Page 92 of Bottoms Up
Everything that doesn’t come with us is going to the women and children’s shelter. I haven’t been able to go every week, but I go to one of their rehearsals at least twice a month, often more. One of the guys moved across the country with his mom, and the girl guitar player is about to move out as well, which means it’s going to break up the band, but I’ll keep working with the ones who are left as long as they want me to. I was happy my towels, furniture, and such had a worthy place to go.
I heard our sound guys doing a quick sound check and knew we were just about up. Our guys set everything up just for us — they never depend on whatever settings the band before us used, and that’s always in the contract. Will’s a stickler about us sounding like the Mythic Beast everyone expects. It’s one of the reasons I love working with him — it’s all about the art with him, and he’s the one in control. We don’t have pencil-pushers and money people making those decisions.
The lights were already shifting into our preferred colors, reds, pinks, and purples bleeding across the haze, smoke machines low and subtle. My heart raced but my breathing was steady. The kind of high only live performance gives you.
The crowd roared when we came into view on stage, and adrenaline spiked in my system. I breathed through it, listened for Mikey to start us, and then it was just me, my guitar, the music, and the crowd in front of us. I sing backup on mostsongs, but there’s nothing quite like walking to center stage and standing behind the main mic. I can startMan Up, and Mikey will pick up, but he started us off, probably to keep me from overthinking it, and he was right to do so.
Often, you don’t know what the crowd thinks of a new song until you get to the end, but they figured out the chorus and were fucking singing along a third of the way through. My heart soared and my stomach relaxed when I hadn’t realized it was tied up in knots.
They liked it.
* * * *
Julian
I was glad I’d seen the whole show from out front the week before, because watching from the side of the stage wasn’t the same. I could see Silver up close and personal, so it was more intimate. I could see her emotions more, but we didn’t have the audience’s view.
And when I say we were on the side of the stage, I mean that literally. We weren’t in the wings because there was no curtain. We were dressed in all black, but we were just up on stage, to the side of them. No spotlights were on us, and I doubted anyone paid attention to us, but still. I wasonthe fucking stage. I could look out and see many tens of thousands of people. I’d looked it up when I first saw the crowds, and learned there were one hundred and fifty thousand people attending, not counting the other bands, their staff, and the festival employees.
The Royal Opera House in Versailles, the largest in my time, held between seven hundred and fifteen hundred people in the audience, depending upon what we were performing and the orchestra size. We occasionally performed at some outdoor venues that could handle around three thousand people, butnothinglike this. It was an ocean of people.
Mythic Beast in a warehouse with a half-dozen people watching was extraordinary, but Mythic Beast in a huge field with more than a hundred thousand fans was something to behold.
I wanted to taste my Silver while she performed, but shortly after would have to do. I couldn’t feed from her tonight, since I’d recently done so, but a few sips would be fine.
Near the end of the performance, Silver stopped playing and looked at her arm.Hisarm. The mustache made him look evenmoremale. It made me want to fuck his mouth again — I’d dragged him inside three or four times today, to do just that.
The mustache was working for me.
He looked at me, looked around, and went back to playing. I tried to look to see what was different, and when I couldn’t see anything, I went into his thoughts.
The necklace, now a bracelet, coiled around her upper arm. On his bicep.
It was still alive.They hadn’t diluted it, or killed it, or whatever. It’d just bided its time until it could appear in public again.
I focused on it. Would anyone recognize it? It looked different. What were the odds someone would see the armband, made of three metals braided together and not just gold, and realize what it is?
I texted Kirsten and then Marco. Two words.It’s back.
* * * *
Silver
I wasn’t going to worry about the damned bracelet. I shoved it to the back of my mind and enjoyed the rest of the show.
The last song has tons more special effects, fog bursts, lighting patterns, quick pyros synced to the beat. It’s one of our fan favorites, so it’s always a blast to perform.
Well, with all the special effects, I suppose it’s several dozen blasts. We’re limited to the special effects we can do at festivals, but we always put on a good show. If we can’t include a minimum amount of extras, we don’t perform there.
Major adrenaline rush for the final song, a literal buzz in my fingertips, and then it was over. We waved. Did our usual end of show theatrics, and made our way to the back of the stage and off.
And suddenly the heat, the light, the tension evaporated. Security ushered us the twenty feet to the rented limo, and everyone piled in.
The doors closed to silence.
Julian pulled me into his lap, and I didn’t protest. I was sweaty and gross, but it didn’t matter. His arms around me made the world right again.
“Amazing. Ya’ll are fucking amazing,” Davy said. “Blew me away. It’s like ya’ll come alivemorewhen you perform for a big audience.”
