Chapter 31 – Rafael
RAFAEL
She was right there.
Right fucking there, close enough that I felt the heat of her body as Rex shoved her toward me, close enough that my hands were already reaching, already closing around—
Nothing.
My fingers close on nothing.
Smoke and dark and the roar of fire eating the backdrop and the stampede of three thousand people and I'm grabbing air where Bells should be.
"BELLS!"
My voice tears out of me raw enough to shred vocal cords. I spin in the dark, arms sweeping, reaching for anything. The stage floor is scorching through my boots. A pyro column sputters and dies to my left, the last of its fuel burning out, and in the brief flare of orange I see—
Nothing.
She's fucking gone.
"BELLS! BELLS!"
Phoenix crashes into me from the left. His huge hands find my shoulders and grip hard enough to bruise. "Where is she? Where—I saw Rex push her to you—"
"She's gone!"
"What do you mean she's gone?"
"I mean she was there and then she wasn't!" I'm spinning again, scanning the stage, the wings, the dark maw of the house where the last of the crowd is surging toward emergency exits in a crush of bodies.
The fire suppression system finally kicks in and foam sprays down from the overhead rig, coating the stage in white chemical slush.
"I felt—I felt someone else. Hands. Someone grabbed her. "
Phoenix's grip on my shoulders tightens.
"Rex," he says. "Where's Rex?"
I saw him fall.
Right before he shoved Bells into my arms—right before she wasn't in my arms—I saw Rex's body jerk and his knees buckle. The way he crumpled. Like something hit him from behind and cut the wires holding him up.
"He went down," I say. "Stage center, or near it. I think—I saw—"
We move.
The stage is a warzone. Toppled monitors.
Phoenix's drum kit scattered, the kick drum on its side still vibrating.
The backdrop is a smoldering ruin, fire suppression foam dripping from the rigging in thick gobs.
The emergency lights have kicked on, harsh red, strobing, turning everything into a nightmare.
All we find is blood.
A wide, long smear of it on the stage floor, dark and wet, reflecting the emergency strips. Then more of it in a splattering trail leading off stage.
Toward the wings.
"That's Rex's," Phoenix says, his voice going hollow.
The trail thins and then disappears at the edge of the stage. No body. No Rex. Just blood and clouds of white foam and the distant wail of approaching sirens.
"He must've gotten up. He's probably—"
"With Bells," Phoenix finishes. "They're together. They have to be together."
Yes.
That's right.
That has to be right.
Rex got hit and went down and then got up because Rex is fucking unstoppable. He survived a car fire that ate half his face and a decade of isolation and his own brother's gruesome death.
A bullet wouldn't stop him.
A nuke wouldn't stop him.
He got up and he found Bells and they're backstage right now, and Bells is trying to stop his bleeding and Rex is snarling at her about it and everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
We barrel through the stage right wing. Cables, flight cases, a knocked-over light tree. A stagehand stumbles past us going the other direction, face white, walkie crackling with overlapping panicked voices.
"Hey!" I grab his arm. "Did you see our lead singer? White hair, white jacket, probably still wearing a fucking bunny mask?"
The stagehand shakes his head, wild-eyed. "Everyone's evacuating. Fire department's—"
I'm already past him.
The corridor backstage is chaos. Crew members rushing for exits. Equipment carts abandoned mid-roll. The smoke has thinned here—the fire was contained to the stage, the rig, the backdrop—but the emergency lights paint everything in that pulsing red that makes it hard to think.
"Dressing room," Phoenix says behind me. "If Rex is hurt, he'd go somewhere private. Somewhere he can get his mask…"
"Go."
We run.
Our dressing room door is closed. I grab the handle, yank it open, and the fluorescent overhead flickers on automatically.
Empty.
The garment bags are still hanging where we left them. Phoenix's snack tray still on the table. Rex's half-finished dragonfruit shake sitting exactly where he set it down an hour ago.
No Rex. No Bells.
And Rex's mask, the real one, is here, not on.
Oh gods. Everything is NOT fine.
"Fuck," Phoenix breathes. "Okay. Okay, maybe they went to—"
"Check every room," I say. "Every fucking room in this building."
We split. I take the left corridor, Phoenix takes the right. I'm kicking doors open, scaring the shit out of crew members huddled in closets, scanning every concrete box of a room for white hair or a black mask or anything.
Greenroom.
Empty.
Storage.
Empty.
Second dressing room, the one assigned to the opening act.
Empty.
Tech booth.
The fire panel is lit up like a Christmas tree. Someone left their coffee mug. No Bells. No Rex.
I'm back in the main corridor when Phoenix's voice reaches me. Not a shout this time.
"Raf."
Quiet.
Wrong quiet.
The kind of quiet that means he found something and it isn't good.
He's standing in the doorway of our dressing room.
The one we already checked.
The one that was empty thirty seconds ago.
"We missed it," he says. His voice is flat. Shock flat. "Look."
I push past him.
On the folding chair where Bells sat in Rex's lap an hour ago, there's a bouquet of roses, dark red and black, wrapped in clear cellophane, lying across the seat like someone placed them there with care.
A card is tucked into the stems. Small. Cream-colored. Elegant handwriting.
I cross the room in two strides and rip it free.
My beautiful songbird. You've always been mine.
The card crumples in my fist.
My vision goes red.
Not metaphorically. The emergency lights are still strobing, painting the concrete in rhythmic crimson, and combined with the adrenaline and the fury and the absolute volcanic motherfucking rage detonating through my nervous system, the entire world narrows to a red point.
The folding table goes first.
I flip it. Shakes and snack trays and the glass bottle of Rex's drink explode across the concrete in a red spray. The garment rack goes next. I grab the aluminum pole and wrench it off its base and hurl it into the cinder block wall with a crash that echoes through the corridor.
"RAF—"
"He was here!" The words come out as a roar that doesn't sound like me. Doesn't sound human. "He was in this fucking room while we—while she—"
I pick up the folding chair. The roses scatter. I slam the chair against the wall once, twice, three times until the legs bend and the seat buckles and the metal frame deforms in my hands.
"He took her!"
Phoenix grabs me.
Both arms, full bear hug, my back against his massive chest, pinning my arms to my sides.
I fight him. Thrash against the cage of his arms with everything I have, snarling, my boots skidding on the wet concrete, but Phoenix is a fucking giant and when he decides to hold someone down, they stay the fuck down.
"Let go of me!"
"Raf, STOP."
"I'm going to fucking kill him!"
"I know. I know." His voice is in my ear, low and steady and shaking underneath the steady. "But you can't kill him if we can't find him, and we can't find him if you destroy the only room with evidence."
I stop fighting.
Not because the rage is gone. It's still there, molten, filling every vein, making my hands shake and my teeth grind. But Phoenix is right.
The bastard is always right.
He loosens his grip by a fraction. Testing.
I don't swing.
"Rex is hurt," I snarl. My voice is hoarse and scraped raw. "Rex is bleeding somewhere in this building. There's so much fucking blood, he could be dead, and Bells is gone and her stalker was in this room and without Rex—without—"
"Bells found Rex at the cemetery," Phoenix says.
I turn my head.
"Nobody told her where the grave was. Nobody knew Rex even went there." His blue eyes hold mine. "She found him on instinct. On scent. On whatever the fuck connects mates when everything else falls apart."
The word mates hits like a fist.
Because that's what we are. All four of us. Whether Rex has admitted it out loud or not, whether the bonds are marked or not, whether the world knows or doesn't.
Pack.
Mates.
"We find her the same way," Phoenix says. "We trust our instincts."
I look at the crumpled card in my fist. The roses scattered across the concrete floor, their petals crushed beneath my boots.
"Then let's fucking go."