With the boom box blaring the sounds of Kyuss and Mastodon, the three willing participants of the act take turns getting their flesh pierced and then hoisted into the air by the freshly imbedded hooks. I can’t look away. The scent of blood is not only affecting Raúl and me, it’s also whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Some of these people could be shifters as well, but any human being can be easily affected by the vibe.
A young man takes two rings through each forearm, crosses his arms over his head, and a rope is threaded through the bloody jewelry. Someone loops the rope over the sturdiest branch of the old oak tree, hoists him up, and gives him a push like a grisly tire swing. He kicks his feet off the ground, oscillating like a pendulum. His face is tight with pain and adrenaline, veins standing out on his neck. If his arms were to become fatigued enough for him to let them fall, it’s obvious that the rings would rip out of his arms completely.
“Dude!” someone gasps, “this is the most metal thing I have ever seen!” I have to agree.
A young woman in a corset and trailing skirt is up next, her face completely covered by a white expressionless mask. This time my jaw drops as I watch the piercers slide several long meathooks under the muscles in her back and hoist her aloft. Someone grabs the trailing rope and swings her around and around in a wide arc until her trajectory makes her appear to fly. The rope is let go and she sails in a circle above us, her face a graven image, her arms outstretched like some masochistic angel.
The scent of so much blood, pain, and adrenaline is driving me wild—literally. Without exchanging so much as a word, Raúl and I look at each other and decide that it’s almost time for us to go inside and wait onstage. It appears that the other group members are like-minded, for everyone else is perched by the bandstand, having had enough of the suspension act. Little by little the overstimulated spectators trickle back into the bar, followed by the performers with fresh bandages doing little to conceal disconcerting amounts of seeping blood.
We are obviously intended to bring some relief and closure to the night: strong enough to keep the momentum going, but irie enough to dissipate all of that manic energy. And to my surprise, Nigel steps down for a song and lets Lydia sing a lovely rendition of “Duppy Conqueror.” I find it rather poignant in the wake of whatever demons we shifters must soon fight. The vibe within the band is nice tonight, only marred during the last twenty minutes when Gabriel approaches the stage, snatches my set list, and gleefully flees with his prize like a coarse American tourist stealing a beer mug in Germany. I don’t care to chase him to get it back, but the hubris of his act sets off the burning within. I can look off of Nigel’s set list, but that particular one had all my personal notes on it—when to watch for cues, when to not rush, which songs have hard endings, and so forth. My stalker is now officially tampering with my livelihood. I take a deep breath, suppress a growl, and finish the show with as many memorized notes as possible.
One more hurdle to go. I am glad that Raúl and I are carpooling in his van, but I am not wild about Gabriel being able to identify any vehicle associated with me. I can’t imagine that anyone would be so stupid as to cross Raúl, but I hear the familiar annoying scurry of footsteps approaching as I hoist the cymbal bag into the back. “Birch! Hey, Birch! Didja figure out when would be a good time for us to get together and jam?”
Raúl takes a protective stance beside me, growling softly as I stand my ground. The reflection of the streetlights on my stalker’s glasses makes it hard for me to make eye contact with him, but I put every ounce of menace into my voice. “Look, Gabriel. I am an extremely busy person with too many irons in the fire as it is. We are not going to jam—ever. And your incessant attention is beginning to get really unnerving … okay?”
He freezes in his tracks. Even in the shadows cast by the streetlights, he appears flushed. “You don’t appreciate all the support I’ve given you!” he retorts. At Raúl’s cue, we haul the last of the gear into the back of his van. Just ignore him is the silent advice. Even still, I can’t repress a shiver when he begins to scream at our retreat, “You’re a real buzz kill, do you know that?”
I glance in the rearview mirror. Gabriel appears to have stepped back into the shadows somewhere, but Lydia is standing outside the bar, watching us slowly disappear.
I am on the steppes –was I here before? I don’t have the sensation of walking, but I am suddenly facing my shining stag. We resume our stare-down, and its eyes are sorrowful. Something is different. It is made of fame, adoration by others, and lofty status. Balance is good, but now it’s time to ride this wave of obsession. I give chase once more. These fangs are very handy. This is like being able to run with a knife and a fork without worrying about falling.
I am gaining with easy speed and am soon upon the creature, which goes down without a fight. A successful hunt! This time my teeth snag its shining hide, which slides easily off of the creature’s body in one piece, like an old blanket or a cheap costume. The exposed skeleton turns to regard me with empty eyes. Something squirms within its ribcage …
I bolt upright in bed with a gasp before my mind can register what else was underneath those bones. I have a chilling feeling that I should just stay in bed today. But the show must go on.
Driving up Esplanade toward La Balcone, I feel an uneasy lump in my gut. By this time, I have learned to trust this instinct, but I still feel that I have to show up for my gig no matter what. In the past I have played through extreme illness, personal crisis, major fatigue, and tendonitis, so why should I back down just because now I have the heebie-jeebies?
When I arrive at the venue, I immediately sense that something is wrong. For one thing, there’s already a bass rig set up. My first impulse is that it belongs to whoever played the shift before me, so I open my gig bag and strap on my Rickenbacker. Then as the rest of the previous band clears out, it dawns on me that someone else is on this gig tonight, and no one bothered to call me. There’s no sign of the rest of the band. This pisses me off, but before I can ask anyone what’s going on, Naj walks briskly over to me. A dark vibe washes over me, almost palpably slugging me in the gut.
“Oh, Buzz! Check out the engraving on the jewelry! Does this look like Scots Gaelic to you?” she bursts out before I can ask any questions. She’s holding a brooch in her hand. It appears to have some sort of ancient inscription on it, but at a glance there’s no telling if it’s anything genuine or just a bunch of nonsense. As I lean in for a closer look, she suddenly pretends to fall against me, jabbing the pin of it an inch deep into my forearm.
“Oh, my God … I am so sorry!”
My knees buckle. White-hot pain shoots from the tip of my pinky to my armpit and blossoms through my body like a chain of fireworks. I am suddenly overcome with a weakness and fatigue. Too late I realize that the brooch was made of silver. How could I be so stupid? Even my instincts were trying to warn me. I grip the wall for support and glare at Naj. Sand has quietly crept up behind her in support.
Her smile is all dimples and sunshine, but her eyes are ice. “Birch MacKinlay, did you really think we needed you on this gig? We need a George Porter Jr. or a Donald “Duck” Dunn or a James Jamerson to bring this group to the next level. Not you. All you do is shapeshift your genres. You’re a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. It’s a major handicap for us, and we all have to dumb down our playing to accommodate your drama queen ass!”
I don’t understand. In over twenty years, no one has ever had a problem with my playing before. No one.
“And okay, I’ll admit that you can handle rolling with the punches, say when I start in the wrong key or forget an intro or something. But that’s still no excuse. You can’t un-white your playing, get into the groove, or get greasy.”
Even though this bitch drummer can’t keep a steady tempo? It’s my last clear thought before the silver begins to infiltrate my private thoughts. Coils of ancient fears begin to tighten around my chest.
“You have to be a major pocket player and really h
ave a highly developed understanding of playing in the pocket, playing a groove, and having a facility in the genre.” Who does this bitch think she is? I rage, and then the self-doubt seeps into my nervous system. I’m a bad musician … I deserve to suffer … people only hire me because they feel sorry for me …
“You are nothing but a whiny little victim and a band liability,” she cheerfully continues, while Sand nods from the background. “Even your pack doesn’t need you, especially now that you’ve put it in jeopardy. There are two bass players in your little family. You know there’s going to finally be a musical balance when you disappear and they get that Turkish beauty to replace you. You are so pathetic and needy that you actually spilled your guts to me—someone you barely know. You’ve given us enough info to help us, and for that I would at least like to thank you.”
Smiling sweetly, Naj cups my face and kisses me on the mouth, sinking her teeth hard into my lower lip. I taste the burst of blood over my tongue, even as it goes numb from the poison. Suddenly the lights dim, as if on cue. My eyes quickly adjust, but the rest of the room is oblivious to my shock and disbelief, while the neurotoxins quickly permeate my bloodstream from the bite.
And without fanfare, standing right in front of me is none other than Calvin Quinn. My eyes see, but my brain doesn’t want to believe it. Betrayed with a kiss …
His face is as deadly and charming as I remember it, and likewise his smile has no warmth. What the hell is he doing here? He opens his mouth to expose a set of fangs and languidly extends a forked tongue at me, like a deadly child teasing a rival. And his body elongates, grows and my disbelieving eyes can’t quite comprehend the man with a python’s body from the torso down.
Naj cozies up to him, he slides his arms around her waist, and he slips a wad of bills into her hand. He pauses to give her a lusty kiss on her throat, murmuring for her to keep the silver brooch as her tip. Thirty silver pieces is all I have time to think before he lunges forward, grabs my shoulders, hoists me upright, and slams me up against the wall. Splinters of pain bore into my eyes.
My skull sounds like a hollow crack against the bricks and stars fill my vision.
My beloved black and white Rickenbacker bass falls to the ground with a horrible clattering twang, an instrument’s yelp of pain. An instant later I too slide to the floor in complete paralysis. The three fall onto my gear, which flies everywhere. They disembowel my gig bag and ropy coils of cables spill out. My tuning pedal gets hurled against a brick wall. I cannot turn my head to see my bass, but I hear the sound of wood cracking and the discordant jangle of strings going limp. Sand kicks my rig hard directly in the speaker cone and the head falls off of the cabinet in a mechanical decapitation.
My head still rings from the impact, and my vision blurs –perhaps I have had a concussion or maybe I am in tears. Pain, anger, humiliation, and despair don’t even begin to describe the wreck of emotion that seizes me. Cal returns for me, his hand closing around my throat, his other hand searching my possessions. Helpless, I can only stare in horror as he rummages through my gutted gig bag and then my jacket, where he finds my secret pack cell phone. All of our numbers, all of our texts, correspondence, plans … oh, dear gods!
The thud of padded metal makes him jerk and let go of my windpipe, as in an instant Lydia King arrives on the scene, drops her trombone gig bag, and with inhuman speed leaps on his back grabbing him in a chokehold. His eyes bulge as she constricts more and more tightly. With a hiss, she wrests the phone away from him, one arm still around his trachea, and dials a number—I can only hope it’s the emergency number on the screen. She shoots me a look of extreme apology and whispers, “Not all snakes are poisonous.”
There is a pain that passes understanding. A quick fade swallows me whole, and then the world goes black.
CHAPTER
8
GROUND LIFT
Drifting in and out of awareness. I have no senses, only a knowledge of my own existence. Sometimes I feel more than hear a blend of frequencies cocooning me, and I know it is the rest of the pack singing to me. Driving the toxins out of my blood. I hear the occasional canine whine of concern, but mostly human voices.
Fever dreams consume me. I have no idea how much of this is reality and how much of it is in my mind. At times it feels more vivid than anything I have ever experienced before. Images flicker until I finally let go and allow myself to be swept away.
I don’t know how I ended up in this tunnel. Is a near-death experience, or I am actually dying? But from what I have heard, the near-deceased are swept away, not trying to squeeze themselves through a low crawlspace in pitch darkness. Neither would the passage walls have a rough surface with dirt crumbling under my hands, if I actually have hands. Just as I am trying to figure out whether or not I have a physical body, the tunnel widens into a natural antechamber. I am filled with a sensation of space as I look beyond into a natural apse.
There are wolves in a firelight cave, shaggy and familial smelling, consulting one another in a tightly knit group. This feels like what any den should have, even bones on the ground, presumably from previous meals. But there are paintings on every surface created by sentient beings, petroglyphs depicting animals of all sorts: stags, bulls, birds, and horses. There are also depictions of men in the process of shifting into stags. A central fire is crackling, a human made resource that the animals don’t fear. The firelight makes the painted animals appear to move and the people to morph. This is no world of forms. It’s something more profoundly abstract.
This preternatural apse is the place where dreams come to die and prepare for rebirth. It’s where ideas are formed, where all forgotten music goes, and ideals go to their final resting place. It is a point of primal origin, a womb of solid stone. It’s small and it’s infinite, as the domed ceiling casts an image of space without time overhead. I try to comprehend as much as I can with my mortal mind, which is about as effective as trying to capture the ocean in a butterfly net.
I blink my non-existent eyes and the wolves are now humans clad in robes of fur, standing in a circle with arms raised; male or female I can’t tell. Male or female doesn’t matter in spirit… I don’t even question the voice that has just inserted itself into my head. The wolf people don’t appear to notice me, but I am being given answers nonetheless, swept on the hypnotic currents of shamanic drumbeats. Lub … dub … I shift my perception to figure out how I can be experiencing the smell of sage burning, the heat of flames and the texture of the stone if I am only a spirit. I want Rowan by my side more than anything else in the world. I want him to explain this to me. I want him with my whole being, even as I don’t have a physical body here. I wonder if the closeness of the pack can transcend the boundaries between physical and spiritual as I try reaching out to Rowan in my mind.
He is a holy man, the voices reply to my emotional vibrations. No one can ever truly have him.
Despair tears through me like a winter howl, blasting a hole straight through my core of consciousness.
*One* I don’t hear the word, even in my mind, so much as feel its frequency.
Your connection to him will always be there, but with a price. The price is the pain of never truly having him, but you will receive the gift of always being connected to him.
I still cannot see faces, but the singing begins, and the tempo increases. Both primitive and intricate, the music becomes so beautiful, I feel like my heart is about to break … and yet the longing deepens to an aching beyond fathoming. So odd that we are gifted with the wonderful ability to pass out from physical pain, yet emotional agony is relentless, I muse. Dissociation is as close as it gets, even in the spirit world.
And then nothing exists but the eternal echo.
*One*
The pungent smell of alcohol and worry is everywhere. Even before I open my eyes I know that this is not my bed and it’s too quiet to be my apartment. First it is sound that I perceive: the hush-hush of padded sneakers going by in the hallway, carts rolling, and call
button beeps that sink into my brain before I can fathom anything else. I’ve got tubes coming out of my arms, and the steel railings of this hospital bed feel like a cage. I am agitated in my confusion and let out a primal growl. Sylvia is at my side in an instant, soothing me, urging me to settle down. I close my eyes and feel a cool cloth across my forehead.
My whole mouth tastes like seawater, caustic and salty, and I wonder how long I’ve been on the saline drip if it’s permeated my saliva. My sluggish face feels like a meaty mask. I reach up to touch it gingerly and discover a rough surface: stitches in my lower lip where Naj bit me. There is still a ringing in my head like an eternal splash cymbal. I’m fairly certain that there are stitches across the back of my head as well where Cal slammed me against the wall. The room is still a little too bright. Sylvia notices, and closes the curtains.
“Safe?” is the only thing I can blurt out. My voice is raspy from disuse.
Sylvia looks deeply into my eyes. “Everyone is fine,” she reassures me.
“Nagas … they are supposed to be benevolent,” I croak.
Sylvia’s mouth is grim. “In my line of work, it has come to my attention that even angels can go bad—big time. It appears that there is something about you that was worth serious money to the wrong people. Money for which Naj Copperhead was so desperate, she betrayed her fellow shifter. It appears that she was especially fond of speedballs—the combination of heroin and cocaine—responsible for so many celebrity deaths. By injecting, she could get her high without damaging her voice, although her performance suffered from far worse than mere vocal shortcomings, as you know. I suppose she thought that being a naga would make her invincible, since nagas seem to be immune to blood borne illnesses.”
So much I still don’t understand. “Lydia King …” I try again.
“… is a SIN agent. Turns out your serpentine ex Calvin Quinn was involved in all kinds of illicit things, mostly sex trafficking and the distribution of illegal drugs. Not only that, according to SIN intelligence, he is linked to our enemy, possibly in allegiance. He was chased by the cops not long after you were rushed to the hospital.”
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