All That Bleeds

by Kimberly Frost

  “Do you think the third time’s a charm?” she asked, splashing drops of bourbon over the headstone. “A new demon contacted me,” she whispered.

  The sound of a throat being cleared startled her, and she went still and silent. She inhaled and recognized the cologne.

  “So you’re the one who’s been killing the grass,” his voice said.

  She didn’t bother to look over her shoulder at the interloper. “Hello, Dad.”

  “I’ve left you a lot of messages,” he said, his voice low with fury. “Given the mess you and your brother made, I’m under a lot of pressure. Invading the Etherlin? You must have been out of your minds. At least you were hopped up on morphine, but what the hell was Cato thinking?”

  She turned slowly, her eyes narrowed to slits. “He was thinking that Merrick was never going to bring us that muse that we needed for the syndicate’s plan—your plan—to work. Cato was thinking that we’d go in and get the job done ourselves.”

  “And he got himself killed.”

  “Yeah, he did. But at least he had the balls to try to get out from under their thumb.”

  Victor glowered, his lips retracting to show his glistening fangs. “If you don’t want to get thrown in a fucking cell, you’d better straighten up. And I’ve already told you there cannot be a blood feud. Not now. So Merrick and that bitch muse are off-limits until everything quiets down.”

  “I wanted the rock-and-roll muse. If you’d agreed to let us snatch Cerise Xenakis, the wrong portal would never have been opened. Cato would still be alive.”

  “The North girl was the smarter choice. She was more isolated. And Cato would still be alive if he hadn’t gone off half-cocked into the Etherlin.”

  “That plan worked,” Tamberi hissed. “We slaughtered every Etherlin Security officer that we came in contact with. There are no living witnesses in the Etherlin to prove we were there.”

  “The choppers were seen.”

  She shrugged.

  “And Alissa North could testify.”

  “Not if she dies before she gets the chance.”

  “I’m so fucking sick of fighting with you about this!” Victor snapped. “It’s like you’re deaf, and—” The words that would’ve followed choked and died on his lips as two V3 bullets ripped through his heart.

  “I heard you. Every time,” Tamberi said as he crumpled backward, clutching his chest. She slid the gun she’d whipped out back into the pocket of her coat.

  She walked behind the headstone and grabbed the sword whose blade was buried to the hilt. She unsheathed it from the earth, sending clumps of dirt flying.

  She stalked to her father. Victor’s eyes were wide with shock, his bloodless lips moving silently.

  Her jaw was set. “I’m tired of fighting about this, too,” she whispered. “You think it’s only about Cato, and it mostly is about him. He’s dead, so they need to be dead, too. But it’s also about something that started a long time back. And I can’t afford to have you or anyone else getting in my way anymore. You always said you can tell how committed someone is to a goal by what he’s willing to give up for it.” She swung the sword and didn’t let herself blink as her father’s head rolled free of his body. The bullets probably would’ve killed him, but decapitation was certain.

  She swallowed hard and retrieved the bourbon bottle she’d dropped on the ground. She swiped the dirt away and took a burning swig, glancing up at the overcast sky. After a moment, she forced her gaze back to where blood pulsed, then trickled, and finally oozed from her father’s severed neck.

  “I have a goal,” Tamberi murmured. “And I am completely committed to it.”

  Cerise tightened the belt on her purple trench with shaky hands and walked toward the side door of the urgent care center where they’d stabilized Jersey Lane. An ashen-skinned Hayden was at Jersey’s bedside, so Cerise stepped out for a moment to escape the bleach-scented air and the sight of Jersey’s tiny body covered in wires.

  Jersey’s alive. You got there in time, Cerise told herself, trying to stop her heart’s frantic pounding.

  But she was blue. We had to do CPR. What if she’s brain-damaged? What if she ends up a vegetable? It might seem like we got to her in time, but maybe we didn’t. Maybe I was too late to save her. Just like I was too late to save Griffin.

  In a flash, she recalled Griffin’s lifeless body, followed instantly by Jersey’s on that doorstep. Cerise’s stomach churned. She swallowed gulps of air and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Do not get sick. Do not.

  She spit out excess saliva and slowly eased herself down the bricks to sit on the ground, her back against the wall.

  In the early days after Griffin had died, the pain had been so bad she’d started to meditate, focusing all her concentration on her next breath. She did that now, listening to her breathing, clocking the beat of her heart as it throbbed in her temples.

  Better. Just breathe.

  Her heart slowed, and her stomach settled.

  She rested against the wall until the door opened, and Hayden called her name.

  “I’m here,” Cerise said, shooting to her feet. “Is she worse?”

  “No,” Hayden said, and a lopsided grin claimed his face. “She’s awake. The little brat.” He grabbed Cerise in a fierce hug and nearly sobbed. “If you hadn’t said we should go—”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Yeah, it freaking does. And it always will.” His bony fingers tightened against her back. “I was so stunned when we found her. If I’d been alone, I might have just stood there in shock.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have.”

  “The way she looked. I don’t know if I would’ve thought to try to save her. And when you used the power of your voice on her—if you hadn’t been there, she would’ve died. I’ll never—I’m sorry about what I said earlier. The Molly Times only works with one muse. Ever. No matter what happens, we’re with you and no one else.”

  Her eyes misted, but she blinked away the tears and swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “We’ll figure things out,” Cerise said. They’d gotten a second chance with Jersey, and Cerise wasn’t going to lose her. Cerise would find a way to help the Molly Times again even if it killed her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Hayden nodded with a wobbly smile.

  “Let’s go back in. I don’t want her to be alone,” Cerise said.

  “Yeah, c’mon.” Hayden’s hand clung to her arm, and Cerise wondered if that was to steady her or to steady himself. Maybe both.

  They walked down the sterile-smelling hall to Jersey’s room, and Cerise braced herself with a deep bleach-scented breath before she opened the door.

  Inside, Jersey looked like a little doll whose makeup had been applied by a child. Smudged black eyeliner haloed her light eyes. Smeared scarlet lipstick at the corner of her pale mouth looked almost like blood, as though she were a tiny blond tribute to the undead.

  “Sorry, Cerise,” Jersey said. “I’m so sorry. I just wanted to sleep and forget about everything. I guess—” Jersey had a clear high voice that could be mesmerizing when she sang. Even wavering as it did now, it was irresistible. “I guess I took too much.”

  “I guess you did,” Cerise said, sitting on the edge of the bed and clutching Jersey’s hand. “You almost killed yourself and us along with you. You scared us to death.”

  “Sorry.”

  “How do you feel?” Cerise asked.

  “I’m okay.” She tried and failed to stifle a yawn. “Tired.”

  “I bet.”

  “When I was dying, I saw an angel, and I heard Griffin.”

  “You did?” Cerise asked, brushing the platinum hair away from Jersey’s face.

  “Griffin said, ‘I’ll tell you where it is. Songs among the rafters. In the falling playground above the stage.’ Something like that,” she murmured. “Isn’t that crazy that I heard his voice? It was nice, though, to hear it again.” Jersey’s lids drooped. “I miss him.”


  Cerise ran a shaky hand through her hair. She continued to watch Jersey, but her thoughts were elsewhere. In the last six months of his life, Griffin had been obsessed with heights. Climbing them or avoiding them, depending on his mood. He’d been fixated. “The farther it is to fall, the more I love it, Cherry. And the more I hate it,” he’d said to her.

  Griffin’s mood swings had upset them both. Cerise hadn’t probed into the cryptic things he’d said because he’d been a powder keg of emotions. She’d tried not to pressure him because questions set him off. She’d thought he would talk to her when he was ready. Leaving him alone had been a mistake; his struggle ultimately consumed him. Now he had plenty of space to brood. And she and the Molly Times had plenty of space to grieve.

  Cerise shivered, withdrawing from those thoughts. Instead, she concentrated on what Jersey had said.

  Songs among the rafters. Above the stage.

  Griffin had sometimes written music in one of the top boxes in the performing arts center that was named for her mother. He’d liked the place’s outstanding acoustics.

  Could he have left his songbook there? But if he had left it in a box, someone would’ve found it and turned it in. Or kept it and sold it. The kind of money collectors and fans would pay for a journal of Griffin’s would be a serious temptation to most people.

  Cerise frowned at the thought of someone trying to profit from that book when she and the Molly Times needed it so much. It was the last piece of Griffin they’d ever have.

  Griffin wouldn’t have left his songbook lying around in plain sight. If he’d left it in the auditorium at all, he’d have put it someplace where no one would stumble across it. He would’ve hidden it.

  I have to check.

  Cerise rose. “She’s asleep again.”

  “Yeah,” Hayden said with an affectionate roll of his eyes. “She nearly gives us heart attacks and freaks me out so much I may not get a good night’s sleep again ever, then five minutes after she wakes up, she’s out again like she’s got a clean conscience. How’s that for irony?”

  Cerise smiled and gave his arm a squeeze. “You watch her. There’s something I need to do.”

  He nodded. “Sorry about you missing your dinner party tonight.”

  “No worries,” she said, walking out of the room. That celebration party was a sham anyway.

  The trees lining the walkway were strung with small blue and white lights. Grecian colors, Cerise thought. From the outside, the Etherlin appeared to be all things pearly and bright. Home to women who had descended from the ancient muses. Women who were inspiration made flesh, as the saying went. Maybe the fact that Cerise spent a lot of time with rock stars who were subversive and athletes who battled for their bread made Cerise harder to placate, harder to control. She didn’t see the Etherlin as a glittering Garden of Eden. Like all things of great power and beauty, it had a dark side. Ambition and the quest for perfection made people dangerous even if they lived in the Etherlin.

  And, of course, some darkness came from the shadows cast by the Varden. It was just outside the Etherlin’s walls and home to the ventala. One of the Varden’s fallen creatures had recently seduced a muse and the community was still reeling in the wake of her defection. Some couldn’t accept that Alissa had been seduced. They believed she’d been taken.

  Cerise was sure her former friend had left voluntarily, but sometimes women loved men who later caused them endless pain. Alissa was in the hands of one of the most dangerous men in the world. If Alissa decided she wanted to leave him, would Merrick let her go? Cerise doubted it. That was a thought that kept Cerise awake at night. What if Alissa regretted her choice? Did Alissa think that the Etherlin Council would never let her back after what she’d done on the night she’d left?

  Cerise planned to talk to Alissa. She couldn’t cure Alissa of an attraction to the wrong man, but she could make sure that one of the most talented muses in the world knew that she had the support of the other one. If Alissa wanted to come home, Cerise would fight to make that happen.

  Cerise approached the Calla Xenakis Center for the Performing Arts. It was a building of alternating blue and white glass with reeds of silver in between. Musical instruments and notes were etched into the frosted panes, making it playful yet elegant.

  When Cerise unlocked the door, music floated down to her, and she slowed as she stepped inside. The building was dark. There were no scheduled performances or rehearsals. Sometimes students or staff musicians requested use of the building, but Cerise hadn’t wanted to run into people tonight, so she’d checked the schedule and found it bare.

  She ventured deeper inside and opened the door to the main auditorium. The dark stage was empty, but light drifted down from above. She stepped inside and looked up. The illumination was very faint. From a candle or small lamp? In one of the upper boxes? Why would anyone be playing up there?

  It’s him, she realized. The Etherlin’s version of the Phantom of the Opera.

  For months, there had been rumors of a performer who some of the staff called the young maestro. They claimed he played the guitar as well as Hendrix and Clapton, that on sax he was sublime and on violin unparalleled. She knew it had to be an exaggeration, but it made her curious.

  The music always came from the upper boxes, and initially, some of Griffin’s fans thought it was his ghost, but Griffin had only played guitar and never as well as Hendrix or Clapton.

  So who was the young man who turned up out of nowhere and left the same way, never tripping the building’s alarms? He was suspected to have fixed a hole in the roof caused by a lightning strike. There’d been water all over the floor, but when the workmen went up to patch the leak, there were new shingles nailed in place.

  His presence had been confirmed as real rather than fantastical when the center’s director had found a cash-filled donation envelope midstage during the center’s annual fund-raising drive. The note had been done in writing that was more calligraphy than cursive. It read: The welcome this space offers to music is admirable. A visiting musician offers compliments to the designers and builders of this place.

  After the note, the hunt for the center’s young phantom had redoubled, but he was more slippery than ever according to the students who sometimes hid in the upper boxes in hopes of spotting him and getting to listen to him play for more than a few moments. They caught glimpses of him and said he was tall and blond, but they couldn’t tell much else.

  Knowing the sound of her boots against the stairs would travel, she sat and removed them. Setting them aside, she ascended in stockinged feet. Three flights up, his playing stopped her. In his hands, a violin was more than a violin. It was the voice of countless generations. It was the soul of the whole world. “Beethoven’s Fifth” transitioned to Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” which gave way to “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” She crept higher into the building and opened the door. She closed it silently and didn’t dare move farther because she would rather have fallen down the stairs than have him stop playing.

  She recognized Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” which turned into Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Then a blazing “Flight of the Bumblebees” transitioned into “Dance of the Goblins.” She cocked her head. His lightning speed had such clarity and precision that her jaw dropped. She slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Closing her eyes, she followed the music, not bothering to identify any more songs.

  When the music stopped, Cerise had no idea how long she’d been sitting on the floor. And she didn’t care. She uncoiled her limbs and rose. This mystery man was the most talented violinist she’d ever heard, and she wanted him for an aspirant. No sound that pure and amazing should be played for an empty auditorium. The world had a right to hear it. She would make him understand.

  She followed the soft glow, enjoying the smell of sandalwood. She was surprised to find that the candle wasn’t in a box. It was in the middle of a girder. And lying next to it was a book she recognized. There in the center of
a steel beam several stories above the stage was Griffin’s lost songbook.

  She heard water slosh and turned her head sharply. When she did, she froze. The tall shirtless blond creature drinking from a jug of water was stunning in a host of ways, not the least of which was that she’d met him before.

  The meeting had been on Alissa’s last night in the Etherlin when the ventala had infiltrated the muses’ retreat and had murdered ten members of Etherlin Security. including its director, Grant Easton, whose body had never been recovered.

  She should have been afraid of the blond intruder, but she wasn’t. No sixth sense warned her to retreat. She actually wanted to crowd him, to challenge him. In was an inexplicable instinct.

  “It can’t be you,” Cerise said, staring at him.

  He quirked a brow. “It can be me. In fact, it can be none other.” He finished off the gallon of water, his skin glowing from the ferocity of his earlier playing. “And hello. How have you been?”

  “I’ve been fine. How did you get in?” she demanded.

  His gorgeous smile widened. “I’m not obliged to answer your questions and choose not to.”

  Oh right. Now I remember. He’s impossible. “You’re an incredible musician.”

  “I know.”

  She fought not to scowl. He might be an arrogant jerk, but for a talent like his, allowances would have to be made.

  “Thank you for the compliment,” he added, sliding a large duffel bag from the shadow of a corner and putting the empty water jug into it.

  “Where did you train?”

  “Many places, and the sound quality here rivals them all.”

  “What school? Who was your teacher?”

  “Ah. I’ve not had instruction. I teach myself.”

  Of course you do, you bastard, she thought with an inward sigh.

  He wrapped his bow in a worn cloth before putting it in the bag. His violin joined the bow after being covered with a frayed towel.

  “You need a violin case. An instrument like that deserves better protection.”

  “The violin has never complained,” he said as he zipped the duffel. He looked up through strands of dark blond hair and added with a slow smile, “Which is why it makes better company than some people.” He looked so young and heartbreakingly handsome that her heart thudded in her chest.