Chapter Two
9 years, 10 months later...
PRESENT DAY
RUTH
My heart thundered and roared in my ears despite the screaming and cheers, despite the beat coming to life—the night’s cadence—as my fans waited for me to go back on stage. I closed my eyes and studied the music, her beauty, her tempo in which she flowed beneath my boots. Music heard me. Music was me.
I was simply a mortal that she strummed repeatedly. I let her lay claim to me. I loved her, and I thought she must love me. She gave me a voice. She gave me all these years… This was my last concert tour. Only no one knew that.
Make it count.
Leave an impression. Make yourself everlasting, so even when you are long gone someone will remember you.
If you think I hated the demon if you think I wished I hadn’t stumbled across that library—that was surprisingly empty the very next day—then you’re wrong.
Ten years were better than none.
Six platinums.
Four albums.
Fifteen hits.
Ten years were enough and too little all at once.
The demon could have taken my soul that day, but he hadn’t. Oh, did I witness his capabilities? Ask the seven dead fools that died around me in the last decade if you ever see them on the other side.
“Time to go back on.”
Without a nod or a word, I passed the backstage staff member and walked onto my very last stage.
As the cries grew louder, and that epic high reached my bloodstream—the only place I’d ever experience this scorching in my veins—I knew if I hadn’t stumbled upon the library, I would have begged him to come to me. I would have offered the demon my soul in exchange for this one last moment all over again.
Did I want to die? No.
I wanted to live, but this was the only way I wanted to breathe.
____
“You were great out there,” my makeup artist, Angela, said, patting my back as she scooped up my cosmetics off the table and walked out of the room.
Once I stripped out of the curve-hugging leather and dressed in my favorite black T-shirt and jogging pants, I let my bodyguards, Max and Rupert, walk me to my tour bus.
“Are you excited that by tomorrow night, you’ll finally be sleeping in your bed again instead of on the bus?” Rupert asked me.
I would do it again and again until the demon came for me if I could.
My lips curled upward even though I wasn’t excited and redirected the question, “What about you guys?”
“Makes no difference to me,” Max shrugged.
“My wife will be happy to see me… I hope.” We laughed at Rupert’s words.
We were quiet until we reached the frosty night air, reminding me I left my jacket on the bus. “Did you hear about Liz’s supposed comeback?” Max asked.
“I thought she was in rehab?” Rupert responded, scratching his chin.
“I thought that was a fake article. No one actually saw her, did they?” Max said quickly.
“If I had money, I could make things disappear too.” Rupert muttered.
“What do you think?” Max turned to me, his blue eyes widening for an honest answer.
“I couldn’t care less if she makes a comeback or not. If she does, more power to her.”
And I meant that.
Still bitter and angry when I first started out, I let my first impression in the music world be about her, and as great as “Sun” did me, and as many times as I still sang it even now at every tour because fans loved it, I regretted it.
I was making my music about her, us, when I shouldn’t have. Liz discarded me. I should have done the same. Liz all but fizzled out over the years on her own. I only had to sit back and watch her self-destructive path. I knew Liz was a user—she was already halfway there in our high school days—but I had been there to stop her. I had been her voice of reason.
Even now, I don’t understand why she did what she did. In the end, it got her nowhere. The worst part was her stealing “Here Lies” from me. I had written that a week after we had lost one of our friends during junior year. She attempted suicide after being raped by her stepfather repeatedly since a child. When she had come out about it, her stepfather called her a liar. Even her mother believed him over her. And I don’t even think it was the fact that she stole it from me that really got me, but the way she sung it. The only thing that let you know the song was meant to be painful, raw, and angry were the lyrics, definitely not the way she had sung it.
It was still considered an emotional song… Yet I knew it had the potential to sound so much more.
But maybe I was giving myself too much credit.
Rupert opened the bus door for me while Max sputtered quickly, “Liz is hot, but she doesn’t compare to the Dark Goddess.” I rolled my eyes, and I heard Rupert smack him as I climbed the three small steps to get into my home away from home.
Dark Goddess…
The very demon that gave me ten years of this life nearly took it away from me every time he killed someone around me.
I had earned that name. He had earned me that name.
I was cursed, deadly, thanks to the demon that extended my death date by ten years.
There was a bark, followed by a jump. I grinned and caught my eighty-pound beast before he knocked me back out the bus. “Hiya, Moose,” I cooed at my traveling companion as well as the only one that’s had the pleasure of living with me throughout my career. “You ready to go home?” He barked his response, wagging his tail. “Do you have to pee?”
I studied my blue pit bull. Hmm, seemed today was one of his good days. I was convinced he had a split personality. Some days he growled and wanted nothing to do with me, then there were times, like right now, he was all over me.
I loved my personal assistant, Jayne, who also happened to be my best friend after years of working together, but I had a hard time convincing her to let Moose join me during tours. It didn’t make sense, she said. Why would you bring a dog on tour with you? But what she didn’t understand was Moose was the only male companion that was allowed around me. Every male that had hit on me—correction, every guy I had shown interest in—had paid for it with their life.
Except for Flo from the rap duo I toured with called LoFlo. The bastard was a sleaze-ball who had been trying to get in my pants all summer during our worldwide tour. It got to the point to where I’d take a separate plane from them—I never understood their names—when traveling between countries. Finally, we’d reached a breaking point in Minnesota when he had forced his hand on me. Of course, Rupert heard the commotion on the other side, and I could hear his giant steps making their way down the hall to my dressing room. Flo did too because he cursed and pushed me away.
“Fucking bitch,” he muttered like a child who didn’t understand what no meant.
Only he didn’t make it five steps when he gasped, the soul reaper’s shadowy form whipped out in the bright fluorescent lights and zipped through his chest quickly. Flo’s body rocked forward, tumbling to the floor just as Rupert opened the door.
I gripped my chest and leaned against the mirror in a daze as Rupert dropped down to check Flo’s pulse. It wasn’t the first time he had encountered a dead body around me, and it wouldn’t be the last. He had actually witnessed my makeup artist dying a similar way. He claimed that she was simply moving my stuff around when she fell over. I hadn’t been in the room, but I knew what had been while I was on stage—the demon’s book. The same thing might have happened when a fan snuck inside my dressing room. I was willing to bet the fan touched the book in the same way the makeup artist had.
That tour was canceled rather quickly with Flo’s death, and with it, angry fans sunk their teeth into my reputation claiming I was cursed. Of course, they were right. It took time, but I went off the radar for a couple of years and focused on writing lyrics, unconcerned that lives were being stolen because of me.
Had I been terrified when the demon killed Flo? Yes. Had I felt bad about it? No. The guy was a class A prick, and I just had a feeling he was very accustomed to putting his hands on women.
Was I terrified the first time the demon ever killed someone because of me? Yes. Was I furious? Absolutely. Confused? Of course!
Matt might have been an actor, but he was a great guy and when I encountered him during my music video, he mesmerized me in the same way he had his fans. Not disgustingly, but with a cheesy smile and an honest-to-God good American boy politeness that I would have never pegged for a famous star such as him. So when the golden boy showed an interest in me? I was dumbfounded, and I gave him a good chase before I crumbled and let him kiss me for the first time when he came to visit me at the studio. He tugged me to the elevator; I remembered it so vividly. He kept asking me to join him for coffee since it was so early, and he knew I’d been at the studio overworking like I always did. But I had refused because I was fueled with a new type of song. A chemistry song. Possibly even a love song. He gave me one last kiss before he stepped through the door and just as the elevator began to close the demon rose up and took him from me.
At first, I didn’t understand why the demon did this to me. Honestly, it broke me and scared the shit out of me at the same time, reminding me that the demon was ever present in my life. Several months later, I began to understand when I went to a club. I found myself straddling a stranger in a private room. He knew who I was, but I didn’t care to know him. I needed a release that singing and songwriting couldn’t give me, but the demon would never allow me to fuck a guy. He breezed through the stranger’s body while I was making out with him, stealing his breath from his lips as I tore away from him. What did I do? I got the hell out of there before someone recognized me.
Slightly drunk, angry, and hurt, I let Rupert drive me home as I cried and screamed at the demon in the back seat. Rupert had no clue what I was going on about. Why was the demon doing this? I wasn’t a virgin when I encountered him, but he refused to let me get close to any guys that wanted between my legs.
“I’m not a fucking virgin,” I slurred that night in the back seat. “Why are you doing this to me? My soul isn’t going to get any less tasty for wanting nooky. You cock blocking SOB!”
Rupert was a good guy. He never questioned my antics or fits although I rarely had moments like that. He probably thought I was really cursed with everything he’d witnessed, but he stayed by my side. I gave him good merch for his wife in return.
Back to the present…
Because of my fucked up lack of a sex life, I had a newfound love for vibrators. The only dying going on with them were the batteries or if I forgot to charge them. Did I mention that my orgasms had fucking super powers? Every time I came, the lights flickered and went out until the moment passed.
Who knew what the hell the demon did to me?
But, my time was about to end. Which meant I had to take care of everything that I would leave behind.
“Want me to take him to use the bathroom?” Max asked, and Moose growled in return. He backed up, and I chuckled.
“Nah, I got him. You can just stand back and observe.”