No Holding Back (7 page)

This was Heretic.

It was nearing midnight when Wade tore through the lyrics of their last song and by then, a gigantic mosh pit was already pushing exhausted security to the edge. As Wade made motions to dismiss himself and Heretic from the stage, he thought he heard a familiar chant rising from the audience. He cupped his hand to his ear and what he heard made him smile.

“Live Dead! Live Dead! Live Dead! Live Dead!”

Wade’s head fell back and he laughed drunkenly to himself before he brought the microphone to his face again.

“So,
it’s like
that
, is it?”

More chanting. More raving. More lunacy.

“You think we go around playing our most bad ass song for just
anyone
?”

Wade smiled when the chant grew louder and louder until soon,
thousands of voices molded into one single unifying chant.

“LIVE DEAD! LIVE DEAD! LIVE DEAD! LIVE DEAD!”

Wade threw his infamous evil smirk in response to their cries and fanned his arms as wide as he could open them. Then, he swung around to face Chris. From under her hoodie, she locked eyes with him and already, she could feel his ruthless stare. Despite the sweat that ran down her back soaking her through her t-shirt, his looks alone gave her the chills and it didn’t take long to know what was happening.

Wade was gauging her.

He had a bond with Heretic - an invisible chain that all band members shared with one another, but that took time. But for some reason, Wade could feel connection forming with Chris and it caught him off guard. He knew it took years for new members to connect with their new homes, but Wade stood there dumfounded. She knew exactly what she was thinking and Wade could read her reaction just as easily.

He wanted her to play Live Dead just as bad as she did.

Wade remembered her stunning performance and the way she played their most difficult song at the audition. He knew she ached for it, but a small part of him told him it was too soon. 

His gut said otherwise.

Ultimately, he knew the decision belonged to Chris and to Chris alone.

Wade saw her
confident expression as clear as day and it was
his
turn to feel her burning stare. She nodded and it was settled.

“You want
it?” Wade purred. “You got it!”

Wade adjusted his guitar once more around his sore neck and heard it crack as he
moved it in a circular motion. He looked to Chris one more time and watched as she spun her sticks around so fast in her fingers they were a blur when suddenly, she threw them both high into the air.

Wade froze
watching the delicate pieces of wood go up and do somersaults in the air. A fleeting moment of panic gripped him when he thought of what would happen if she didn’t catch them – subjecting Heretic to ridicule so soon after Hess. But she remained eerily calm as they fell back down to earth and into her hands.

While the crowd screamed unabated, Wade
’s stomach did back flips. Yet again, he had to remind himself that it was a girl who rocked the audience just then. It was a girl who rocked
him.

He toyed with the
idea of revealing her, but his gut said it was too soon.

Wade
shook his head of it and laughed outright at her ability to prime the crowd the same way he did. Soon, the sharp ‘click, click, click, click’ of the wooden sticks came together so hard, Wade thought they would break. But when she broke into Live Dead, the pristine clash of drums and cymbals rang sharply in his ears, giving him a high like no other. Chris rocked them at her audition on a rickety drum set, but sitting behind Hess’ Tama full titanium line, or "Black Beauty" as he affectionately called it, she was a goddess. 

As the crowd lost themselves to Heretic
’s song, Wade became lost himself. He tried to focus on his own task, to strum his guitar along with her flawless beat but it wasn’t as if he could hear himself play anymore. The crowd was too wild and amped up and Wade wasn’t far off. He looked back at her several times, too many times in fact, but he didn’t care. He was enthralled with her performance. Under the guise of Chris Rebman, Wade had to keep reminding himself that this was a girl. A
girl
for fuck’s sake!

Wade
was drenched with sweat despite the economy-sized fans that blew on stage, but it didn’t matter. He knew the secret behind his goose bump. And it happened to coincide with each of Chris’ hammering throws.

When
Chris brought her sticks down onto the cymbals one last time, Wade threw a fist into the air just as sparks and pyrotechnics launched in every direction. The lights cut out simultaneously and Wade breathed easy knowing the techies nailed his queue. The crowd roared absolute as Heretic’s performance came to a close.

In complete darkness
, Wade shrugged off his Gibson and placed it back on the stand not far from him. He didn’t need to see having done this so many times before. Hundreds even. But not Chris.

He moved expertly past half a dozen techies, equipment, speakers
, and over precarious wires just to get to her. He didn’t want to panic, but keeping her a secret among thousands of people gave him an uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t much like. He chastised himself when he inadvertently forgot to mention to Chris what to do after the concert. There wasn’t time to do anything it seemed. Ever since they hit the road, Wade hardly had the time to wipe his ass. But this one escaped him completely.

He begged under his breath that Heretic
’s savior drummer stayed put – that she would be there waiting for him in the darkness.

B
ut it wouldn’t have mattered if he screamed it. With no microphone in hand, he could hardly hear himself think let alone his own inaudible prayers. But as he groped through the empty air like a blind man without a cane he began to panic. If he couldn’t find her in five seconds he’d turn into an animal, and tear the place upside down.

He felt his knee bump into the drum set and he knew he had to be close.
But if he held his breath a moment longer, his lungs were going to explode. His hand fanned the darkness until they connected with a mess of fingers.

He smiled and
allowed himself to breathe again, feeling his heart pound as ruthlessly as Chris did her drums.

Without pausing to consider his next move
, he jerked her into his embrace. He didn’t think about how they looked in the darkness, nor did he care how Chris felt being man-handled. But their first concert together was a hit - their perfect beginning came full circle into a stunning show stopper that Wade didn’t recall having before with Hess. With no warning whatsoever, he became teary-eyed at the prospect at finding such a jewel – a diamond in the rough. And he would never let her go.

Chris certainly wasn
’t expecting the bear hug Wade subjected her to. She felt awkward and didn’t know what to do with her hands as he practically squeezed the air from her lungs.

Finally,
grabbed her head with both of his hands and pressed his mouth where he thought her ear was. Her face burned as if an iron had been pressed against her skin when she pictured the two of them alone in the darkness, cradled by nothing more than the endless cheers that echoed Heretic’s name.

“You good!?” he screamed. She nodded. “Follow me and stay close!”

He jerked her along behind him almost too roughly, but he was determined to protect her.

She tripped once over wires she didn
’t see and almost landed face first into Wade’s moist t-shirt. She tightened her grip around her drums sticks – afraid they would fall and be lost forever among the forest of endless wires. Chris was beginning to think that the darkness would never end until she happened to look down at her feet. And there, glow-in-the-dark tape lit the trail of their escape.

As they walked closer to better lighting
in the backstage area, she could begin to make out the contours of Wade’s chin and five o-clock shadow. But as soon as he looked at her, he jerked her sleeve.

“K
eep your head down!” he barked.

Chris
complied and stayed behind a protective Wade as he held both her tiny hands with just one of his own. She winced a bit in pain; the wood of her sticks pinching and rubbing her already sensitive fingers.

His towering frame was an easy hiding spot
and she tried not to think about her hands in his. She had no choice but to look down and see the mess of their fingers intertwined. She was miserably hot and uncomfortable in all her clothing and the way it clung to her. But each time he gave her hand a firm squeeze, she felt a distinct chill go up her spine.

As Wade expertly maneuvered t
hem both into a better lit area, he met a relieved Joe and his emotionless brother – hell-bent on ignoring Chris entirely. As soon as Joe saw them, he appeared on edge and more anxious that Chris ever thought possible.

“Wade! Jesus-
fuck, man! What the hell took so long!? You were starting to freak me out!”

Wade kept his cool as the backstage became crowded with band members, security
, and techies. They were nearly done. They just had to make it back to the bus.

“Would you relax? Or did you forget
Chris
can’t see in the dark!?” Wade retorted.

Joe didn
’t seem to hear as he breathed in and out a few times and did some other ridiculous relaxing mantras. Wade rolled his eyes and looked around the entire backstage area trying to find the shortest distance to the bus, all while trying to prevent anyone from getting too close to Chris. He knew the last, not to mention the biggest, hurdle was making it from the building back to Heretic’s bus with their secret intact.

“Joe! Os! Let
’s go. We’re done here!”

Os huffed in irritation at their delay but
he and Joe followed Wade just as he set his sights on something that made his stomach drop.

“Fuck
me,” Wade groaned, giving Chris’ hands another squeeze.

“What
’s wrong?” Joe asked.

Aside from
a squalor of fans with backstage passes, Wade saw dozens of news crews from various local and national levels, and he even spotted a correspondent from Metal Madness. He knew security would be all around them, escorting them to the bus, but it was Chris he worried about most of all and so he wracked his brain trying to figure out what to do next.

As Wade struggled to come up with an idea, he spotted a white news van off into the distance
with green lettering that read “
Ready, Reliable, and Relevant: Your Triple Triad News Crew.”
Then, it hit him.

“Joe!” His friend
’s head snapped in his direction. “Stand here - next to Chris!” Joe did as he was told and then motioned to his lumbering brother. “Os, take the front.”

At once, Os settled on a foul expression.
“What the fuck for?!”

“Just
do
it!” he screamed. “You’re bigger than anyone else and you can clear us a path!”

Os mumbled some incoherent
dislike under his breath, but completed the triangle, taking his place in front of Chris. But Wade had his reasons for such a request. After all, what he said was true. Os was, by far, the biggest of them all and even put some security to shame. And as Heretic eased their way past the exit doors, he acted as a living barrier as the four of them eventually made their way through a jungle of arms and hands.

As they came within reach of
the voracious news reporters, Wade put his hand on the back of Chris’ neck and talked through the thick layers of her clothing into her eardrum.

“Whatever you do, don
’t look up! Just keep your head down!”

Chris
couldn’t help but comply. With the way he kept pushing her head down, he was already doing most of the work for her. If he had shoved her anymore, she’d kiss the concrete. She expected the treatment, but the adrenaline dwarfed any other emotion she may have felt. Besides, she didn’t want to be discovered either.

However,
she was brave enough to sneak a peek past Joe’s lanky frame and saw the reporters and their lackeys waiting by Heretic’s bus like hungry vultures.

“Wade! Wade! Wade! Tell us about your new drummer!”

“Where did you find him?”

“What does this mean for Heretic?”

Several heavy cameras and about a half dozen microphones shoved themselves into Wade’s personal space but he did his best to keep his composure and all but ignored them as Heretic continued pressing forward. He didn’t so much as look into a news camera, more concerned with ensuring that Chris made it safely onto the bus.

“We
’re very fortunate to have found him when we did. Heretic will now continue with the rest of the bands on tour thanks to Chris. Thank you.”

A cold, emotionless response, but as far as he was concerned, it was more th
an what they deserved. But to his relief, the doors to the bus came into view and cracked open, allowing Heretic on board.