The Gathering Dark Part 8

Club Jinx was one of the hottest venues in Los Angeles, but almost n.o.body played there just as another stop on a tour. It was too small for that, too intimate. There were no tables and no chairs, just benches along the walls and a balcony up in back, and the bartenders never filled the gla.s.ses to the top to cut down on the amount of alcohol that would slick the floor during any given performance.

The performers who played at Club Jinx were almost always there because the publicity people at their label had set it up as a showcase for L.A. media. According to what Nikki had been told, they would all show up tonight: L.A. Times L.A. Times, Spin Spin, Rolling Stone Rolling Stone, Variety Variety, The Hollywood Reporter The Hollywood Reporter, so many others.

No pressure or anything.

"Nikki?"

She looked up from her guitar, which she had been idly strumming and tuning-something she almost always preferred to do herself instead of leaving it to a roadie-to see Aaron Belson standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets. Aaron had a hundred-watt smile and an awshucks good ol' boy manner that might not be a put-on, but in a town like L.A., where n.o.body would believe it anyway, it might as well be.

Across the green room, Nikki saw Kyle perk up. He'd been drinking Gatorade and shooting the breeze with Boyd, the ba.s.s player, but now both of them turned their attention to Aaron. The other guys in the band were out working with the roadies, preparing for the show. That was good. It made Nikki less nervous.

"What's wrong, Aaron?" she asked.

That good ol' boy smile made her want to hit him. "Not a thing, darlin'. We're all thrilled about this showcase. You're gonna blow them away. Kickstart this tour with a killer buzz."

Nikki stared at him. "But?"

Aaron chuckled. "But . . . I just heard you're planning to throw in some old songs. Cover songs, Nikki. I thought we'd agreed you'd stick to the music on your disc. If you play somebody else's music, the audience will think you're not confident enough in your own material."

For a moment she just gnawed on her lower lip. Then Nikki scowled and shook her head slowly. "Aaron, my heart's going a mile a minute. I'm used to entertaining people, getting down in a groove and bringing them down there with me. Most people, they come to see me for that. To come along for the ride. But the club out there's filled with people who are here to put me under a f.u.c.king microscope. That makes me nervous."

"Understandable," Aaron said.

"Oh, I'm so glad you understand!" she snapped. "Since you're not going to be the one up on the stage. I need to throw in a couple of songs that are going to make me happy and comfortable, because if I'm not, they're gonna know it, and they're gonna be on me like f.u.c.king vultures. So if I want to play 'Love Me Like a Man' and 'Son of a Preacher Man,' I'm gonna play them. And you know what?"

The good ol' boy grin was gone, replaced by a look of grave disapproval. "What?"

Nikki smiled. "They're gonna love it. Now, unless you want to cancel the show, why don't you go have a seat. We're going to be starting soon and I don't want you to miss a minute."

For a long moment, Aaron hesitated, obviously dissatisfied with the turn the conversation had taken. Much as she wished she didn't, Nikki understood. This was the label's money they were playing with here, not just her career. They had invested in her, and she respected that they had to safeguard that investment. But at the end of the day, if she didn't feel good about what they were doing, that was going to come through on stage, and n.o.body would benefit from that.

"Trust me," she said emphatically.

Aaron nodded. "I do. We do, Nikki. Just promise me you won't open or close with a cover, please?"

She put out her hand. "Deal."

He shook it, then glanced over at Boyd and Kyle. "You guys have a great show. It's an amazing disc and we all believe in you. This is just the start of an incredible ride, so hold on tight. We're just getting started."

Nikki smiled at Aaron and then he left, shutting the door behind him. The second he was out of the room, Boyd laughed softly and Kyle shook his head.

"Was it just me," Kyle asked, "or did he sound almost genuine at the end there?"

"He's not that bad, you guys," Nikki chided them.

Kyle walked over to her and smiled as he reached out to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear. "Babe, that's one of the things I love about you. You always want to give people the benefit of the doubt. But trust me on this: Belson's your number one fan right now because of the buzz. Maybe he's right, and we're in for a long ride, but if he's not . . . the first time they put out something with your name on it that tanks, he's gonna be telling everyone in hearing distance that he predicted it, knew it all along, and never understood why the label backed you for so long. It's just the way these guys are built."

She punched him lightly in the stomach and he let out a melodramatic little "oof" followed by a bark of protest.

"And maybe you're just a cynic," Nikki said sternly.

"In this business, only the cynics survive."

The words stung her more deeply than she ever would have expected. Nikki frowned and turned away from him smoothing the legs of her pants and then checking the fit of the shirt she wore, a burgundy silk thing that b.u.t.toned down from the top and then flared open below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to reveal her abdomen. s.e.xy but not whorish. Of all the things the label people had tried to get her manager to convince her to wear, this was the only one she even considered. Most of the time it really did seem all about the packaging, but Nikki spent a lot of time convincing herself that the label had signed her because of her music, because of her talent. She couldn't become a cynic, would not allow that to happen but the truth was that she did wonder if Kyle was right . . . and what if he was? What if it was true that only the cynics survived?

"Then I guess I'm as good as dead," she told him, and she shivered.

"Hey, Nik, don't be-" Kyle began.

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and Nikki was glad. She was really fond of the drummer. Kyle had been very good to her. But she was not going to get into this argument with him, not going to be revealed as naive or infected with his cynicism. That would be too much like surrendering, when she knew she should feel triumphant that she had even gotten this far.

The door to the green room swung open and Bones, one of the roadies, poked his head in. "Ready when you are, Nikki."

The rumble of the crowd could be heard from the front of the club, but this was more the buzz of conversation than antic.i.p.ation. The lights had obviously gone down, for Nikki could hear some cheering-probably from the hardcore fans that had heard about the showcase event on her website and bought up the couple of hundred tickets that hadn't been given away by the label-but it wasn't like other shows. It was more subdued. She had never felt more pressure over a gig.

"I'm ready," she lied. Her gaze ticked toward Kyle. "Let's go."

Boyd and Kyle both came up behind her and followed her out of the green room into the dimly lit corridor backstage. They stepped over wires and slid past roadies and lighting guys scrambling into position. At the entrance to the stage, Trey and Sara waited for them. She played keyboards, he played guitar. And that was her band. Nikki had spent years on the road pretty much by herself, but it was nice for her in that moment to realize that she really wasn't in this alone. She glanced around the group gathered there, nodding to each of them.

Without a word she led them onto the stage. Nikki and Trey picked up their guitars, Boyd grabbed his ba.s.s, Kyle and Sara sat down behind their instruments. The lights were warm, but not as hot as they were at some clubs. Still, when she glanced out at the audience, she smiled at no one in particular, not wanting to meet the eyes of the critics. At the front of the stage a small mob had formed, the diehards, the people who had come out to see her. It was them she would play for. Always them.

Nikki raised her right hand, and when she brought it down, the band slammed into the opening chords of "Shock My World." She loved the song, but would never have started with it if the label hadn't insisted.

By the first chorus she realized it had been the right choice. The fans in attendance erupted with joy and sang along, obviously surprised that she would play the song at the beginning of the set. Surprised, and thrilled. And the critics would see that, would have to feel at least a little of that enthusiasm.

Nikki smiled, and for the first time, she let her gaze drift deeper into the club, feeling relief wash over her. This was going to be fine. It really was. The second tune was her favorite cut off her disc, "Been Down This Road Before," and she followed it with the first of her covers, "Love Me Like a Man." It wasn't her song and they all knew it. Bonnie Raitt had recorded (the best-known version) years ago, but n.o.body in the audience seemed to mind as Nikki ground against the guitar and put her heart into the suggestive lyrics.

It made her feel good, let her relax into the groove. With a laugh she glanced around at Kyle, who grinned as he hammered the drums. When she turned back to the audience, she looked down at the guys and girls who were right up in front, swaying back and forth with their arms in the air.

All but one.

In the midst of the crowd gathered right in front of the stage there was a woman who looked frozen. She stood completely still, watching Nikki on stage with an expression that seemed somehow both sad and patient, as though someone had dragged her along and she would rather be anywhere else. Nikki sang a few more lines, but she was distracted and her eyes wandered back to the motionless woman, a pretty Asian with black, silken hair, dressed in a baggy, unflattering sweatshirt. There were cuts on her face, healing, but there. She looked as though she had been attacked by a cat.

A shiver went through Nikki. The woman's expression was unnerving.

She started to turn again, looking around to Trey and Sara off to her right to get some moral support, so that she could shake the weird vibe she'd gotten off the woman.

Then a spark of recognition hit her. Nikki had been playing guitar so long, performing since she was a child, that she didn't miss a note with her hands or her voice. But her thoughts were spinning as she looked at the audience again, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible, never forgetting how vital this performance was to her career.

Her gaze locked with the haunted eyes of the unmoving woman in the audience. Nikki knew her now.

Keomany Shaw. Nikki hadn't seen her in years, and if someone had asked her the day before, she'd have said a reunion with her old friend would have thrilled her. But Keomany was just standing there, gazing up at the stage with a face etched with sadness, as though they were the only two in the room and the music did not even exist.

Nikki forced herself to look away, to find a way to settle back into the groove again. Whatever had brought Keomany here, whatever had made her look so forlorn, it would have to wait until she had done the job she had come to do. The music had to come first. The music, and the critics who were scrutinizing her every move.

All through the rest of the set she avoided looking at Keomany as best she could. Nikki had no idea what had drawn the other woman here, but there was one thing of which she was quite certain.

It wasn't going to be a happy reunion.

6.

As much as the city of New York had changed in the early years of the twenty-first century, there were things about it that remained remarkably the same. Technology ran rampant, particularly in Times Square and the surrounding blocks, as well as in the subway stations, and yet some of the neighborhoods seemed almost to move backward in time.

Perhaps it was a response to the tech evolution going on elsewhere, but though the Village had remained as eccentric and eclectic as ever, it had also regressed to a more genteel age. Trees were cultivated along the sidewalks more than ever before and a kind of neighborliness had begun to blossom that was almost alien. The businesses in the area also reflected these subtle changes.

Once upon a time The Hovel had been a counterculture restaurant, but more and more over the years counterculture had become simply culture. Vegetarian dishes and world cuisine were the order of the day and no one gave waiters with green hair and multiple piercings a second glance. Ritual scarring and drastic body modification were still common enough, but growing less so, given that the shock value of it had worn off.

Peter Octavian sat at a small table on the sidewalk patio in front of The Hovel with Carter and Kymberly Strom, enjoying the warm spring day and the view up and down St. Marks Place, watching the world go by.

"So what do you think of the place, Peter?" Kymberly asked as she snapped her chopsticks at the Ocean Stir Fry Plate on the table before her. Kymberly was an attractive, dark-skinned woman with truly regal African features and an easy grin that had charmed Peter the first day he met her.

"It's . . . interesting," Peter replied with a wary glance at the souvlaki that had been set in front of him.

Carter laughed loud enough to draw the attention of others who were having lunch on the patio, but he either did not notice or did not care. Peter's agent was a big, heavyset bald man with enormous hands and an accent from his native Austria. People at gallery shows were often astonished to learn that this was Carter Strom, a respected figure in the art world. But Carter liked that: challenging people's expectations.

"Kym, haven't you realized yet that Peter doesn't like things to change?" Carter asked his wife with a broad wink at Octavian. "He's upset we didn't go to the White Horse. You should have said something, Peter."

He p.r.o.nounced "something" as zumzing zumzing.

Peter gave them a lopsided smile. "If it bothered me, I would would have said 'zumzing.'" have said 'zumzing.'"

Kymberly laughed at his teasing, but Carter shot him a stern look.

"You make fun uff the man paying for lunch? Not very wise, I think."

The conversation deteriorated further and then they were all occupied with eating their lunch. Peter was surprised to find that his souvlaki-which he would usually only buy from a sidewalk vendor; they always seemed to have the best-was quite tasty. Throughout their lunch he hid quite well the fact that Carter was right. He was not pleased with the change of plans. Kymberly had been ill when he had finished the last painting for the upcoming show and so they had put off their celebratory lunch until today, when Carter had insisted that Peter try someplace new. The Hovel wasn't very far from his apartment, but ever since he had become mortal again-ever since he had begun to age once more-Peter had found comfort in things that were routine.

Once upon a time he had faced in battle a sorcerer named Liam Mulkerrin. The man had used magick to prolong his human life, so that as he neared the century mark, he still looked barely sixty. Peter knew that he could similarly extend the time remaining to him, but in his heart of hearts he was afraid of what would come after.

It was strange to him, because he also relished his mortality. After all the years he had spent knowing he could not die, to be human again made him appreciate every second that ticked past on the clock, for he knew he would never get it back again. Anytime he wished, he could ask for the gift of immortality from Kuromaku or Allison; either of them would be pleased to give it to him. But he would not.

Peter feared what was after death, but he found a pleasure in the smallest things in life that he knew he would not have felt if the specter of his own eventual demise did not loom ahead of him. He wanted to live a simple, mundane life as part of the flow and rhythm of humanity, after so many centuries existing outside of it.

But Carter and Kymberly had reminded him today that he had taken such desires to the extreme.

The Hovel was a fine restaurant, the world that churned along St. Marks Place vibrantly alive. And the souvlaki was tasty.

"Thanks for suggesting this place," he said as he finished his meal.

Carter looked up with one eyebrow raised. Then he smiled. "You are very welcome, my friend."

"Kymberly, I'm glad you're feeling better," Peter added. "Now just stay healthy. The show's only a few weeks away and I won't get through it if you aren't there."

Her expression was soft and kind and Peter reflected that she did, indeed, remind him of a queen. He had met royalty several times in his life . . . his father had been an emperor . . . and Kymberly Strom had the bearing of a monarch.

"I wouldn't miss it, Peter. And it will be wonderful, of that I'm quite certain."

"I wish I shared your confidence," he told her.

A busboy came and began to clear some of the plates from the table. Carter began to go over some of the details of the upcoming gallery show again, but Peter was never very concerned with such things, preferring to leave them in his agent's hands. He nodded solicitously, but then let his gaze drift across the patio.

A trio of girls whose ankles all bore identical rose tattoos sat chattering happily to one another several tables over. Further along there was a fiftyish couple toasting one another with fluted winegla.s.ses and sharing a glance the intimacy of which was both inspirational and intimidating. On the other side of the table where Peter and the Stroms sat were two young men who spoke softly to one another, ignoring their lunch, their hands clasped across the table. A first or second date, Peter thought. And beyond them, three couples arrayed around two tables that had been pushed together.

And from the street a scream.

Peter snapped his gaze up to find the source of that horrid, guttural, animal sound. When he spotted the woman crossing the street toward the open patio of The Hovel, he stiffened immediately. She looked forty, but given the filth and grime that covered her and the snarled nest of her hair, she might have been considerably younger or even older and he would not have been able to tell. Her clothes were torn but she hugged herself in a way that kept them clinging together.

As she crossed the street, a car locked on its brakes and the driver sounded the horn. The filthy woman's head moved with fits and starts like a nervous bird, and she walked with the same jerky motion. Her eyes were wide, and when the driver of the car shouted out the window at her, she seemed not to notice.

Abruptly, as if at some unseen horror that had appeared in the middle of the street, the woman let loose another ferocious scream. Then this strange creature rushed the rest of the way across the street, paused on the sidewalk just beyond the shrubs that lined the patio, and began to jabber to the large party at the two shoved-together tables, all of whom were studiously avoiding looking at her. One of the men rose and strode purposefully toward the entrance to the restaurant, likely to bring a hostess or manager to shoo the homeless lunatic away.

"Poor thing," Kymberly said, the sadness in her voice palpable.

"Someone like that, it's terrible," Carter added. "Probably she was a patient at a hospital somewhere, and her insurance ran out. They do that, you know? Put the crazies out on the street when they can't pay."

But Peter was not paying any attention to his friends. Instead, he was listening listening to the woman. This horrid vision of madness who was speaking to the people on the patio, insulting them in a language not spoken on Earth in tens of thousands of years . . . a language Peter had only ever heard spoken in h.e.l.l. to the woman. This horrid vision of madness who was speaking to the people on the patio, insulting them in a language not spoken on Earth in tens of thousands of years . . . a language Peter had only ever heard spoken in h.e.l.l.

"Excuse me," he said, standing up so quickly that the legs of his chair sc.r.a.ped loudly upon the patio stones.

"What? Oh, Peter, no. Don't get involved. There's nothing you can do."

He paused and glanced at them, a frown creasing his forehead. These were his friends, certainly. But how well did they really know him? Not well at all, in fact, for he had only given them a little of himself. They had seen the artist, the soft-spoken man who kept his hair too short, did not shave often enough, and who had begun to go gray at the temples.

Then he smiled. "Let's see."

Peter moved past the young men on their date, who had stopped holding hands, their time together now soured by the madwoman's approach. He strode toward the large group at the joined tables, some of whom glanced at him curiously as he approached. At the edge of the patio he simply stepped over the shrubs.

The nattering, grime-covered woman turned on him, spittle flying from her mouth as she threatened him in that ancient tongue. Then she blinked, as though a bit of awareness had crept into her mind, and an agonizing scream erupted from her throat.

"I can help," Peter told her.

But then her eyes narrowed again as the thing inside her regained control. It spat at him, and where it flecked his cheek, the saliva burned. Peter quickly wiped it on the leg of his jeans and the denim began to smolder there until he slapped at it a couple of times.

The thing inside the woman was grinning madly.

Peter raised both hands and contorted his fingers as though he were a puppeteer controlling some invisible marionette. Under his breath he muttered several words, and then he whipped his arms back, tugging hard. The woman's mouth opened and she screamed again, only this time, those who heard that scream would have noticed that there were two voices screaming-one the woman's and one a low, guttural, savage snarl that had not been there before.

A yellow fog the approximate shade and stink of urine erupted from her mouth as though she had vomited it up. It began to dissipate but Peter would not allow that. With a wave of his hand and a flick of his wrist he crafted a sphere of energy that enveloped that putrid yellow fog completely. Then he whispered to it and the sphere grew smaller and smaller until at last it disappeared with a tiny pop like a bubble blown by a child. Those who were nearest to him might have heard a m.u.f.fled, guttural shout of pain in that moment, but it was abruptly cut off.

The woman collapsed and Peter grabbed her, held her until she was steady enough to stand. She stared at him with moist, brown eyes filled with fear and anxiety.

"Where am I?" she asked.