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Because I was nothing in the face of that song. Nothing that mattered.
The siren called, and we all shuffled forward on our knees, gazing adoringly up at the living fountain of flesh towering over us. Even the Blue Fairy had dropped his rod and reel, caught up in a song that went for the soul. I could barely see my surroundings, feel the tough grass scuffing beneath my knees. The siren wanted us, and not for anything good. Death would be the kindest thing that would happen to us, once the siren had clasped us to its unforgiving bosom. I knew that, and I didn’t care. I wanted to worship it forever, worship it with my body until I died of it.
Except . . . there was another voice in my head and in my heart, another face before my eyes. My Molly, my sweet Molly Metcalf, who had put her mark upon me long ago. As soon as I thought of her, I could feel the torc blazing coldly around my neck, trying to alert me to the threat . . . and those two things together gave me all the strength I needed to stop moving forward. I slowly turned my head to one side, looking away from the terrible, wonderful thing before me. It was all I’d ever wanted, right there waiting for me, and I fought it with every ounce of strength and will I had. I turned my head away, my whole body twitching and trembling with the effort, and saw another face, looking at me.
The Blue Fairy had stopped moving too and had turned his face away from the siren. Perhaps because of his nature, perhaps because he also wore the golden torc, perhaps because he was half-elf. Or maybe he was just stubborn, like me.
We looked at each other, and I slowly turned my gaze to the rod and reel lying abandoned before the Blue Fairy. He looked at it too, and with the last of his strength, he grabbed the reel and threw it into the golden pool, hook and line and all.
The line snapped taut again, dragging at the siren’s fleshy orchid head, distracting its attention. I forced myself up onto my feet, turned my back on the siren, and lurched over to the communications centre. I had to record the siren’s call before it was sucked back down again. I subvocalised my activating Words, and my armour flowed over me in an instant, sealing me in and protecting me from the world. The golden strange matter encased me from head to toe, and just like that the siren’s song was nothing more than noise. I hit the record button and turned quickly to see what was happening.
The siren was no longer held to this world, but it didn’t want to go. It had been defied, and it was angry. It had found an endless feeding ground, and it would not be denied. It towered high above us, flaring and pulsating; and even through the protecting filters of my golden mask, this extreme and awful creature was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The Blue Fairy was on his feet but halfway transfixed again, and the others were very close to the siren now. So that left just me. Because that’s a Drood’s job: to be the last man standing, and stand between humanity and all the threats from outside.
I walked right up to the siren and hit its glistening side as hard as I could with a spiked armoured hand. My fist slammed right through the pulsing, sliding substance, and my armoured arm sank deep into the shifting body, right up to my shoulder. The siren screamed, a terrible agonised sound that blew away all its song’s effects in a moment. The others scrambled back away from the pool, away from what they’d been worshipping just a moment before. I jerked my arm out and drew back a fist to strike again. The siren plunged into the glowing golden pool, sounding for the dimensional depths where it belonged. Where prey knew its place.
I armoured down, the golden strange matter retreating into my torc. I wasn’t ready for the others to see me in my armour just yet. They’d look at me differently. I stood by the side of the loch, savouring the quiet. With the siren gone, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what had been so entrancing about its song, and that was probably for the best. The others were back on their feet, their eyes still a little lost and dimmed, but they were recovering fast. They were professionals, after all.
Katt glared at the Blue Fairy. “The next time you have a brilliant idea, feel free to keep it to yourself!”
“We have a recording of the call,” said Blue, giving her back glare for glare. “Or at least, as much of it as the console could handle.” He looked over the equipment, muttering to himself. “We’re missing most of the higher and lower frequencies, which is probably just as well, but what we have should do the job. More than enough to bring Nessie at the gallop, if only to see who’s calling. Honey, I’m patching the recording through to you now. Are you getting it?”
“Got it. There’s just under a minute of the call recorded, so I’ll put it out as a repeating loop. Yeah, that should do it.”
“A thought,” Peter said suddenly. “If what we’re broadcasting is a mating call . . . won’t everything in the loch with working glands come ru
“Thank you for that mental image,” said Katt. “Which I just know will haunt my nights for years to come.”
“I’ll put the call through some filters,” said Honey, “so only really large organisms should be affected.”
I leaned in close so I could see her face on the tiny screen. “Are you sure you can drive that thing?”
“Of course,” said Honey. “I’m CIA. I can drive anything.”
“Want to bet she crashes the gears on her first try?” Peter murmured to Walker.
“I heard that!” said Honey. “Okay . . . Going down, people. See you in a while.”
We all looked around just in time to see air bubbles frothing all around the yellow submersible as it drifted away from the bank, and then it sank slowly and with great dignity beneath the dark waters of Loch Ness. It was soon gone, not even a yellow glimmer in the water, with only the slowly widening ripples on the surface to mark its passing.
We all crowded around the communications console, watching the data coming in and listening intently as Honey kept up a ru
Time passed, and after the first half dozen false alarms, we all started to relax a bit. Two hours passed, then three. If anything, it got colder. A heavy wind blew the length of the loch, driving its chill through our clothes and into our bones. We all ended up huddling together like sheep, to share our warmth. The sky was completely overcast now, the light fading, and it occurred to me we’d better scare up something while there was still enough light to photograph by.
The submersible prowled up and down all twenty-four miles of the loch, and most of what lived in the waters gave it a wide berth. The submersible’s powerful lights hardly penetrated the underwater gloom at all, and while the sonar picked up shape after intriguing shape, Honey had to be almost on top of the object before she could identify it. So far, the most promising near misses had involved several hopefully shaped sunken tree trunks, half a dozen shoals of fish, and a couple of quite surprisingly large eels. And that . . . was it. Honey grew increasingly short and bad-tempered in response to our well-meaning suggestions, and she ploughed more and more desperately up and down the loch. I think the overcrowded confines of the submersible’s cabin were getting to her. Her sonar did pick up a great many large cave mouths sunk deep into the sides of the underwater banks, some of which led on into whole cave systems farther in than the sonar could follow.