Chapter 14
Mei
“Let’s go,” Ronit snarls when he comes out of the back of the house. I find it annoying that I’m so aware of him, like part of me was counting the heartbeats until he came back. “I need to kill something,” he mutters wrathfully.
I have known of the Sirens for a hundred years, but every now and then, I am completely astounded to realise I don’t know them at all. We are strangers who spent a few fateful hours together.
And then we destroyed each other.
But I have spent every single sleepless night thinking about them. It’s not like I could forget. A few hours changed the path of both our lives so drastically we’ll never be able to go back to who we were.
The memories assault me again. Fire so angry and hungry, the feel of the ocean bearing down on me a weight of rage as furious as the flames above. The fury and the fear, but underneath all of that, a pain that I knew would change my life.
And it has.
Lirin grabs my wrist. It’s in the back of my mind to argue, but then we’re falling. We smash into a wave I wasn’t expecting and plunge into the depths of an ocean that doesn’t exist on Earth.
The urge to panic hits me because last time they dragged me like this, they fed me to a monster, but I resist, allowing Lirin to drag me behind him. If I have to die, it’s better to die like this than as food for Deux.
Leaf sweeps past, a glowing teal stain that spreads in my mind, faster and faster, he circles down until the green is so bright I want to scream, and then we’re falling again, but there’s no water.
I react instantly, shifting my body and preparing for impact. I land hard and crouch down, listening intently. There’s a screech of metal, but it’s not the same as from their cars. It's smaller.
“Sam! Sam! Did you see that? I swear, I saw them appear out of thin air. Sam! Get out here!”
I turn my head, listening intently and pushing all other sounds out of my mind. There is a weird sloshing, pulsing sound coming from the house across the road from the screamer. I bet anything that weird house is the target.
Lirin pulls me up and brushes my wet hair back from my face. The water leaves my clothes as my ability to think leaves my body. He’s so gentle. It takes everything I have not to lean into him.
“There. Good as new.”
I reach up cautiously, waiting for him to stop me. I gently touch his face. When he doesn’t move, I map out his features, my breathing becoming shallower and shallower. My heart tightens.
It’s really him. Half of me thought perhaps I’d imagined him, but I know this face.
“Come on, Strega,” he says in a teasing whisper. “Let’s go kill bad guys.”
“Do you need instruction?” I ask, embarrassed by my sudden lapse in reason.
He laughs and squeezes my wrist. “I do love to watch you slay things.”
“Well, pay close attention, Siren, I’ll teach you how to really move.”
“Enough flirting,” Reed snarls. “We’ve got a job to do, let’s get it done.”
I splutter. “I wasn’t-”
“Totally worth it,” Lirin says and bumps into me, sending me stumbling.
“Do you want to die?” I hiss at him.
“Only if you’re the one killing me.”
I have no idea what to make of this version of Lirin. Is he drugged? Has he touched a Viscous Purple Panter? Did the Stinglebob bite him?
Do they have those creatures here?
Canto fills the space between Lirin and myself and with an arm pressed to my lower back, moves me away from the deranged Siren and his laughing temptation of a voice.
The wind moves around, and I’m able to get a rough idea of how high this building is. Solid but not concrete, I smell wood and varnish. People, lots of them. But nothing recently. Beneath all that is a trace of rot, decay, and something that is familiar.
I duck into a crouch, pulling my hand free and walk low to the ground, feeling the way, touching everything I can.
“Fuck, Mei, wait for us.”
I pause under a wooden structure and turn back, my hand still on the wooden wall in front of me. It’s cold and smells strange.
“So, that’s why you’re having so much trouble navigating this world,” Brio murmurs. “You see with your body, don’t you?”
I tilt my head. “Ears, smell, touch, instincts. All of them. People scream when I walk.”
“It is a bit unnerving,” Brio admits, “but only because you move in a way that I don’t think any human can. You look like you’re dancing,” he muses.
I cock my head to the side.
“Enough talk,” Ronit growls and walks past me, kicking the door open.
The smell that comes out is revolting.
I lean back, my mind ticking over the different mixtures of scents. Decay, bones, dirt, dust, rubbish, faeces, and urine; something that doesn’t belong. It’s dark and cloying, like something that lived underground for too long.
Familiar, so familiar.
Lirin ruffles my hair, distracting me, and follows Ronit into the house. I hesitate on the perimeter, uneasy but unable to articulate why.
Leaf runs a hand over my arm as he passes the threshold, then Brio and Canto file in, leaving me with Reed.
“Scared, Strega?”
“It smells wrong,” I say absently, without thinking too hard.
Reed stays right beside me, his body relaxed but poised for action.
I try to move into the space, but my head won’t let me. Its teeth and claws and dark things full of poison. I think I know this smell, but I can’t remember from where I smelled it.
“Talk to me. Tell me what it is.”
Minutes tick by as I consider what I’m sensing.
“It’s screams and writhing, pain in the bloodstream, skin melting, eyes bursting, tongue swelling.”
Reed inhales sharply.
“Ronit, there’s poison, get out of there,” Reed screams, startling me.
There’s no answer from them. My heart slams hard against my rib cage. I lean forward, straining to hear any sign of them. There’s nothing, how can they just disappear? Reed clamps his hand down on my shoulder. It hurts, but I ignore it.
“I’ll go,” I say softly.
“No! We go together.”
My mind flies across the information and what I know. I have one thing that might work in my favour.
“Reed, you need to stay,” I say decisively.
“No, I-”
“Call. You need to keep talking. Curse me, hate me, say all the words in your heart, just keep making sounds so I can hear the way home.”
I don’t mean to say that last bit, but his fingers on my shoulder tense just for a heartbeat, but then he snatches them off me, leaving me feeling cold and alone.
“Hate me loudly, Siren.”
He opens his mouth, and he starts to sing. The words are so venomous that I recoil back before I remember this isn't personal, it’s just survival.
I dart into the dark, and as much as I don’t want to hear his words, the fact that I can hear him is such a relief. My entwinement with the Sirens happened in seconds. Infatuation that should have died but has instead lasted forever.
A hundred years is a long time to carry a torch for people who tried to kill me.
I stay silent, moving through the house systematically until I find a hole deep in the basement where the stench is the strongest. It goes deep into the earth like something burrowed here.
I hear a scream, but it’s human.
Still, I move towards it, cursing myself three times a fool. I would never have been this stupid on Nightmare. This is suicidal. I had a sense of self-preservation once. I wanted to stay alive. To live.
Now, I’m rescuing the very people who tried to kill me-
I trip over a body, landing hard. I scramble around on my knees and run my hands over the still form. It’s not someone I recognise, and I think it’s human, though youngish. Maybe early twenties. It’s been dead a little while, and I catch the sickly sweet scent of dried vomit.
Poison.
Something deadly in the dark.
Clicking.
Clacking.
Hunting in the dark.
If you hear the dark ticking and clicking.
Run for your life,
There’s something hunting you in the dark.
I flinch at my mother’s words in my head and force them out, listening to Reed. His vile words have softened, and now he’s singing about confusion and pain. Trying to understand why. He sounds so far away.
He’s a voice in the dark. A rope. My path home, and I cling to him for a long moment. I live in the dark, always. And I’m the hunter, not whatever this is.
I finally start heading deeper, but this time, I move faster, running.
Sing louder.
Sing, Reed. Sing.
I find more and more bodies before I finally hear them. Leaf is growling and struggling. That alone alarms me.
“What’s in the dark, mother?” I say, twisting so I can curl my pudgy arms around her neck. She pulls me tight against her chest and kisses my cheek.
“It’s the beetle,” she whispers.
“The beetle? What’s a beetle?”
“It sticks you with poison and drags you down to eat you like a liquid soup.” She tickles my belly until I cry with laughter, but I was always scared of beetles after that. As she intended, as I should be.
“Fucking bugs,” I snarl as the memory slams into me. I hate bugs.
I launch through the space, using my hands on the walls and floor, guiding my way until I see Leaf. His green is a throbbing, furious colour as he struggles to hold something back. I don’t hesitate, rushing over to it and climbing up its body.
Its body is smooth but covered with coarse, thick hair that I use to pull myself up. It’s three times taller than me and twelve times longer if my calculations are right.
It’s massive, but there’s got to be a- ah, here it is.
I stab down, shoving my arm deep into its eyeball. I rip and tear, holding on as it goes wild, thrashing around and bucking. My talons slice through its insides, and it falls, dead. I roll free and stand up, flicking the disgusting bug eye juices off my arm. Absolutely and totally revolting.
“Leaf, where are they?” I snap out. I don’t like the sudden quiet. Is he still there?
He growls but doesn’t answer.
“Leaf?”
“I can’t see. How can you live like this? I feel so-”
“Vulnerable?” I say with amusement.
“Yes.”
I dance around, running my fingers over everything until I locate my four Sirens. They are alive and breathing. I grab Ronit and pause, cocking my head and listening. Something in the air, like a quivering.
“What is that?” Leaf asks, moving closer towards me by instinct.
I reach out and place a hand on the wall. It’s vibrating, the earth is pushing in, closing the wound the beetle created.
Fuck.
“Leaf, come towards my voice.”
He walks towards me, and I pass Ronit into his arms. I grab Brio, who is the next closest, shove him at Leaf, and I grab Lirin and Canto by the back of their tops.
“Can you hear Reed?” I ask urgently.
He’s silent.
“Leviathan! Can you hear the siren?” I thunder.
“Yes.”
“Run towards him. Don’t stop. Run, run now.”
He bolts, and I follow behind, but much slower, struggling as I drag their heavy weights over the uneven ground.
“Keep going!” I pant.
The roar of the earth gets louder and louder. I struggle, sweating and panting, fighting for every single step. I get them past the body and know the entrance to the basement is just ahead, but I can’t be sure. I let out a whoosh of air and push harder, faster.
“REED!” I scream.
His song gets louder, aggressive, stronger, powerful. He’s a promise of heaven, of something beautiful. A world I don’t belong to, but I want so badly to be there.
Leaf lets out a relieved grunt and runs again.
I keep going, slipping hard, slamming my knee on rock.
I grab them and keep pulling. Just a little more.
I reach the basement hole and pass through, but the house is shaking.
I turn my head in the direction of the stairs, trying to picture it and how far I still have, and I’m not sure we can make it.
The house trembles, and Reed’s song stops.
I throw myself on top of them, dragging us together. I’m not going to let my Sirens die.
“No, this is not happening. Not in the dark. No ticking, no clacking. I am the hunter here!” I shout in defiance.
The smell disappears, and I lift my head, feeling the harsh sun beating down on me. The smell is instantly one I recognise.
How the fuck did we get to Nightmare?
I stand up, listening as scared denizens start looking for an easy meal.
I flex my fingers and roll my head.
When they attack, I do what I’ve always done. I fight back. My legs ache, my arms feel like lead, but I keep moving, I keep dancing. I’m dripping with blood, but little of it is mine.
There is a ring of corpses around us when Lirin and Canto sit up. I ignore them and rip the guts out of the idiot who thought he could bite me.
“Strega. What’s going on?” Canto says, trying to stand up but failing.
I let out an exhausted huff. “Trying to keep us all alive, right now.”
“Where are we?” Lirin says, alarmed as a sharp-toothed, ground digger claws towards him. I stab it in the head, and it vomits blood onto Lirin.
“Nightmare.”
I leap past them and stab another one through the throat, whirling to shove another back.
“How did we get here?” Canto asks in what on anyone else I would call panic.
I let out a sob. “Do you really need to discuss this? Now?”
“How do we get home?” Canto demands.
“I don’t know!” I grit out and slam into another creature. My arms and legs tremble, but I keep moving. I rip his genitals off and toss them to something that eats them out of the air.
“Mei, there are a lot of dead bodies here,” Lirin murmurs. “Did you do this?”
“No, the Tooth Fairy did.”
“I love that even fighting for our lives, you're still able to shower us with sarcasm,” Canto growls and manages to get to his knees.
A shadow moves. I can feel it, and then the Grim is there, and I stop fighting. I stop moving. My breath saws in and out of my body, but it’s not enough. I sway, my body aching and twitching. I’m covered in blood.
I’m more exhausted than I’ve ever been, but I did it.
I kept them safe.
I tilt backwards, unable to stay upright.
Reeds’ hate-filled song plays in my mind, and I wonder if there will ever be anything I can do to change it to something less painful.