Demon Song (31 page)

Adriana didn’t sit. She stood there with obvious discomfort, clutching the black zippered bag for dear life. “I sent her back home. I’ll call when I need her again.”

Aww. Poor kid. Fifteen minutes on the mainland and she has to go home. “Couldn’t you at least have taken her to a water park or a movie or something?”

But she wouldn’t budge. “We’re already having difficulty keeping her from clandestine visits here. Having enjoyable experiences would only validate her behavior and make her want to disobey more.”

“See, I have just the opposite opinion. If you let her have a taste now and again, she won’t be as likely to disobey because she’ll know there’ll be a next time.”

Adriana shrugged carelessly. “But you aren’t her mother. Nor am I.”

True. It wasn’t my place to say how she was raised.

“Um … Celia?” Dawna’s voice cut in. “Were you going to introduce us or something?”

Oh. Oops. “Dawna Long, this is Adriana, high princess of the Pacific siren clan.” Then I looked at Adriana. “Adriana, Dawna Long. Although pretty soon it’ll be
Queen
Adriana, huh?”

That raised Dawna’s eyebrows. “Whoa. You’re getting the throne? Sweet.”

Adriana’s face flushed just a bit and her tone took on an impatience tinged with panic: “There will be no wedding unless we speak. Now. And this is not the place for the discussion.”

That wasn’t good. “I’ll have to check with the police to see if we can leave. If so, we can talk in the car on the way back home. It’s a long trip. We’ll have plenty of time and privacy.”

Her eyes flicked toward Dawna. “Can your servant be trusted to hold her tongue?”

The look on Dawna’s face was priceless—a classic
oh no, you didn’t!
expression. Unfortunately, my phone was still dead, so I couldn’t get a picture. Dawna opened her mouth to start spewing an offended response, but I interrupted with a laugh and a hand on her arm. We didn’t need to escalate. Adriana had a pretty thin skin, too. “It’s okay, Dawna. Remember that she’s a
princess
. Servants and attendants are all she knows.” Then I looked at my cousin. “Dawna is my best friend and an employee of my security company. She’s not a servant in the sense you mean. But yes, she knows how to hold her tongue.”

At least Adriana had the sense and courtesy to dip her head a fraction at Dawna after a second of consideration. “Apologies. I’m unaccustomed to princesses of the realm having …
employees
.”

Or friends, I was betting. Dawna looked slightly mollified and her expression went through a few transformations before settling on
oh, well
. “Yeah … well, I’m not accustomed to Celia being a princess. We’ll all have to adapt, I guess. How about I go check with the police to see if we can leave? I’ll meet you two at the car.”

I was going to suggest that, but it sounded less … princessy coming from her. “Thanks. If they still need me, just yell.” I was actually surprised they hadn’t come to get me already for a statement. I wasn’t sure what was up.

*   *   *

I was still unlocking the car when Dawna came up behind me, a strange expression on her face. “No statements required. They said they didn’t want to
inconvenience us any further
. We can go.” She shook her head and reached for the backseat door handle. “They were acting really weird. All smiles and apologies. Not coplike at all.”

That made me let out a little growl and look over the roof at the stunning redhead waiting for me to unlock the doors. “Did you manipulate them?” Because I sure as hell hadn’t.

She shrugged. “As you know, I’m not capable of that level of psychic manipulation.” Then she smiled. “But I am a princess, and soon to be a queen. They are not fools.”

“I’m going back to give my statement. I want the facts behind my shooting of that demon on the record.”

Now she looked petulant, as though I was being needlessly obstinate. “They won’t take your statement, Celia. In their minds now, your actions were totally justified … which is absolutely true. You’re being ridiculous. If it will make you use common sense, I assure you that I’m here for a crisis that’s equally as dangerous as your earlier one. The world truly
is
about to end.”

18

Okay, that
got my attention. Dawna grabbed my elbow. “Um, Celia. Maybe she’s right. Let’s go while the getting’s good and find a good place to hide and wait it out.”

I turned my head and gave her a look. “I’m pretty sure
waiting it out
isn’t an option during a world-ending crisis.”

“Hardly.” Adriana’s tone was as dry as desert sand.

I slathered on a layer of sunscreen. I’d finally figured out about how strong the smell has to be for there to be enough. It’s like sitting in a vat of coconut flakes—close to gag worthy. Still, it works.

Once we were in the car and on our way toward the 5, Adriana started to speak: “How much do you know of the first age of the sirens?”

“Not tons. That was the glory days of Atlantis, right? And when it sunk into the ocean after the battle between the sirens and demons, you all got relegated to a few small islands around the world.”

Dawna spoke up from the backseat: “I always thought the legend of Atlantis was really interesting. I’ll bet it was an awesome place. It’s so deep in the Atlantic trenches that nobody’s ever found it.” She moved forward slightly to catch Adriana’s eye. “Is it true they had electricity on Atlantis, even back then?”

Adriana shook her head. “I can’t speak to the question of electricity, although it is quite possible they harnessed the sea into batteries of a sort. But there’s a very good reason why Atlantis has never been found—it’s
not
on the ocean floor.”

That made me take my eyes off the road for a moment. “Come again?”

Her face held both embarrassment and fear. “Atlantis was the location of the
last
dimensional rift. Worse still, it was the sirens who caused the rift.”

Dawna’s jaw dropped and she unhooked her seat belt so she could lean forward. “Wait. I thought it was the sirens who saved the world.”

Adriana let out a sigh. “It was both. We had no choice but to save the world. We’d nearly ended it. Or,” she added with another frown, “more precisely, certain contingents of the sirens had.”

“Like Stefania, you mean?”

Adriana nodded at the corner of my vision. I changed lanes to get into the flow of traffic on the interstate. “Queen Eris had bred badly and her daughters didn’t hold the world’s children—the humans—in very high regard. Princesses Kraystal and Evana were of the opinion that the land would be better off without the human race. But sirens were at that time loathe to step too far inland, giving them no way to exterminate humanity. So they sought … help.”

“The demons.” I was starting to get sick to my stomach. “And now it’s started again, and I’m betting Stefania and Eirene had something to do with this new rift.” Adriana’s nod was answer enough. We drove for a moment in silence while I sorted out what I wanted to say. “So why change the history books? Why not just tell the world the sirens had a traitor, but you fixed it?”

Adriana shrugged. “Ego? Pride? I don’t have an answer. But I do know that even now my mother is going to be
furious
I’m telling you this.”

Oh! “So that’s why she was so angry when I asked about the Millennium Horns. Because it’s a reminder of the folly of the whole race.”

Now a deep sigh issued from Adriana. “No. Her embarrassment is from the
second
folly of the sirens—we’re not prepared for today’s crisis because the queens refused to believe the past could repeat.” I waited, and so did Dawna, until Adriana was ready to dish the details. After a long moment, she took a deep breath and continued, “When Queen Eris realized what her daughters had done, she sought the help of the greatest minds of the world. Human minds. To make the point to her daughters that sirens had to learn to coexist, she worked with members of what they considered a lesser race to come up with a plan to close the rift. It was a Greek philosopher and inventor, I believe, who first suggested the use of sound waves.”

I knew there had been some great minds in the past—after all, we still use techniques developed by the Romans and Egyptians. “I didn’t realize they’d experimented with that.”

Adriana nodded. “Of course. The island nations have long used conch shells as horns to signal over long distances. Humans were curious creatures. Where the sirens would choose any shell at hand to signal a boat or a friend across the island, the humans always tried to makes the tool better. This shape or that, the blowing hole larger or smaller to change the pitch. Queen Eris found people who showed promise and put them in the same room to offer ideas about what size and shape would work best. She then sent her best warriors out to find as many conch shells as she could and forced her daughters, as punishment, to find the one that would heal the wound in space.”

Dawna’s comment echoed my thought: “I’ll bet she didn’t give bathroom breaks, either.”

Adriana’s jaw set with either displeasure or concern for her own fate. “The warriors ensured they continued their task while the island was slowly eaten by the rift and the people were tormented by demons. The elder daughter, Kraystal, died of exhaustion after four days. It was Evana who found one that made the darkness waver and sparkle, after half of the island was gone. But it wasn’t enough by itself to seal the breach.”

Dear God. That must have been terrifying. For everyone. “So what happened? How did they seal the breach?”

Adriana raised her hands and frustration edged her voice: “I don’t honestly know and I’ve scoured our libraries. We know there were two horns and that the rift
was
sealed. We know Atlantis was swallowed into the rift in an implosion of immense proportions. There’s been no trace found because it doesn’t exist in this dimension anymore. I found notes from one scribe that said the method was written down and hidden—as were the horns. After so many sirens were found to be involved in the scandal, the queens decided it was best if the memory was forgotten, so no future generations would ever be tempted.”

My mouth opened and I spoke before I probably should have: “That is the stupidest damn thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Are they
idiots
?”

“Celia—” Adriana was tense, nearing anger. “You’re talking about my
mother
. For better or worse, she was—they were—trying to protect humanity.”

I let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, but if she was on the throne back then, what she and the others did was beyond foolish. Information is the only thing that keeps people safe. Diseases are cured by people sharing the clues from the dead; inventions are created from the ruins of failed experiments. Can we at least
ask
her what she knows?”

Adriana shook her head. “She doesn’t know anything. I did ask. I wasn’t joking when I said the memory was
forgotten
. They wiped their own memories of the event and left it to the scribes to keep the knowledge safe for the future. But either the scribes didn’t do as ordered or the records disappeared. It seems that there are pages missing from some books. But they’re very old texts. It could be that the sheets fell out and were thrown away by accident.”

I pressed my foot down harder on the gas in pure frustration and the speedometer needle shot past 70. “So, we have no horns, no instructions, and a bunch of mages who are going to exhaust themselves soon to contain a rift that will never stop growing?”

Adriana nodded and Dawna let out a groan of near despair. “Close. Very close. But only two of those are completely accurate.” My cousin pulled the black canvas tote onto her lap and extracted … a massive triton conch shell. “We have one of the horns. Our troops found it in Stefania’s palace after she died. There’s an engraving inside in old Atlantean cuneiform—
Eris, who mastered the dark.
It’s likely that she was the one to blow the horn. She had the most formidable power.”

I noticed the fuel gauge was getting dangerously low. “Let’s stop for gas. I want to look at that horn closer.”

In a few minutes the digital numbers on the pump were spinning upward and Dawna and I were admiring a shell that had survived for over a thousand years. I collect shells, so I can be a little jaded about them. But this was truly magnificent. “Look at the
colors
. I’ve never seen a triton conch shell that looked like this.” Unlike king and queen conch shells, which are a creamy apricot and have jagged points and spikes, a triton conch is long and smooth, with dark spots. This one had not only dark dots and spots but also what looked like patterns of gold flakes and burgundy sand. I ran a slow finger along the etched figures that Adriana said were writing. They seemed familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. “It sort of makes sense one of the horns is a triton. They have an amazing sound.”

Dawna was likewise running almost reverent fingers along the curves. “There are all sorts of carvings and paintings of the sea god, whether you call him Triton or Poseidon, using one of these to call his people to battle. And this particular puppy can seal the rift, huh?”