Chapter Twenty-four
The mermaids came prepared, which in one respect boded well for Jenny since they needed her alive. When she regained consciousness in the murky water, it was to find a mouthpiece taped to her jaw, feeding her oxygen. On the other hand, though, not dying quickly probably meant they wanted something from her. Given they weren’t exactly gentle in their handling of her as they dragged her underwater, their powerful tails propelling them, it meant they just needed her alive long enough to reach their destination and then…
That was what she didn’t know. Why did the mermaids want her so bad? Why did Lucifer? Let’s not also forget that scary entity in the portal. And how come the one person I want to want me is the only one willing to let me go?
Given a choice between dwelling on her depressing forced breakup with Felipe and her probable impending death, she chose neither. Her siren aunts hadn’t raised her to mope around and lament her fate. Strong women decided their fate. Just because she couldn’t charm the pants off anything with a penis didn’t mean she didn’t have other skills. But how to sing her way to freedom when she not only wore the amulet still but her hands were bound and her mouth taped to a regulator?
She’d have to find a way. Given her captors didn’t pay her much attention, only occasionally adjusting their grip on her hair, which they used to painfully tow her, Jenny tried to work on the knots binding her wrists.
Hours later, she’d almost managed to get the final knot undone when someone finally noticed. Or so she assumed when she awoke to another throbbing headache and her hands once again firmly tied. Argh!
On a positive note, she wasn’t in the water anymore and her mouth was free. Licking her lips, she peered around, the light dim but not so much that she didn’t recognize the spot. Her shoulders slumped.
Welcome home.
Kind of. She found herself in her old living quarters. Well, cave. A ten-by-ten cell with a moldy pallet and a few broken toys covered in a layer of lichen from disuse. It seemed the place she’d called home for the first few years of her life hadn’t hosted any new occupants or a cleaning as the scratchings on the walls, pictures she’d drawn, still decorated it.
How Jenny had loved the crayons smuggled to her, a present from an anonymous donor. She’d used their brightness to adorn her cell with pictures she’d seen in the few books she’d owned. Childish renderings of sunshine and trees. Stick figures and flowers. A sad attempt by a child, punished for her birth, to bring color to her life.
A life she wasn’t ready to give up, no matter how dire the situation.
Struggling to her feet, Jenny staggered to the wall and found a ragged stone edge. She sawed at her tethers, ignoring the pain as she occasionally abraded her skin in her haste. She’d have worse things to worry about than a few drops of her blood if she didn’t escape.
When the last tendril snapped, she wasted no time ripping the amulet from around her neck and stuffing it in a pocket of her toga. Let the mermaids come. She’d greet them with a song.
Crouching by the wall, she took up watch, eying the lapping edge of the sea against the floor of her cave, not letting her mind wander. She couldn’t afford to. I need to save myself. No whiskered kitty would come bounding to her rescue. No singing blonde sirens would yodel her abductors into submission.
She was well and truly alone. But not defeated.
Without a window to the outside, she couldn’t gauge the passage of time, but she would have guessed a few hours passed before Mommy Dearest finally dared to pop in her seaweed-covered head. From the ripples in the water, Mother rose, her eyes unblinking, her lips unsmiling.
Jenny met her cold gaze with an even icier grin. “Hello, Mother.” Then she sang a little ditty, “Step on a crack, break the bitch’s back. Sing a happy spiel and merrily she’ll keel.”
She should have known the woman who’d birthed her and hated her would have protection from her voice. Still, it had been worth a try.
Rising from the water until only her tail remained submerged, her mother’s lidless black orbs perused her. “Just as deformed as ever I see. I should have let you drown at birth.”
Imagine that, her mother was still as hateful as ever. “Why didn’t you? You’ve always despised me.”
“Yes. You’re an abomination. You should have never been born, especially of my body,” she hissed.
“Any guess as to who’s not getting a nomination for mother of the year?” Jenny muttered.
Hatred made her mother ugly as she spat, “I might have birthed you, but I am not your mother. You are no child of mine, abomination. Merely something I had to suffer.”
“So why didn’t you give me away at birth? I’m sure you could have foisted me upon some fisherman’s family. Instead, you kept me here. A prisoner.”
“I was given no choice because of the prophecy.”
Okay, that wasn’t expected. “What are you talking about?”
Colorless lips curved into a smirk. “You didn’t think I let you live because I wanted to, did you? I wanted you to die. But you were needed. Or, should I say, your voice was.
“For what?”
“Why, to awaken and free the one who was unjustly imprisoned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t need to know. Just sing when you are told.”
Hold on a second. The mermaids wanted her to sing? Because of a prophecy? That couldn’t bode well. “I’m not doing anything for you.”
“You will.” Her mother, who refused to acknowledge her even now, made a gesture, and from the water, mermaids rose, four of them, along with four Undines.
Jenny sucked in a breath and sang a few notes, to no effect.
Her mother laughed. “Oh please. We might have misjudged your voice during our early attempts, but we know better now. These worthy volunteers won’t fall victim to your mutant power.”
Indeed they wouldn’t. It horrified Jenny to see the scars where once they’d born ears. The crazy fanatics had rendered themselves deaf in order to escape her power.
Her sense of dread deepened, especially as they pinned her and taped another regulator to her mouth before dragging her into the cold Darkling Sea.
They didn’t have far to go. Ringed by a coral reef, carved over time into an amphitheater, the large ceremonial clearing was where rituals were performed and where they dumped her.
Swimming away wasn’t an option, not with the dozens of mermaids swimming circles around the sacred spot, not to mention the air bubble they encased her in was tethered to the sea floor. But then again, once Jenny saw who else shared the space, she couldn’t have moved anywhere.
In good news, Aunt Molpe had survived the storm that had capsized their boat. The bad news? The mermaids had her.
And when the choice was given, “Sing or the siren dies,” Jenny didn’t hesitate. She opened her mouth and sang.