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The past has shown that new Sirens had trouble controlling their desire to kill any human within reach. For male Sirens, self-control proved to be even more difficult. Therefore, Alex needed to leave our house at least for the beginning of Rey’s Siren life. Just to be sure. However, with the VCP on the lookout, it wasn’t safe for Alex to roam around on the streets for when Rey would wake up. The only comfortable place I knew beside our house was Rey’s home three blocks down the street. So that’s where I went with Alex on the evening before Rey’s transformation was supposed to be complete. We jogged along the tree line until the house with the adjoining glassblower shed came up. There was no sign of a VCP car and so we let ourselves in through the unlocked door. It felt strange to be in this dark and dusty place without Rey. We had shared a few conversations at the kitchen table but mostly, I visited him in his work shed. That's also where Rey slept since his wife had to go to a mental institution. Ever since then, the rest of the house had remained almost untouched and therefore looked like a museum of antiques which hadn’t been taken care off.
“Why do you look so gloomy? I won’t be here for long.” Alex said.
“I don’t like to leave you here alone.” In case the VCP got him after all, he couldn’t even let me know about it.
“I should be the worried one since I am the one staying at a stranger’s house. Except for having watched him while he was sleeping for the past month, I don’t know Rey at all.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” I said, although probably it would have bothered him since he wasn’t used to having people in his house except me. But that didn’t matter now. Rey had to get to a new life either way. “We will get you as soon as we know he is doing okay.” I swallowed. In case Rey would turn into a hungry beast, we’d figure something out as well.
“Do you think he has anything to eat here?” Alex asked hopeful.
“How can you think of food in such a moment?” I rolled my eyes.
“That’s pretty much all I can think about these days.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Besides you of course.” He lifted one corner of his mouth.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too.” He kissed me and I tried to memorize the feeling of his lips, as so many things could go wrong in the next 24 hours.
“I’ll see you tomorrow”, he said. I stroked over the soft stubble on his cheeks for one last time and then hurried back to our house. Although Melissa - the one who had transformed me and had been a Siren the longest of us -was there to guide Rey as well, I had to make sure I’d be there when Rey woke up. After all, I was the one who started his transformation one month ago.
Melissa and Luke had installed themselves in the living room with an unobstructed view of Rey. It gave the picture of two people sitting at the deathbed of a loved one. Melissa’s shiny brown curls falling over her hunched back because she was checking Rey’s energy once more. I verified whether the chains around his ankles and hands were firm and well attached to the feet of the couch. These were the usual precautions since Sirens move about one hundred times faster than a human. Since a new Siren isn’t aware of that, she or now he would get killed by slamming into a wall right after waking up. Secondly, the chains were there to stop Rey from going on a hunt for human hearts right away. Hunting was our instinct, and Rey’d have to learn to control it. Hopefully, the new serum would make this process easier for him.
I sat down at the table with the others. “Was the atmosphere so tense when you changed me?” I addressed Melissa.
She smiled, and her green eyes sparkled. “Except that we were in Malaysia and went to the beach or explored the jungle while you were in transformation, it was pretty similar.”
My nervousness seeped into terror as I anticipated what was about to come. It could very well be that I had turned my kind friend into a human killing monster. I let go of a long breath.
“I’m nervous as well,” Melissa replied. “With you at least we could be pretty sure you’d turn out well, as your aura was right and the Orbiters themselves wanted you to become a Siren. However, with men, we've always been sure a disaster would happen if we transformed them.” Her eyes wandered to Rey.
“But so far, all the male Sirens transformed instantly,” Luke jumped in. “I was human and in the next moment, I was a Siren with all the abilities of a Siren. My body wasn’t ready for the changes. The one-month break is necessary and it’s the serum that caused the slow transformation in Rey. Which means Cathy did a good job.”
An image of beautiful Cathy flashed before my eyes. She had been the most typical Siren of all of us with her cold and unapproachable manner and her killer looks. It was her who had the right idea how to create the serum. Unfortunately, the idea demanded the death of a living Siren. She had been so convinced of her own idea and that the serum would work that none of us could talk her out of killing herself for it.
“If only he would wake up.” Luke traced along his jaw with his fingers.
“You think Rey might not wake up?” My eyes widened.
“I don’t know what to expect,” Luke replied.
Now the tension in the room was almost touchable. This would be a long night. We passed the time with some card games. It reminded me of the old times when I first arrived at their house and we needed something to do at nights, since we didn’t need sleep. Then, my thoughts wandered to Alex who was about three hundred yards away. Was he sleeping or lying awake with the same worries that plagued us? I made out his heart from all the other tubby thuds from the animals in the area. His was vital and strong, making my mouth water and bringing excitement to my body. He was safe from me though. Unless you count this one incident from my first hunt in Malaysia, where I almost ripped a poor human’s head off, I was never blindly driven to kill someone. Luke on the other hand still needed a chaperone when it came to his hunting time. We were hoping this would not be the case for Rey. Yet, should anything go wrong, we’d have to keep him in his chains until he’d be too weak to hunt on his own. I didn’t even want to say this out loud because it made the whole situation appear even more inhumane.
At the break of dawn, Melissa walked to the couch and sat down on the couch table. Luke and I followed her. Nothing showed that Rey might wake up soon. He only looked a few years younger than one month ago. His head was still bald because he had shaved it but had fewer wrinkles and marks from the sun. He now looked about fifty instead of sixty and would probably stay that way for the rest of his life. However long that may be.
Without warning, Melissa drew back in a brisk movement. I would have missed Rey's first moment otherwise. He had opened his eyes. My jaw dropped and the three of us stared at him in surprise. His eyes weren’t evil and dark like I remembered mine to be when I first looked into a mirror. No, they were a mixture of different shades of light blue, like the ocean in the Caribbean Sea. What made them even more unusual was that the pupil was missing. Therefore, I couldn’t be sure what he was looking at and whether he had seen that we were here. He must have noticed us though, for suddenly he wanted to back away from us and pushed himself further into the couch.
“Rey, it’s okay. Welcome back!” Melissa said.
He didn’t relax and only turned his head from Luke, across me to Melissa and back on me again. Then he noticed that he was tied up and pulled on the strings around his hands.
“It’s alright, we’ll tie you lose in a minute. How are you feeling?” I tried.
He closed and opened his blue eyes a few times in a quick manner. “Who are you?”
Melissa threw a worried glance at me.
“What do you mean?” I took a deep breath. “I’m Nathalie, this is Melissa, and this is Luke, don’t you remember us?”
Rey sucked in quick and short breaths. “No,” he stammered. “And why am I here like this?”
“You can calm down. We have talked about this. You agreed to become a Siren. We used the serum on you and now you have been in transformation for one month. It’s probably normal that you wake up a bit confused.” Then, I beamed at him. “But Rey, it has worked. You woke up exactly on schedule.”
He snorted and tried to kick his legs. “Why do you keep calling me Rey?” he pushed through his teeth while pulling down with his arms with all his might.
His question had left me speechless.
“Because that is your name,” Luke answered for me.
At that moment, the couch gave in to the strength of Rey’s arm and the chain including the white, wooden foot of the couch flew into our direction. All we could do was jump aside. With the momentum that Rey had gained he ripped his other arm free as well.
“Rey, stop!” I yelled and pushed down on his feet because he was about to yank of the chains around his ankles as well. His eyes that were such a calm and serene contrast to his behavior rested on me for a moment not letting me know what was going through his head. In the next moment, I was flying into the wall and the impact knocked every wisp of air out of my lungs. I sank to the ground, struggling to inhale, to exhale or to do anything. Oh boy, he was strong. Dazed, I watched how Melissa and Luke tried together to push him back down on the couch while talking to him insistently.
“Give us a minute to explain, please. We don’t want to cause any harm.” Melissa breathed.
“It’s normal to feel confused in the beginning, you have to get used to everything first.” Luke joined in.
“You are crazy,” Rey yelled.
It wasn’t a pretty spectacle to watch. Rey tried to fight both off, hitting and kicking as hard as he could.
I stepped in front of the couch, not joining their fight but trying to calm him down otherwise. “Please, Rey, we are your friends. Even if it might not look like it right now, you can trust us.”
He stopped fighting and eyed me suspiciously which gave Luke and Melissa some time to catch their breath. “I am tied to a couch, you are talking about Sirens and I don’t even know my own name or age and I should trust you? I’m sorry.” Before either of us saw it coming, he reached out for Luke’s and Melissa’s heads and smashed them together.
“Oh my God,” slipped out of my mouth. Luke dropped to his knees and Melissa sank onto Rey’s legs with her upper body. Finally, he ripped his feet free and jumped off the couch, a bit surprised himself how easily that had worked. The sixty-year-old man he was before the transformation couldn’t have pulled off such stunts.
“Rey, stay here, they will kill you!” I shrieked, thinking of the Orbiters. Or the VCP with their guns. “Or you might kill yourself. You have no idea how your powers work.” It was a miracle that he had stopped in the middle of the room after jumping up from the couch.
But he didn’t listen. In a second, he was at the door, coming to a halt just in time without crashing into it and another second later he was gone. I heard Melissa groan which made me think they’d be okay, but I didn’t have time to check on them. I chased after Rey. I was pretty sure his aim was his house because it might be something he still remembered. Unfortunately, that was also the closest place with a deliciously beating heart. Now Alex was in immediate danger after all. Exactly what we had wanted to avoid. I tried to run faster. Rey was still in my vision far ahead zigzagging past trees and road signs as if he hadn’t done anything else all his life. I only focused on him, trying not to lose sight, our surroundings swooshing by in a blurry color mix. We reached the city and he ran along the fences of Orleans’ shelter with me still on his heels. The longer we ran the more I asked myself whether he was trying to lose me or whether he simply didn’t know where to go. His house hadn’t seemed to attract him, and it was astounding that so far, he hadn’t shown any interest in humans at all. The way he had behaved I was sure he could easily break into the shelter and rip some hearts out if he wanted to. When he reached the coast, he ran along it, probably not realizing he could run across water.
“Rey, wait. Where are you going?” I called as no humans were around anyway. The streets were empty except for some parked cars along the road.
Rey looked around but kept running. We were far into the state of Rhode Island when he approached another shelter. I don’t know what had changed but suddenly, he came to a halt in front of the barbed wire fence. I swore because if anybody watched, people would have seen him appear out of the blue. I raced toward him to tear him away from there. However, in the next instant Rey had disappeared. Could he have been so fast that not even I noticed where he had run? Before I could ask myself, any more questions everything turned black around me. I stopped dead and waited for the dizziness to pass. After all, this wasn’t the first time the Orbiters had summoned me and therefore the darkness didn’t come as a complete shock. When the fog cleared away, I discovered Rey a few yards to the right of me. Finally, the Orbiters had interacted in a good moment. Apart from black eternity, there was nothing else around us. Not feeling anything solid below my feet gave me slight vertigo.
Rey pressed his palms onto his eyes. “What the hell is going on?” he yelled, and his voice echoed. “Why are all the people behind fences and how can it be that we’ve been on Cape Cod and moments later I run past the ‘WELCOME TO RHODE ISLAND’ sign?” He dropped to his knees into the black nothingness.
“I know, the world is in a mess. That’s why you had to become a Siren. We want to help everything go back to normal. To your second question, as a Siren, we can run fast. It’s very surprising though that you can maneuver with so much ease. I had to learn that first.”
Rey was now pressing his hands to his ears and had his eyes shut tight. Although I wasn’t sure whether he was listening, I had to ask. “Rey, when you ran past the humans or even when you stopped running, what were you thinking?”
He didn’t reply or move. I was growing nervous he’d actually lost his mind.
“Nathalie, your job is to restore the good faith into magic and not expose us to the world.” One of the Orbiters spoke, and Rey now crouched lower so he could hide his head between his legs. What could I say to him to make it better for him?
“It is you who told me to create a male Siren and you could have cut in a little earlier for my taste”, I replied boldly. If they still needed me, they wouldn’t harm me.
“We had to be sure of his intentions. He didn’t attack humans and doesn’t seem to be bothered by them, so that’s a good start. But the memory loss is a problem. You must try again.”
“What do you mean? Change another man?” I closed my eyes for a moment to block out reality. They couldn’t be serious.
“Numerous. If transformation takes one month, we can’t waste time waiting for the outcome.”
I gulped knowing they wouldn’t let me leave here until I’d tell them what they wanted to hear. “What will you do to the guys if they turn out like Rey?”
“He is a danger to us. I’m afraid we can’t let him go back.” The Orbiters whispered like an icy breeze.
I started to tremble but tried not to show it. “He was the first one and he is my friend. You have to give him more time to adjust.”
“You need to spend your resources on a positive outcome and not on babysitting.”
“Yes, but have you ever thought this might not be the right approach after all?” Rey hadn’t budged. I walked over to him and spoke to him like with a scared child. “Rey, we will get you back, don’t worry. Soon, the world will seem more understandable again.” I turned away from him and muttered, “I hope for everyone.”
“Enough.” It resounded from all sides and I clenched my jaw until it passed. “This isn’t only about your limited quarter on this earth and what is good for you. You must succeed in this or else everything will be meaningless.”
“I see something needs to be done. You must believe me, I will do everything I can to set an end to this, but you can’t make me change innocent men and rob them of their life afterward.” Fear had managed to creep into my body, nevertheless. What if they killed Rey now and he wouldn’t even receive a fair chance? “I won’t do that.” A sob escaped me. “I can’t.”
Rey finally brought out his head from between his knees and stared ahead into the darkness with his arms wrapped around his legs.
“I thought you were here for the balance of right and wrong.” I dug my hands into my head and hair. Having to hold on to something. “Not even giving someone a chance who struggles because of you would surely put too much weight onto the lever of wrong.”
“This isn’t about what used to be. It’s about what he is and how he behaves now.”
“You wanted male Sirens. Perhaps that’s how they are.” I breathed quickly, almost hyperventilating. “But I know he can learn. After my transformation, I would have reacted like him if I had had his strength. Would you have killed me then?”
The Orbiter which was only a whisper answered without hesitation. “Very well. This will be a one-time chance for Rey. If you can’t get him to agree with the terms of being a Siren, we can’t let him on earth.” By terms, they meant not to expose magic to humans and not to kill innocents.
“He will learn. It will be alright.” A heavy weight fell off my shoulders.
“And it can’t interfere with the fight against PaNacea.” One of the Orbiter’s boomed.
“We are on it. Claire and Themba are in Europe getting to the core of who’s PaNacea’s true leader.” Claire, Melissa’s creator, was doing her best because she felt very protective of our family. Themba’s motivation was driven by keeping in touch with us and making sure we didn’t create an army of male Sirens. He was one of the other few male Sirens who could control himself but absolutely disagreed with the creation of new ones after his own experience.
Of course, all of us could work more relaxed if we knew Roisin was okay, but I couldn’t push my luck any further this time and ask the Orbiters about her again.
“Pursue that but don’t forget that Sirens will be the key,” the bass voice of an Orbiter spoke to us. Shortly thereafter the blackness mixed in with grey and I knew they had sent us on our journey back. I lost sight of Rey in the huddle around us. Plus, I had to concentrate on not falling because the room was spinning so much. As quick as it began it stopped. With dread, I realized we were in Rey’s house. Alex dropped a can of corn salad, spilling its content over the floor.
“Seriously? Perhaps this is testing him a bit much.” I instantly stood between Alex and Rey but couldn’t hide my anger toward the Orbiters for having brought us here.
Rey stared at Alex intently, slowly getting up while brushing some invisible dust off his pants. The old Rey would have been furious with someone creating a mess in his beloved living room, as the room reminded him of the good times with his wife. The new Rey probably only concentrated on Alex’s fast pounding heart.
“I see you are alive again.” Alex swallowed, taking a step back.
Rey looked from him to me, snorted and then dropped onto the chair next to the bookshelf. “What is going on?” He put his head in his hands. “I don’t know anything about myself or this world but somehow I feel it’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
“You are right, not much is.” I breathed, still ready to fight him in case this was a trick. “But before I start you have to tell me one thing. How does his heartbeat make you feel?”
Rey looked over to Alex again as if he’d already forgotten he was even in the room with us. Rey narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Now, that you say it, why do I even hear it?”
A laugh escaped me. “So, you don’t want to,” I took a deep breath, “kill him?”
He sat up a bit straighter and tilted his head. “Why, should I?”
Alex let go of the air he had been holding. “No, of course not. So, this means, the serum has worked?” His voice was more of a whisper and his face brightened but fell somewhat when he noticed my own tired face.
“I would call it a partial success.” I turned to Rey. “Rey, do you recognize this room?” There still was a plastic cover on the couch like Rey had left it because he didn’t want any changes after his wife had to leave. Some pictures on the wall revealed what a pretty woman Evelyn used to be, and their sparkling eyes told a love story on their own. He had given up on his life when they no longer could be together because of her disorder. Could he really have forgotten all the happiness and pain, or did he not want to remember? I expectantly waited for his answer as he was studying the bookshelves. It was in this very room that we first met.
Yet, neither his tone of voice nor his words changed. “Why, should I?”
I gave Alex a meaningful look.