs. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t because I’m wrong, I’m broken. I couldn’t kill him for you.”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone Iris,” I whisper.
“It’s him,” she mutters as she rolls around, cuddling up to the root farther away from me. Without budging her sleeping form, I move to her other side to hear her better. The words float on her breath as she exhales. “It’s Damion or you. I choose you.”
I lean back, the bark of the tree scratching through my t-shirt. She’s really giving up her family. The sun peaks in the sky, showering the beach in warmth. If it wasn’t for the blood-stained sand, you would never guess a horrific catastrophe had occurred here only yesterday. I watch as the ripples on the ocean’s surface play with the reflection of the sun, a tug of war between light and movement. I see why Iris loves the ocean, even with the sinister evil lurking just below the surface.
Despite the blistering heat, Iris remains fast asleep. While she rests, I take a quick walk down the street and buy more bottled water. I return to Iris standing at the edge of the shore, her toes centimeters away from brushing the water’s edge.
Iris faces the ocean, her arms folded firmly across her chest. A warm breeze tugs at her hair and throws it into a frenzy behind her. With the exception of her hair, the rest of her body is as immovable as Michaelangelo’s David. I can’t even see the rise and fall of her chest to signify breath. I pull myself up, brushing sand and dirt away from my pants. When I reach Iris, I softly wrap my arms around her waist. The skin beneath my touch pulls away from her body, stretching as though it doesn’t belong to her anymore.
“What are you looking at?” I whisper in her ear.
She furrows her brow and is silent for a moment. “The end,” she whispers.
“The end? Of what?”
Iris shakes her head. “Everything.”
The glow of the afternoon sun touches Iris’ face, but it can’t remove the sadness etched into her expression.
“I’ve gone over it in my head,” she continues, “over and over and over, and I can’t figure out how to fix what I’ve done.”
“You didn’t do this, Iris. Your clan did. You’re not the same as them.”
“That’s just it—I should be. But you’re right, I’m not.” Iris pauses. “So what am I? I’m not a human and apparently I’m not a siren. And if I’m not a siren, I don’t have a home. I don’t have a family.”
“Iris, you have me. I’ll be your home. I’m your family.”
Iris smiles softly, the stress seeping out from around her eyes. “Yeah?”
“Always.”
Iris takes a deep breath. “If I don’t completely belong in either world, what I’m supposed to do? Who am I supposed to save?” she whispers.
I wonder for a moment if Iris really was awake for our conversation this morning. “Do you mean between me and Damion?”
Iris’ head whips back to look at me. She turns around in my arms, her skin stretching across her stomach. Her eyes stare deep into mine.
“How…?” she asks, not even pretending to hide her fear.
“You sleep talk,” I shrug. “Last night, you said you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t kill him for me. You told me it was either him or me…” I decide to leave off the last part about her choosing me.
She stares into her lap.
“Just my opinion, but I think you should choose your family.”
“I think so, too.”
“Should I know more?” I ask.
Iris shakes her head and then nods, unable to make up her mind. “Gah,” she sighs. “I don’t know! I don’t know what you should know.”
“What if you just tell me everything and then I can decide what I should know?”
“Because if I do that, you’ll make the wrong choice.”
I feign a shocked expression. “Excuse me, I make great choices.”
A small laugh escapes between Iris’ lips. “I’m sorry.” She places her palm against my cheek. “That came out harsh. You make great decisions and that’s why you’ll make the wrong one this time.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know, but it’s true.”
I look past Iris’ determined face and stare at the ocean, seemingly harmless a day after the bloodbath. After a few minutes, I decide to move on; I want to keep Iris talking, distracted from this ‘end’. “Tell me about your past.”
Iris is taken aback by this request. It’s out of the blue to her, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Iris is dying, and I refuse to believe she’s a lost cause. Problem is I don’t know enough about sirens to know whether or not that’s true. And the only one to teach me about sirens is a siren—so maybe I can learn something that will help us save her.
“My past?” she asks. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me more about your pull to the ocean.” I shrug, pretending like this question hasn’t been circling my brain.
Iris steps away from the waves pouring onto the shore and sits down on the sand. “Well, it’s painful to be near the water. The ocean’s pull is the most amazing feeling in the world but trying to resist it is excruciating. The closer I am
to the water, the more painful it is.”
“Why do you like to sit so close to it then?”
Iris shrugs. “It’s a part of who I am. Have you ever had something you absolutely love that no matter what you were doing, if it appeared, it would monopolize your entire attention?”
Immediately my first thought is of Iris, but I don’t say that. “Surfing,” I whisper. “The feel of the wind and the spray of the ocean when I’ve hit the wave just right, it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There’s no rival.”
Iris smiles, recognizing her weakness and mine aren’t so different. She nods. “It’s like that only thousands of degrees stronger. The ocean is my life; it’s where I find peace, but it brings me more pain than any human body could withstand.”
“Pain? How does it bring you pain if you never get in?”
Iris pulls her hair over her shoulder and points to her tattoo. “As a part of my exile, Damion buried me under spells to keep me in line. One of which forbids me from ever setting foot in the ocean without prey. My body yearns for the ocean, my entire existence covets it, and the smell of the salty water is like a breath of fresh air—like I didn’t know I was holding my breath until the mists touch my skin. But the closer I get to the ocean, the stronger the pain grows. All because Damion branded me a traitor.”
The pain is thick in her voice, the hatred seething inside of her as her throat closes with anger.
I think of all the times I tried to convince her to come into the ocean with me, and she always refused. “What would happen if you went into the ocean without prey, just to enjoy it?”
“I’d burn.” Soberness shadows her features, and her shoulders droop. “The curse sparks a fire within my body, or at least it feels like that. Alone, the curse wouldn’t kill me, but it would be agonizing.”
My brows pinch together. “But you have swum without prey. I’ve seen you.”
Iris nods. “Sometimes the pain within the water is worth the peace of being home. Banishment to land is painful with no attainable rest.”
“Your father would let that happen?” I ask, astonished.
“He encourages it. I’m no different than any other member of our clan to him. The clan always comes first,” Iris says imitating Damion. “When I sit next to the ocean, it’s painful; but its scent gives me a release at the same time. Does that make sense? That’s why I come to the beach, why I sleep on the dock so often instead of at Mr. Demonas’. I’m forbidden from my home, but it’s still my home.”
“All of the times I saw you at the beach, I had no idea you were going through this every time. Was it hard at the beach party?”
A laugh escapes Iris’ lips. “Yeah. Well, yes and no. You made it easy for me not to sulk in being restricted to the sand, but I almost lost it when you tried to throw me into the water.”
“Almost? I thought I was done for.”
Iris laughs again. “No, never. Had I touched the water, I didn’t know if I’d be able to resist it. Plus, if I got in, my scales would appear and how would I explain that to you? I ran and hid to refocus and calm down so I wouldn’t give in to the ocean’s draw.”
I shake my head, shocked I’d been so oblivious to the secret life she’d been hiding. “Well, thanks for giving me another chance to prove myself.”
“Always.” A small smile replaces the concern that’s become permanent on her face.
We stare at the horizon line in silence for a few minutes before I break it with my interrogation. “Next question?”
Iris shrugs. “Why not?”
“Tell me the real story behind you and Mr. Demonas. He didn’t really explain it to me. Plus, he is the mythology teacher and you practically walked out of one of his books.”
Iris laughs. “That’s a good story. The first time I met him I actually planned to harvest him. I got pretty close too before he stopped me.”
“How’d he stop you?”
“He offered me a home and help. Up until then I’d been on my own all the time. Always staying at the beach, unable to get rid of the pain unless we were feasting. Kai offered me a life, separate from the one I lived as a siren. I should’ve known then something was wrong with me, that I wanted out of the world I was born into.”
“Wait a second, ‘Kai’,?”
“Out of everything I just said, that’s what caught your attention?”
“Sorry. That’s so weird, though,” I say.
A smile tugs at Iris’ eyes. “Yeah, well I knew him as ‘Kai’ before I knew him as Mr. ‘Demonas’.” She recounts the time she first met Kai in a coffee shop. Her expression melts as though she embraces the memory as a fond one as he was the first, and the only person, who believed in her as being good.
“Kai saw when I took my first kill after having met him. The man was a murderer and I reveled in his death. When it was time to find another, Kai would spend all day searching news articles. He’d find me a victim, point me in the direction to go, and I’d take it from there. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Kai helped protect the innocent lives by steering me toward those who were less deserving of life.”
“I’m glad you had him, Iris.”
Iris’ small smile disappears. “Me, too.”
I’ve been thinking for a while how to phrase my next question but figured there’s not really a right way to ask it so I just say it. “You’d told me Jaxon and Stewart were sacrifices in place of me, but Jaxon survived. Does that mean your clan still needs to feast on one of us?” I shudder at the thought.
Iris doesn’t move, giving no obvious sign of her discomfort; but it’s her stillness that makes me realize something’s off. She’s trying too hard to act casual. She blinks a few times, her front teeth playing with the tip of her tongue. I watch her lips, waiting for her answer to breathe through them.
“No.” She shakes her head, and her hair falls in loose, limp curls around her shoulders. “I have a plan. He won’t take either of you. I won’t let him.”
Iris is too defensive. This won’t be over until Damion takes either Jaxon or me, maybe both of us.
“You’re lying,” I venture.
“No, I’m not. I think I have something Damion will want more than you or Jaxon.”
“What is it?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Iris fingers the locket around her neck. The only trinket she has left from her mother.
“Yes, it does matter. I want to help.”
“No, Jace. This is my battle not yours,” Iris says. Her eyes lose their sparkle and turn dark. “I don’t need your help. I need you to stay safe until this is over.”
“Okay.” My fingertips brush her upper arm, the dry skin, crackling under them. “Will you tell me if you decide you can’t do it alone?”
Iris tilts her head to look at me, her eyes softening. “Of course,” she whispers. I place a soft kiss against her temple. Iris breathes deeply—her once full lips are thin and tight, her eyes tinted with a yellowish hue, her nails chipped and cracked. Her body is literally decomposing in front of me.
“Iris, your body…”
“I know.”
“I’m taking you to a hospital. There must be something they can do…” I jump to my feet ready to whisk Iris into the air.
“Jace, stop.”
“Maybe a blood transfusion, or…”
“Quit it, Jace. Human medication will have no effect on my condition. I’m not sick. I’ve betrayed my species. There is no fixing this.”
I hesitate then settle back onto the sand, knowing Iris is right. I keep waiting for the color to return to her face, for some tone to rise in her muscles, or for her skin to soften, but her body only decomposes further. With the more water and sleep Iris gets, the more she awakes looking like death has laid his blanket over her. She’s never going to gain enough strength to get herself to the ocean.
I lean back on my hands, placing one arm behind Iris to give her support. Her head lolls against my shoulder, and her body collapses into my side. She’s fightin
g the reality of what’s happening to her.
Iris closes her eyes and drifts off while I contemplate her life and how I can save it.
Chapter 35
JACE
All too soon the sun sets below the horizon, the moon rising to take its place. I roll onto my back to face a blackened sky, the moon staring at me from a dark sheet pockmarked with stars. I lie on peaks of soft sand, Iris nestled safely in the crook of my arm. Asleep with the moon’s glow on her skin, she almost looks healthy; as though she’s not about to give up her last breath. When Iris’ eyes flutter open, she stares straight up at the night sky blanketing us.
“You know, when I was little, I used to watch the elder clan members work so hard against each other to stand out. They always competed to be the fastest, the strongest, the most sinister, anything they could do to get Damion’s attention, to earn his praise. They stole life after life, even sometimes within our own clan; and whenever evil seeped from their bones, Damion rewarded them. The more evil the act, the more praise they received. I don’t believe sirens are inherently evil—Damion made those of us in his clan this way. He spoon-fed every single one of us with his manipulative lies until we had no hope but to turn malicious.”
“How does he have so much control over all the other sirens?”
“He’s our leader, set apart to be such by Achelous,” Iris says.
Briefly I remember her telling me that name before—the king of the river gods.
“With the kind of power he gets from Achelous, he can do practically anything.”
“Anything?” I ask, an idea sparking.
Iris nods. “Yep, he has the power to command a legion of creatures without a single thought of betrayal or doubt; the power to massacre hundreds of human souls in a single tide of the sea; the power to cut a siren down leaving her body torn from the inside out with the flick of his tail; the power to turn a beautiful creature of the moon into a dark, sinister monster of the sea. I’ve seen it all—there’s nothing Damion can’t do.”
“Even heal you?” I whisper.