Reflex Read online

  “Motherfucking hell! Get off him.” The explosion of sound sheered a pathway through the static. Simultaneously, the pressure on his throat eased, allowing his lungs to fill, and the support holding him vertical was removed. Spook’s knees buckled, dropping him like a satellite falling from orbit.

  “I’m going to put you in the fucking ground. What the hell do you think you were doing to him, you sick bloody fuck?”

  Spook rolled. Curled. He was still in the grimy corridor, which was even less salubrious now, thanks to some fresh blood splatter. A waterfall of green and purple appeared right before him. He blinked, unsure whether his vision was playing tricks on him, only for the colour explosion to reform into a familiar visage.

  “Paul?” he croaked, through a throat full of thorns.

  “Spooky-man. Right here.” He was treated to a shit-eating grin, before the big friendly giant laid his fists into the slug on the floor again.

  A wall of boots arrived maybe a second later, then again, it might have been hours.

  “That’ll be enough, Mr Reed. Security can handle this from here.”

  “He’s masquerading as fucking security.”

  “We said back off, now.”

  “Do it, or I’ll have you locked up and processed too.” Yeah, Spook knew that voice. Their manager. And he would too. Graham Callahan was a bastard like that.

  Two blood-roughened fists hauled Spook upright. “Spook?” When he managed to focus in roughly the right direction, an impish grin was beamed at him from a distance of an inch. “Talk to me, Spooky-man.” The clasp under his pits, holding him aloft, morphed into a shake. “Did that bastard… Do I need to go back and cut off…?”

  “Hey, back up there, big guy.”

  Calm arrived in the form of black silk and leather, and a whiff of Giorgio Armani for men. Two strong arms caged him in a protective embrace, while a pair of cat’s eyes hypnotically scrutinised him. “I’ve gotcha.”

  Xane. For a moment, peace burned away his anger and indignation. “Xane.” He reached desperately for the other man.

  “Right here.” Xane swaddled him in an embrace, then backed up. “Let me have a look at you.” Xane gently inspected his face. “I don’t think stitches are going to be necessary. Can you focus? Look at me. Your head okay?”

  He nodded, even though he wasn’t entirely sure.

  “What do you say I get you cleaned up and out of here?”

  He gave another nod, pleased that Xane wasn’t insisting he talk or answer dumb questions about how many fingers he was holding up. Xane would get him out of here. Keep him safe. When he chose, Xane was an organiser extraordinaire. He had a way of making people jump to attention and get shit done. He didn’t exactly snap his fingers and teleport them, but they did reach the exit without a single person getting in their way.

  “The limo’s out front. Sorry, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to magic the crowd away.”

  Spook flinched.

  Xane contemplatively turned the hoop piercing his lower lip. “Okay, let’s just hang tight a moment and let the others catch up.”

  Spook wasn’t sure how that would help, but he was all for staying put.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  No. Yes. Like you don’t already know. “Some piece of pond life jumped me.”

  “And?”

  And there was nothing else to say about it. His face hurt, his brow stung, and he felt weirdly detached, like his mind wasn’t anchored inside his skull properly. “I’m fine. It’s not like it’s anything new. I’ve been groped a zillion times.”

  Xane—heaven curse him—saw right through him. It had always been his talent, right from the day they’d met. Forget the masks that everyone accepted, Xane had soul specs. He saw right into the hearts of people. Leastways, he’d always seen right into the heart of him.

  “Spook. You haven’t been fine in all the time I’ve known you. So if you’re fine now after you’ve just been assaulted, there’s something seriously off. In any case, I can see you’re not okay. You’ve a bust lip and the makings of a black eye. Plus, I can feel you shaking, so how about you don’t spin me a bunch of shite?”

  “What the fuck do you want me to say?” he snapped. “Some guy decided to try and make me his fuck toy? So, no, I’m not feeling overly jolly at the mo’, but I’ll cope. I’ve been through worse and survived.”

  Xane didn’t actually respond to that, but Spook could virtually hear the words running through his head. “But only just.”

  “Fuck off,” he muttered.

  Xane just lifted his brows. “Want another hug?”

  “No.” Yes. Maybe.

  “How about you tell me what you can handle?” Xane suggested, again seeming to pinpoint exactly what was running through his head. Fucker. And he needed to quit with the neutral, altogether reasonable tone he was adopting. It was pissing him off. He ought to be telling him what an idiot he was for screwing up so catastrophically. No one had put him in danger. He’d done that to himself. It wasn’t as if he was part of some break-out band who weren’t clued up on how the world worked. Making that phone call had been stupid on every level imaginable.

  “Spook, listen.” Xane continued, maintaining that unsettling even tone. “There’s a whole gaggle of fans out there, and this meet-and-greet corporate party bollocks to attend. But, I don’t give a shit what Sally Kettering or anyone else says. If you need to bail, then we’re bailing. Here.” He grabbed a wad of tissues off the reception desk and awkwardly offered to clean up Spook’s temple and busted lip.

  Spook made himself stand semi-still for it. If it’d been anyone else, he’d probably have shoved them through a window for getting too close, but Xane, he just had a way about him that made compliance easy. Also, he was surprisingly gentle, which Spook appreciated. His head felt like there was an ice-pick embedded in it above his right eye, and his throat…it seemed to be clogged with gravel. Speaking around that was a fucking effort.

  “Like I pissing care about some party.”

  “I know you don’t. Do you want to go somewhere… talk?”

  Spook shook his head. Oh, the hell, no. “I don’t want to analyse this shit, and you know it.” There was only so much talking over things one person could stomach, and he’d reached his capacity before he’d hit his twenties. Xane knew it too. Never did stop him from occasionally trying to chip holes in Spook’s curtain wall though.

  “If we bail it’ll only cause a hassle,” Spook muttered. A party was the last place he wanted to go—too many people—but he couldn’t think of an appealing alternative. Also, true fact: going along with what Sally Kettering wanted was way more expedient than switching plans on her. If they showed their faces at the party, then at some point he’d be allowed to escape to wherever the hell he decided he might want to escape to.

  Oblivion, maybe, because he sure as hell didn’t want to wallow inside his own headspace right now.

  “You know what Sally’s like.” The last thing he wanted was for her to insist on accompanying him to the local hospital to get checked over. Bitch that she was, she’d sit there grinning at his discomfort while he was probed and prodded and forced to communicate while a bunch of doctors who knew fuck all about him threatened him with a psych evaluation.

  They only had to catch a glimpse of the old scars on his inner arms, and bam, he was labelled high risk. They were nothing but two faint silver ribbons these days, barely noticed by anybody.

  Goddammit, he wasn’t about to wind up suicidal over some prick shoving him around.

  Xane seemed about to say something, but evidently changed his mind. “Just tell me when you’ve had enough, okay?”

  Sure. Whatever. How about now? Know where he could find a bath of ice-cubes, because he needed to do something to stop the crawling sensation over his skin? If he was numb to the core, at least he wouldn’t feel it any more. Logical, see?

  “How’d you find me?” he asked. Rock Giant had appeared out of nowh
ere, with Xane and security on his heels, but he couldn’t figure out how or why.

  Xane drew his tongue along the ridge of his front teeth. “Allegra Hutton called me, out of her friggin’ mind. Told me you were being mobbed.”

  He hadn’t hung up.

  Still didn’t entirely make sense.

  “Fastest way to find you was to take a look at the CCTV.”

  “I didn’t know Allegra had your number.” Nor was he sure he liked that fact. Not because he was afraid of Xane making a move on her, but because he didn’t like the idea they might end up exchanging messages about him behind his back.

  “Graham apparently passed it on when we were negotiating the contract with her. Do you want me to call her back, or are you going to do it?”

  Spook disposed of the wad of bloody tissues Xane had left him holding after his little clean up routine. He could see his reflection in the brushed steel of the reception surroundings. He looked like a goddamned spectre—beyond pale with luminous blue eyes in darkened sockets.

  “I can’t talk to her right now.” He wasn’t about to explain the ins and outs of the conversation they’d been having prior to the world going tits up. Although, judging by the way Xane was looking at him, he’d either already guessed or Alle had told him. Spook shook his head as a warning. After a moment, Xane got out his phone and tapped out a message. “I’ve let her know you’re safe, and that you’ll call in a few days or so.”

  Or never. “Thanks.”

  Allegra, and this obsession he had with her, wasn’t healthy. It had to end. Look what had happened.

  The rest of the band arrived, along with Dani and Ginny, Ash sporting a pair of shades, which he immediately offered. Spook ignored him, focussing instead on the amount of micro-pore tape wound around Rock Giant’s knuckles. The band’s manager, Graham Callahan, brought up the rear, seeming to fill twice as much space as the rest of them with his presence.

  “Drama’s over, boys. Perp’s on his way to lock-up, so dust yourselves off, and let’s get your arses to this corporate piss-up. And play nice, now. The tour’s been storming and things are good at the moment. We need to keep things ticking that way until the new single drops.”

  What new single?

  “I hardly think we’re much in the mood for a party,” Rock Giant grumbled.

  “Spook’s fine. Aren’t you, Mr. Mortensen?” Graham insisted.

  Spook turned away, unable to stomach the sympathetic looks cast in his direction. Graham was being a dick, but that wasn’t anything new. Brushing woes under the carpet was his speciality. It never mattered which of them was in shaky town, just as long as they could pull their act together to go on stage, do the interview, lick the correct arses. It’d been Graham who’d first floated the idea of letting Ash go when he’d been struggling. Arsehole.

  Graham evidently took his silence as compliance. Spook guessed, in a sense, it was. Expedience, like he’d said to Xane.

  Rock Giant muttered under his breath, something that incorporated shit-face, and boggart breath.

  “There’s still a crowd out there,” Dani pointed out, as they all edged towards the door.

  “No way,” Luthor protested. “I am not running the fucking gauntlet. Plans? Suggestions? Anybody? Why are we exiting via the front? What was wrong with the back door?”

  “Yeah, we know all about your preferences,” Liam humourlessly quipped.

  Luthor scowled.

  “You need to be seen.” Graham patiently explained, like Luthor was five, and hadn’t spent half his life playing gigs or hanging backstage at them. “The fans like that. It’s their chance to get close to you.”

  “Time and a place, man,” he muttered. “Time and a place, and this ain’t it.”

  “Ash?” Xane prompted, giving their lead guitarist a nod. “Think you can work some Gore magic?”

  “You betcha.” One mega-watt smile plastered across his silly mug, Ash headed outside. Fearless? Stupid? Spook wasn’t sure which it was, but he was grateful for it. He watched Ash take off at a right angle to the building, away from the waiting car.

  “I’m going to lend some muscle,” Paul announced, shuffling free of Graham’s guardianship to go after Ash.

  “If it works, we’ll pick you up around the corner,” Xane called after him.

  If…

  As if there was any doubt.

  Spook watched uneasily through the tinted glass. Sure enough, the first few fans, having caught sight of Ash, were now peeling away from the waiting limousine, which in turn was alerting others to the fact a band member had been spotted. When they saw Rock Giant jogging to catch up to Ash, a general stampede erupted. That was right when Xane pushed Spook onto the street, and they ran the three yards necessary to tumble into the waiting vehicle.

  Xane slammed the door behind them. The noise turned a couple of heads back in their direction, but with Ash and Paul on the street, no one was interested in pressing their noses to the smoky glass to find out who was in the car.

  The opposite side door opened a moment later and Ginny followed them inside, shadowed by Dani and then Luthor.

  “I swear all I have to do is stick a woolly hat on, and no one knows who the fuck I am,” the latter bemoaned. He threw a look in their direction and a subtle furrow appeared between his brows. It vanished almost instantly, when Dani slapped him across the arse. They both settled together on the back seat.

  “You’re the man who’s shagging Xane Geist,” she counselled, “You’ve got to expect some resentment. It’s not that they don’t recognise you, Luthor. They’re just super mad at you for stealing him, and that’s mostly the ‘girlies’. The guy-fans have been totally supportive of you.”

  Luthor raised his hands. “Yeah, well I’m not apologising for my relationship.”

  “No one is saying you have to. You just need to accept that it screws with their fantasies of banging him. At least you don’t get hissed at. You’re still hot, even if you’re a drummer, and they still get to imagine being in the centre of a Xane-Luthor sandwich. I’m the bitch who has it all, and deserves blasting into smithereens.”

  Dani had certainly come a long way in the last year from the insecure woman Xane had installed on their tour bus as the price of his return to the band. Looking around, maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d grown.

  “Hot, despite being a drummer,” Luthor moaned indignantly.

  “You know perfectly well that’s not how I intended it. Tell him, Xane.”

  “It could be worse,” Xane said distractedly. “You could be the bass player.”

  “I kind of like those at the moment,” Spook muttered. Rock Giant had saved his arse.

  Unfortunately, speaking had the effect of fixating everyone’s attention back on him, and they were all looking at him as if he were made of finely drawn glass. He was not about to fracture because some nob-end had knocked him about a bit.

  Xane subtly moved his hand so that it lay over the top of Spook’s on the leather seat between them. The touch was appreciated, though unnecessary. For fuck’s sake, he was fine.

  “Get out of that,” Xane said a moment later, initially confusing Spook, until his friend nodded down at the blood-splattered remains of Spook’s T-shirt. It was only on looking down at himself that Spook realised how badly he was shaking. He couldn’t make it stop, either. Upper arms, shoulders, even his flippin’ legs were jigging up and down like he was perched on top of a washing machine. No wonder they were all squinting at him. They probably figured he was in shock or something.

  “It’s cold,” he rasped.

  “Have this. I’m stifling.” Xane took off his own silk shirt and handed it over. “I’m good with just my jacket.”

  Spook nodded, accepting the offering, though he couldn’t make his fingers work well enough to fasten the damn squirrelly little buttons. Mind, it did give him a hit of pleasure to fling the ruins of his T-shirt on the floor.

  “Here.” Ginny leaned in and slid the shirt buttons for him. “
That colour suits you.” The shirt was the darkest of reds, practically black except for when the light hit it a certain way. He liked that she didn’t try to crowd him and sat back the moment she was done.

  “That’s better,” he said. “It was a bit nippy.”

  He didn’t think any of them bought that the shakes were down to being cold.

  The driver pulled off, stopping around the corner so that Ash and Paul could extract themselves from the fan base, and get in. The crowd even let them. Gore magic, like Xane said. Ash had always been able to work a crowd.

  Ginny gave a humph on seeing him. One side of Ash’s face was covered in lipstick prints, and a pair of panties sat tucked into the top pocket of his jacket.

  “Public service,” he mumbled, when Ginny shot him a death glare. The lingerie subsequently went out of the window.

  Spook passed the rest of the drive in silence. He tuned out of the conversation, right after he claimed a drink from the mini-bar. A second would be sliding down his throat just as soon as they arrived at this gathering, because while alcohol didn’t precisely stop the snakes from slithering over his skin, it did deaden the sensation.

  -3-

  Allegra Hutton stared at the text message lighting her phone screen again. It said nothing. Told her nothing. What did fine mean? Every woman on the planet knew it didn’t actually necessarily mean fine. In fact, it almost certainly meant the opposite. Nor did she like the tacked on ending suggesting she’d have to wait days for additional information. Mind you, the message was from Xane, not Spook, so maybe he didn’t realise how often she and her man communicated.

  Not that Spook was hers exactly, but she thought of him that way, even if he wasn’t as committed as she’d like.

  Actually, she didn’t precisely know what they were. More than friends, but not quite lovers. Two frantic encounters notwithstanding.

  The last time she’d seen him in the flesh was in July. They’d hooked up at an industry awards ceremony. She’d been presenting the trophy for Best Single, and he and Xane had been there representing Black Halo.