The Siren (29 page)

Samael caught up with me. “This was a trap to lure you here. The Siren has summoned him. He’s under her control now.”

“The hell he is,” I argued. “Warren!”

He didn’t respond.

A blue sedan was approaching in the distance behind Abigail. She didn’t turn to look. Instead, she raised her hand and the car flipped backwards about twenty feet into the air before crashing down onto its roof.
 

I grasped Warren’s arm and screamed his name again.

Nathan reached us as Samael tried to pull me away. “It is no use,” Samael insisted as he closed his arms around me. “We must go!”

“
En magna, Samael
,” Abigail hissed.

My head snapped up at the sound of the bizarre language. It sounded like an odd mix of broken Latin and Klingon.

“
Retribues pro, Kasyade
!” Samael shouted over my head. “
Adduces enim super te formidabilis vindictae! Tuum erit dies
!”

I wrenched my body free and grabbed Warren by his head. I forced his face down to look at me and peered into his black eyes. His pupils were completely dilated and blank with incoherence. But there was something else. For the first time ever, I saw his mortal soul.

“Warren!” I shouted, shaking his skull. His glazed eyes stared right through me.

An unseen force knocked me sideways, and I landed hard on the concrete. Nathan rushed toward me, and my hip burned with a deep pain as he helped me to my feet.

“You believe you can defy my will, Praea?” Abigail roared, her voice echoing against the buildings with a hollow, inhuman pitch. “Did you not think I would know it was you? You betrayed me! Your very own mother!”

“You’re not my mother!” I screamed.

Her hand waved through the air, and a ghostly slap across my face knocked me against Nathan’s chest. He pushed me behind him with one hand and yanked his handgun from its holster with the other. He aimed and fired twice at Abigail, striking her in the chest. She faltered back a few steps, but straightened…and laughed. The two entry wounds were bloody and should have been fatal, but Abigail was far from neutralized. She raised her hand again and knocked the gun out of Nathan’s hand.

She looked at Warren, and he began slowly walking toward her again. I scrambled to my feet. The pain in my hip seared through me, but I hobbled to him as quickly as I could.

Abigail turned toward me, but before she could act, Samael launched a fiery ball of light at her. The blow knocked her off her feet just as I reached Warren.
 

I grasped him by the face once more and forced him to meet my eyes. Without a thought in my brain other than the desperation of calling him back to me, I pressed both of my palms to his heart and screamed, “Warren!”

The familiar zing of electricity that regularly flowed between us was suddenly like the shock from a defibrillator. We both fell backward onto the street, and the skin was torn from my elbows by the asphalt.
 

Suddenly, Warren was on top of me. “Sloan!” Whatever control Abigail had on him was broken.

Samael grabbed Warren by the shirt and hoisted him into the air like my 220 pound boyfriend was nothing more than a flimsy rag doll. He placed Warren on his feet and grasped his shoulders, leaning so close they were nearly eye to eye. “You must sever the connection between her spirit and her body,” he said. “I cannot kill her, but in spirit form, I can remove her from this place if you help me!”

I rolled onto my knees and tried to push myself up, but the pain was too great. Then Nathan’s arm hooked around my waist and he pulled me up.

“Are you all right?” He was panting as he helped me stand.

Before I could answer, Nathan was ripped off his feet and pulled through the air. Abigail’s palm was outstretched toward him, drawing him like a magnet. When his neck collided with her hand, she dangled him inches off the ground.

“Nathan!”

In horror, I watched as she lowered Nathan’s face toward her own. Her fingers went white with tension as she closed them around his throat. Her mouth opened to a shockingly abnormal width that dislocated her jawbone. A screeching hiss and a high pitched sucking sound were released from deep inside her. Nathan’s shoulders convulsed violently for a moment before going limp. She discarded him, slamming his body onto the nearby sidewalk.

I screamed again and pushed myself up off the road. Stumbling over my own feet, I took off in a clumsy, painful sprint toward him. Her hand flew up again, erecting an invisible wall in front of me. I slammed face-first into it and fell backward with a warm gush of blood flowing from my nose into my gaping mouth. I coughed and spewed a shower of blood into the air.

In my peripheral, I saw her move again, and then Warren and Samael were knocked backward out of my view.

Before I could turn and look for them, my body began to slide across the asphalt, the rocks ripping the back of my shirt open and tearing into my flesh. I slid to a stop at Abigail’s feet, and her black shoe came down hard on my throat. “My daughter, Praea.” The words dripped like poison from her mouth. Her eyes were a glowing golden color as she ground my skull against the rough pavement. “The events have already been set in motion, and there is no stopping it now. You’ll see. This is only the beginning.”
 

She leaned down, pressing her foot harder against my throat. Burning pain began to throb behind my eyeballs as my body starved for oxygen. “Whether you like it or not, this is your destiny. It is what you were born for, Praea.”

I clawed at her shin, struggled in to breathe. “My name is Sloan,” I choked out.

She removed her foot, and then her hand sliced through the air above me. The intangible force hit me so hard that I rolled four times down the yellow center line of the street. I came to rest with my face in the gravel dust facing her. She slowly walked toward me, her feet seemingly not connected with the ground.

 
“You will greatly suffer, my daughter. I will destroy you and those whom you love. I will destroy your future and take what is rightfully mine!” Her hands shot forward, and my body lost its connection to gravity.

“Warren, do it now!” Samael screamed behind me.

As I levitated into the air, I caught a glimpse of Warren dropping down to one knee. Blood was running into my eyes, but I saw his hands shoot forward in my direction. A bright surge of electricity blasted through the air, rippling the space between us. The force spun me out of Kasyade’s ethereal grip, and I slammed into the concrete again.
 

The distinctive clap of lightning exploded and was accompanied by the shrillest shriek I had ever heard. My head rattled with the splintering sound, and I covered my ringing ears. Kasyade’s body crumpled to the street, then a cloud of energy rose and pulsed over her lifeless corpse. Suddenly, Samael vanished and a violent, hurricane-force wind rushed over me and collided with what I assumed was her spirit. With an audible
crack,
they disappeared like they had been sucked from this world into a black hole.

The street fell silent.

As I tried to push myself up off the ground, I felt Warren’s large hands close around my middle. He pulled me to my feet and into his strong arms. My legs felt limp underneath me.
 

“Are you all right?” He was panting.

I winced as I tried to hold my weight. “I’m broken.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nathan’s contorted figure bent at an unnatural angle between the side of a building and the broken sidewalk which had cracked under the sheer force with which she had thrown him. “No!” I tried helplessly to work myself free from Warren’s grasp, but he held me still until he turned and saw Nathan for himself.

A choking gasp caught in his throat. “Oh God, Nate.” He wrapped his arm around my waist, and I winced as he carried me across the road.
 

When we reached Nathan’s lifeless body, I sank to the ground beside him as Warren rolled him onto his back. His eyes were open and bloodshot and staring into nothingness.
 

Nathan McNamara was gone.

Though I knew I wasn’t going to find one, I checked for a pulse in his neck.

“Sloan,” Warren said.

Instinctively, I tilted Nathan’s chin up and opened his mouth to begin CPR. I covered his mouth with my own and breathed into him.

When I straightened, Warren reached over and closed Nathan’s eyes. He put his hand on my back. “It’s no use.”

I threw my fist at him. “You can help me or you can leave!” I shouted. “I’m not just going to give up on him!”

Patronizing me, Warren got on his knees beside Nathan’s torso and pressed his large hands against Nathan’s sternum. When I breathed into his cold mouth again, the audible grind from his broken rib cage as it expanded was almost enough to turn my stomach. Warren compressed Nathan’s chest a few more times, and tears mixed with blood streamed down my face and dripped onto Nathan’s lips. I breathed again and again.

Nathan’s lower lip quivered ever so slightly, and I pulled away. “Check his pulse,” I said.

“Sloan, it’s no—”

“Check his pulse!”

Warren pressed his fingers against the side of Nathan’s pale neck. “Nothing.”

I bent and forced more air into his lungs. His chest rose and collapsed. My heart twisted as I hopelessly breathed into him again. When Nathan’s chest fell a second time to its lifeless resting place, painful sobs erupted that I couldn’t control. Warren reached to console me, but I pushed him away. I clambered to my knees and clasped my hands one on top of the other and placed them over Nathan’s heart. With all my strength, I pushed.

A deep and hollow
boom
echoed around us. I toppled forward as the windows in the abandoned buildings around us exploded. Warren shielded me with his body from the falling glass where I lay with my head on Nathan’s chest. Then I heard it.
 

Thump. Thump. Thump…

Warren and I slowly rose up. Warren must have sensed it as well because he moved around me and pressed his fingers to Nathan’s jugular again. His eyes widened.

“Call an ambulance,” I said, pushing him out of my way.
 

Warren moved a good distance away from us and pulled out his phone.

I cupped Nathan’s face in my hands. “Nathan! Nathan, can you hear me?”

His eyes fluttered open ever so slightly. “Sloan.” It was barely a whisper.

I cried and bent and kissed him on the mouth, not even pausing to think of the consequences that might follow. “Oh my God, Nathan!”

I sat up and looked at him again. Blood stained his mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was his or my own.
 

“Sloan,” he said again.

“Shh,” I said. “Just breathe.”

A bright flash of light lit up the street, and I looked back to see Samael standing over me. “Put your hands on him,” he said with a voice so calm it was haunting. “Cast your life into him. You have the power now.”

“I don’t know how,” I said.

“You don’t have to know how. Your power is not limited by your ability,” he said. “Put your hands on him.”

Carefully, I placed my trembling hands on Nathan’s chest and closed my eyes. Like something out of a bad, low-budget sci-fi movie, I concentrated on sending whatever energy I had into Nathan’s broken body. Either to my surprise or to my horror, I wasn’t really sure which, my hands warmed slowly against his chest. Heat surged through all of my fingers—even the ones I hadn’t been able to feel in weeks. Underneath my palms, his bones were moving and grinding like rocks stuck in the chain of a bicycle.

Nathan cried out in pain.
 

“Don’t stop,” Samael said.
 

His joints popped and snapped. I felt his spine crack, but much more violently than the way mine did in the morning. Nathan was screaming and writhing in pain, but once again Samael instructed me to continue. Finally, the angel’s hand came to rest on my shoulder, and I relaxed.

Nathan’s breathing was even, and when I pulled away and looked in his face, his eyes were calm and no longer streaked with broken blood vessels. His lip quivered as he reached up and pulled my head down to his shoulder. We both cried.

For the second time, I had almost lost this man that I loved. I pressed my head to his chest just to hear his heartbeat. When his sobs subsided, I sat up to examine his face. He was in pain, but he was going to live. I picked up his hand and pressed my lips to his palm, leaving a bloody kiss behind.
 

Warren and Samael were talking quietly behind us. “How are we going to explain this to the first responders?” Warren asked.

I looked back, curious as to Samael’s response.
 

“Easy,” Samael said with a wink.

He turned and looked down the street we had come from, and a moment later, our rental car turned the corner and was rolling toward us. My mouth dropped open, as there was no one in the driver’s seat. “What the hell?” I mumbled.

When it neared us, Samael raised his hand, and our rental car floated off the ground. He waved his arm and sent the car careening into the front of the blue sedan Kasyade had flipped earlier.
 

Warren’s mouth dropped open in amazement. “God, I want to learn how to do that.” He nodded toward a man sitting on the curb whom I hadn’t even noticed in the confusion. “What about him?”

Apparently, the driver of the blue sedan had crawled to the curb and had witnessed the whole crazy ordeal. He was visibly shaking, and blood streaked the side of his tanned face.

Samael outstretched his hand in the man’s direction. The man slowly and gently slumped to the concrete. “When he wakes, he will have no memory of what happened,” Samael said. “The accident report will show that the brakes on your rental car were defective.”

Warren was shaking his head, staring at the mangled cars. “That’s one hell of an impact for a backstreet accident.”

Samael put his hand on Warren’s shoulder. “Do not worry.”

I pointed to Abigail’s lifeless corpse sprawled out across the center of the road. “And her?”