by Z. Rider
The door in the bus came open with a creaking complaint. One of the musicians stepped off, his hair a bush that had grown wild. He stretched his arms over his head, interlocking his fingers, arching his back as he squinted toward the sky. One of the roadies slapped him on the shoulder, and the musician treated him to an I’m-not-quite-awake-yet smile.
Another came out, sticking his head through the bus door before deciding to step into the humidity. He looked elfish to Carl, his dark hair splitting to either side of his ears, like rivers parting around a rock. He was all elbows and knees as he bent in front of one of the open bays to haul a bag out. Dropping it on the sidewalk, he unzipped it and started rummaging through.
The third walked down the steps backwards—blond, All-American good looks—talking to an older man coming down after him. His hands flew as he spoke. He had an easy smile and a solid, lean build that was exactly the frame his faded jeans and tight tee shirt had been made for. The older man nodded, his eyes flicking toward the building. He carried a coffee in one hand, a roll of papers in the other. He pointed toward the open door as roadies shut the bus bays, and the blond spun on his heel and walked along with him, into the venue, his hands shoved into his front pockets, a smile on his face as he talked.
The other two followed, the elf stopping to light a cigarette. He dropped the match on the sidewalk. The wild-haired guy held the door for him.
Carl watched the bus door, hanging open and silent.
Dean hadn’t come out.
The bus jostled as a roadie hopped up its steps, agile for his size.
A cab pulled up behind the bus. Short toot of the horn. Engine idling.
A few seconds later, the driver came down with his bag over his shoulder, wearing the same faded work trousers he’d had on that day in the alley.
The cab drove away.
The roadie closed the bus door on his way back out. At the venue, he nudged a brick out of the way and pulled the door shut behind him.
The sidewalk was empty—oddly quiet against the street noises around them.
He could have missed Dean getting off earlier. The guy could be in the building.
He pushed off the wall and walked the length of it, away from the bus, his steps slow. Around the corner, the ticket window—literally a hole cut into the brick façade and framed out with red-painted wood—was shuttered. He pushed his fingers in his pockets and watched oncoming traffic, the bus visible in his peripheral vision.
The breeze from the morning was gone. Sweat stuck his hair to the back of his neck.
He sat at the corner, propped against the building. He dropped his pack of cigarettes between his tennis shoes and lit one up, letting it dangle between his fingers as he blew smoke and watched the bus.
For the next few hours, people came and went, but never Dean.
He told himself the musician was inside, tuning a guitar, whatever it was they did before a show.
But, as his attention returned again and again to the back of the bus, with its blinds drawn, he felt like Dean was still on there. Hiding from the sunlight.
What happened afterward, Dean? What are you now? What’d you do with Gershon’s heart? Because that was kind of crazy, wasn’t it? Bays didn’t say the heart had been stabbed up by something blunt. He’d said it was gone.
The venue door swung open, the guy with the wild hair coming out, an unopened can of soda in the crook of his arm, his other hand bringing a half-eaten banana to his mouth. Carl watched him jostle the soda so he could get the bus door open. Someone—a fan, heading for the entrance to stand in line—called out his name and he smiled and called back a “Hey,” before climbing inside, stopping to pull the door shut again.
He leaned against the wall and watched the bus.
2.
* * *
“Are you going to wear the fake teeth again?” Shawn asked from the other side of the cardboard barrier. A soda can top popped with a hiss.
Dean winced. During last night’s encore, he’d gotten too into—charging the front of the stage with a snarl. A shiver had gone through one of the girls who’d been reaching for him.
“Yeah, probably.” The bunk was close and stuffy, the mattress hard, his hips tired of being on it. He’d done a lot of thinking while the sun warmed the wall by his shoulder. A lot of thinking about what he’d almost said last night—and how he did need to say it. How to say it. Dread was growing in him again, just like before the biker had shown up. It was distant, but the tips of its fingers reached deep.
He didn’t know what was coming, only that it couldn’t be good.
And he needed to tell Shawn at least some of this. At least something—in case he had to leave. In case Shawn could think of a way to keep him from having to leave, which was really what he wanted—someone to say, We can figure this out. They’d always figured things out.
His breath gathered in his throat.
And Shawn, out there clueless, said, “I called Evie.”
Dean realized that was why he was here in the first place, to confess to someone he’d called his pregnant ex. To talk that out.
“What’d you do that for?” Dean asked—half relieved to be off the hook for a few minutes longer. Maybe his situation wouldn’t seem quite as bad to Shawn, compared to a pregnant ex. He pulled his pillow under his chest, lying on his front.
“I had some crazy idea in my head that maybe, with us hitting number one, she’d change her mind.”
“And?”
A silence stretched out.
Dean bent his head, stretching his neck.
“I was never that great of a boyfriend, you know. Always on the road, in the studio, writing, practicing, rehearsing. She used to accuse me of spending more time with you guys than her, and I’d say, ‘That’s my job. What do you think pays the bills?’”
Dean picked at the seam of the pillowcase.
“I’d tell her, ‘You knew what I did when we met.’ And I was just…an unmovable brick wall about it, you know? All ‘This is what you signed on to.’”
“She knew what you did,” Dean said.
“Yeah but…I don’t know. I just thought…if this is the tip of something, if we can get High Class to release Mercy and really get a handle on this thing, I could afford to bring her out for some of the tours. I could…I don’t know, find a way to make a better balance.”
“And the kid?”
“That’d be just more reason to make it work, right?”
Dean leaned his forehead on his pillow, his insides fighting against this disruption. This change. And it was old Dean’s insides pulling tight at the idea of it, old Dean who would have wanted to keep the band just the fucking way it was. Girlfriends came and went—or hell, maybe even a wife, as long as she stayed home, stayed out of the studio, stayed out of rehearsal. “What if it’s not your kid?”
Shawn let out a breath of a laugh. It sounded like it was turned in on itself. “I was thinking if we got back together, I’d tell her to not even try to find out. We’d just call it mine.”
“And?” Dean had his face turned, cheek to pillow, scanning the manufacturer’s name printed on the bottom of the cardboard he’d taped against the hole in his bunk.
“She was glad I called so she could give me her new phone number. She moved in with the guy over the weekend.”
“You want to hit something?”
“Really bad.”
“I’m sorry,” Dean said. And meant it. He may not have wanted Evie tagging along, but he could feel Shawn’s hurt like it was his own. Or, like it was old Dean’s own at least. He could still reach out and touch old Dean, if he stretched far enough.
And old Dean needed to talk to Shawn about new Dean. He put his fingers against the cardboard. “Are the doors closed?”
“The— Oh.” A half second passed, during which Dean felt Shawn looking toward each end of the bunkroom’s hallway. “Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m—”
“Shawn! You in there?” Wayne’s voice, c
oming from farther up the bus.
Gonna come out of here because I need to talk to you.
“Yeah!” Shawn called.
“They’re ready.”
“’Kay!” To Dean, he said, “Sound check. Up for it?”
His chest tightened, his moment to explain slipping away. “No, I’d better not. Can you come back right after?”
“If Mike doesn’t have shit lined up for us.”
“Try to come back. I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
The door to the bunkroom closed.
Dean stayed where he was, hugging the pillow.
An hour passed. Two.
The sun sank away until it was nothing but traces tugging at his mind.
He hugged the pillow tighter, against the dread in his chest, until he couldn’t take lying there. With the edge of his thumbnail, he pried up the tape. Folded the cardboard out like a door. Slipped through the opening into the dark hallway and let himself into the back, just to check. He put a knee on the couch and tweezed two slats in the blinds open with his fingers.
Still enough sun out there to bother his eyes some, but it wouldn’t last much longer.
He scanned the crowd, all those kids come to see them. The traces of sun weren’t so bad where the building blocked it.
His gaze fell on a face he recognized.
He put his hand against his chest, against the swamp of dread there.
The biker hadn’t been the only thing to show up the last time he’d felt this. And the biker hadn’t been the only thing that’d been gone when the dread had disappeared.
The kid who’d brought the stakes, his head dropped back into the crowd. He must have risen up on his toes. Another dark head was next to him, light shining around it. The sun playing tricks on his over-sensitive eyes.
He let the slats snap back into place.
Guy comes on the bus with a handful of stakes, he knows what he’s after.
And now he was back.
Dean sank to the couch, wondering what he should do. What he could do.
He nixed the idea of telling Shawn, at least right now. Better to keep everyone out of it until he figured this latest development out. Maybe by not knowing, they wouldn’t wind up caught in the middle of it.
3.
* * *
The crowd wound around the corner.
The wild-haired guy had come off the bus with one of the roadies fifteen minutes ago; now music rumbled from the building, so distorted by the brick it was hardly music at all. It kept up for a good forty minutes. Another forty minutes later, the first band on the bill was playing in fits and starts, their sound higher than Man Made Murder’s but still just a distorted mess.
Carl stood among the other fans, his shoulder against the wall. He faced the back of the line. Every minute or so, he lifted up on his toes to check the bus.
He had to have missed Dean somehow.
The band’s fans were there in groups—pairs at a minimum, but four or five or ten at a time who all seemed to know each other. He tuned them out and lifted onto his toes again. Shadows hugged the edges of the building beyond where the security lights reached.
Cars came up the street, headlights leading the way. Concert-goers held them up as they crossed to the venue. One flipped a driver off, laughing with his friends.
Carl came up on his toes.
The bus door shifted.
His heart did a quick beat. He stepped away from the wall, his fingertips ghosting it. He peered around the shoulders of the people behind him.
A few at the end had caught the movement too. They nudged each other, nodding toward the bus.
The door opened to a black hole. Then Dean Thibodeaux clodded down the steps, looking like he’d just woken up. He stopped halfway between the bus and the venue, ducking his head to light a cigarette.
He looked up as he shook the match out. His eyes went straight to Carl’s.
Carl held his breath, his fingers pushing against the wall. Trying to decide if now was the right time to try to have that talk.
Wariness crossed Dean’s face. He shoved the matchbook in his pocket as he started walking again, not looking at Carl. The door at the band’s entrance, and a second later it fell shut. Dean Thibodeaux had entered the building.
Chatter broke out, excitement about the sighting.
Carl leaned his forehead on his arm, his hand braced on the wall. He stared at the bricks.
Lit by the jaundiced security light, Dean’s cheeks had been sculpted out, his lips pale. Dark smudges crouched below his eyes.
He looked like a drawing Carl had seen once of a wendigo.
Someone jostled him, the line moving. He pushed away from the wall, stepping out of the crowd, letting people behind him spill into his empty space.
Dean hadn’t set foot outside until after dark.
Carl’s head twitched, unconscious little jerks.
A hand touched his back, someone slipping past to get to the line.
He took another step back, coming off the sidewalk completely. Staring straight ahead, his breaths drying his mouth.
The shadow that had crossed Dean’s eyes. The pallor of skin.
He’d just seen a vampire.
The pavement vibrated under his feet. A noise rattled him. It took a few seconds for it to connect. He dragged his head around. His mouth opened, throat dry.
The rumble echoed off cobblestones and brick. The line kept moving forward, mostly oblivious, people disappearing into the mouth of the door. A few fans craned their necks to catch a look at what was coming, jumping forward to keep their spots.
And there they came, five outlaws in leather and denim, straddling steel beasts, their gloved hands gripping throttles, their hair rippling like flags behind them.
Carl turned as they roared around the corner, the noise beating his ears.
They pulled up behind the bus. Kickstands came down, engines cut off. A tension stretched the air. Carl backed another step into the road, distantly seeing the front corner of a car slamming on its brakes just shy of his thigh. He touched the hood of that car, still watching the bikers, felt it slip from under his fingers, the driver going around him.
The bikers split up, three striding to either side of the bus. On the side Carl could see, two canvassed the windows, the edge of the roof, the dark space underneath. The one in front—the broad-shouldered blond Carl remembered from the bar—strode toward the door, looking neither right nor left. Chin high.
The venue’s back door swung open. A roadie stepped out, not realizing what he was walking into. When he saw the blond reaching for the door handle, he stiffened. “Hey, show’s inside.”
Carl wished it had been the bigger of the two who’d come out, the one built like an ape.
“Ticket booth’s around the corner,” the roadie said.
The blond looked the bus door up and down.
“Come on, guys,” the roadie said, striding toward the bus.
The blond jiggled the handle. Stepped back, craning his neck.
Carl caught movement at the end of the bus’s roof and darted his gaze over as boots landed. He’d missed how that one had gotten up there—climbed? Jumped? A red-headed kid—probably not even as old as him—with an unpleasant sneer clomped his way across the roof to one of the ventilation hatches.
“Hey!” the roadie called. “Come off there before I have to call the police.”
The blond’s arm came out from his side. Black-gloved fingers clamped around the roadie’s throat. The blond hadn’t even looked over to see what he was grabbing for.
The roadie clutched the biker’s hand, saying, “Hey,” his voice strained. Saying, “I’m not looking for trouble. You guys just—” The roadie’s eyes widened. He tore at the biker’s hand, his breath rasping as he tried to get air.
The redhead on the roof levered a hatch up, pushed it over. Dropped to his ass, his legs dangling through the hole.
The blond watched him slip through befo
re turning to the roadie, walking him backward with long, sure strides until the roadie’s shoulders slammed into the wall, followed by his skull.
He stared at the roadie while the roadie’s mouth gaped like a fish’s.
“Oh my God,” whispered a girl beside Carl. Her elbow bumped him as she brought her fingers to her throat.
He swung his gaze back. Another biker dropped through the roof. The bus swayed on its tires as the men moved around inside.
The other three stood guard, arms crossed, watching the crowd, the street, the back door to the venue. They were all solid, one with a gut pushing at the tee shirt he wore under his Black Sun Riders jacket.
The line to get inside had stopped moving, people bunching up. The guy taking tickets had his hand up, holding back the crowd while he yelled to someone inside.
The blond watched the bus, ignoring the roadie at the end of his arm. The toes of the roadie’s sneakers scraped at the pavement.
The bus door squeaked open. Boots clunked down the steps. The two bikers emerged, the older one giving a curt nod before tossing something the blond’s way. The redhead was already heading for his bike.
The blond looked at what he had in his hand. Looked back up at the bus.
He let the roadie drop back to his feet, and the roadie clutched his own throat, gasping for air, staggering against the club’s wall.
The crowd bowed back as the blond strode to his bike. He shoved whatever he’d gotten from the bus into an inner pocket in his jacket.
He threw his leg over his bike.
The engines revved. Their riders walked them out of the mouth of the alley, pointing them toward the street, then they took off, the riders lifting their feet to the pegs, their bikes swerving through cars. They rounded a corner, hair flagging in the wind.
It seemed to take an eternity, but finally the sound of their engines died off.
The crowd breathed a sigh of relief.
Carl’s chest felt like a weight had sat down on it.
The chatter started around him. “Did you see? What the hell was that?”
Four guys spilled from the back of the club, bats and sticks in their hands.
