All That Falls (37 page)

Griffin set his guitar down and went to stoke the fire in the stone fireplace. They’d showered after returning from the club and his damp unstyled hair was adorably shaggy. Cerise sat on the bed with his guitar next to her. She plucked the strings absently, thinking about the song they’d been working on.

“Finish your wine,” he said.

“My head’s already full of bees,” she said. “If I drink any more I’ll pass out.”

“So? We’re on vacation,” he said, draining his own glass. He kissed her, his soft insistent mouth stirring passion. He leaned back and held her glass to her lips.

She sipped the wine, which had a tart cherry note to it and a slightly bitter, but not unpleasant, aftertaste.

The room whirled slowly, and against her ear his mouth whispered, “Goes down like nectar.”

She sank into an oily darkness, music and voices echoing in her head.

My throat hurts. Can’t breathe.

The room tilted, her body jarred, rocking to the rhythm of rough sex. She was facedown on the bed and he was ramming…who? As she woke, terror roared through her.

Her unsteady fingers clawed at the hands around her neck. She fought, scratched, screamed against a closed throat. Thrashing, she caught a glimpse of him in the mirror.

Red violet eyes narrowed, the vicious sneer on his face making him almost unrecognizable.

In her head, she screamed for him to stop. He was killing her. This version of Griffin, one she didn’t know, was choking her to death while he raped her.

She fought desperately, and an endless shriek continued over and over until her mind shattered.

She woke shivering and sore in a bath of warm water. A crying Griffin bent over her, scrubbing her body with a soapy washcloth.

For a moment, she couldn’t move or speak. Her head hurt, throbbing and swollen like the rest of her. The world seemed distant, as though her skull had been packed with cotton soaked in hand lotion.

A little spike of clarity stabbed her heart. Fury, black and bleak, put strength back in her arm. She slapped him so hard his head smacked the wall, cutting his cheek where it struck the ceramic tile.

Stunned, he fell back, landing on his ass.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry—”

She lurched from the tub and landed on him, pummeling him until she had to stop to catch her breath.

He huddled in a ball, bruised and bleeding, begging for forgiveness.

“It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me,” he cried.

She wobbled to her feet and stumbled out of the bathroom. She had to escape this nightmare.

The floor tilted and rocked like a theme park ride. She landed on her hands and knees and felt so tired she couldn’t even crawl.

Out. Get out!

Her limbs didn’t obey. Instead they buckled, and she collapsed onto the rug. Her heartbeat throbbed in her temples, and she struggled to hold on to consciousness. The exhaustion was too much.

This time he was calm when she woke. She was unnaturally calm as well. She lay under a throw blanket on the couch where he’d obviously placed her. She watched as he put a black cord, duct tape, and a hunting knife into a duffel bag. When he coughed she thought she smelled eggs too old to be eaten.

In the grips of a chilling realization that Griffin had a sociopath alter ego, she shifted to look around the room. The loaded gun she always carried when she was outside the Etherlin was waiting inside her purse, which sat on the table.

She sat up slowly, silently, but he still sensed or heard something because he turned and stared at her.

He swaggered toward her with his left arm hanging back behind his body.

That’s not how Griffin walks. Not usually.

She rose, gripping the blanket. She would drop it if she needed to fight, but until then she didn’t want to be naked. She stared at his arm, trying to see if he held anything in his hand like a weapon or something he could use to restrain her. She edged around the couch toward the table.

“You’re up,” he said with a smile that turned her stomach. “How do you feel?” he asked lightly.

How the hell do you think I feel?

He darted forward and caught her arm.

She jerked her arm out of his grip and widened her stance.

“I think we should go back to the Etherlin tonight,” he said.

“Who are you?” she asked.

His brows rose. “What do you mean?”

She stared at his eyes, looking for the hints of red she’d seen earlier, but he’d buried the telltale signs. Still, she knew this wasn’t her Griffin.

Several moments passed before she spoke, the silence stretching eerily until her blood ran cold with dread.

With a flat voice, she said, “The Griffin I know wouldn’t have done what you did.”

“What did I do?” he asked, the cadence of his speech slow and careful and nothing like the way Griffin spoke when he was upset.

The stranger’s tone was pleased, not confused. This creature knew exactly what he’d done, and remorse was the farthest thing from what he felt about abusing her. His smile widened while she struggled to choose whether to slam a fist into his smirking face or to rush to the table in an attempt to reach the gun before he caught her.

Her heart banged in her chest, but that actually felt good. Most of the earlier haze had lifted, and as adrenaline spiked her blood, her muscles tightened.

Whether he felt her stiffen or just became impatient, she didn’t know. But when he tried to take her arms, she slammed her knee into his groin and her fist into his throat. He staggered back as she bolted to the table.

Her purse was partially unzipped. She yanked it open and dug inside until cold metal reassured her. She spun to point the gun at him.

He stood massaging his crotch and throat. At the sight of the gun, he laughed.

“Your mind and body are stronger than most, I’ll give you that,” he said. “So now you have a gun. But if you succeed in killing this body, you’ll lose Griffin.” His voice was a low hiss of malice. “Or we could bargain. Would you like to save your boy toy?”

“What are you talking about?”

He took a step toward her, and her finger twitched against the trigger.

“Come even an inch closer, and I’ll end this conversation.” She meant it, and her hard tone told him so.

He studied her. “You just might…I’ll let you say good-bye to him.”

His eyes, momentarily red, rolled back and Griffin’s body collapsed. His face contorted and a violent seizure slapped his jerking body against the floor. Bloody saliva dripped from his mouth from the cut on his tongue made by his clamping jaw. Her instinct was to rush to help him, but she never moved.

She waited, unsure whether the seizure would kill him. If it didn’t, she wondered who she would be facing when he woke and wondered how Griffin had ended up with multiple personalities. Was he an innocent victim whose personality had fractured from some terrible childhood trauma? And what about his eyes?

The seizure ended, and his labored breathing slowly returned to normal. Soft groans became unintelligible words and finally mumbled phrases. She waited for what felt like hours for him to regain his senses.

When he did, he sat up. “What happened? What did he do to you?” he asked, his voice catching.

“You don’t remember?”

He shook his head. “I never do,” he whispered. “I wake up in strange places. Sometimes there’s blood, and I never know if the person it came from is alive or dead.” Tears filled his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“What did happen? Where did he come from?”

He winced and held his head. “I have such a headache.”

“Answer me, Griffin.”

He looked up at her beseechingly. He seemed young and a little fragile, and it made her heart contract painfully. He wanted her to let him off easy as she often did when something upset him, but this time she couldn’t.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“I never knew I would meet a muse. Never knew I’d get the help I needed to take my music to the next level. I was desperate. You know how it is for people like me. We’re obsessed. We’d do anything. We can’t help it. And who knows if I’d ever have met you if my music hadn’t started to take off. You noticed me because the music became great.”

She cocked her head. What was he saying? That he—no, it wasn’t possible. “What did you do?”

He sighed. “The tattoo artist in San Francisco was a witch. We were using Ecstasy together one night. I was trying to reach a different consciousness, to find a source of inspiration that would help me write that one hit song I needed to launch my career. While we were lying there, I was running on about how desperate I was to become one of the greats, and she said she knew a ritual to get me what I wanted. I remember I said, ‘I’ll do anything.’”

Tears streamed down his face, and he sucked in a breath. “The next night, we summoned a demon. It was bloody and painful, but he played music that was so hard and so sweet, it felt worth losing my soul for. He told me I’d become a legend and that he wouldn’t necessarily take my soul. He’d give me the option of buying it back from him. When it was over, my head exploded with creativity. It was fucking great,” he said, crying.

“I didn’t hear from him for a couple of years. I started to wonder if it’d even been real. But then he started to come to me in dreams. He wanted me to perform rituals.” He shuddered. “At first I did. I didn’t want to kill animals, but that’s done all the time, isn’t it? If we’re not vegetarians, animals are slaughtered for us. What’s the difference, right?” He shrugged. “Then you and I met and got involved. And having you as my muse…I could feel the difference. The purity of the way I could create with you. I wanted to be done with the demon. I wanted to make one big sacrifice to buy my soul back. But the thing he wanted would’ve ruined everything.”

“What did he want?” she whispered.

“You.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “They all want you. The ventala. The demons. Other fucking musicians. Everyone always wants me to deliver you to them. Like I’m nothing. Like I don’t matter.” He licked his lips. “Maybe I don’t. But I said no. I told the demon to fuck off. Ditto to the ventala and everyone else. That’s where I draw the goddamned line. But he wouldn’t let it drop. The blackouts I’ve had since I was a teenager got worse, and I started to think I was doing things…or my body was.” He clenched his fists.

“It turns out the demon, that motherfucker, was recruiting. He was making offers to the people around me, setting up his
network. He’s got Troy. That sick asshole was trying to cover up something to do with young girls and the demon helped him do it, saved him somehow. Troy let things slip when he thought he was talking to the demon. That’s how I found out that I’m not alone in this body. It’s been a nightmare ever since.

“There’s a female ventala, a real bitch, who’s raised demons. I thought she might know a way I could cut him out of my life. Do some ritual to banish him. I’ve tried to get information, but she’s cagey and I could never trust her with the truth. She’d use it as leverage. Besides if it came down to him or me, she’d probably choose him. I think he’s been screwing her.”

Griffin leaned his back against the coffee table. “I do love you, Cerise. I love you more than anything, more than the fame and a lot more than myself. Sometimes I think I should kill myself. He’s been talking to Hayden. Now he’s hurt you. I’m so fucking sorry.” He swallowed. “And I can’t take this,” he said, his voice catching. “He owns my soul and he’s got a way of smashing it into nothing, so he can use my body. I can’t stop him. There’s nothing I can do. I wish—I wish you’d use that gun on me.”

She sat in the chair, resting the gun on her lap, and cried.

He stood and took a step toward her, but she shook her head.

“Don’t come near me.”

He covered his mouth with his fist and shook his head. The anguish in his eyes devastated her. She wiped the tears away with her left hand while the right held tight to the gun.

“You know I love you,” he said.

“I loved you, too,” she whispered. “But you got involved with me knowing your life was infected with a demon.”

“If I could get rid of it?”

“I’d still never be able to trust you again.”

“No, Cer, c’mon! You have to have a little faith. If I thought we were over, I couldn’t—listen, there isn’t anything we can’t do together. You know that!”

“What I know is that you didn’t warn me. You knew he was using your body and you let me get drunk and come here alone with you. He used your body to rape me.”

“I never thought he’d hurt you! You’re important to him. I never thought he’d do anything like what happened tonight. You have to believe that!”

“Do I? Do I really?” she spat. “He’s a demon. Are you really surprised he does evil things?” She glared at him. “I think you knew something like this could happen and probably would. But you were selfish. You wanted your music and me and the life you sold your soul for. Now you expect me to say that everything will be okay if you can get someone to exorcise him from your body? How can you ask that of me after what you did?” She shook her head. “It’ll never be okay, Griffin. And as long as he can take control of your body, you’re a danger to everyone you know. You should be locked up.”

“Do you want me to kill myself, Cerise? Is that what you want? Because I think you’re saying that you’re not just gonna leave me, you’re going to ruin my life. If I couldn’t play music—”

“That’s what you’re worried about?” she roared. “Your career? Aren’t you afraid of what else he’ll do using your body?”

He held out a hand. “No, because now you know. You can watch me. And I’ll do anything you say. See a priest. Another witch. Anything to get rid of him! Just help me.”

“What if there’s no way to get rid of him? What if while you’re trying to find a way, he hurts me even worse or hurts Hayden or Jersey? Look at the things he was putting in that duffel bag. It looks like stuff that would belong in a serial killer’s bag. He could already be killing people.”

“No. He wouldn’t risk me getting accused of murder and having my body arrested. Murder’s petty to him. He’s planning something big. And as long as we can keep him from doing that, we’ve got time to get rid of him.”