Among Demons : A Siren's Voice

Ch. 5 : Into the Past

I moved to sit at the dining table while the others went about their business, talking or gaming or eating as the minutes ticked by.

My eyes soon followed the three women who were standing near the work desk and mini-stage in front of the three-way mirror. Devin stood on said stage, complaining about not wanting to stand still for so long while Nyla whined back at her about a dress. Sammy simply giggled and added things here and there until Devin huffed and removed her loose t-shirt, leaving her in a tight tank top and skinny jeans. Then Nyla pulled out a long measuring tape and began to move around Devin, taking all kinds of measurements multiple times.

They all looked so calm. Blissfully happy as they went about their day doing everyday things… like a peaceful family. It was nice to watch and I found myself smiling for a moment before my mind wandered to my own family.

My parents were both Demons who had gotten pregnant young, marrying after my older sister was born. My mother, a Siren, had devoted herself to raising my sister Harmony while also trying her best to share the heavy burden of adult life with my dad. They hadn't really been in love with each other, having hooked up at a party hosted by mutual friends. But neither wanted to abandon each other after committing to stepping up and taking responsibility for what happened. And three years later, during a peak fertility cycle that somehow struck them both at the same time, I was conceived.

My dad named me Loralyn, hoping that I would turn out to be a Vampire like him. But as I grew older, it became clear that I was like my mother and sister. Even after realizing this, my dad still doted on me and spent most of his time playing with me. The main reason for this was because my mother had become attached to my sister, focusing all her attention and affection on her. So I grew up adoring my dad and spending special moments with him, while my mother and sister went off to do their own thing.

Sadly, everything changed when our mother died when I was twelve.

Harmony went off the deep end after that and started acting out against the world. Her hatred towards our dad made things at home a nightmare. And the sudden disgust and annoyance she aimed at me broke down my self-confidence quickly.

I was especially thankful to my dad during this time because he would come to me every time she started to tear me apart in any way. He would hug me and try his best to calm her down and talk to her, but she'd just turn on him before rushing out of the house. Things stayed this tense for a couple years while my dad continued to try over and over again to connect with Harmony, only to get brutally shut down. On rare occasions, her anger at him for even speaking to her would explode out of nowhere, ending with her cursing him out, slapping him and disappearing from home for a few weeks.

It was after another one of these fights that something changed in my sister. She would shut down in the middle of a fight, losing all energy to keep going like she normally would. Sometimes she would just roll her eyes and ignore both my dad and I completely instead of starting a massive fight like she always would.

Finally, after a few months of this strange calm that fell over our house, my sister stepped out of her room in a thick sweatshirt… during the height of summer.

Dad had told her gently to take off the sweatshirt, reminding her that our A/C wasn't working right. But she just shook him off and went around the room, absently glaring at things here and there. As the hours ticked by, I watched her get flushed and drip with sweat, worrying both me and dad. But again, she just ignored us or brushed us off when we voiced our concerns. Then, out of nowhere, I heard my dad blatantly ask her if she was pregnant, stunning me completely.

This pushed my sister over the edge and another fight broke out because of it. It was during the yelling that I learned that our mother had acted the same way as her during the first few months that she was pregnant with Harmony. She had tried to forget about it, not wanting to acknowledge the growing life inside her and choosing to wear large, bulky clothes to help conceal it. But upon hearing this, Harmony stopped shouting, glaring daggers and me and dad before she raced out of the house.

She was gone for months this time around, somehow managing to hide from everyone that our dad sent to look for her.

We worried about her safety and possible pregnancy during those many months, sometimes going out until late at night trying to find her. But not a single trace of her was found until later that following spring.

I had turned seventeen a couple weeks before this day, when a knock on our door prompted me to go over and answer it. I still remember how I felt, shocked beyond words to see my sister standing there with a baby car seat hanging from her arm and a diaper bag sitting by her feet. My words tripped over my tongue as I tried to say multiple things at once while she just stood there, staring at me coldly.

Then, with a frigid cold voice I hadn't heard from her before, she said, "I don't want this… keep it, if you want."

She then roughly handed me the car seat, turned on her heel, and stalked away from home once again.

I tried calling out to her, struggling with the car seat in my arms and stumbling a little over the diaper bag. But she didn't even look back as she walked away. Not one single glance at the baby boy that started whimpering, making me freeze and look away from her.

My little nephew was a sweet and chubby little baby with blond hair a few shades darker than mine and my dad's honey blond locks. His ringed eyes were a beautiful combination of gray and pale green. And he had a cute birthmark on his shoulder in the shape of a wiggly hourglass. He was absolutely adorable and my dad and I instantly fell in love with him.

Of course, dad and I had questions.

Who was the father of this sweet baby boy? Did he know he'd gotten my sister pregnant? If he did know, had he rejected his son? Where had Harmony walked off to after leaving him with us? Was she safe? Had she been there this whole time? Why did she tell me to keep him? Why did she act as though she didn't care about her own baby?

Part of me dwelled on that last question the most, tossing up all sorts of possibilities as answers every time I thought of it.

At one point, months after she left Alder with us, my mind wandered towards a bitter thought that quickly angered me. Yet as I thought about it more and more, I wondered if maybe I was right, only to feel guilty for thinking of my sister that way. But my dad soon stunned me when he voiced the same thought out loud, partially confirming my suspicion.

"He looks nothing like her."

I nodded slowly as I stared at my little nephew in my arms, recalling how many times my own mother pointed out how I looked nothing like her, while Harmony was almost a perfect clone. Yet here was baby Alder without the same pale brown hair that both mom and Harmony had. Even her ringed eyes were completely different too, her eyes glowing a lighter shade of amber than my own around an almost neon looking pink.

Alder looked more like our dad as he grew older, turning out to be a Vampire just like his grandpa and sporting the same outer ring of gray that dad and I both had. And as time continued to flow, my baby nephew showed more and more personality traits that resembled his grandad. They both liked to watch sports, regardless of what was playing. Fast food was only good as a rare treat for them as well. They were both calm when talking to others yet held a deep distrust for strangers that gave them a bad first impression. They even liked the same colors and refused to drink blood straight from the source unless absolutely necessary.

It was cute, watching my dad interact with his mini-me, bonding more than he ever did with his grandson's mother.

Then came the day that our whole world broke apart last year.

It had been a day like any other for the three of us. Dad had just gotten back from work, Alder was sitting on the dining table doing his homework, and I was busy in the kitchen getting the ingredients for dinner prepped. Alder was seven now and growing rapidly, with growth spurts that made his appetite nearly bottomless. So I was making sure that we had enough blood pouches that I could use to mix into our food and drink when someone knocked on our door.

I remember feeling a strong urge to run and a wave of panic flooded me as I stepped away from our cooler, peeking out to watch my dad answer the door. My eyes remained glued to his back as he held a soft conversation with whoever knocked, my body moving on its own as I stepped closer and closer to my nephew. Then, making both Alder and I scream, the loud bang of a gun rang out and my dad staggered back, both hands clutching his stomach. I rushed towards Alder who tried to get to his Grandad, tears beginning to stream from his ringed eyes.

“R-r-run…” My dad choked out, slamming his back into the wall as he coughed up blood, his ringed eyes exploding with ink as he continued to bleed. “Get… away…”

And I tried. I tried so hard to protect my nephew, to make it out of our home and escape as a group of armed Humans rushed inside. But I wasn’t fast enough and ended up trying to fight them off while I kept Alder behind me. I used my Siren’s song on the main group of Humans, managing to kill a few and knock the others unconscious. I used all of my strength to suck in as much air as I could to get rid of the threat and at the very least protect Alder.

But I wasn’t enough.

My throat began to close as I choked on tears, the sight of my father, bleeding as he begged us to run, clouding my vision. And because of this, I didn’t see the Human sneaking up behind me until he pulled Alder away from me. The crushing panic I felt then was all consuming and I kept my eyes glued to the knife the Human held to my nephews throat.

That was when I gave up and let them take me.

The Humans used some sort of handcuffs that were speckled with black things that made me even more nervous, stinging and burning against my skin once they slammed on me. I was also force fed a gray-ish lavender potion that I later found out was specifically made for Sirens, blocking our ability to sing and use our powers at all. Thankfully, it wasn’t anything like the potion I was suffering from right now and I was still able to talk. But once my nephew and I were loaded into their cars we were blindfolded and I tried to keep a tight grip on his little hands, grateful that they let us sit beside each other, at least during the drive.

Once the cars stopped moving, we were forced out, with Alder screaming for me as he was pulled out of my hands. I called back to him, even going so far as to beg these Human beasts to return my nephew to me as I was being dragged away. But no one responded to my pleas, though some did laugh or kick me before I was shoved into a cell.

They removed my blindfold and cuffs and told me to make myself at home, mocking me over the fact that my precious nephew was in the cell right next to mine. Yet they refused to tell me if he was to the cell on the right or left of me.

I still remember the deep scent of earth that filled my nose as I took in my new space, realizing that it was a room carved into the ground with support beams made of metal and a heavy metal door. A small prison-like bed, a desk, chair and barely covered corner bathroom were the only things inside it. And though the Humans provided me with meals twice a day, I was still beaten and made to drink the same lavender potion that kept me defenseless. They also chose to mock me, beat me or simply ignore me when I would ask them questions, demanding to know why we had been targeted and why we weren’t simply being killed.

It wasn’t until what I guessed to be a couple months or so passed that I learned the dark truth, and I began to fight them all as hard as I could everytime the door opened. I refused to allow any one of them to touch me. I refused to even listen to a single word they spoke to me. And I spent the next year plotting, planning and learning as much as I could about my captors, my location and any and all possible gaps in their security that I could use to my advantage.

I would’ve stayed in that cell for just a little longer, still carefully building up to my escape, until I heard that my nephew, along with a few other captive children, had already been moved to some other location two days before.

That was when I took a chance and forced my body to puke up the potion I had been given so I could escape, also losing all the food I had eaten as well and becoming weak and dizzy. But I still managed to regain some of my strength to fight my way out of there. I just hated that I was now rendered mute and that I had grown so weak. I nearly died in those woods after escaping and even collapsed a few times while I continued to hike. But I was better now, though still unable to sing.

I just needed to find out where my now eight-year-old nephew was being kept, and figure out how to safely rescue him…