My Sisters in Death (Siren Suicides, Book 2)

Chapter 10. Green Stage

All of this looks surreal, like an ink drawing on dark evening paper. As the deafening crack splits the air, I flinch and cover my ears, but can't stop staring. The whip is like the black, delicate outline of an angry snake. It produces a momentary gust of wind, within one second of unfolding, and twists, snaps, and yanks Canosa from mid-air. Her glowing body leaves a shimmering trace in the fog as she slams into the ground by my father's feet. I hear both Ligeia and Teles quietly retreat behind me, slinking back into the woods. Stinking cowards! Without their alpha and her commands, they're nothing.

I stand still, studying my father's face. He's killed so many, and he came for me. Most likely, not out of love, but from his obsession with purification and his desire to rid mankind of siren corruption with their lethal, perverted, love-inducing songs. Love. If love even exists in his vocabulary. It must have, at one time. I wonder if his mother ever loved him, my grandmother whom I never knew. What did she do to him that screwed him up so badly, to make him hate women with such ferocity? What did she do?

Canosa writhes under my father's foot, shrieking. He cracks the whip again, close to her head, not to kill her but to torture her, I'm sure. Because, at their close distance, if he wanted to, he could've already evaporated her into a million drops, making her vanish like a puff of fog. He cracks his whip again, and I flinch. He watches me, watching the effect it has on me, and smiles. It creeps me out and I shudder. This is the smile of a killer.

I don't know why I'm still standing here, I must do something.

With her white hair spread wide in a torn blanket over the grass between two rows of wooden benches, her face and body glowing in almost full darkness, Canosa stubbornly begins singing her song. Perhaps it's to irritate my father, or perhaps it's a last attempt to kill his newly ignited soul.

"We live in the meadow

But you don't know it.

Our grass is your sorrow,

But you won't show it.

Give us your pain,

Dip into our song."

The entire time she sings, Papa cracks the whip until, finally, he makes her stop.

Each time the bullwhip cracks, a wave of pain similar to an electric surge passes through my body, shattering all hope and longing and desire. Yet I'm unable to move, enthralled by the violence of the scene. And deep inside, there's the satisfaction of revenge. This is what you get, Canosa, for making my father fall in love with you. It should have been my mother. He never should have met you.

At last, she is quiet. My father raises his head. It's so dark now that I can barely make out the white of his eyes.

"This is what happens to women who don't listen," he says, directing it to me.

My heart aches and I grasp the beam harder, to stay upright. I swallow.

"This is what will happen to you."

My soulless chest rings with horror at his words. Surely, if he wanted to kill me, he would've done so by now. Still, I can't move. It's as if someone shot industrial strength staples through my feet and bound me to the stage.

"This is what women were made for, to haul water. That's all they're good for." He grabs a handful of Canosa's hair, wraps it around her head several times and stuffs the end in her mouth. She lies motionless, stripped of her mane, unconscious from the repeated blasts.

I shake, glowing in the dark like the silver of a freshly caught fish, trembling at the end of Papa's line. I fight the familiar urge to run, run for my life.