Sound of Muses

Author note: this is part 2 of a spicy poly romance which means characters are in multiple relationships, including M/M. If that’s not your cup of tea, please try a different story. Series content includes sex, coarse language, violence, captivity, and bullying.

Chapter Two

(Rebekah)

The world is awash with sound, even in the dark at 2:00am. I close my eyes and drink it in. The hum of the blue neon lit shop sign across the road, the pulsing thrum of car engines, the haunting trickle of water in downpipes, all counterparted with the trill of sirens somewhere in the distance. There’re always sirens wailing in this big city.

Siren. It’s a strange word. When did the beautiful singing of otherworldly creatures morph into a warning sound?

Get out of my way! The ambulances and police cars sing as they weave through traffic down on the sixty-nine. Horns blare as someone protests a traffic cutter. A dog yips inside the twelve-story apartment behind me. I can’t see any of them in the shadowed gloom, but their sounds paint a vivid picture for me, rising out of deserted street like a desert mirage. I lift my hands, dancing my fingers across the city’s invisible musical strings.

The chill autumn air bites into my skin, raising goosebumps under my black hooded windcheater and heralding an approaching winter. Winter lives in a different octave, sound muted through snow and sleet, people’s breath leaving a trail of misted music notes in the air.

I smile and close my eyes again, hands still raised to embrace it.

I’ll be in trouble for leaving the house, but out here is where the music lives. But the music I want to hear most is the ocean, the world’s greatest, most tireless symphony, and even though I’m forbidden, my joggers move, as if on their own accord, toward the Hudson. The pit-pat of my shoes taps out the rhythm I’m creating just by existing.

The river isn’t the ocean, so technically I’m not breaking the rules.

I pick up the pace, knowing they’ll catch up to me within minutes. The silver bracelet on my wrist bounces with every step, warmer than metal should be against my skin. A new musical note enters my stage and I cock my head, listening to the three-part harmony. Beautiful, raw, with a wild rhythm that sinks deep into my soul and a falsetto that steals my breath.

Light floods me and for a second I think it’s the song’s visual form, but then I jump back from the drifting car, blinking hot spots out of my eyes from the blinding headlights. Brakes screech, breaking the mesmerizing melody, and I shake my head to clear the mesh of reality and intangible sound. What did I just hear? It was beautiful and sad, and somehow masked, like a once-raging river dried up in drought.

I clutch at my fluttering heart and hum a few notes.

“What’re you doing out here?”

I jump at the harsh tones which crash into my reverie and spin around. My heart speeds up as a tall, skinny man ducks out from a black SUV. They found me already.

Jimmy jacks his hands onto his hips, his dark skin blending with the night, except where the edge of the streetlight catches on him. “Just helping yourself to a midnight stroll? Thought you could sneak away?”

I recoil as he stalks closer, his partner Hamish crawling the car along the curb. Light gleams in Jimmy’s fist as the blue lines of a street map glow faintly on his phone.

“Just listening to the city,” I murmur, mouth dry. Not because I’m afraid of them, but because I was enjoying myself, and I hadn’t made it to the river yet. I’m not ready to go back.

“You know the rules, kid.” Jimmy latches his long fingers around my elbow tightly and guides me back to the car, as if the snake head tattoo on his hand bites into my flesh.

The world song muffles as I clamber into the back seat and click in my seatbelt. Hamish glances at me in the rearview mirror, frowning. His heartbeat is tired, annoyed that I got them out of bed on a cold evening. Cymbals crash as Jimmy slams his door and the engine guns with a quiet purr. I lean my elbow on the windowsill and watch the apartments streak together like a wormhole as we take off. This sound isn’t necessarily worse, it’s just one I’m too familiar with.

“I want to go to the river.”

Hamish’s eyes flick up to the mirror again, then across to Jimmy, who twists to look at me over his shoulder. “You know that’s not allowed.”

“Please? I feel a song, but I can’t find all the pieces inside the house. I’ve written every sound I can find there.” I cross my fingers against the cold glass. “The river’s not the ocean.”

Hamish snorts. “She has a point.” His partner frowns at him but Hamish shrugs. “It’s worth it if she has a song.”

Jimmy groans and runs a hand through his hair roughly. He glances back at me. “A song, huh?”

I nod, letting my pleading show in my eyes. I don’t ask for much, and they know it. Jimmy’s lenient with me, all things considered.

He rubs at his forehead and sighs. “Ten minutes only, but we’re stopping for something to eat first.”

I smile, my whole body suddenly lighter, and he swears softly, eyes dropping to the silver chain draped around my right wrist. Sinking back in my seat, I dredge up the different sounds I’ve experienced tonight, two separate melodies dancing teasingly just out of reach in my thoughts. One is melancholic and incomplete, inspired by the multi-hued tones coming from the car that almost hit me. The other is freer, composed of the water dripping down the pipes, which I’m certain will swell into something complete the moment I hear the song of the river.

Life fades, and I’m only dimly aware of us stopping while Jimmy grabs pizza. I wave off the piece he offers me and lean closer to the glass, eager for my first glimpse of water in the dark. There, the puddle of yellow light from a streetlamp rolls in place of solid ground. I unclick my belt before we’ve even come to a stop in a tiny parking lot hemmed by rock.

“Stay where we can see you,” Hamish orders.

I mumble agreement as I bolt out of the car and clamber down the rocky bank, the sounds guiding me more than my eyes. A thick, happy splash greets me as water laps around the base of the stone. A faint whimper slips from my throat and I drop down, plunging my feet into the water, shoes and all. As I thought, the world song changes here, more feminine and the beat more regular. I clamp my hands around the rough edges of the stones which have stood guard here for hundreds of years.

A faint flash of recognition zips through my mind, but it’s gone before I can grasp it. I know almost nothing about who and what I am; I’ve been living with the Viper Brotherhood as long as I can remember. But despite that, I know I was born near the ocean and water always calls to me.

A happy chuckle escapes me as small waves lap against my calves. In the distance water slaps against boat hulls and boats strain against moorings. The vast expanse changes sound, spinning the notes into a different key. I bet there’s a whole other song playing out under the water.

My heartbeat picks up and I start humming. The cold wavelets numb my legs and the song rushes in instead.

“Hey! Are you listening!?”

“Fuck, she’s half in the water!”

Not even the human voices can disturb my trance now.

Tears run down my cheeks as they break my connection to the water, and I hang over someone’s shoulder, bobbing just like the dark tide as I’m carried away from the river.

Jimmy’s face bordered with a one-inch beard juts into my view, cutting off the colorful blur swirling around me, and I blink heavily.

“White Room or bedroom?”

“White,” I mutter, the song fading a little as the familiar gray walls of the brotherhood’s clan house solidify around me.

“Alright, but you have to change leggings first, kid.” My keeper holds out a folded towel with purple pants and slippers stacked on top.

I blink several times at Jimmy, until his meaning dawns. I’m soaked from the knees down and cold as the Arctic. I can’t even feel my toes, but I don’t mind one bit. “Right.”

He nods, seeing my senses clear up, then bends to undo my shoelaces.

“She’s not a kid anymore.”

I twitch, registering other presences in the room. Vinson, leader of the Vipers, grins at me around the hoop in his bottom lip. He’s been out of the city on clan business for two months. He must have just got home today.

He braces his hands together on the common-room table. “She grew up into quite a pretty thing. Taller than I’d thought. How old are you now, Rebekah?”

I turn my head away. No music is bad, but all music affects your mood, and Vinson’s heart song always makes my stomach feel heavy. It’s dark, full of base, with no lighter notes for respite.

Jimmy elbows me gently in a reminder to answer our boss.

I hug one arm across my chest. “I’m not sure.”

Vinson kicks away from the table and takes my chin in his tattooed fingers. “I’d have to check the books, but I’d guess it’s twenty-three this year.” He turns to Hamish who sits at a table, inhaling a cigarette. “Amazing, isn’t it? How many twenty-three-year-olds make the kind of bank this girl does?”

I jerk my chin out of his hand, stumbling over my own shoes.

Jimmy steadies me. “She’s got a song, boss. The less we talk to her, the better.”

Vinson arches an eyebrow, the flinty look in his eye promising trouble for Jimmy later. Then the gang leader turns back to me. “Is that right? You’re working on a song sweetheart?”

I nod mutely, mentally running through music to protect my tune from his soul’s heavy grunge metal.

He grins and waves an arm elegantly toward the soundproof music studio known as the White Room. “Go right ahead then. I can’t wait to hear it.”

Jimmy guides me into the familiar White Room and I skip into the attached bathroom to change my soaked pants, humming under my breath. When I come out, there’s baskets of food and bottled water lined up on the side bench, and the lighting has been dimmed.

Vinson comes in through the thick door, earmuffs covering his ears and I know from experience he’s wearing earplugs underneath.

He gives me a questioning look in his eye that disrupts the steady beat of my heart, and not in a fun-detour kind of way.

I nod and he reaches for my wrist. With a hot, blazing flash of light, the bracelet falls into his palms, and he backs from the room, winking at me before shutting the door. It’s flush with the wall so you wouldn’t even know there’s a doorway there. Beside it is a large, dark silver mirror, which I can forget is a one-way window once I sink into a trance.

Silence.

No sounds from outside can get in here, and my shoulders drop as the unwelcome Vipers and their heart songs fade away.

Breath rushes into my lungs, sweet and rich. Ten times, I count my breaths, letting them sit a little too long in my lungs and exhaling long and slow through my mouth. With each exhale, music seeps into me, crawling up my legs and down into my hands until I’m tingling with it. Striding forward, I turn on the electric piano and run my right hand across the notes in a four-beat rhythm.

I grab a marker and uncap it, pressing the blue tip to the huge whiteboard which covers the wall behind the keyboard as well as most of the far wall. As the blue ink curls out, I open my mouth and sing, my lifeblood condensing and transferring into the visceral world. It’s not the song spilling from that old white van today, but I’m certain I wouldn’t have caught this one without that encounter. I smile and let my head fall back.

The white walls close me in, safe and pure. This will be my home until the song is complete.

I don’t create music. I am music.