Smoke and dark and the roar of fire eating the backdrop and the stampede of three thousand people and I'm grabbingairwhere 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'sgone!"
"What do you mean she'sgone?"
"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 shewasn'tin 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 therigging 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. Theyhaveto 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.
Anukewouldn't stop him.