Chasing Death Metal Dreams (2 page)

He breathed, slowly, in and out, fingers of his hidden hands clenched in the boring, blue cotton of his shirt, feet in his new sneakers spread even further apart. Carlos Medina would write songs, one day. He would play guitar on a stage and everyone would cheer and say, “He’s so good. Look at him.” And they would see who he really was…

****

Chapter 1

¡Mierda! These people were crazy.
Carlos threw his shoulder against a heavy speaker that threatened to fall on him, while managing not to break his rhythm on his guitar. There were probably a hundred people squeezed into the living room of the cramped house venue they were playing, all at least half-drunk, all singing and shoving and laughing, surfing the mosh pit, crashing into each other.
My kind of crazy.
Carlos ripped off a sharp arpeggio line that caught him a startled glance from Foster on bass, but Carlos didn’t care. He’d written the damned song, he could play it the way he wanted to. Mia on drums went with him, her bare arms shiny with sweat, the sticks a blur as she matched his tempo.

Carlos leaned into the mike.

You think that you can break me

With your cheating and your lies?

You think I missed the rot beneath

Your saccharine disguise?

Let me tell you

Fuckin’ amateur

I saw you

Who you really were

You’re not the first I’ve kissed with only greed behind your eyes.

The speaker wobbled again as a big guy in dreadlocks hit it with his hip. This time one of the venue guys grabbed it, then stationed himself between it and the moshers. Carlos gave the guy a nod, as he nailed the bridge back to the chorus, the notes fast and crisp under his calloused fingertips. He wasn’t a star, wasn’t where he’d sworn he’d be by twenty-five, but this? This was what still made it worth getting up every day— a crowd of people asking him to move them, shake them, blast their ears and their souls.

Not going under

Not going down

Using the users

Owning this town

Been kicked in the teeth

Been stabbed in the back

But I’m not going under

I’m on the attack

The music took him then, and all he knew was the guitar under his fingers, the voice that ripped out of him, rough and deep and painful, and the lyrics that had kept him alive through the tough times. Mia was on fire, Foster actually kept tempo, and the songs Carlos had written pulled the surging crowd around him into one sweaty, shouting, heaving, dancing creature, drunk on cheap beer and on his music and his words.

They finished with “Get Off”. What was the old saying? Leave ’em laughing? He slammed the last chords and sucked in a harsh breath, knowing he’d done that. Taken this crowd of strangers and made them angry, made them ache, made them laugh. It was heady, heady power, and he shouted a laugh of his own. His throat was raw, the sweat soaked every inch of him, his head still throbbed with the beat, and it was a perfect moment.

So of course that was when someone slipped in the pit, flailed long arms and whacked Foster in the neck.

Foster, being the moron he was, took a return swing, missed the guy, and hit the girl next to him in the tits. She shrieked, her boyfriend whirled with a roar, and Carlos swore and grabbed for Foster. “Forget it. Come on!”

Foster whirled around, his guitar swinging dangerously on its strap, and shoved him back. Carlos staggered, catching his foot on the six-inch strip of wood that was all that marked the stage from the floor. He fell backward into the crowd in the mosh pit, hugging his black-and-white RGA custom desperately against himself. Luckily the room was so packed he fell in slow motion, buffeted from a meaty shoulder to a bony hip to a denim-covered thigh, before hitting the floor. People shouted and laughed, but over it Carlos could hear the sounds of a fight getting started.

¡Puta madre Foster!
Carlos wriggled himself clear, wrapped protectively around his instrument. He made it back to the stage space by Mia’s drums, and stood.

“Mia! It’s me!” he yelped, just in time to avoid being brained by his angry drummer. She snarled at him, but put her shoulder to his, standing in front of her kit with sticks in hand like a mama bear defending her cubs. He set his guitar behind them too. It might be just as well he’d left his cello behind today.

A sudden ripple in the crowd marked the approach of Big Dave. The brawny six-foot-six bouncer grabbed Foster by twisting up his arm, snared the girl’s boyfriend by the collar, and yanked them apart with a wordless snarl. Carlos relaxed slightly.

Some venues were nasty, with no one monitoring the crowd, ending up with a mass of drunken fans pissing in corners and shooting up in the bathrooms. One reason he came back to The Cave was because they ran a clean venue. Big Dave’s ability to bounce troublemakers out the door was a large part of that. Unfortunately, half of the trouble getting bounced now was his bass guitarist.

Carlos hurried after them, as Dave frog-marched his captives toward the door. “Yo, Dave? Let me grab my guy?”

Dave paused, and shook Foster, drawing a whine of pain from him. “You sure you want him?”

Not really.
Carlos was pretty sick of this. But he said, “Yeah. I’ll deal.”

“Okay. Keep him out of trouble or I will.” Dave shoved Foster at Carlos, then kept going with the boyfriend despite the girl now yelling and slapping at his meaty arm.

Foster rubbed his shoulder, watching them push through the crowd to the door. “Dave is such an asshole! He fucked up my playing arm.”

“Shut up!” Carlos gave Foster a shove of his own. “We’ve got ten minutes to tear down. Get the goddamned amp unhooked.”

“I want a smoke first.” Foster patted his pocket clumsily.

“Smoke after! Christ!” The tech crew for the venue were already at work coiling away cables. Mia, reassured that the crowd was drifting away from the stage, turned to her drum kit. Carlos bent to retrieve his case from the corner and put away his guitar. The Japanese custom Ibanez RGA had cost him two months of his day job salary and she was worth every penny. He patted her cutaway horn as he settled her into the case, then closed and locked it. A glance to his left showed that Foster had managed to find his own case, but not open it.

Carlos stepped over to give him a hand. “What the fuck are you on?” he asked under his breath, as he unhinged the lid.

“Just BC bud, man. The good stuff.” Foster’s eyes had a sharp glitter that belied his words. The bass player was jittery, not mellow on weed.

Well, they’d got through their set without any disasters. Carlos would have to settle for that. He stood up, hefting both guitars, and let Foster head out the door behind the stage area without stopping him. Easier to do the work himself than babysit that guy.

The doorway behind them led through the house kitchen to the back door. There were people hanging about in the kitchen, but the roadies for the next band had cleared a path to get the gear through and outside. Carlos took a breath of damp cooler air out on the deck, and looked around for Mia’s van. It was parked on the gravel behind the house. Completely parked in, of course. You could either park in close, and expect that, or hump your cabs and shit for blocks. The speaker cabinets were heavy, and bulky enough he wouldn’t do that without an army of roadies. At least no one had blocked the back doors of their van shut this time.

It took about ten minutes to get their minimal gear out of the house. The next band was setting up as they were tearing down, stepping around each other in the confined space. The Cave ran a tight show, so it was at least organized chaos. The next act was a well-known local group who did have a bunch of guys willing to roadie. Carlos cast an envious glance at the Mesa/Boogie quad being wheeled past him. If they cranked those speakers up, the beat would be felt halfway to downtown.

The guy wheeling the quad was worth a second look too— the build of a runner, the straight, silky hair of a model, and the out-of-place goth look of a wannabe vampire. Carlos lifted a lip in mixed appreciation and scorn.

He got a long look back, one of the ones that jumped from his pecs to abs, to package, to ass, and then up to his eyes to linger a second too long. Vampire-boy had wide gray eyes behind the straight fall of his dark hair, and lush lips that curved just enough to signal “message-received”. Carlos wasn’t surprised when the guy kept on going without a word, though. This was not the time and place.

Mia said at his elbow, “I would so tap that.”

“Mm.” The back view was nice too. “If I was some kinda girl, I would too.” They gave each other dramatic snarling looks. Mia knew exactly what he was, and a metal show wasn’t the place for that either.

“This is the last of it.” Mia hefted a coiled instrument cable, tagged with her bright red stickers every three feet. Carlos followed her back to the van once more, even though his own hands were empty, and waited, leaning his shoulder against the side while she stowed the cable and checked that everything was in place and safely fastened down. There was a time, years ago, when he’d have been impatient with her finicky perfectionism. Then he heard a guy talking about how his Washburn went flying through the windshield when his car got hit, and finicky started to look really fucking good.

Mia slid back out of the van, locked up, and looked at him, her head cocked. “Coming inside for Serpentine?”

“Nah.” He always had a hard time listening to someone else’s music coming down off his own set. Tonight he really wasn’t in the mood. “Gonna walk, I think. I’ll come back when we can get the van on the road. Can you flog the merch for now?” Bands lived and died on their merchandise sales, and it was kind of his job to be in there, selling the crap, pushing the band. Especially since Mia’s ex-girlfriend had dropped the band along with the relationship, and they were shorthanded. But tonight he suddenly needed air.

Mia gave him a closer look, then said, “Yeah, my friend’s been watching it, but I’ll go see if I can push a few shirts. Don’t get mugged or anything. You may suck, but I’d still hate to have to find a new lead guitar.”

He gave her another sneer, but his heart wasn’t in it. Her words made his gut hurt, because the band was painfully close to having to find a new bass.
Pinche Foster pendejo, with his fucking drugs and booze.
He turned away from the house, heading down a rubble-strewn path toward the local swamp. Foster was the third guy he and Mia had brought into their band. He was the best technical player they’d had, and four years ago, after dumping two guys who couldn’t play the music Carlos wrote, he’d seemed like the answer to a prayer. But what had started out as Foster just liking to party a lot was turning into a disaster, and it was screwing over the band.

The sound from the house ramped up, with the opening power chords of Serpentine’s set. Carlos suddenly wanted to be further away from the crowd and the noise and the band that was doing better than his while pounding out boring unoriginal shit. He strode on, into the scrubby abandoned area that backed up to The Cave.

The path got rougher and the ground boggier, but the sound died down. He stepped over a mud puddle, kicked an empty pizza box out of the way, and cursed as the concrete block hidden under it scuffed the side of his Docs. They were new boots, too, bought just for shows. A hundred and fifty bucks of tattoo print, and now there was a gouge in the side. “
Chingada madre
,” he growled, then louder, “Fuck my life!”

“Just your life?” an amused voice behind him asked.

Carlos whirled, his heart thumping. A few too many times, someone making a stupid joke behind him in a deserted place had not been good at all. But this time it was Vampire-boy, smiling slightly, but not in an I’m-gonna-have-fun-beating-your-ass way. Carlos noted that even if he was planning to be a jerk, he was barely an inch taller and probably had twenty pounds less muscle. Wiry, skinny dude. Not a real threat.

Carlos took a slower breath, relaxed his shoulders, and unclenched his fists. “What’re you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in there cheering for your Snakes?”

“Nah.” The guy shrugged. “I roadie ’cause the lead guitar’s my brother. I’ve heard their shit about a billion times already.”

“So you figured you’d walk in the swamp?”

“So I followed you. I didn’t know you were a mud-loving lunatic.”

“I’m following a path.” Carlos waved at the muddy strip of ground between the boggy patches of weeds.

Vampire-boy lifted one foot to look at the muck on the bottom of his black sneaker. “Just because other idiots went marching through a swamp in this direction doesn’t mean you should too.”

“I wanted somewhere
private
to
think
.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t want somewhere private to fuck, because no one’s gonna kneel down in this crud.” The guy stepped up right beside Carlos, and scraped the bottom of his shoe off on the edge of the concrete block.

Carlos could smell the guy’s aftershave, even over the unpleasant funk of the swamp. Their arms were so close that he could imagine the heat of pale skin against his own. Vampire-boy glanced at him from under that silky hair and Carlos suddenly wanted to shove his fingers into it, grab hold and pull the guy in. It had been way,
way
too long since he’d got laid. But he still had an ounce of caution left. “I don’t see any girls here.”

“Why would you want a girl when you’ve got me?”

“Jesus!” Carlos reached out, but somehow his hand landed on the guy’s neck, not in his hair. The skin under his palm was shaved satin-smooth, unmarked, and cool, unlike Carlos’s own. “How the fuck are you not more careful? This isn’t exactly a rainbow folk show.”

“Since my ears are still ringing from your set, I’d say that’s pretty obvious.” The guy didn’t pull away.

Carlos slid his fingers a little higher, up to the guy’s hairline at the back and into the dark soft strands. He tugged lightly. “Well, some of the metal crowd aren’t exactly gay-friendly.” He still wasn’t quite certain this wasn’t some kind of setup, to out him. A fizz of anxiety made him breathe faster. Or maybe it wasn’t anxiety as much as anticipation, because the guy didn’t pull back from Carlos’s grip, but leaned into it, lips parting. Carlos muttered, “You could get bashed pretty bad, saying that to the wrong guy.”