Jonnie transitioned away from the ballad with an upbeat, gritty riff. They moved through a set of hits and radio anthems. High-energy vibes returned, clapping and cheers filled the seats.
Rock music rollicked, the guys giving it their all as they strutted one-by-one down a column extending into the crowd.
After two hours of music, Fyre played their biggest hit. A big-time song signaled the onset of the denouement, Helen’s nerves frying in time. Her pulse became a war drum. Her senses sharpened, cataloguing as much as possible. A pink Harley Davidson shirt. Reporters aiming black cameras as big as old-fashioned boom boxes, recording the action. Asymmetrical golden zippers slashing the legs of Jonnie’s tight leather pants.
A flash of movement offstage. Golden head. But when she blinked and looked again, the figure was gone.
Guitars and drums reached a frenetic pitch, grinding as the musical number raced to a crazed climax. A spray of pyrotechnic jets as blue as the flames on a gas stove erupted near the front of the stage, warming Helen’s face. Fellow front row spectators squealed and jumped back.
Brian attacked his red instrument, shredding away. He toggled the whammy bar, drawing out the notes. His pinky, sheathed in a brass tube, slid over the strings. Blues-y, quavering tunes dominated.
Near the back of the stage, the flames of six tangerine geysers burst. While the band played, more went off, forming a ring surrounding the performers. Sweat slipped down Helen’s back.
“Fyre! Fyre! Fyre!” The chant filled the crowded arena, pagan and crazed, like something from Wicker Man. Helen’s perception trembled, loopy from the surreal madness.
She floated out of her body, split, a buzz of flies assailing her ears. The clear crystal was hard in her pocket, pressing a pointed corner into the top of her thigh.
Amidst the pyrotechnic frenzy and bowled over by a sharp awareness as dour as it was stark, she locked eyes with the orange carousel horse and dropped into her trance state.
It’s happening. She couldn’t quite say yet what “it” was, but she needed to work with what she had. So, Icarus seeking the sun, she became a guided missile and propelled herself toward a crimson burn. She entered the flames, her lashes singeing. She focused every ounce of her energy on the feeling she wanted to bring to Brian. Safe. Protected.
But then she gasped, struggling for air in sucking breaths as she rejoined with her body as fast as she’d left it.
The stage was a structure fire of controlled arson. Explosions boomed into bonfires. A gigantic, thundering flame erupted, giving Brian a fiery wingspan spanning the stage floor.
Pyrotechnic fire shot from the horses’ eye sockets. Red flames spewed out of the demon horse, and white blasted from the Pegasus.
Then came a massive snap.
A single scream set off a domino effect of vocal panic. The smoking set prop sagged toward the ground in stretching slow-motion, the upended bulk garish and out of place, a violating disarray.
Performers scrambled offstage as the disaster hit the ground with a biblical crash. Alarms blared, emergency siren howls mixing with shouts and cries in a cacophony so brutal she had to cover her ears to think.
Bodies darted in every direction, uncoordinated roaches scattering.
Red lights lit up the perimeter, blinking. Whistles blasted. Security guards performed crowd control. The stench of burning plastic rotted her lungs, seared her eyes.
Sprinklers released, dampening her face with mist.
And then she saw it. Out of the vacant socket of the crushed set prop, the demolished and broken horses crackling with residual sparks as they lay caved in to the elevated ground, slithered the phantom. The murky color of air pollution, her nemesis crawled from the dead eye like a tapeworm and slipped to the side, vanishing offstage.
Helen dashed in the direction of a barricade cordoning off the backstage area.
A guard grabbed her arm. “Evacuate to the nearest emergency exit,” he shouted, echoing robotic instructions blasting out of loudspeakers.
She linked in with the crystal, blanked her mind, and teleported to the other side of the metal gate. “No can do.”
He gaped, rubbing his eyes. “How did you do that?”
Amidst the onslaught of alarms and indoor rain, Helen raced down the corridor, tracking the fog monster. Better not call Brian’s name and risk drawing attention to herself or him. But she didn’t have time to waste on a blind hunt, either.
Helen ducked into a supply closet and, standing in the middle of piled speakers and amplifiers, visualized her target and tranced out.
In five seconds, she was astral and floating. She flew through the air, wiggling through jelly walls as she swam through the backstage bowels.
Nobody was around, they’d all evacuated. Classic distraction, basic bitch of a ruse.
An almost-noise as subtle as the musical hallucination of a remembered song sneaked in below the blasting screech tearing through the arena. No mistaking chanting. She followed it until it got louder, weaving through corridors and hallways and down staircases until she hovered at the threshold of a door the color of rust.
Ancient pipes bellied the ceiling, and water-stained concrete the color of old meat covered the floor. The alarm was muted down in this secret place, overtaken by the clunk and gurgle of some sort of boiler. Louder, though, was the chanting beyond the door. Choral, ritualistic, hauntingly familiar.
Steeling her resolve, Helen pushed herself through the barrier and confronted a horrible sight. Pentagram chalked in red on the dirt floor. Guts in the middle, trinkets positioned in the tapered corners of the star.
A man, face hidden by a gold mirror-mask, read from the same fat tome as the one from the storage locker. The weird language tumbled from his mouth. Two others chanted in unison.
Brian lay on a cot, tied down and unconscious. He was clothed, but his pants were disrupted enough to reveal the bruise on his hip. The monster hovered in the air above him, hissing.
Helen zapped
