Delilah's World

Title: Assassin
Rating: R (for language and violence)
Summary: "Fandom (from the noun fan and the affix -dom, as in kingdom, dukedom, etc.). A fan, aficionado or supporter is someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking of a sporting club, person, group of persons, etc. In a few cases, individual fans may become so fascinated with the objects of their infatuation that they become obsessive." 
Disclaimer: Don't know them, don't own them. It's fiction and I hope it stays as such.
Author's notes: I listened to Eternally Missed and Scorpion Flower by Moonspell non-stop for this, so you might as well say that served as soundtrack.
I also bow to goddess Kat for beta-ing the story and for all the encouragement and support :D


ASSASSIN
Part One

It was a cold November night. The dark clouds, prelude to a heavy rain, hid the full moon and cast threatening shadows everywhere. But the weather didn’t bother any of the 6500 Muse fans that were leaving the Sporthalle in Böblingen, Germany, where the British band had just finished their set. The tour across Europe had started over a month ago but to every fan each gig felt like the one and only. The crew was quickly loading the trucks with all the gear and soon they’d be hopping into the buses, hours of journeying ahead of them. Another city awaited the band the following day, more thousands of fans eagerly expecting to see the gig of their lives.

The three band members, ushered to their own bus after signing autographs to the resilient fans that awaited them outside for an hour, were also readying themselves for the long trip to Rome, but not before a short stop at a local bar for a drink. While Dom and Chris discussed the gig with Tom and Morgan, Matt wrapped himself in his long black coat and quietly stared outside the large windows in silence, immersed in the view of the lake in the city centre and deaf to the voices of his band mates. Thoughts of Italy and home were put aside when the landscape was suddenly replaced by his own reflection, the change caused by the lights inside the bus suddenly switched on. The image startled the silent man- he looked like a ghost. Paler than ever, bags under his eyes, black hair and clothes- all combined to make him look rather sinister. The singer rubbed his eyes to remove the gloomy image out of his mind. Maybe he did need some sunshine, as someone had recently advised him.

Or maybe he should stop reading weird shit, he berated himself. That stupid book about ancient religions, which he had nicked from his girlfriend’s pile, ignoring her advice that it was only a waste of time and paper, was probably the cause for the silly dreams that didn’t let him rest adequately.

“This is it? This is the place that other bloke mentioned?” Tom opened the bus door as soon as the vehicle stopped, pulling the hood of his jacket over his head. “Blimey, it’s all deserted.”

“Well, it’s raining.” Chris stretched with a drawn out yawn, following Tom out and looking up, watching the light rain. “Could do with a good night’s sleep. I’m not staying long, I reckon.”

Matt was the last one to leave, locking the door, and they made their way across the parking lot towards the bar which was lit by a glowing neon sign. The area seemed indeed abandoned, as Tom had remarked, with only an unfriendly looking bouncer by the bar’s entrance.

So when the small human shadow appeared from the side of the building, Matt’s eyes naturally fell on it. A short woman, at first sight. An aged gypsy lady, in fact, huddled over and covered in a thick shawl, and she was slithering in their direction, moving swiftly for someone who looked so old.

“Let me read your palms, my good men…” She hissed in a thick German accent. “Let me read your palms and I will predict your future…”

“Jesus, fortune tellers in the middle of the night outside a bar?” Dom chuckled. “What is this place again?”

“No palm reading, lady, sorry...” Tom was the first one to be approached but he dodged the woman, rolling his eyes in jest to the rest of the group behind him.

“Foreigners… foreigners in the land of Black Forest, you need caution…”

Matt kept walking with his head down, although he couldn’t help but sneakily glance up at the strange woman from under his fringe. Eerily, it seemed like the gypsy sensed his stare and she immediately turned her attention to him, her bright green eyes shining like a cat’s in the darkness.

“You… it is you… it is you I see...” She tried to catch up with Matt, his eyebrow twitching as he tried to avoid her. “It is you I see in my dreams!”

“Wonder if it’s a wet dream, hey Bells?”

The roaring laughter didn’t bother her. “It is tonight he will find you…” A cold hand closed around Matt’s wrist in a surprisingly tight grip and he turned on the spot, his eyes locking with hers. “Tonight you die.”

“Yeah, we all will. Now back off, will you.”

Dom’s laid back tone of voice was tinged with annoyance as he pushed Matt in front of him, releasing the staggered singer from the gypsy while the woman kept muttering in German. Matt’s face seemed to drain of colour all of a sudden and Dom shook his head, elbowing his band mate in the ribs just as they entered the building.

“You wondering about the best way to go?”

“C’mon, I’d be fucking traumatized too, imagine that old nutcase dreaming about you.” Morgan teased. “Oh Bellamy, fuck me!” He squealed, in a high pitched tone. “No? Then die!”

Matt tried to laugh with the others, tried to pass it off as nothing and, out of embarrassment, conceal from everyone the fact that she had managed to spook the hell out of him. Maybe she could indeed read something about the person, maybe she sensed somehow that he was more gullible than everyone else that evening?

“This place is alright.” Tom looked around as he pulled out a cigarette, forgetting his initial scepticism on the recommendation. "Beer everyone?"

The bar was packed, although it didn’t seem so from the relatively empty parking lot, and with the arrival of the crew, loud cheerful voices speaking in English took over the place. Beer was served; everyone keen on trying some local brand and there seemed to be no fans of the band in sight for a change. Yet, despite the relaxed environment, Matt began to feel uncomfortable again, undoing another button on his black shirt and rolling up the sleeves, the temperature inside the building rising abnormally. He gulped down the rest of his red wine, grimacing at the awful flavour and regretting being the only one refusing the beer.

“You look fucking awful. You coming down with something?” Chris commented and then narrowing his eyes at him. “You didn’t take that woman seriously, did you?”

“Course not, just…” The air was so stifling. And when did talking turn into such an extraneous task? “I’m fine, just need to sleep. Fucking hot in here...”

“Yeah, sleep would do you well. You wouldn’t mumble stuff the whole night, not as much anyway.” Chris continued, as Matt rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Thought you were possessed the other night, you weird fucker.”

“Didn’t think you’d be able to hear a thing, snoring all night long as you do…” Dom chipped in as he sat down next to them, another drink in hand.

“I can hear Matt talking as well as I hear you tripping over stuff, and laughing in some drunken stupor. And where are you going?” The bassist’s eyes went up in surprise, watching Matt standing up in haste and awkwardly leaving the table.

“The loo.”

Dom’s gaze followed his band mate stumbling his way across the bar to the toilets. “He doesn’t look so good, does he? Time to go, I suppose, we would be in a right mess if he got ill.” He swigged his beer quickly. “Besides, we can’t let me get too drunk and prevent others from sleeping.”

*

Barging inside the toilets, Matt leaned over the sink in exhaustion, his clothes uncomfortably sticking to his rapidly sweating skin. The heat, the noisy music pounding in his ears, people’s screeching voices, all the nauseating smells shooting straight to his stomach…he desperately needed space. He felt asphyxiated, like the oxygen was being sucked out of his lungs, and his hands trembled as he opened the tap to splash some water on his face clumsily. The image of the old gypsy’s intense green stare began to crawl its way back into his mind, his own death predicted in a low guttural tone.

He tried to shake away the vision but the sight of his distorted, ragged self in the mirror didn’t help and he closed his eyes. His legs were showing signs of wanting to give out and he suddenly realised that he was fighting to stay upright. There was something terribly wrong with him- he needed to get out of there, had to tell someone. He forced his eyes to open again but this time he was met with a different image in the mirror. Seemingly materialised out of nowhere, a tall man stood right behind him, brown hair falling over his shoulders in greasy waves and dark eyes that locked with Matt’s intensely. The chilling shiver that ran down Matt’s spine prodded the singer to turn around, half expecting to see no one and convinced he was now suffering hallucinations.

But he was wrong. The person was real, and so were the hungry eyes which still watched him with rapture. The stranger took a step in his direction, looming down on him scarily, and the drained man couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He froze on the spot, only staring back with wide glazed eyes as the person took another step closer. His legs wouldn’t support him anymore and hands scrambling to get a grasp on the sink were unsuccessful in his last feeble attempt to remain standing. The man’s lips were moving but the buzzing in Matt’s ears was so loud… and everything went black.

*

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Dom Anderson said grumpily. “There’s surveillance cameras in the bar, why don’t you give that a try? I’m gonna go check around with Danny and Tony again and make some more phone calls.”

The tour manager’s suggestion was promptly accepted by Dom, Chris and Tom, who quickly made their way back to the bar and out of the rain. It was almost 3AM and Matt had vanished without a trace. Although surprised, they guessed the singer had either opted to wander off by himself, or had returned to the bus after Dom had gone looking for him in the toilets when he didn’t return to the table. But then everyone was ready to resume their journey to Italy and the front man was nowhere to be found... In the past, years ago, he’d disappear for hours and on occasion even days, barely showing up in time to perform. But things had changed since then. There was no explanation for their current situation and remembering their last minutes together only gave them more reasons to be concerned.

It was a relief for the trio when the owner of the bar raised no complaint at showing them footage from the surveillance cameras, even offering his office for the purpose. The last thing the band needed was their request denied and Matt’s disappearance relegated to something akin to diva behaviour. They had already asked around to bouncers and bartenders but no useful information was offered.

Thankfully, there was one camera that caught the entrance to the toilets, and after rewinding and fast forwarding for a few minutes they succeeded in getting on screen the small shaky figure they had been looking for. If they could see Matt going in, then surely they’d see him going out. They watched the footage with unblinking eyes for what it seemed an eternity, until Dom himself appeared in the footage. There was a collective murmur of puzzlement.

“Are you sure he wasn’t in there? Locked in some stall?”

“He wasn’t in there, Chris. How many times do I have to say I checked everywhere?”

“Then how did he leave? There’s no windows!”

“Let’s watch it again.” Tom kneeled on the floor in front of the screen, twiddling with the definitions of the equipment, trying to improve the image resolution. “It was crowded, maybe we missed something.”

Nobody protested and they watched the scarce minutes of footage again, pausing every blurry image in case it hid Matt, until Dom pointed to the screen. “Wait, stop. Stop there, Tom.” Two men were leaving the toilets together, one of them heavily supporting the other as they slowly walked by. “That one went inside alone just now.”

“Maybe he went to pick up a mate. Completely shit faced by the looks of it.” Tom rewound and tried to obtain a clearer picture, all eyes focused on the TV. The taller, long haired man was basically dragging his partially hidden companion through the crowd, right arm around his waist, the left hand keeping one thin arm around his own neck.

“That’s Matt…” Dom whispered, heart racing. “Look at the white cuff of the sleeve, it’s him.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone stared at the frame digesting the realisation until Chris voiced everyone’s thoughts.

“Who’s the geezer? And what the fuck is he doing to Matt?”

Tom turned to the only German in the room. “There’s an exit in that direction, isn’t it? Any other cameras we can check?”

“That’s the backdoor in that direction, it’s always open too.” Mobile phone in hand, the owner of the bar quickly informed them that the cameras there hadn’t been working for a few days before he switched to German, apparently giving a few curt orders to whoever he was calling.

Chris got up from the couch visibly stressed, running his hands through his hair, while Dom quietly grabbed the remote and played again the short seconds of footage. It was glaringly obvious that the smaller person in the other’s shadow was Matt and judging by the way he was held fast was a very strong probability that he was unconscious.

“Maybe he didn’t feel well? And someone... I don’t know.“

“But he’s not in any hospital, Tom, and no one answers his phone...” Chris desperately wanted to believe it but he couldn’t. “We’ve been looking for what, almost 2 hours? If someone wanted to help him out they’d say something in the pub, they wouldn’t take him to God knows where.”

“Okay, so what about the bouncers? The bartenders? Jesus, someone must have seen them going out.” Tom turned to the owner again. “You mind if we talk to your staff again, mate?”

“Two members of my security are coming.”

There was a knock on the door as if on cue and the two German security guards were promptly shown the footage, one of them nodding his head in recognition. “Big guy pointed to the small man and said ‘too much drink’ and they left.”

“Fucking…” Tom couldn’t finish the sentence, balling his fists. “Did you see where they went? Do you have cameras outside?”

They didn’t. They couldn’t cling to the hope that Matt was ill and someone had taken him out to help, the chance seemed thinner and thinner. Chris covered his eyes with his hands, sinking into the couch, while Dom remained immobile by his side, white faced and with unfocused eyes still on the screen, even as he spoke.

”So now what do we do?”

*

The wood creaked as a large shadow descended step by step, slowly but surely. The cold room at the bottom of the old stairs wasn’t warmed by the presence of the two newly arrived guests, one carrying the other effortlessly over his shoulder.

Reaching the furthest wall of the room, the man bent, catching with ease the precious load he carried as it slid down his shoulder. Laid on an old dusty mattress on the floor, the fragile figure remained motionless, the tall man observing him for a few seconds before looking around in satisfaction, inhaling deeply. A small smile crept over his thin mouth, perhaps the first truly content smile in years.

After a last check on the body that rested at his feet, he turned around, his purpose there fulfilled. The door closed after the heavy steps echoed across the stone floor, and then there was nothing more except darkness. And silence. A profound, deafening silence.