Dark Muse (21 page)

Muddy turned back to the trio, still
attempting to find a way out that didn’t exist. “He’s not afraid.
He wouldn’t. Just couldn’t.” His friend faced death every day. It
didn’t make sense.

The sirens either lost sight of him or simply
didn’t care to pick through the mess when they had a captive meal
fifty feet in front of them.

Thoughts of dying churned though Muddy’s mind
and suddenly he realized he would soon reunite with his mom.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt much
, he mused as he kicked a flat,
ocean-smoothed rock.

Rocks? He picked it up and realized hundreds
surrounded them and beneath the bones. Corey noticed what his band
mate was up to and shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

Neither of the boys were athletes, but Muddy
figured that Corey had a much better arm, and aim. As the sirens
neared the entrance, they slowed and formed a half-circle before
them, sniffing out their prey, finalizing their attack.

“Ah, geez,” Corey said.

People dealt with impending death in
different ways. Muddy remembered his mom reading every book and
cooking every recipe she could before cancer took her. He
remembered asking why she read so much then mentally kicking
himself after he spoke the words.

“So, I’ll have more to talk about with all
those dead authors and chefs in the afterlife,” she’d quipped.

His buddy suddenly didn’t seem like the
joking type. They looked at each other and Muddy knew their faces
said plenty.

Let’s go out fighting like the Jets against
the NFL hall of fame.

Corey wound up and launched a baseball-sized
rock. It sailed upwards and hit the closest siren smack dab in the
face. She dove and crashed on the rocks.

Both cried in triumph and gathered more
rocks.

The siren raised her stunned body. Just
dazed, Muddy thought. She shook off the pain and took to the air
again, angered.

The others circled wider, but prepared to
dive. They would sacrifice one or two for a good meal, especially
with these odds.

But the pair wouldn’t go out without a fight,
even though neither had been in a good brawl before, not with Poe
and Lyra inside, needing protection. They called Luke to join in
the fight. He hesitated before leaving his twin, but saw the plan
for what it was. Each gathered rocks of varying sizes and began a
full assault on the winged beasts. One by one, the rocks hit their
targets, more connecting than missing. Still, hardly any sirens
dropped out of the sky. Those who did got right back up, even if
some flew broken and bloodied.

Death was visible and near to Muddy, just
like his mother saw hers coming. It calmed him. If he’d had time to
ponder it, he might have been amused, or more frightened.

The sirens wailed and sung, hoping to
hypnotize their prey and gain the easy meal. They began to land and
hit the shoreline in formation. With measured jumps, they advanced
on the teens like hungry checker pieces. Just like on a game board,
the teens had nowhere to go. They could only back into the cave,
but that only allowed another few yards of retreat.

Just maybe there was a tunnel, and they might
find it if they searched hard enough. Heck, maybe they could even
dig one.

“Retreat,” Muddy called, feeling like a
coward.

They raced inward and began feeling the walls
for something—anything. Yet their fingers found nothing. No doors,
no secret passages. Nothing.

The howling hit the entrance of the cave.
They were here to feed and the only escape was death. Muddy
wondered if he could end it quickly, but knew their beaks and claws
would be anything but subtle.

He stepped to the edge and looked at his
approaching executioners. They now numbered about a dozen, hovering
at the entrance, awaiting the call from the lead hunter. He
wondered briefly if they’d ever had to truly fight for a meal. Not
that this would be much of a battle, despite the group’s
intentions. His mind fought the siren song they now began to sing,
knowing his group couldn’t resist long.

Maybe falling under their trance would save
Poe and the others from suffering.

His mind raced with phantom sensations of
pain. His nerves previewed the tearing of flesh, the separation of
skin from bone and watching them devour him while he was still
conscious.

Mom, here I come. I love you. Dad, sorry I
was too caught up with my adventure to say goodbye.
He felt
like the loser so many said he was.

He stood in front of Poe. Maybe somehow, they
would just capture her, satiated after eating him and Corey. Maybe
they could use her voice to help them. Maybe…

What was taking them so long! Just get it
over with already
.

Thunder burst through the cavern as he began
his death prayer. It was if the heavens above broke in an avalanche
of sound. Like a Metallica concert with amps jacked to eleven. Like
every drum set and amplifier in the world blasted all at once.

Every siren dropped to the ground, crying in
pain from the noise.

Then the bass drums began.

Another rumble sounded right before them. A
roll of earthquake-like proportions hit and Muddy forced himself to
look.

Rocks, no, boulders rained down on them. Not
on them, but on the sirens. Falling on
all
of them. What the
heck?

Chapter Seventeen

“Otis!” Luke and Muddy yelled as they caught
a glimpse of the drummer standing amidst the cover of bones under
which he had hid. He
wasn’t
a coward. Muddy berated himself
for even considering that Otis’ survival sense had kicked in. Had
he been thinking straight, maybe he would’ve done the same.

The drummer stood taller than he possibly
could and pin-wheeled his arms. With each mallet strike, another
peal of storm assaulted their ears, and the rock wall above the
entrance. The mountain in which they hid crumbled from above. Not
all of it, just the outside crust, but still, it was enough to drop
car-sized boulders on the predators. One by one the rocks tumbled
and crushed the sirens. Many didn’t even have the time to scream.
The sounds of their bodies crunching under stone sounded sickening
and Muddy felt sorrow—for a moment—until he remembered they were
seconds away from chowing down on the entire band like human
buffalo wings.

Otis stood there, clamoring away while his
drum solo literally brought down the house. When he realized he had
saved his friends, he cracked one of his
Otis
smiles and
started to say something. And then he disappeared from view.

A curtain of stones caused them to dive for
cover. The avalanche managed to quiet their friend. Muddy would’ve
grinned if he hadn’t realized his best friend just died in front of
his eyes.

A rain of smaller boulders brought down the
last sirens, but along with it a curtain of stone, which quickly
built up a wall between the drummer and his buddies. They were
trapped inside the cave; safe, but trapped and separated from the
friend who’d just saved their butts.

No one could manage a word. Was Otis buried
as well? The drumming halted just as suddenly as it began. He
probably lay in a grave of rock, a way he would prefer to die but
still, likely dead beneath it all and just
gone
.

Maybe he’d managed to scurry backwards as the
avalanche happened, Muddy thought optimistically. Maybe he stood
there on the beach, alive. Trapped away from us and safe for the
moment, but only until the remainder of the sirens came for their
revenge.

Poe wasn’t the first to cry. Corey was.

“He sacrificed himself. Why? He might have
been able to bring down the house from inside, not out there with
them.”

Muddy attempted to speak, but couldn’t. His
friend was dead, just moments before he’d resigned himself to
death.

“He didn’t have to give his life for us,” Poe
whimpered. “We could’ve done something.”

“No,” Corey rebutted, “we couldn’t. It was
over. Done. We were toast. We were caught off guard and he was the
only one who thought to use Silver Eye’s training, just like Poe
did on the ship. He saved us. He knew what the consequences might
be, but we don’t know if his death is definite.”

Muddy prayed his friend was right.

“What now?” He found his voice. “Do we die in
here? There’s no exit.” He still felt like a wuss and hated himself
for it. In spite of the new powers he had and all this travel to
find Zack, what had he accomplished? Nothing. As usual, he was the
lesser brother, the weakest of the family.

“We dig,” Corey said giving an order in a
gruff tone of voice.

They would dig. For what, Muddy had no idea.
Maybe to find that Otis had killed all of the creatures, and that
they would be able to use the boat to find another route inside the
mountain.

Corey looked at his friend. He cocked an ear
to the rocks.

They both heard it. Scratching. From the
other side. From outside the wall of rocks.

Was it a siren still alive, trying to get to
them?

“I’ll kill you!” Muddy screamed. “I swear
I’ll tear each feather from your freakin’ wings and shove them down
your beak.”

The digging stopped. Something coughed.

“That’s not cool at all. Not very friendly of
you. Figured your diva guitar self would show eventually.” More
coughing broke up the sentence.

“Holy—” Corey turned to Muddy.

“Otis?”

“Who else would it be, dorkus? Justin
Bieber?”

“Hey, diva!” Corey yelled, slapping Muddy on
the arm, his happiness spilling over in tears of joy. “Dig!”

Rock by rock, they worked. They pulled and
dragged them all away. One by one, they removed the barrier and
prayed their work wouldn’t cause another cave-in. Within a
half-hour they found success. Poe screamed when she saw a bony hand
reaching through the debris and they pulled the drummer through a
tiny, but welcomed opening.

Soon after they pulled Otis from the rubble,
Muddy realized his condition. His brittle bones were broken all
over.

They lay him on the cavern floor and let him
rest.

“I’m fine,” he said, coughing up dust and
blood. “Really, it’s only a flesh wound.”

Poe began her song, hovering above him, a
lullaby-type tune they had never heard before. Corey joined in with
a vocal melody on his sax-type thing. They performed a duet in a
sweet harmony, lines weaving between each other.

Suddenly, Otis’ eyes glazed over in pain.
“Stop it!” It was hurting him.

But Muddy understood their intention.

She sung. Harder. He played. Louder.

Each note was somehow healing him. Musical
surgery. Did they know that they were doing it? How would they
know? Yet as he stared at the duo, he knew that they did know.

An hour later, the drummer slept, his bruises
visibly fading.

Muddy hugged Poe. Before he had a chance to
ask the question, she spoke. “You weren’t the only one who Silver
Eye gave secrets to. He figured this song might come in handy.
We’re lucky Otis wasn’t in worse condition.”

Muddy just grinned and wondered if every guy
always knew the exact moment he fell in love with someone.

Otis awoke soon afterwards, joking and asking
why the heck they hadn’t found the way out of this hole yet.

“There has to be a way. The slaves who worked
for the Tritons weren’t dumb,” Lyra said. “They wouldn’t have
sacrificed themselves for something they hated with all their
being. There must be a way inside.”

“What’s that?” Poe asked, feeling along the
wall with Luke. They stood against the far side, digging their
fingers into a carving. It contained no words or pictographs that
they could see. Then again, Poe didn’t normally operate under the
land of the sighted. Muddy never knew what to expect from her.
First, she’d healed Otis, and now this.

“There’s something here. Maybe it’s
nothing.”

Lyra jumped up. “Nothing here is
not
nothing. It’s something. It is.”

But how would they solve it? What could they
do?

The music. It had always saved them and might
one more time.

Corey shrugged. Sometimes, the answer existed
in a jam. Sometimes the best songs, the ones that changed people’s
lives, began with no apparent purpose.

“Should we?”

Otis picked up his drum and knocked off a rim
shot. “Like, you had to ask?”

Corey, Muddy, Poe and Otis began the jam in
E, their favorite, and played without purpose, just pouring
themselves into every note, hoping for something.

Each note lived, just like it did in the
River. It lived. It grew. Then it took on a life of its own and
found its purpose with the secret in the wall.

“I
told
you there was a way!” Lyra
hugged her brother, and then Muddy.

Poe smiled, winking at him. “People usually
do find a way to get what they want.”

Dust broke all around them as the wall
belched. They’d found the way of escape, an entry that opened into
the bowels of the mountain. Strangely, no one celebrated, probably
because they realized that their luck had to run out sometime. It
had been a long time since they’d lost a member of their group and
that scared Muddy more than the task ahead.

* * * *

The scrawling on the wall before them was
minimal at best. Muddy expected a code in some strange language.
Everything he read was code to him anyway with his dyslexia. How he
thought he would solve this problem was beyond him. Every class,
every day, he had to fight just to keep up with the others. Even
Poe whizzed through books in Braille when the school could afford
them. What did he have? He had a father whom many worshipped as a
writer; he was simply the stupid son. Even musically, he held a
distant second place finish in his family.

“What does it say?” He turned to Lyra and
Luke, hoping they could decipher what he couldn’t. After all, this
was their world, not his.