Madelynne Ellis - Come Undone

The lyrics, words he’d written, might sound like an incomprehensible growl to the critics, but they had meaning for him. Meanings that now bruised and bit and tore into his chest, making him feel as though his heart would rupture. Whereas in the past those words had been an emotional, sometimes sentimental, sometimes cathartic release, they were now transformed into a poisonous rehashing of the last eighteen months.

He had to stop this charade somehow. If only to make them realise he wasn’t here to be used and abused.

When, midway through ‘Perverted Wraiths’, their biggest hit to date, he skipped the first three lines of the chorus, the concerned looks that bassist Paul ‘Rock Giant’ Reed had been throwing him became truly alarmed. For a while the rest of the group were carrying him, but that couldn’t last long. The fans were watching, and they were used to a thumping, souped-up horror show that Xane led. If there were monsters in the band, then he was the biggest, and made a point of dressing the part: black leather, piercings, the sort of glassy-eyed stare that could melt steel (it certainly wet knickers) and other accoutrements of the shock-horror genre. Then there was the stuff he could do with his voice – raising hairs on the backs of necks one second, only to change into a chorus of angels the next. What he actually was, when you stripped away all the theatre, didn’t matter. Folks didn’t pay to see the real Xane Geist. They paid for a spectacle.

Unfortunately, tonight the cracks in his disguise were showing.

Given the amount of crap he endured on a daily basis, and the routine lack of respect, it was a miracle he hadn’t reached this point sooner. One human being could only take so much, and being a rock god didn’t change that.

His nose stung, and his vocal cords refused to form the lyrics. Hell, he couldn’t even scream, something he was particularly known for.

Elspeth ought to have held her tongue, but when did she ever?

Why had he believed she’d be good for him?

Maybe, if he’d been more honest with himself and how he felt, it would never have come to this?

There was no way of knowing now.

The sound of the audience’s frustrated baying was a minor thing at first, easily masked by the crash of the drums, but soon not even Ash hacking away on lead guitar could entirely drown them out.

When he mouthed, ‘We’re done’ to Steve, the drummer, he hadn’t counted on the big screen picking it up. The fact that it did brought things to an extremely swift halt.

* * *

Xane barely got off the stage before Paul and Ash were both in his face asking him what the fuck was going on. Xane was no weed but Rock Giant towered over him by a good four inches. He could probably bench-press Xane and a Ford Fiesta combined. ‘What the fuck, man? Get back out there.’

‘Is something up with your voice?’ Ash, their lead guitarist, muscled his way between them. He wasn’t quite Rock Giant sized, but he did know how to throw a mean punch. ‘You’ve been off-key all night.’

‘He’s been giving one too many blow jobs,’ one of the roadies joked.

Xane threw the guy a scathing glance.

‘Keep your dickhead remarks to yourself, Liam. Unless you’d like me to review your working hours?’ Ash snarled. He returned his attention to Xane. ‘Do you need a break to gargle some tea, or something? We can say there’re technical issues.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my throat.’ Xane wasn’t even going to pretend that was the case. His problems were was far more deep-rooted than that. He could no longer work with these people. He didn’t want to be on the same continent as two of them. ‘Gig’s off.’ It wasn’t even a case of artistic differences. Those they could have worked out. This they’d never make right.

‘What the fuck!’ Jan ‘Spook’ Mortensen, who rarely muttered more than five sentences a week, launched into a string of Swedish expletives. Curiously, the dozen or so Swedish words that Xane knew.

‘You know he has a point, Xane.’ Ash tried to lead him off into a corner for a quiet chat, but the rest of the group followed. ‘There’s a stadium full of mad bastards out there. Do you really want to tell them the show’s over? They’re not going to slope off quietly to their homes and hotel rooms.’

He understood that. They’d come for a piece of him, and they’d insist on getting it. He, however, was damn sure they weren’t getting any more of him tonight, regardless of how many people insisted on staring at him as though he’d grown an extra head.

‘Xane, it’ll cost us millions.’

Hardly. This was one gig, and there was only one other date left on the tour. It might piss off a few people, but they’d get over it. Bands sometimes had to cancel shows at short notice. It happened. It rarely crippled anyone.

The guys parted to let Elspeth float to the fore. She looked as insubstantial as a wraith, but she had a banshee’s backbone and a scold’s tongue. Her lips were slicked red, and curved into a perfect pout around two sets of vampire fangs.

Xane’s hackles rose the moment her jasmine perfume wafted to his nostrils. He refused to look at her, focusing instead on the top of her head. She and Spook were the only blondes in the band, but Spook’s white-blond mane didn’t come out of a bottle. Elspeth was showing a quarter-inch of mousy brown roots.

When she curled her hand over his arm, he mentally pulled himself inwards. Xane stared at her black polished nails and fought the urge to physically recoil too.

‘Look, honey, I know you’re upset, but for crap’s sake think about this. You’re not just going to shaft us over this gig if you walk out. The press will hammer us into an early grave. We’ll all lose out. All of us.’

The problem was that ‘all’ didn’t seem to include him in any capacity other than as a cash cow. He knew for a fact that she didn’t give a damn about him as a person. She’d proved that resoundingly, five minutes before they’d walked out on stage.

‘Black Halo’s dead.’

He hadn’t planned to say it, to make it so final, but as soon as the words were spoken he knew it was the right decision. They were over in their current format anyway, because he couldn’t continue to work with either her or Steve. This was his band. Without him, Black Halo were nothing. He was their lyricist, their main composer, the motivating force behind it all. Their whole image had been created by him. Without his drive, nothing would ever happen. Maybe now they’d start to appreciate that.

Despite his bitterness, the shock reflected in their eyes gave him a moment’s pause, but only until he realised that the relief the announcement brought him had given his foul mood a strange little upswing. Oh, yeah, screeched the bit inside him that hurt. Chew on that, lady.

When he jerked away from Elspeth’s grasp, to his relief she didn’t attempt to touch him again.

‘No,’ Rock Giant groaned. ‘We are not done over a fucking lovers’ tiff.’ He stared at them as if he expected them to lay aside their quarrel and to kiss and make up.

It wasn’t happening.

Rock Giant held his head in his hands, which crushed several of the deranged spikes he’d moulded his hair into. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this, Xane. The band’s more important than one individual relationship within it. Seriously, you’re throwing in the towel because she’s not warming your bed any more?’

‘Paul’s right, Xane. You’re acting way out of proportion.’ Graham Callahan, the band’s manager, had arrived, his twenty-stone frame squeezed into a corporate suit.

He was not overreacting. This wasn’t only about him and Elspeth. It was about him and Steve, and the rest of the band too, and all their shitty attitudes, which were apparently about to see another airing.