Blue Desire (8 page)

“Can
you do this?” Kat asked.

“You
promised them something different. Let’s try.”

Kat
took a deep breath and hit Play. “Okay, people,” she purred into the
mic
, in her deepest, sexiest voice. “See if you can dance
to this.”

She’d
pushed the vocals back a good couple of minutes, and she used the time to think
about how to redo the next song, noting in the background that Cindy was doing
a remarkable job of improvising over the repetitive bass line. The light sticks
were starting to move in the crowd. Maybe they’d dance to anything with a beat.
The rockers were getting restless. She could take all that in and still focus
as long as she didn’t think about Brett out there in the crowd. What was he
doing there, anyway?

Better
him than Angus, anyway. She stepped forward and started singing. She didn’t
have a trained voice, but she knew how to belt it out and sing the lyrics with
passion. It was a far cry from what Mr.
Syke
did,
where everything was polished to perfection. She couldn’t do that, but she
could pour her soul and her anger and her frustration into the song. It had
been a love song once. Well, lust anyway. She rubbed the handle of the
mic
like she was jerking it off and closed her eyes,
screaming out the words. She’d been through a hell of a month, and she wasn’t
taking it anymore.

When
she opened them again, there were a lot of stunned looks in the faces of the
crowd, but they weren’t heading toward the exits. And to her surprise Kat loved
the sound she and Cindy were laying down. She glanced at Cindy, who gave her a
weak smile. Kat gave Cindy a thumbs-up, and the smile got stronger. “Let’s do
some more of that shit,” said Kat into the microphone and went back to the
computer. She had everything planned out.

Cindy
surprised her by starting to play before she was finished reprogramming, even
though it only took a few seconds. But it was perfect. Kat waited until they
were in sync and hit the button.

“This
song is called ‘Two-Timing Mother Fucker,’” she said and looked right at Brett.
“Needless to say, it didn’t get any radio airplay.”
Which was
fine because it got a hell of a lot of hits on YouTube.
This time, she
sought out Brett in the crowd and stared straight at him. “And I’m dedicating
it to Jessica.”

He
had the nerve to look like he had no idea what she was talking about. She
remembered how he’d looked for a collar or a ring and had asked her if she was
attached to anyone. God, he had a lot of nerve. With an innocent face like
that, any woman would trust him, too. It made her pissed off. She could use
that. She always gave her best concerts when she was angry anyway.

* * * *

An
hour later she spotted a thin young man dressed in black jeans with chains and
a faded
Kradle
T-shirt kissing a girl with neon-blue
hair and a metallic fuchsia bra top. It was a moment that symbolized the
concert’s success. Somehow, she’d managed to keep both her audiences. The
ravers were willing to listen to a couple of straight-on punk rock songs, even.
When her voice started to give, she’d stood at the computer and turned the
bridge of “The Man Wants My Back” into a ten-minute dance-a-thon. There were
some advantages to longer songs;
Kradle
always sang
them fast and straight, and each one took about three minutes with the set list
carefully organized so the songs that sounded best with a scratchy voice were
at the end. Intermission only helped some. For a change, she was giving a
concert without her voice ending up hoarse and raw.

A
big man with long black hair walked in, and some of the crowd turned to watch
him. Angus. She should have known word would get to him. It had been
inevitable, eventually, but she’d thought that maybe with the concert announced
only three days before that she’d get one in before he started getting pissed
off. He didn’t have a right to get pissed off. He’d kicked her out of the band,
and what did he expect her to do—become a secretary? She certainly didn’t
expect him to show up in person.

The
punk rockers made room for him out of respect, and the ravers moved because he
looked as mean and vicious as he sometimes was. Kat heard someone near the
stage saying, “That guy has a bad vibe,” and she couldn’t agree more. She
wondered if he was going to try to climb onstage. She doubted he was there to
apologize. Cindy was great to work with, but she’d have felt safer if their
bassist had made it.

He
walked right up to the front and then yelled, “What the fuck are you doing with
my music?”

His music.
She’d written it, music, lyrics, and
all. She’d given him co-writing credit on the album because that was what they
usually did. He claimed that their audience would give their music more
credibility if they thought a man was involved in writing the songs. The only
thing he’d contributed was mentioning that a song about a cop buggering someone
would be “cool” often enough that Kat wrote the damn thing to get him off her
case. The music was a lot better than the lyrics, in her opinion.

At
least he wasn’t climbing up on the stage. She wanted to argue with him about
whose music it was, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to make him angrier.

Angus
turned his back on her. “What the fuck is she doing with our music?” he asked.
She knew “our” didn’t mean he was acknowledging her part in it. He was talking
to the punk rockers, working the crowd.
“Our” meant
Kradle
fans.
And they were looking uneasy. They’d
been enjoying themselves, as far as she could tell, but it had probably been a
guilty pleasure. Now they were turning sour.

“And
who are these people?
These pansies in faerie wings and light
sticks and pastel hair.
And my God, mohair leg
warmers!”

The
couple kissing in the back looked up. The ravers were beginning to edge back to
the left of the room. They might outnumber the
Kradle
fans, but they clearly thought they were the prey. No, Angus wasn’t stupid
enough to storm the stage. He was trying to start a riot instead. Kat didn’t
think he was going to succeed, because she respected her fans more than that.
Some of her songs might have a violent edge on the surface, but her fans
weren’t crazy. They understood the difference between being pissed off that
things weren’t right and actually hitting someone. She hoped. In any case,
ravers might be strange, but they weren’t the people to be pissed off about.

She
needed to sing something, get people together. She’d been doing it all night,
and now, suddenly, she didn’t know how. But she stepped up with the microphone
anyway, and Cindy, who’d been taking a break, slung her guitar back over her
shoulder in response. She still didn’t know what to sing.

Then
she saw Brett walking up to Angus and locking eyes with him. Somehow, she knew
then it was going to be okay. She might not think much of the way he ran his
relationships, but the man was as solid, in a way, as any man she’d ever met.
Solid.
She didn’t know of any better way to put it than that.

“‘Liquid
Dreams,’” she murmured to Cindy. “Hit it as soon as you’re ready, and play it
loud. No bass.” It was one of the songs
Kradle
had
never played, so Angus couldn’t claim it was his. He’d complained the bridge in
the middle was too melodic, and Kat thought it was perfect, so she wouldn’t
change it. Hopefully by the time they got there, the situation would have
defused.

Angus
yelled. Cindy played louder. Kat screamed the music as loud as she could while
still having a prayer of hitting the notes. At least she had a microphone, and
Angus didn’t. They were halfway through the first verse when Angus finally shut
up. He stomped out. Brett was with him. A dozen or more people followed, but
everyone else stayed. It was all over by the time they got to the bridge, and
Kat hurried back to the computer to add in some bass and get people dancing
again. And dance they did.

BRETT
HADN’T BEEN in a fight since he’d been on the force, and then he’d had a gun, a
club, and solid steel handcuffs. But he knew the image Angus had created for
himself with
Kradle
and knew the other man couldn’t
back down from a challenge. Kat was creating something special and unexpected,
a strange blend of electronic dance music and hard, driving rock that had
captured the crowd’s imagination, and he couldn’t let Angus spoil that, so he’d
gone ahead and said, “Step outside and say that.” He felt like a walking
cliché.

Angus
had nodded and gone outside. A small crowd gathered to watch the fight, which
apparently was going to take place on the sidewalk out in front of the Caravan
Club. Brett knew the crowd was not on his side, but he thought he heard Kat’s
voice get mellower as they all walked out.

He
had a couple inches of height on Angus but suspected he was giving ten pounds.
Any idea he had of reasoning things out once they were outside had vanished as
the two men were circled by the crowd. Angus had his fists up. There were a
couple of heavy rings on them, not quite as bad as brass knuckles but close. At
least he didn't have a knife like the LSD-hyped kid who’d cut Brett years
before. Brett waited, in no rush to get hurt or to hurt anyone. The whole thing
was stupid. He decided to try reason after all.

“Weird
music, huh?” he said, trying to make his voice sound light.

He
barely ducked Angus’s punch, the red stone on his ring flashing right in front
of Brett’s eyes as he ducked away. He was going to have to fight back. He could
still hear the pounding music in the background of a song he’d never heard
before.

It
wasn’t long until Angus gave him an opening, and he landed a hard punch on the
other man’s jaw. Unfortunately, Angus struck right back, and the ring hurt as
much as he thought it would. Brett was bleeding above his eye, and he knew it
wouldn’t be long before his eye swelled up.

He
could hear sirens in the distance. The Caravan might be in a good neighborhood,
but less than a mile away was DC’s biggest open-air drug market, or at least it
had been when Brett was on the force. The sirens probably didn’t mean anything.
Still, Angus drew back and listened.

The
sirens got louder and closer.

“Let’s
get out of here,” said Angus, and Brett wondered who he was talking to. A
couple of people in the crowd though moved aside to let him out of the circle
and then followed him down the street. The rest stared at Brett.

“Well?”
he asked wearily. “We
gonna
go back and listen, or
are we
gonna
get busted out here?”

Some
more people walked off, and Brett walked back toward the dimly lit entrance to
the club. A few followed. The bouncer looked him over with a wary eye, and
Brett stared back. The bouncer decided he had better things to do. Brett
supposed his assumption was that Brett had outfought Angus, but the truth was
it was at best a draw.

Inside,
Kat was still singing, and the two cultures were starting to mix again. Brett
smiled, even though it hurt his eye. It was definitely time for that scotch.
Waiting for the crowd to thin was no longer an option. When he got it, he
leaned back against the bar and watched from a distance. He’d always liked
Kradle
because they were fierce and loud and fit a certain
kind of mood. Music like that woke him up better than coffee did. But he’d
never realized that their lead singer was so talented. Stripped of her
bandmates
, it was so much clearer what she could do. He
watched, mesmerized, through the show and two encores. Finally, Kat told the
crowd in a hoarse voice she couldn’t sing anymore and then hopped off the
stage.

Lisa was right. I
definitely needed to get out more
. He sipped his drink. The show was
over, and he might as well go. He wasn’t going to force his way through the
crowd to get to Kat; he’d look like a
fanboy
, for one
thing. That wasn’t how he wanted to relate to her, not anymore, no matter how
special her music was. He’d always remember the way she moved in response to
his fingers and the gasps she made when she came. How her breasts were almost
too sensitive to be touched. How she liked being spanked. He sipped his drink,
reflecting. Lisa was wrong. He hadn’t been mooning over Kat, but he was getting
all too close to it now. The sound system started playing dance music, and the
Kradle
fans were heading out. He straightened and got ready
to follow them.

Then
suddenly Kat was at the bar next to him. “Thank you,” she said, standing on her
toes so that she could be heard over the noise.

“Pleasure.”

“Tell
Jessica hi. And that I’m sorry her man got a shiner for me.”

He
blinked. He remembered her saying something about Jessica when she’d been
staring at him and singing the song about cheating, but he hadn’t understood
what she was trying to say. Maybe that she was in a relationship with someone
named Jessica? But now he was confused. “Who is Jessica?”

Kat
curled her nose in disgust. “You know who Jessica is.”

He
racked his brain. He knew a Jessica at the club and had made a corset for her
at the request of her
dom
,
Brandon.
“Blonde girl?
Goes to Le Petit Mort?”