Lead guitar, Kent Hayden, had a fascist look, slick-backed black hair, black T-shirt and jeans, fingerless leather gloves. He stared at the crowd impassively while his fingers danced on the frets of his instrument.
Together, they set up a textured rain of sound, melody struggling to escape chaos.
Eliot Ray, lead singer, leapt to the fore, grabbing the mike and pressing his mouth to the foam. He wore work boots, cutoff shorts, and a three-sizes-too-big T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He shut his eyes and wailed, but it was controlled, playing with the rhythm and song; it was, after all, music. I forgot to pay attention to the lyrics.
The crowd in the pit surged toward the stage, screaming. Fists pounded the air, a hundred bodies jumped in time with the beat.
Near me, Jax leaned on the bar, as enthralled as I was. Nobody wanted to buy drinks now.
Shouting into his ear over the music, I asked him, “How much security you guys have tonight?”
“Every bouncer on staff—and each of ’em brought a buddy. Ambulance waiting around the corner.”
Over the last year, Devil’s Kitchen had started headlining the club circuit. Their recent East Coast tour had made news: They’d left a trail of injured concertgoers in their wake. Every show they did, someone was hospitalized with injuries way beyond the usual cuts and cracked ribs of the mosh pit. It became part of the show in a way—a new kind of extreme sport, like rock climbing in Afghanistan. The more publicity they got about the casualties, the more popular their shows became. People had started following them from show to show like they were some kind of postapocalyptic version of the Grateful Dead.
They attracted a dangerous crowd. Part of this was the music they played, heavy as granite, sharp as razors, drawn from the old European industrial scene and punk they’d cut their teeth on as kids. Most of it was the band’s reputation for putting people in the hospital. Not that any of the spike-haired heroin-thin manic kids currently in the mosh pit thought that
I had some theories about the band and the kind of energy they generated. They, or maybe just one of them, were vampires. Maybe not the standard bloodsucking undead, but some kind of psychic variety, feeding on danger, aggression, and bloodshed. What better venue to generate such emotions?
Eliot had more energy than any one person had a right to, leaping from one end of the stage to the other, bent over with the mike stand clutched in both hands one minute, stretched to his full height the next. He was fun to watch. I was screaming just as loud as anyone at the end of each song.
A couple of kids had started crowd surfing in the mosh pit, people passing them overhead from one end to the other. Then, one would get swallowed, disappearing in the crowd and another would spring up to take his place, riding on the upstretched arms of his friends.
They must have been four songs into the set when the first fight broke out. I didn’t notice exactly when it happened; the surge and lurch in the crowd seemed like part of the natural flow. Then, a body slammed against a railing. The guy bent, his arms limp and flailing, and slid down to the floor. Four or five other guys suddenly locked together, grappling, and a space of a foot or two cleared around them. In the press of people trying to get away, more punches and body slams crashed. Eliot kept screaming into the mike, and a swarm of bouncers descended on the crowd.
A half-dozen people, men and women, with bloody cuts streaming over their faces were dragged past me. The music faded, reverb whining over the speakers and echoing in my ears.
“We’re taking a break,” Eliot said. Kent and Danny were unplugging their instruments. “Round two, ten minutes. Don’t move.” They disappeared behind the stage.
All that blood. My shoulders tensed, hackles rising. I had to get out of here.
I jumped off the bar and ran, climbing stairs to the catwalk circling the pit, dodging the press of onlookers. The pit was a war zone, half the mob still thrashing to the taped music now playing, the other half trying to pick fights, struggling against bouncers and friends who held them back. At the other end of the walkway, I slipped over the rail and hopped to the back of the stage.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, it’s not even ten minutes into the show and they’re already killing each other! That’s a record even for us. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Come on, it’s what they’re paying for. You don’t think they’re actually coming for the music, do you?”
The green room was a piece of the club’s storage area that had been curtained off and decorated with a minifridge and sofa. I stood at the edge of the curtain’s opening and listened.
“Shit like this is not supposed to happen every show!” The angry voice—I could tell he was stalking back and forth across the space by the stomp of his boots—belonged to Eliot.
“So what’re you going to do?” said the other one. “Quit in the middle of a gig? What kind of riot do you think that’ll start?”
Eliot threw something and kept pacing.
“Just chill, Eliot. You’re not going to quit, so stop bitching.” I was guessing that was Kent. Calm and pragmatic. The third, Danny, hadn’t spoken. “We’re going to go back and play. The crowd’ll fight like they always do. Then we’ll go home. We’re not paid to worry about what those jerks do to each other. Not our problem.”
“Just once,” Eliot said between deep, careful breaths, “I’d like to get through an entire gig without stopping because of a fight.”
He threw back the curtain on his way out and ran smack into me. It was my fault; the possibilities presented by this conversation—dissention within the band, the fact that they, or at least not all of them, knew what was going on—so intrigued me that I missed him stomping toward me. We stared at each other, startled. His jaw clenched, and he looked like he was about to yell a string of obscenities.
I forestalled this by smiling. “Hi. You must be Eliot Ray. I’m Kitty Norville.” I stuck out my hand for him to shake.
He looked at my hand, looked at me, his snarl twitching. “Kitty Norville? The fuckin’ talk show chick?”
“Yeah.”
The snarl melted into a smile, and he shook my hand. “Cool. I’m a big fan.”
“Thanks.” I looked over his shoulder. Kent stood with his arms crossed. Danny sat on the couch, shoulders hunched. “I’m real interested in talking to you guys. Maybe after the show? Would that be possible?”
“You want to talk to us?” Eliot threw a grin at the others. “Now we really are famous, if Kitty Norville wants to talk to us. You’re, like, the Barbara Walters of freaky shit.”
Kent, frowning, shoved past Eliot and me. “You’ll have to set it up with our manager.” He stalked toward the stage door.
“Sorry about that. I think he’s got a thing against werewolves.”
“Werewolves or nosy people? So—this kind of thing happens every show?” I nodded toward the chaos still rumbling from the main part of the club.
His expression tightened; he looked like he was going to yell again. But he just ducked his gaze and scuffed his boot on the concrete floor. “Yeah.”
“You ever think it might be caused by something—oh, external? Like someone’s manipulating things to cause the violence?”
“You mean—not our fault?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “Not specifically. It’s just something to think about.”
Danny was staring at me from the sofa. I couldn’t read anything in his expression. Just a hard, interested stare. It made me twitch.
“Come back after the show,” Eliot said. “We’ll talk.”
“No calling the manager?”
“Our manager doesn’t know dick.”
“Thanks.”
The show must go on. The bouncers had cleared away the injured and the survivors were hungry for more. It was a wall of emotion, of anger and hate. More fights were waiting to break out. All my instincts said to get the hell out of here—I couldn’t hold my own in a fight, not with this many people. Even if I sprouted claws and fought like a wolf. I returned to the safety of Jax’s bar.
Jax was nervous, too, standing tense and clutching the edge of the bar, white-knuckled.
“This is really weird,” I murmured.
“This is totally fucked up,” Jax said, without a trace of sarcasm.
