by Kat Turner
“Are you attempting to manipulate her into moving out again, Kris? Because your dodgy tricks won’t work. And right now it isn’t safe. I mean it.”
“Tilly, sweetheart, go put those in the car. I’ll send some people over in the morning for the rest of your things.” The supermodel came into full view, an impeccable chignon knot the color of champagne atop her head and facial features frozen into permanent, plasticized pseudo-youth.
Brian held on to Tilly, who pouted and stomped a bare foot. He said, “Kris, listen. There’s something going on right now, something awful, and I need you to take it seriously. There’s been a threat on her life.”
Kris sashayed over in a long-limbed, runway glide, stopping a couple of feet from Brian and Tilly. “Brian, honey, you’re so predictable, You’ve gone and offended someone significant in the Order of the Priory of Knife and Phoenix, haven’t you?”
Helen set her present on an end table, fished her journal and a pen from her purse, and wrote down that fucking ludicrous name. “Someone? Anyone in particular you know there who would make death threats if offended?”
Kris made a huffy noise and slid Helen the hairy eyeball. “Are you going to introduce me to your new friend, Brian?”
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing in my home and what your designs are on my daughter. And the Priory of Knife and Phoenix? Talk, Kris.”
“Of course you don’t know of them. You can take the boy out of the English midlands farm, but you can’t take the hick out of the boy. It’s an elite organization. They make threats all of the time, but it’s all bluster. They don’t want people leaving the organization and yammering to the media, spoiling their reputation. Come on, Matilda. Let’s go.”
Tilly wiggled. “Let go of me. I’m late.”
“Like hell.” Brian held on tight.
Helen stashed her journal. “So it’s a cult, yeah?”
Kris’s frown morphed to a bemused look. “I’m sorry, you are?”
“My name’s Helen. And it would really help if you tell me everything you know about this Order of the Priory of Knife and Phoenix.”
The supermodel’s pale blue eyes gleamed with interest. “I can take you to a meeting. Are you relocating to Los Angeles permanently?”
“I don’t want to be recruited. I want you to tell me whatever you can about this group. Their practices, anything illegal or ritualistic you may have observed. Have you seen anything that’s scared you? Activities with religious overtones, like a black mass?”
Kris blinked. “I don’t know anything about that.” She glanced in both directions, her speech and movements eerie and robotic.
The creeps crawled under Helens’ clothes. Kris was gone. She’d disappeared, leaving Helen with the distinct sense that she no longer spoke to a person. The cult had activated one of the drones that Joe brought up in the hotel hallway.
“You know their name, and that they had Brian in their sights. Meaning you know something. And we’re quite possibly all in danger here, so if you have facts please share.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Kris stared vacantly.
She turned on a sneakered heel and swayed to the door, exiting and closing it behind her.
An engine rumbled and petered out as Drone Kris drove off.
Tilly dropped her pile and blasted a shrill scream. “I hate you. You suck. You ruined my life.” Wailing, she raced up the stairs.
Brian touched his nose and lips. “At least she’s safe. This’ll blow over.”
“You realize the implications.” Helen chewed the end of her pen.
“I think I sense the vicinity. Kris is one of them. She’s close to it all, near the center even. At least we have a name.”
“True. And you better put Tilly on lockdown from here on out and watch yourself, too. Because I can’t say for certain they won’t kidnap her as bait to lure you.”
Seventeen
The damn thing wouldn’t tune. Brian twisted Lady S’s tuning pegs and strummed. Tinny whines grated against him. Nope. Off-key, sour.
He tuned and played a chord, adjusted a dial and played a chord. Nope, nope, nope. One of Brian’s heroes, a guitar great, had gifted Brian Lady S while the two had toured the man’s English estate years ago. And in the present moment she tuned about about as properly as a pawn shop cast off.
Brian slung the strap over his torso and propped Lady S against his overstuffed chair. He walked to the mini fridge, got out a beer, and twisted off the cap. A long pull of his frothy, wheaty Bavarian brew cooled him down, blotting the chatter in his head with sensory pleasure.
Despite everything else happening in his life, he had a tour finale to practice for, and the show had to go on. Meaning he’d better get into the zone. Brian shoved thoughts of rituals, witchcraft, and clandestine organizations out of his head and appraised his home studio.
The mixing board with its panel of dials and buttons was pro grade. News clippings, awards, and photos lined walls with proof of Fyre’s accomplishments. Two computers sat on the office desk, twin high-tech soldiers tasked with editing tracks.
Amidst the reminders of his band, his art, his career and dearest friends, he got a grip.
Sequestered in the glass of the sound-proof booth, Jonas sang, practicing his vocal range as he swayed with hands over headphones.
Brian grooved in time. His drummer wasn’t half bad. Higher octave, equally melodious but a bit less romantic than Brian. Reminiscent of Robert Plant.
One of the few Black men in contemporary rock, Fyre’s drummer had carved out a niche for himself as one of their main songwriters and the band member most talented at arranging lyrics, riffs and melodies into whole songs.
In addition to keeping egos in check and fights over women and money to a minimum, finding and accepting defined roles proved crucial for the band to remain intact and successful for multiple decades. The four of them were a team down to their marrow. A brotherhood.
“You look pensive. Something on your mind, mate?” Jonnie, sunk into a tan leather couch and strumming a yellow Fender, chanced Brian a knowing, brown-eyed glance.
He accepted the other guitarist’s gentle call-out with a grumble. “Yes. Something by the name of Order of the Priory of Knife and Phoenix.”
“’Scuse me?” Jonnie’s long fingers bent over his fretboard as he turned out an upbeat rock and roll riff.
“That’s the name of the cult that’s cutting people, the one with ties to Joe. Kris was here earlier, and she named them.” Acting brainwashed, a whole other matter.
“I take it this development links up with the bird who’s staying with you now, the woman you met in Minneapolis and brought to Denver?”
“Yeah.” It sickened him to admit the tie. “You met her when you came round for practice, I take it?”
Jonnie tucked hair behind his ears. “Uh-huh. Ran into her on my way in today. She’d been out to the farmer’s market and was bringing in grocery bags. Look, I don’t want to make any waves, but I want you to know that I hear the uncertainty in your voice, and I think it’s valid.”
His stomach closed around the liquid he’d drank. “Why do you say that?”
“I mean, like I said, mate, I don’t want to make any waves. You deserve to be happy, and if you like Helen and want to date her, then I like her too. And I support your choice.”
Please. If Jonnie meant that, he wouldn’t have spoken in the careful tone of a diplomat or hostage negotiator.
Brian finished his beer, though now it tasted skunky. “But?”
With an apologetic shrug, Jonnie fiddled with the knobs on his guitar neck. “If it were me, I’d steer clear from anyone even tangentially connected to Joe or cults or magic.”
Doubt shrank Brian’s world into suspicion. Cautious cowardice, he told himself, was smart and necessary. “Well, as we both know you’re even more apprehensive about relationships than I am.”
Jonnie groaned. “What’s my love life got to do with yours? Look, if you like
her, keep seeing her. I never advised you not to. All I’m pointing out is that I register and agree with your tacit, unstated acknowledgment that something is very strange here.”
“You think I’m making a mistake with her.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s what you meant.”
“I’d proceed with caution and be mindful of how much emotional investment might or might not be clouding your judgment. That’s all I’ll say.”
Brian peeled off his bottle label in one satisfying sheet. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from Jonnie. Permission to surrender his misgivings and fall in love with Helen, or confirmation that it didn’t make him an arsehole to retreat from her. Her internal struggles, the insecurities and such that made bonding with her a challenge, also caused concerns.
At the end of the day, she dragged frightening baggage. Black magic. A clone. Occult sacrifices, secret societies. Helen wasn’t innocent. A heavy feeling weighed on Brian. His horizons contracted.
Thom burst in, two equipment cases in tow, sunglasses and cowboy hat shielding his face. “Awful quiet in here. Is this a world famous rock band’s studio or a retirement home?”
The bassist unfolded a metal chair and sat at a card table. He snapped open a plastic rectangle and popped a luxurious, bronze-hued Rickenbacker from its foam protector.
Methodical, Thom unpacked an amp, hooked it up, and chorded.
“You’re late.” Brian caught whiffs of feminine perfume blended with a far more personal tang, and thus didn’t bother to ask about the reason for Thom’s tardiness. Everyone knew what the confirmed bachelor got up to when not making music.
“Sure am.” Satisfied smirk on his weathered face, Thom worked through his warmup. “Porn stars never cease to amaze me. We’re talking genius talent when it comes to stimulating the male pleasure centers.”
Brian ignored the suggestive bit and focused on Thom’s music, easing his worried mind as he left interpersonal mode and ventured into his musician headspace. Thom, who took the strongest affinity to the blues aspect of Fyre’s sound, plucked out a rich number. He tapped a cowboy boot-clad foot to the beat.
Thom slid a brass tube over his pinky and moved it up and down the strings, creating a loopy, warbling effect. Despite Thom’s amorality and predilection for debauchery, the man wielded commendable skill. He was a true artist, his emotional connection to harmony the most profound of the quartet. Thom channeled intangible and ethereal mysteries when he played.
Brian grabbed Lady S by the neck and joined the bassist at the square table. She tuned up right and proper this time. He layered in his own riffs. Their sounds mingled, danced, merged in the hypnotic way unique to English blues-rock. He nodded at Thom, switched his tuning to Drop D, and played in A minor, a modification which took his sound darker, more brooding.
Jonnie threaded in a dreamy, mythological experimentation.
The door to the sound booth shut, and soon a deep bass groove trembled in Brian’s bones.
Lost to the instrumental communication, he glanced over to see Jonas seated on the couch, dreadlocks hanging in front of his eyes while he played a bass guitar.
Brian moved his fingers through chords, his most cherished possession doing his bidding yet again. This new song had a heaviness to it, a gravity, a weight.
Architects of moral panic decried rock and roll as the devil’s music. Though Brian mostly laughed at such fear mongering, at times he felt it.
At the very least, something Dionysian and wild, the essence of a snarl or a cocky sneer and a phallic and thrusting guitar, lived forever in the soul of rock.
Fuck, he loved his band. His music. The lighthouse in his storms, always and forever.
With or without Helen, he’d always have his bandmates, his calling. Even if their affair broke his heart, he’d never be without purpose.
“Yeah,” Thom said, deep voice smoky as he broke into song.
Unrepentant and sexual lyrics of troubadours and carousing, roaming and prowling, conquered the room. The restless nomad’s tune challenged Brian’s romantic reverie.
“Our sensitive singer is having lady troubles again,” Jonnie said dryly.
Brian’s mates got on him for falling for every bird he touched. It wasn’t quite that bad; he knew when to exercise discretion and reject female charms, but perhaps the boys were on to something with their ongoing advice that he needed to get better at protecting his heart from the wrong women. Kris King was proof.
“I’m telling you, you don’t need some relationship to find inspiration. The muse comes from in here.” Thom slapped his chest. “And here.” He grabbed his balls.
Fighting a grin, Brian continued to play. His bassist loved who he was without regret or apology. A leering imp, a randy jester, a decadent rocker to his marrow. Still, he couldn’t miss a chance to take the piss. “Before you know it, you’ll be the eighty-year-old with a nineteen-year-old girl on your arm. Which isn’t cool. It’s pathetic.”
“Tell that to my eighty-year-old cock when it’s getting sucked by said nineteen-year-old.” Thom fetched a beer and used end of the table to crack off the cap.
Tilly’s smiling face flashed into Brian’s mind, and he irrationally squirmed with an urge to sock Thom’s jaw. As twisted as it sounded, part of him was grateful that Janet’s untimely death had left him to the task of raising their young daughter by himself. Stumbling into single fatherhood and figuring out how to parent a girl from age six onward had taught him sobering lessons on why the world needed feminism.
“By that time, let’s hope no young woman feels compelled to service you for any reason. And I’d rather not entertain a conversation with your knob, no thank you,” Brian said.
Thom slid mirrored sunglasses down his nose, light brown eyes aglitter. “Lemme get some girls over here. We’ll find some inspiration the true rock star way. For old time’s sake.”
Brian worked through his solo. “That isn’t me, and you know it. You’re a sad old man grasping at the scraps of his lost youth, not some sly devil dangling temptation. Better I tell you than someone else.”
Thom laughed a robust laugh, shaking his head and sending long hair flying. His song reached a denouement.
Supplying rhythm and backbeat, Jonas and Jonnie kept up their parts.
“We’ve gotten boring. Look at us, a pack of geriatric men sipping beer. We used to pass girls around and pull trains in studios much like this one. Remember?” Thom’s jackal smile revealed the fistfight-chipped tooth he hadn’t bothered to fix.
Most of the wilder exploits from decades ago were bound up with so-called partying, otherwise known as alcohol and drug abuse, and Brian had no desire to relive them.
He’d long since come to terms with the excesses he’d indulged in around the time of their first tour, learned lessons, and moved on. Sex with groupies had been just another drug. No intimacy, no shared humanity, no affection or true spark of desire. A manifestation of addictive behavior, an attempt to relieve boredom and fill a deeper emotional and spiritual void with a momentary rush, a fleeting high.
And, of course, such behavior involved treating the women not as people with their own feelings and needs, but as consumables laid out on the rock star’s endless buffet of party favors, toys to be used and discarded.
“Nah. I don’t think moving past sharing women with your bandmates means getting old and boring. I think it’s a sign of personal growth. Maturity. Insight. And I’m grateful I figured that out quickly, so such behavior represents a misspent year of my youth, not a permanent marker of my character.” Brian wadded up a piece of notebook paper and threw it at Thom.
“The man’s got a point,” Jonas said from the couch. “You know many of those girls didn’t have their heads on right. And how we took advantage…not good for the soul. I couldn’t get to sleep at night if I was still on the shag.”
Thom put a thumb over his bottle and shook it up. Fizz left glass with a hissing pop. “I hereby consecrate, beatify, an
d declare you Saint Brian. That’s what you want, right? Or do you need to trudge to Jerusalem with a crucifix on your back and have someone nail you up?” The bassist pressed his damp pad between Brian’s brows and moved it to his chest and each shoulder, making the sign of the cross. He flipped Jonas the bird. “Why don’t you come over here and suck him off, Mr. Yes-Man Drummer? I sleep fine, thanks.”
Jonas swapped his bass for a mahogany Fender and wailed out a solo. The drummer had a brutally calm way of ignoring attempts to lure him into conflict.
“Enough,” Brian said through an appreciative chuckle, wiping wetness from his forehead. “I, too, sleep fine at night. I’m happy with who I am and who I’ve become.”
Perhaps he ought to look in a mirror and reconnect with the good man he was when he started to feel jumpy about his personal life. His conscience would guide him to the right decisions.
A series of knocks struck the door in a jaunty rhythm, cutting short the camaraderie.
Brian opened the studio to Helen. She wore a goofy grin and a T-shirt with a graphic of a kitten riding through outer space atop a slice of pizza. “Hey. I recognize that guitar from Minneapolis.”
Puzzled by the random intrusion and clumsy, forced comment, he stroked Lady S’s glossy finish. “Right, well, she’s my special instrument. What’s going on?”
Helen waved jazz hands in the air. “I know, I know, I’m totally pulling a Yoko right now, crashing your practice. But I have big news.”
The excitement in her voice perked him up. “Do tell.”
She bit down on her bottom lip, drawing out a dramatic pause. “Two words: Soul Krush.”
Many of his acquaintances in the entertainment industry took spin classes and practiced yoga in the elite studio, though he found it odd that she chose this exact moment to mention the gym. “What about it?”