“All that doesn’t matter. We’re way beyond that. Just listen.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “I’ve been alive for thousands of years.” He stood on the bed, naked, completely exposed. “I make music and the energy of the audience keeps me alive.” His words were crazy but there was no madness in his eyes. “The Vandals I knew weren’t the kids who throw bottles off freeway overpasses. The Goths I’ve seen didn’t brood in black lace, they made war. And I’ve played for all of them. I’m a demon, born of the elements.”
She backed to the door, then twisted to find the handle.
“Misty, look at me.”
The handle turned in her hand. One last look. She had to. Maybe it could end whatever relationship she’d had with him and his music. A clean break might not hurt so much. But she knew that wasn’t possible. The pain sank deep, pushed by betrayal.
So just look at him
, she told herself.
See that he’s a just a man
. Then she could start trying to forget any of this happened.
Trevor still stood on the bed. But he was only half-man. The other half was beast. His legs were covered with thick hair, and he had cloven hooves for feet. The same dark fur that covered his legs was also thick on his forearms. The muscles of his chest were the same. And his eyes still reflected his energy and intensity. Above them, short horns curled from his forehead.
He reached a hand out for her.
She threw the door open and ran.
Chapter Five
The music in the hotel suite screamed at her as she hurried through. Wolfgang and his girls were a tangled mess on the floor. Lee still sat in the chair, his woman curled on his lap. They were all motionless. They could be dead. At least they were human.
Fucking high-heeled shoes slowed her down. She slammed out the front door and skittered to the elevator. It opened right away. She kept punching the lobby button until the doors closed again.
What the hell was in that room? Her drink had been spiked. She was tripping. But she had cracked the seal on the bottle herself. There were still ways to drug her. That was the only explanation. Everything else looked normal. The elevator was still too damn slow.
And when the doors opened, Misty anticipated the inferno. Cauldrons of hot oil, boiling the flesh off sinners. The devil with Trevor’s eyes. Tempting her to destruction.
He had been talking crazy. Now she felt like the one going mad. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Monsters like that didn’t exist. Man/beasts belonged in fables and myths, or painted on ancient urns.
The elevator finally creaked to a stop. She bolted out the doors before they were completely open. The old woman behind the main desk only shook her head sadly as Misty hurried across the lobby.
At least it wasn’t a blazing ring of hell. And no monster’s hooves thundered after her. Yet. She shook the thought out of her head. It was a hallucination. Some kind of drug and hot sex and the fantasy that she had some kind of real connection with a rock star brought it all on.
Night air blasted coldly through the open front door. She was back to reality, running down the street in ridiculous heels. She half expected to be joined by a hundred other women in impractical shoes trying to put distance between themselves and bad Hollywood dates. The nightly walk of shame. Counting herself among that stereotype pushed a blush of anger into her cheeks. But this was so much more than a busted one-night stand. Which made the fall to the reality that much more painful. She’d been so free with him. And with herself. It really did seem like something had changed in her.
For the worst. She’d made up emotions where there were none. What appeared to be a real connection turned out to be the trick of a madman. Then she hallucinated the typical rock star as some kind of satyr. But if the monster wasn’t real, why was she still running?
The terror that had first hit her when she saw him still cut sharp through her spine. Her heart pounded and her hands tingled with adrenaline. Fear wouldn’t let her stop running.
Let it be irrational.
Just get home safe.
Her heels tapped a steady quick beat down the alley where she’d first met Trevor face-to-face. The strange connection she’d first felt in the club continued in that fog. He was a hell of a performer, making her think it was all real. Even the kiss. All through the sex.
“Fucker,” she spat out under her breath. Rounding the front of the club, she kept hurrying to the parking lot where her car waited to take her back to the normal world.
Why the fuck did he have to pretend there was something more?
She might’ve slept with him anyway, shaken hands at the end of it all, and they could be on their way. Instead he built up a fantasy. And she helped reinforce it. Then he turned it into a nightmare.
She was on the sidewalk, almost at the parking lot, when a laughing voice barked out at her. “Walk of shame?”
An idiot guy and his buddy were on the other side of the desolate street. They used the parking meters as crutches for their drunk legs. The guy laughed again and waved her toward them.
“If you’d spent the night with me, you wouldn’t have to run home. I make a great breakfast.”
His friend chuckled, fumbling with his phone. Ordinary bullshit from asshole men. It happened every night. But what she’d just gone through was far from ordinary. Usually she ignored the idiots, just kept moving. Tonight was different.
“Fuck you.” Her keys were spikes between her fingers. She didn’t wait to see his reaction, but kept walking for the parking lot.
His voice chased her. “What? What the hell...?” Footsteps off the sidewalk.
The buddy moved with him. “Chill, bro.”
A glance over her shoulder showed the two of them standing, unstable, in the middle of the street. She continued quickly into the parking lot. Nighttime wasn’t safe. It never was, but the shadows now hid greater threats. Anything could descend from the darkness. Like angry satyrs. Impossible.
Her car was nearly the last one in the lot. The sketchy attendant with a choppy Mohawk sat in his kiosk, watching her fumble out her keys. His face was ghoulishly green in the bare fluorescent light. But he was still human. The only thing she’d seen change was Trevor.
With the car door open, she half sat in the driver’s seat and changed into her trail runners. Just a little more armor. Once they were laced tight, she slammed the door, locked it and started the engine.
Trevor’s voice sang at her. Cold sweat ran across her back as she punched at the CD player on the dash. The music stopped abruptly. Could she just stop the memories of this night, too?
The parking lot attendant didn’t even wave as she tore out the driveway into the street. And screeched to a stop in the middle of the street. The idiot and his bro were still there. Just a few yards away. Sneering hate distorted the guy’s face as he pointed at her.
“You can’t tell me to fuck off—”
“I can do whatever the hell I want.” She lurched the car forward and the guy scrambled to get out of the way. He knocked into his friend and the two of them tangled in an awkward dance to the curb. Her tires spun on the pavement for a second before catching and bolting her car forward. That threat was behind her, soon to be forgotten like all the other dicks who thought they owned the street because they were men. But the car couldn’t go fast enough, or far enough, for her to erase the memory of what happened with Trevor.
She thought about calling Kim to tell her everything, but tossed the thought out the window with the other trash on Hollywood Boulevard. Misty wasn’t even ready to admit to herself what went down tonight, let alone her good friend. Tomorrow, in the light of day, she might tell Kim. Once all the fantasies, good and bad, were dead.
A mass of taillights ahead slowed her. Goddamn street construction. They did it late at night, which meant no matter what time you were on the road, there was traffic. Slowly inching away from what she saw in that hotel room wasn’t an option, so she turned off onto a residential side street.
Only a couple of other cars had the same idea, so the pace was faster. The area was unfamiliar, though, and she quickly lost her bearings. The other cars were gone, leaving her without any movement to follow.
Two right turns should’ve taken her back to Hollywood Boulevard. But she felt like she was still heading south. It might get her home eventually, if that really was the right direction. A few more intersections and random decisions didn’t clear things up. Before the frustration grew too high, she pulled out her cell phone and skimmed for the map app.
The car lurched to a stop. The phone flew out of her hand. One brief second her eyes weren’t on the road and she hit something. Or someone hit her. The car was still settling from the impact. She turned off the engine, set the break and struggled out of the locked seatbelt. She took a quick breath to make sure she wasn’t hurt, then threw open the door.
Where was the other car?
“Shit.” She hurried out and around her car, terrified she’d hit a person. There was no pedestrian or animal or fallen tree wedged under the front wheel. “What the hell did that?” The wheel was snapped at the axle at a grotesque angle.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” she shouted, too rattled to care if she woke anyone. “What kind of car just fucking breaks?” As if the night wasn’t bad enough.
She started to reach inside her car for her phone, but the automobile lurched again. Jumping back, she saw the wheel fall off. The hood crumpled under an unseen weight. Jagged cracks raced like lightning over the windshield, and then the glass shattered.
“You’re just another hallucination.” She backed up. The car continued to sag as if something very large walked on it. “You can’t hurt me.” But everything felt far too real. Even invisible beasts. Whatever world she’d stepped into couldn’t be escaped, no matter how far she ran.
“Trevor, if that’s you, just stop. Let me leave. Just let me go and I’ll never tell anyone about what happened. Or what I thought happened.” It was insanity to be talking to an invisible monster. “Stop. Stop now.”
The car door twisted and tore from its hinges. Large footprints emerged in the scattered glass. They came right for her.
* * *
Trevor jumped from the bed, transforming his legs away from the hooves. Landing on human feet, he hurried to collect his clothes. Charging after her naked was not the best way to regain Misty’s trust. He heard the front door to the suite slam.
He spat a string of insults in languages alive and dead, cursing himself for showing her the demon in him. Modern mortals didn’t react well to that form.
But the bond had been so clear. Everything had shaken. She was his Muse. Unbelievable but unmistakable. The legend come to life.
His
Muse. Hadn’t she seen it? Couldn’t she feel how it all changed? The sex was incredible, but it was more than just two pounding bodies to reach those heights.
Shirt, jeans and boots on, he was out the bedroom door and into the suite. He was two steps in when Wolfgang and Lee untangled themselves from their women. Trevor got half way to the door when they blocked his path.
Lee held his woman’s shirt in front of his crotch for some modesty and put his other hand on Trevor’s chest to slow him down. “She ran, let her go.”
Wolfgang, completely naked, kept his voice low. “What the hell did you do?”
Lee glanced over Trevor’s shoulder at the woman he left in the chair, then pushed on Trevor, angling him toward the bathroom. “This ain’t like you. Black magic from the Philosophers?”
The mortal women in the room, no matter how languid with satisfaction they were, couldn’t be allowed to hear what he had to tell Lee and Wolfgang. The urge to chase after Misty still burned in him. And the hunger. But more than just the selfish need to feed, he hated the look of fear on her face as she ran.
He let his friends lead him into the bathroom, and closed the door.
“I scared her. I showed her the demon.”
Wolfgang’s eyes went wide. “What the fuck did you do that for?”
“I know things have been a little dark for you, brother,” Lee said, “but you two were doing fine on the couch. Showing a girl the demon is no way to get her off.”
“And chasing them through hotel corridors is just going to get you arrested,” Wolfgang added.
“You assholes don’t get it.” Trevor was just about ready to turn his fists to stone and break down the walls between him and Misty. “She’s my Muse.”
His bandmates just stared back.
Finally, Wolfgang spoke. “Bullshit.”
Lee, though, was more ready to believe. “It’s real?”
Trevor nodded. “She changes everything.”
“How?” Lee asked, a slight chill of fear in his eyes.
“I don’t know.” The how of it didn’t matter. He was driven only by the woman out there, running away. The hunger increased. She must be moving farther and farther away. His Muse fled. The fable became real just in time to tear his heart out. “But I thought she understood. I mean, the air was lighting up with energy. Completely new. All of it from her. She was part of it, creating it. Not just reflecting the power back like the crowd. I thought she knew. I fucked up and told her what I am. I showed her.”
“Idiot.” Wolfgang shook his head, disappointed.
With his forearm against his chest, Trevor pinned Wolfgang to the wall. “You don’t get it.”
Searing heat blazed out of Wolfgang’s skin. Trevor turned to impervious stone and pushed harder on his drummer. The other demon only grinned and let the fire burn brighter, blistering the paint on the wall.
Before the tussle could escalate into a genuine fight, Lee’s granite-hard body slammed into both of them. All three men separated. The fire receded from Wolfgang’s body, but the challenging smile remained.
Trevor shook his head. “You don’t need to understand. Just don’t try to stop me.”
Lee kept his voice even, but the gravity was understood. “Never seen you chase someone like this. I...I still don’t know it’s real, man. The Muse...” He fixed his gaze on Trevor. “You reach out to hurt her, we will stop you.”
“That’s not why we’re on this earth. I’d never hurt her.” Again. Her terror before fleeing would haunt him as long as he lived. Which might not be long if he couldn’t find her.
“If it’s true...” Lee stared through Trevor, at some distant point.
“It’s real,” Trevor reassured him.
Lee’s eyes barely focused. “But she’s just a mortal.”
She’d started that way. Trevor had felt her change, though. The energy they’d shared couldn’t have come from human flesh and blood. “No one knew what the Muse was supposed to be. It was just a fable. For all we knew she could rise out of a volcano or walk into a show after paying her twelve-dollar cover.”
“Why now?” Wolfgang sneered.
“How the fuck should I know?” The cloud at the edge of his thoughts had started that morning. “There were no divine voices explaining things. What do we know about any of this? We live from one show to the next.”
Lee grabbed his arm. “But a mortal? That means that any of our Muses could be out there now. Or not born yet. Lines of fate just waiting to converge.”
“Fate slammed me tonight. And if I don’t find her, I’ll die.”
Silence as that sank in to Lee and Wolfgang. Lee pulled his hand away from Trevor, who shouldered past the other demons. They were two of only a few beings who understood what it was to live the way he did. And now they couldn’t even share that. He was alone. No. His life was now tied to only one other in the world. Misty.
He stalked out of the bathroom. How far was she? How could he explain the truth without having her run again?