The Girl in the Water

Chapter 17

It took several moments for the sounds to filter their way through the fog in Roan's head. His eyelids fluttered heavily, closing several times, while he struggled to understand what he was hearing. There was the roaring of fire – it was a sound he would know anywhere. But the other noise assaulting his ears...

Was someone singing?

A memory bloomed into being in Roan's throbbing head. He was in Ramsay's bar in Chicago, and it was karaoke night – the small, warm space was crammed full of people laughing and having a good time. It smelled like alcohol and cigarette smoke, and a cheesy disco ball shone from the stage. A young woman with a Mohawk was on stage, singing terribly to Britney Spears while the rest of the alternated between laughing and singing along.

"How can you stand this?"

The words echoed as if they came from down a long tunnel. Roan was vaguely surprised to realize that the words were coming from his own lips.

Beside him, Ramsay was filling a pint with tap ale. His brother looked like him, except darker – his skin was more tan, and his blonde hair looked more gold than white. But the eyes were the same; molten gold and flecked with green. They met Roan's eyes now, warm and happy as he smiled.

His dead brother shrugged as he topped off the glass. "You do what you gotta do for the people you love." He told Roan simply.

His words echoed too, and they carried Roan into darkness.

The singing didn't go away. When Roan forced himself to focus, he realized that it wasn't the Mohawk girl singing – the voice was male, and he didn't recognize the song he was singing. His voice was all wrong; it grated and scraped along Roan's eardrums with something that sounded like madness tinting it like poison. Roan's eyes ached, and he almost drifted off again when his mind finally processed what he was hearing.

"Gods and Goddesses, hear my cry! Royal for royal, blood for blood, please restore what once was mine. I give you Emery, the last of them all, and hope with fervor, that you hear my call – "

Roan's eyes flew open with a snap, and what he saw before him made him cry out in horror.

He couldn't believe what he was seeing at first. It looked like a scene from an awful action movie – the bad guy danced and sang in circles around a giant stone cauldron, the giant fire behind him roaring as if it was singing along. The orange light made terrifying shadows in the walls – hellish figures and wraiths melted and shifted into being as Greyfire danced.

And above him, suspended like some awful effigy, was Emery.

Roan felt his heart rip in half as the light illuminated her side profile. Her head hung low, her chin almost brushing her chest, and she swung gently from the rope that held her up. Her shirt was in tatters, and blood dripped slowly down her figure like candle wax; the droplets sailed down noiselessly into the waiting cauldron below.

The sound that ripped from Roan's chest was animal-like in its anguish and fury. Greyfire's song was cut off as he turned to look at Roan – when he stopped dancing, the figures on the walls stopped dancing too.

"Oh, so you finally found the energy to join us." The older waif said disinterestedly, his pale face disdainful in the light that flickered on him.

Roan tore at the chains around his wrists, fury and grief pumping through him like a drug. "I'll kill you, you monster." He snarled. The chains rattled and clanged as he pulled at them again and again, and fire blazed out from his hands like snakes. "I'll rip your throat out for what you've done!"