Dark Muse (32 page)

“You did well, boy,” said the middle Triton.
“You did well.”

Lyra looked for something to beat him with,
her brother or the Triton, as she glared at them. Either would do.
“As long as these
things
are alive, we’ll never be free. You
know that!”

Otis rushed at him, ready to swing. “You
saved me. I saved you. That means something, doesn’t it?”

The boy said nothing. He refused to meet any
of their stares.

Lyra turned to see the instruments locked up
tight in a quartz box behind Zack’s machine. “You’ve just signed
their death warrants. You do know that, you miserable weasel.” Her
voice dripped with poison.

“I thought you’d understand. This isn’t life.
Where they’re from,” Luke said as he waved at the band,
“
that’s
life. This is nothing but a prison. We’re already
dead; they just haven’t buried us yet.”

He turned to the others. “I’m sorry. I wanted
the best for my people and I thought the Tritons would make you
sing forever, not kill you. Honest.”

The band seethed, everyone refusing to look
at him. All through their lives, betrayal had been at the
forefront. Now, just when they felt they could count on these two
people, one turned his back on the bond. Muddy felt a tear form.
He’d failed them.

Muddy fell against the wall, blocking out the
song that pained him. The gauntlet had been an elaborate set up to
test them. If they died, it would have meant that they didn’t have
the music in them. End of story. Or were the Tritons lying just to
throw them off? Had the Tritons really won and this was just the
final test?

“What’s your game?” He yelled at them. “To
have us join Zack? What then? Take over our world?”

The Tritons didn’t even flinch. “No, we just
want to bring music into this one and conquer one or two others for
the
other
. It’s a vast world, parallel to yours with many
kingdoms, many mountains. We want more. We want to control all of
the music. We all do. It’s what this place was built for; to help
those who make the music, to harness it all.”

“You keep saying ‘them’ and ‘others.’ “ His
head spun as he formulated the plan he prayed would work. “Who are
they
?”

Wait, he thought. If they could travel to our
world, they would have done so already. They can’t cross over, not
without Zack’s power, but they might be able to soon.

They ignored his question, but answered
another. “Haven’t you figured it out, yet? You came even though the
old man warned you of what you might find here. Your brother has
become the darkest muse of them all. We just helped him realize
it.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Muddy looked at his brother’s eyes and saw
little remaining, but still, something of his family was in there.
He needed to save Zack.

“Now listen and please, take your places.”
They gestured to the harnesses.

The song they played on Zack sounded like a
mash-up of Bach and Mozart crossed with Def Leppard and Metallica.
It was beautiful, complicated, but with the power of a thousand
electric guitars though a wall of amplifiers. As the song
intensified, Muddy felt it penetrate his bones.

“Think of your lives here,” said the first.
“No more pain from society. None. Your song would feed nations and
bring them happiness.”

One placed its spindly arm on Corey. “Boy,
you came from nothing and moved into everything, but you still feel
an emptiness nothing can fill. Until you came here.”

Another placed one of its long arms on Poe’s
head. She recoiled in revulsion.

“You, dear,” said the creature, its
finger-things lifting her hair. “We have sensed from your first
trip here, the pain you feel, the most of all in your group. A
father should be a father, not a monster.”

“So says a monster,” she said with tears in
her eyes. The music from Zack was killing their resolve.

“You can escape it all here and make scores
of children smile in the way your parents couldn’t.”

The third hovered over Otis. “Son, you have
nothing back home.”

Although he writhed in pain, he turned his
head to glare at their captors. “I have more than you ever will. I
have my family and friends.”

“They will stay with you until the end of
your life, but you know it’s not far off if you go back where you
came from. Here you would never fade, never hurt.”

Lyra was next. She still tore her brother
apart with the fire in her eyes as he sat next to the captive
instruments. “Your people have never known freedom. Your village
will be spared if you cooperate, but they’ll be vaporized if your
brother doesn’t honor his agreement with us. We have no use for
you, so please don’t stand in our way.”

Finally, they came to Muddy. “Your brother
was always the golden child. You know that. Without your mother,
your father and Zack have withered into themselves, leaving you,
the child with needs they couldn’t address, to be neglected.”

He felt his fists curl, aching for the
guitar. No. They wouldn’t rattle him, or cause him to sell out all
that mattered to him.

“Here, you will never be picked on, never be
the low man. Alongside your brother, if you wish, you can rule the
music and be adored by many worlds.”

Again, the voice whispered in his head.
You know the truth. You came here for a reason, for a task you
knew you could accomplish. Now save your brother, my son
.

His anger boiled over and he kicked his left
leg high, right into the joint where the Triton’s knee should’ve
been. Yet it didn’t flinch.

But his assault did have the effect he
wished.

All three turned to laugh at the teen on the
floor.

Lyra winked at Muddy and attacked
Luke—hurtling herself into him, sending him towards the
windows
.
As they tussled on the precipice in front of the
window, they rolled into the pedestal which contained the band’s
tools in the clear case. It shook and teetered.

“I tried!” Luke screamed, pushing her off
him. “When Zack first came to the village, I warned him, told him
to go back home if he wanted to live, but he didn’t listen.”

“Liar!”

“No,” he said, pinning her as she still
kicked into the pedestal. “The prophecy. We’ve been told all along
that someone would come to set us free. To give us the music that
we see the visitors come for, and leave with, as we are left with
nothing, time and time again.”

“Someone was coming. I knew it and they found
me in the forest. It was either them or the village. I didn’t know
them!”

“But now you do!” She rolled him into the
pedestal, toppling to the floor in a shattering crash. The
instruments scattered across the black floor.

“That boy, Muddy’s brother, he never had a
chance. He was clouded, they said, and I saw it too. He wanted to
accept their power. He wished for power, for answers and would die
if he stayed his course.” Lyra skittered out of the way as the band
grabbed their instruments. “But these guys stayed their course and
now you’ll probably not survive because of it.”

Luke crawled toward the window and shuddered.
“I just wanted to save us.”

“And kill these people? You knew you
shouldn’t trust these…things!”

He cried. “I didn’t know! I did it for
us.”

Silver Eye’s voice echoed again in their
heads.
Now! Play the music that makes the earth move!

Each slung the instrument he had given them
and played the song that had been in their heads since the moment
the old man’s ghost sung it to them the previous night.

This is your song, the one you played the
first time we crossed over. I just helped pull it from your
souls.

“It worked once before,” Muddy said, to both
the band and to their mentor, thinking of the melody and rhythms
they wrote for Poe to escape her father.

“Ready?” Poe cued the band.

They stood on the stage before Zack, facing
off against him, just like they would back home in a Battle of the
Bands. It was simple, except that this one might end in the
snuffing out of someone’s life.

“You can’t!” The Tritons screamed at once.
“We’re offering you what you can never have back home. Stop now and
you can still live.”

“I’m through with threats,” she said and
nodded to Otis, who slammed his sticks into the edge of the rim on
his drum to begin the song.

Muddy hoped that their instinct was dead on,
the blues rock fire opus they planned to one day win the Battle of
the Bands with back in their real world. He hoped its off-beat,
up-tempo blues-rock would keep the creatures off steady ground just
long enough to get out of there with all of them intact. He churned
out the earthy riff, something he’d come up with while listening to
his buddies jamming as they waited for Poe to join them. Born of
worry for her, it carried with it an emotional weight he doubted
these Tritons had ever heard first hand. Otis laid down the groove
under Muddy and Corey added a line that functioned as a bass before
snaking into other lands.

Luke had passed on his chance to be the
bassist here. Muddy didn’t need him.

The song rocked, tearing into the fabric of
who they were. It embodied the songs they’d survived that day.

As the creatures roiled in confusion and
terror, something nobody was expecting, Lyra rose again and
gestured for Corey to move toward her. In a smooth motion, after he
finished his line, they threw themselves linebacker-style into the
structure of the man-instrument on either side. It shook. Zack’s
eyes flittered open and his song halted in an instant.

As his music stopped, the others grew in
volume. The rest of the band appeared to double their intensity and
come to life as the Tritons slowed their movements.

The metal and wire structure leaned to and
fro, then again, tipping more each way. The instrument in the
middle struggled. Did the teen wish to get out to protect himself
or to continue the song?

Muddy tried to keep himself in the song,
pushing himself harder, but wished to help his brother, hoping that
thing confining him didn’t crush him.

As if on cue, Lyra and Corey hit it again,
harder and up a little higher. It rocked further, once, twice and
on the third time, she reached onto the edge and jumped up on
it.

It fell like a musical tree into the wall
next to the window with a massive, discordant crash. The tones it
emitted when it broke nearly halted the band, but Muddy and Otis
were locked in tight. Poe was no longer of this dimension as she
sung with sweet pain her lyrics and melody.

Corey stepped up and launched into his solo,
giving birth to deep, rich tones that killed off the reverberations
of the Zack-thing as the boy collapsed in the harness, still strung
tight by the myriad strings.

He lay still while the creatures gathered
around him, inching further from the band.

The band became one again and turned up the
heat on the Tritons as they simultaneously lost themselves in the
music.

Somewhere in Muddy’s mind, he understood
Hendrix, Vaughan, Page, Lennon and the others. The feel of the
music was beyond intoxicating. Nothing he could imagine would ever
match the intensity of the feeling, but many tried. Some did it
with more songs and playing. Others turned to booze and drugs, like
Zack, adding pain to his equation.

Muddy hurt just as bad over mom’s death.
Plus, he’d had to endure much more in school, and his future didn’t
seem as bright as his dad’s or his brother’s, but he wouldn’t let
himself wallow. He was nowhere near the strength he wished to be,
but the band helped a lot.

What happened next helped him even more.

The Tritons skittered around like roaches
caught in the light. Without their song, they appeared lost and
without protection. Up and down the walls and across the floor they
ran, everywhere except where the music emanated. They screamed.
“You can’t destroy us.” Their dissonant voices displayed fear and
anything but confidence. “If you destroy our bodies, true power
will find you. Those who live below the River will know.”

“What?” Muddy almost stopped until he
realized they’d nearly killed his brother. It was a ruse.
Keep
up the song
, a voice from within urged.

“We are only a conduit for those who lie
beneath. They have always been here and always will.”

As Poe sung the last note and appeared to
glow with power, back-to-back with Corey as Otis performed his rock
star ending, Muddy held tight onto his final chord and let it
ring.

“What lies beneath? Beneath what?”

“The River. We have powers you can’t imagine
and live in places no beings like you could ever survive, because
of them.”

“It wasn’t
you
,” Poe said. “It was the
River who guided us. It wanted us to get here, to keep things
pure.” She stood up to their towering height as they still shook
from the reverberations of the song. “
Not
by you. It was the
River
.”

As the trio cowered, they appeared to shrink
a little and said, “The River is power, but it doesn’t choose. It
doesn’t love or hate. Our father, who lives beneath it, does and we
feel his desires now. He wants you to die.”

Muddy suddenly remembered something about his
father’s name. He’d changed it long ago. Right after he’d sold his
first book. Why? Had he come here, too? Had he recited a poem or
story at the crossroads for the door to open? He never knew his
dad’s real last name, but he kind of wondered if it mattered now.
He was part of this place just like his father. The River was part
of their family, as it was for so many others, but if something
horrible did live beneath, it was time to leave a family member
behind.

“You can’t just leave,” said the trio. Were
they regaining their strength so soon? “We won’t—and it won’t let
you.”