They’d got lost on the way to the club when they came across the music. Miles turned his head to the right; he saw Ruby and John do the same. It was a hypnotic melody, beckoning them closer.
It was coming from an imposing stone townhouse in a quiet lane of Edinburgh. They stood at the stairs and hesitated to go in; they, in their Pearl Jam T-shirts and Doc Martens, and the cars parked outside being Porsche and Lamborghini. This wasn’t a party they could crash, they agreed, not for the likes of them, and were about to leave.
But the music didn’t let them. It put its hooks inside them and drew them closer. Before they had a chance to leave (to escape, to flee, to get away), the door opened. A handsome young man with a beautiful full mouth and smiling eyes welcomed them in. ‘This is a party for the lost,’ he told them.
Miles couldn’t tell you what was different about the party. Not at first. At first glance, it was a house-party like any other: drunk men chugging down wine, people dancing in the living room, Faithless pumping from the stereo. A couple of girls were kissing passionately under a landscape of a place called Thrace. In a corner, surrounded by lush ferns, a male statue sported the kind of appendage all of Miles’s male friends would give their right arm for. It was as big as a right arm, for sure.
Miles cocked his head trying to locate the sinuous melody that had attracted him there, but he could hear nothing other than the bass.
‘We only have wine,’ said their host, leading the way to the kitchen, weaving through the crowd of young women and topless men lost in their dance. He sure was pretty. Miles couldn’t help noticing the way his leopard-print trousers hugged his hips, or his dark brown curls framing his luminous face.
‘What’s your name?’ John asked. ‘Is this your party? This your house?’
The man laughed. ‘Does it matter what my name is or if it’s my house? Call me Lyaeus.’ He drawled the name, letting the vowels linger on his tongue, and Miles shivered. ‘But, yes,’ Lyaeus turned to John. ‘It is my party.’
A huge ceramic urn with naughty drawings on the outside stood in the middle of the kitchen counter. A crater, their host called it. He picked three cups and filled them with deep red-wine. Handed them a cup each. Raised his own. ‘To your health.’
Miles drank deeply. He wasn’t a huge fan of wine, more of a lager man himself, but you didn’t say no to the host of a party you crashed. Especially when said host was as good-looking as sin. The wine tasted sweet and somehow familiar; he drank some more. Their host, Lyaeus, watched them with a half-smile on his face. He looked to be a few years older than them; maybe twenty-four. His black shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, revealing glowing olive skin. His gaze returned to Miles a lot, a searing lick of attention which had Miles’s cheeks heating up. He surreptitiously rubbed his sweaty palms on his jeans. Not knowing how to respond to a man like Lyaeus, to his frank interest, Miles drank some more, and before he knew it, his cup was empty.
‘This wine is the bomb,’ Ruby said, her cup empty too. John held her from behind, eyes closed as they both swayed to a sensual rhythm. Miles was pleased to hear the melody again, a hint of it under the Prodigy tune. It slid under his skin and nested there, blooming with a strange, incomprehensible need.
‘Shall we dance?’ their host said.
‘Let’s,’ Ruby replied, and they headed back to the living room.
In the few minutes Miles was at the kitchen, the place had been transformed. Towering plants he hadn’t noticed before grew around the room, which was impossibly wide. It was more crowded than before and stinking hot. Miles could swear they were listening to the Firestarter, but somehow that other melody echoed from everywhere, a melody of flutes and lyres and the beat of relentless drums, a rhythm that started slow and languid and rose steadily and inexorably, rose like the storm gathers, rose like a heart beats faster in the throes of passion. Several people had abandoned their clothing, others wore vine leaves in their hair and howled. Sweat dripped down Miles’s back as he danced, torn between a warning whisper at the back of his mind and his need for— he couldn’t say what he needed, only that he did, badly. He raised his cup, found it full again, and downed it. John danced with his head back, Ruby had divested herself of her top, and the music beat on, an unabating, unflagging crescendo.
Lyaeus joined him on the dance floor. Miles’s need, that abstract thing that pulsed in his veins, took shape and form; it became inescapably clear, and he’d never longed for anything more in his life.
‘Why did you say it’s a party for the lost?’ Miles asked, his mouth dry.
‘I like lost people,’ Lyaeus said, coming closer to him. The air thrummed with an incandescent energy when he joined the dance. Beside them, Ruby and John were kissing; he had his hand on her breast and she was riding his thigh. Miles dragged his eyes back to his host, who reached out to him and pulled him even closer, flush against his sinuous body. Lyaeus smelled of springtime and of green, growing things.
‘Loss is a bad thing,’ Miles said, attempting to hold back the unstoppable force of his desire.
‘Not always. I like it when people lose their inhibitions,’ Lyaeus said. ‘When they lose their fears.’ He ran a finger down Miles’s chest, leaving a searing trail behind. ‘When they lose their clothes.’
It was impossible to breathe in the hot, stuffy room where impossible things grew around them, lush and fragrant and rustling with the night air. Miles said, his voice hoarse, ‘When they lose their mind?’
‘That too. I like them the most.’ His lips brushed against Miles’s skin as he spoke, his breath sweet like the wine, and Miles kissed him.
It’d be impossible not to. He kissed him, and his whole body flared. Lyaeus ground his hips against Miles’s erection, his mouth hot on Miles’s, and Miles ran his hands through his soft curls and down his back, digging inside the leopard-print trousers. He kissed him, and felt his edges dissolve, his flesh becoming a star, a galaxy, a brand-new universe.
When Lyaeus laid him down on a bed in an upstairs bedroom, he asked, ‘What will you give me?’ Propped above Miles, terrible and marvellous and heart-stoppingly beautiful, he kissed Miles’s body with his infernal lips and caressed his skin with his angelic hands.
Miles didn’t hesitate. ‘Everything—everything I am.’
Everything Miles had, he gave up, and Lyaeus took it as it was his due. He took Miles’s body, his virginity, his name, his spirit, his devotion, his lust; every little thing that made Miles who he was burned on the altar of their lovemaking.
On Lyaeus’s tongue, Miles tasted infinity.
***
Rain beating against the window woke Miles up. It was dawn, and he was naked in an unknown bedroom. His brain throbbed with the beginnings of what was bound to be a hangover from hell. He found his clothes on the floor and dragged them on as he set off to find his friends. Silence greeted him when he left the bedroom; he padded downstairs to the living room where a few people slumbered on armchairs and on the floor. No sign of gigantic plants and towering trees; how much had Miles drank last night? His brain was fuzzy, and all he remembered was a melody that he carried in his veins.
Finally, there they were, John and Ruby, murmuring to each other in the kitchen., surrounded by the usual debris of the morning after a party: empty cups, spilled wine, a torn bra, packets of condoms.
‘I’ve been looking for you!’ Miles said, but they returned a blank stare.
‘Who are you?’
Ice cold sweat running down his spine, Miles insisted they knew him. They went to school together, five years in the same form in Graigmount Secondary.
‘No,’ John said, taking Ruby to leave, ‘we don’t know anyone named Miles, and we’d definitely remember if we came to the party together. You’re insane, mate.’
Miles stood frozen in the kitchen, his brain unable to stop a flurry of hazy, half-forgotten memories, swirling in his brain like a blizzard. He tried to catch any one of them and failed. He tried to be sure of his name, and failed.
A glimpse of movement caught his eye outside the window. A man in leopard-print trousers opened the door of a black Porsche. Seeming to realise Miles was looking at him, he turned and waved.
Heart thumping on his chest, Miles opened the window and leaned out. ‘Do you know me?’
‘Yes,’ said the man. He held the car door open. ‘Do you want a ride home?’
Miles ran out of the sleeping house slamming the door behind him, and stopped on the pavement in front of this man. He was gorgeous and smelled familiar. He smelled like Miles smelled.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked him when he got in the car.
The man seemed to give it some thought. ‘Call me Zagreus.’
‘I’m—’
‘I know who you are.’ Zagreus started the car. ‘You’re Miles and you’re mine.’
