Fiasco laughed his braying laugh. “Go ’head, shout. This is Hollywood, no one’s coming.”
“They will when I yell how you’re beating the shit out of their new hero. How much you want to bet half the parking lot shows up? And the really angry ones, those boys always looking to brawl? They’ll fall on your asses like the Holy Wrath.”
Fiasco and Spider looked at each other, each wanting the other to dictate the next move. Clay struggled to his knees, hoping to grab at one of their legs, slow down the double-team. Mo held his ground, the cords in his neck standing out.
Fiasco’s lips bent into a crooked smile. But he was no longer enjoying himself. “Bet you can’t shout before we’re on you, bitch.”
“Stop running your mouth,” Mo told him. “There’s only one way to find out.”
If asked to describe the half hour that followed his attack, Clay could only speak in probabilities. As in, probably Fiasco and Spider had chosen to embrace their pacifist side, given that he and Mo were still alive. Probably Mo had gotten Sunny D Purple Stuff’s attention, because Clay had ended up in the cargo space of her minivan. And probably Clay was in a daze for much of that time because when his mind grew lucid again, they were already in Burbank, cruising down a dark and empty Olive Avenue.
The Disturbed’s cover of “The Sound of Silence” was whispering from the speakers. Sunny D was on the nod in the passenger seat, not entirely there herself, and Mo was driving with his window down, a cigarette shaking in his fingers—though whether it was from what had transpired or out of fear of being pulled over while high, Clay couldn’t say. He groaned and sat up higher, catching Mo’s attention in the rearview. “You didn’t want to go to the hospital,” he said, as if in apology. “You said you needed to get home right away.”
“Yeah,” Clay replied, and gargling with thumbtacks might have felt better than talking at that point. He wanted to spit out the blood pooling around his tongue, wanted to spit and spit until the sick, coppery taste of it was all gone, but the van’s rear windows didn’t roll down. There was also something rolling around at the back of his mouth. Feels like a Tic Tac, or a— A piece of tooth, cracked off one of his molars. Clay plucked it out, along with a thick rope of saliva, and he sat there holding the enamel between two fingers. “Did your sister see?”
Mo shook his head. “I’m just glad she wasn’t part of it.” He dragged his cigarette down to the filter, then flicked it into the night. “I’ve seen it happen. In the chalk motels along Alvarado. I’ve run into more than a few famous faces there. Wasted men who’ve sold their souls. I taught Savy to walk the line, to never stray—not for money or fame or anything. But she wouldn’t listen to me—no more than I could listen myself. And doesn’t that suck so hard? Me and her love each other, we’re familia, but in the end we can’t save each other.”
“Sometimes love isn’t enough to save us,” Clay said.
“I woke in some random apartment with what’s-her-name here and that man, Priest, was standing over the bed. I asked who he was and he said, ‘I’m the right hand of the Master of Puppets, and you, dear friend, are my golden marionette.’
“Next thing I know I’m home, tucked in my own bed. By then, Priest had convinced Savy to sign herself away. I cursed her, screamed at her—but she honestly believed she’d saved us. When I asked if you’d toed the devil’s line, she said you had, but I could see she was lying. So when I spotted you looking for a way into the show, I had to help. Thought it might send the whole deal crashing down.”
“You and me both,” Clay said, and rested his palms on either side of his lumpy skull. He still wanted to spit, and his nose and groin were aching, swollen things. “Thank you. For everything, Mo.”
“A lot of good it did. I gave you the shirt off my back, but look, you tore that one all up too. And damn, dog, your face looks like it fell into a pressing machine.”
Savy’s brother grinned in the rearview, but the sadness in his eyes spoke louder. They reached the end of Olive and began climbing Country Club Drive. “Still,” Clay said. “I owe you, man. A big one.”
It took his bodyguard awhile to reply. “All the sleepless nights I caused my sister, now I’m the one worried sick. Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
The cul-de-sac was deserted when they reached it, no fans or hovering reporters in evidence. “No groupies tonight,” Mo said. “Maybe the cops scared them off.”
“Or something did.” Clay hoped it was only Boyle.
Mo popped the liftgate and Clay leaned out to enter the gate code. The minivan sped uphill until the dark house, and the empty fountain in front, came into shadowy view. Clay crawled out and spat liberally into the flowerbed that Essie had never trimmed. “Want me to stick around?” Mo offered. The edge in his voice suggested it was a good idea.
“It’s over now.” Clay kept his faced turned, hoping Mo wouldn’t read the lie. Whatever was waiting inside the house, Clay wasn’t going to get anyone else hurt. His pulse beat double time in his head, but he felt no fear, only a sense of anticipation that whatever was going to happen, it would be over and done with by dawn. “Go and find your sister.”
“Better lock your gates anyway,” Mo warned.
Probably too late for that, Clay thought. He waited for Mo to pull out, but Savy’s brother lingered, his mind busy behind his bloodshot eyes. “The Generator. They’re not ever going to find who did it. You know that, right?”
“I just assume they’ll pin it on me. I was somewhere else at the time, but with no one to corroborate it.”
“You were with me. Weren’t you? We were playing cards out in Sun Valley Park and I was demolishing your rock-star ass. As usual.” Mo’s stare was unblinking. “And I’ll make sure I’m stone-sober when I tell them that.”
“Mo, don’t—”
“You said you owe me, dog. I’ll cash in by asking you to keep yourself alive. Keep making music. And if you… you ever see a way…” Mo winced. “…to get my sister out of what she did—you promise you’ll try.”
“I promise.”
Mo dropped the minivan in gear and spun around in the driveway. He met Clay’s eyes as he drove by the other way and Clay understood how little hope they both had of saving the woman they both loved. “I’ll do everything I can,” Clay said, but the van was already gone.
29
ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
The house smelled of dead fire. The rooms were unlit, empty, his father still at the work (or who-knew-where), Essie out stalking the streets (or devil-knew-where). Clay locked and chained the front door and almost tripped over the guitar case waiting for him three paces into the foyer. The Rickenbacker. Boyle’s Rickenbacker. His Rickenbacker—back from the repair shop at long last. But who had accepted delivery? For now, Clay skirted the question and hurried to the familiar alarm panel. Every last zone was disabled. Even the gate cams had gone dark. For all Clay knew the whole property was teeming with boogiemen, hungry for a piece of his mortal (and exquisitely sore) flesh. Quickly he armed the perimeter, switched on the eyes over the gate and the sensors hidden on tree limbs and under birdbaths around the house.
Nothing set them off, at least not right away.
Over tonight, Clay’s mind insisted. But did it make sense or was that only the logic of a brain recently concussed? What if the plot was to wait him out instead? Let days, months, a year go by, and when Clay began to feel safe again, that was when the wild horses would come to drag him away. Could he live like that? Paranoid and jumping at shadows? As an endgame, leaving him alone would be a lot more vicious than coming for him.
And where was Boyle? Clay stepped onto the back porch, just beyond the reach of the first motion sensor. He started to call out, but his words fell mute.
He had not yet seen the remains of the Generator. The fire department had doused the flames, but left the scene as was. Burnt lumber and debris lay everywhere, piled and scattered. One black wall still stood, as if in defiance; parked against it was the half-melted rem
ains of the Crossroads pinball machine, the Steve McQueen-esque protagonist leering out from the backglass.
Tears pricked his eyes. Most of the world knew the Generator as the site of an infamous tragedy, but for Clay it had been a sanctuary for a time, a place of salvation through music. Now it felt like a physical part of him had been destroyed.
“Roc? Where are you?” Clay’s voice didn’t carry, taxed as it was from the show and the beatdown. Still, why wasn’t Boyle chomping at the bit for a reunion? Especially when he’d last seen Clay running for his life?
The answer settled on him like a cold, wet blanket. Because someone else is here. Waiting for us to reunite.
So they could be dealt with together.
Yes—Clay could feel the eyes now.
His first glance was instinctually toward the swimming pool. The surface was smooth, unblemished, but there was another shape in the depths, eerily reminiscent of the one Karney had made squatting in the deep end. The perfect place to lie in wait, away from the sensors.
Clay crept to the pool switches and flicked them on, one after another. The water lit with its aqua-glow. The submerged shadow receded. There was nothing in the water but leaves and a liberal dusting of ash from the fire. Clay relaxed a little.
The alarm burst on, splitting the night in two.
Had Clay set it off himself?
No. The light near the orange trees popped on.
Was it Boyle? It had never been a problem in the confines of the Generator, but was his presence strong enough to trip the sensors? He remembered Deidre approaching him on the porch the night he’d impersonated Boyle, how tangibly real her presence had felt on the air.
Another sensor tripped and Clay caught sight of something running. Running flat out. No ghost. The body was visible for a second, gone the next. Whoever it was knew the weak spots in the yard, enough to manipulate them.
The sensor right beside the porch lit up, and in the grass there was the gathering thump of feet. Clay stumbled. His cracked molar, which he’d been holding since the minivan, slipped from his fingers and tick-ticked on the deck. Clay pivoted back to the French doors—and gasped.
A figure was looming on the other side of the glass.
His father. Standing there in his bathrobe. Looking scared to death.
“Let me in!”
Peter didn’t move. Clay gripped the door handle and Peter gripped it from the other side, the fear in his eyes focused entirely on his son. And in the yard beyond the porch something snickered, mocking Clay for believing his old man would save him.
Essie had gotten to Peter. Of course she had. They say a succubus owns a man the moment she has his seed. She had seduced his father the way Annie Strafford had nearly seduced him.
And so this was how it would end. With all the Hailmaker’s underlings descending on him, Clay struggling helplessly while Peter watched them devour him. A fate infinitely worse than being beaten to death behind a concert hall. “Dad,” he yelled. “I need your help!”
A moment passed between them.
Peter took in the lumps and bruises on Clay’s face. “They beat you up?”
“They tried to kill me,” Clay told him. As honestly as he’d ever told anything.
His father let go of the handle and Clay turned it and charged into the house.
Inside, the alarm was muted, but still loud enough to have to scream to be heard. “I just saw something!” Peter yelled. “Watching behind the porch rail!”
“Is Essie here? In the house with us?”
“Haven’t seen her since last night! She won’t answer my calls!”
Glass broke outside as one of the lights shattered. “Who the hell is out there, Clay?”
Clay grabbed one side of the kitchen table and dragged it across the French doors. “I don’t think you want to know!”
Peter killed the alarm and fumbled with his phone. “The police want to speak with you. They think you, or friends of yours, set the fire on purpose.”
“Great, call them back. Tell them I’m ready to chat. Get up here in force.” Something struck the back door, rattling the pane. Clay flinched, and witnessed the broken shaft of a golf flag rebounding across the deck. “Shit, the cops won’t get here in time. Do you still have that .38 we shot when I was a kid?”
Peter hesitated. “It was sold to one of my partners.”
Clay darted to the kitchen counter. “Grab something, anything you can put between us and them.” After arming himself with laptops and guitars, he thought it was high time to find an actual weapon. Clay was drawing the largest German blade from the carving block when his father snatched his wrist—and his father swallowed back his fear, which, Clay realized, still wasn’t focused entirely on the threat outside. “Payton Alexander is dead.”
Peter’s fist tightened on his son’s wrist.
“You don’t think I—”
“Did you burn down our guesthouse and… and…”—even in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to say it (kill, murder, scare to death)—“hurt your therapist?”
“Listen.” Clay let go of the knife handle and stared his father in the eyes. “That’s what they want you to think. I fell in with some bad company and they’re after me now. I think they always have been after me. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Peter’s expression failed to change. “On your mother. Swear.”
“On your wife and my mother, I swear to you.”
The front bell rang cheerfully. Peter’s grip slipped and Clay pulled the knife and brought it with them into the foyer. “Careful,” he warned as Peter stuck an eye to the peephole.
“No one’s there.”
“There’s at least two of them. And you’re not going to want to hear this, but one is—”
A fist slammed the door, and before Peter could look again, Essie’s voice cried out. “Petey! Baby, for goodness sake, open up.”
Peter’s face slackened in relief.
“Dad, no.”
Peter stared at Clay for only a moment before hurrying back to the door. He had his hand on the knob before Clay pulled him away.
Clay tossed the Michael Myers blade onto the stairs and took hold of his father’s shoulders. “What are you doing?” Peter said. “It’s just Essie.”
That wasn’t true, and this close, Clay could see even the old man didn’t believe it was true. But he badly wanted to. The human mind, under duress, sought ways to escape nightmare, real or imagined, and Peter was willing to open their door and risk everything if his orderly, logical world would only reinstate itself in the form of his girlfriend.
“Essie’s gone, Dad. She died last night trying to save me. I wish there was something we could do to save her—God, I do. But all that’s left outside is a corpse that’s still moving.”
“Peter,” Essie called, her voice sickly-sweet—in contrast to the knob, which was twisting violently back and forth. “I don’t have my keys. Let me in.”
“Are you alone?” his father called back.
“Of course, and freezing my tush off. Can we have this conversation inside?”
“She’s not alone.”
“Clay, knock it off, she’s cold out there and I—”
“Petey? Please.”
“If you open that door, she will kill the both of us—”
“I know you love Clay,” Essie cut in, “but he’s dangerous. He’s on something, like you always suspected. His therapist knew it and look what happened to him!”
Phone forgotten in his hand, Peter seemed to sway between Clay and the door. Scared, confused, indecisive—these were not adjectives a man of his stature was accustomed to feeling. How had it come to this? his eyes begged. Choosing between his son, whose face reminded him of the wife he’d lost too soon, and the L.A. woman who’d made his life worth living again. Still, Clay sensed the hesitation in him. The truth, however unlikely, bubbling to the surface. “Your mother used to tell me you were the best person she’d ever met. I thought that was
funny because, for me, that person was always her.”
“Then trust me. For her. There may be someone else who can help us.” Any time now, Rocco, please feel free to steal the show! “But we’ve got to stick together.”
Peter lifted his hands in a gesture that asked Clay to trust him in return.
Clay nodded and unhanded him. “Es,” his father shouted. “I’m calling the police. I don’t want you near Clay if he’s dangerous. Wait in your car till they get here.”
The sweetness came right back: “There’s something I came to tell you. I don’t want to yell it through our door, but you’re giving me no choice.”
Peter kept his feet planted—though his upper body seemed to lean toward her words. “It’s not safe for you. There might be someone else outside with you. I need you—”
“I’m pregnant, Peter. The baby is yours. I’m pregnant and you won’t open the door.”
It was awhile before anyone moved. Clay watched the astonishment deepen on his father’s face. “Pregnant? That’s… not possible.” His voice stricken—no longer the confident lawyer, now the condemned man, desperate to be heard and believed. “We were always careful. Never once without protection—”
“I’m cold, baby. Your unborn baby is cold. Don’t let that hellspawn twist you up. Let me in and we’ll deal with him together.”
“Not possible,” Peter repeated, all the color drained from his face.
“Because she’s lying.”
“Please, Es, get in your car!”
Essie slammed her body against the door, testing the lock. “Let. Me. In!”
“Please—”
“Asshole, fucker, cocksucker!” she shrieked. “Think you can keep me out? Bastard-maker! I’ll get to you, Peter. And your little bastard-maker. I’ll slid it right down my throat—the way you like it—then, when you’re about to blow, I’ll take a nice, sharp bite!”
Clay watched his father, certain he would go to pieces, make a play for the door, shove his son away long enough to release the locks. He underestimated him though. Rather than wither at the sound of Essie’s thunder, Peter hardened to it. His face settled into a steely calm as the door jumped in its frame.
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