Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale (31 page)

I felt the molars rattle inside my mojo, and knew all wasn’t lost.

Not yet.

Chapter Thirty-Six

My First Concert

Deb

There he was. My guy.

Which is not to say he was my guy or anything—more like a guy, but more than just a guy—a friend. My friend. My friendly troll. Whatever, you get it—Harlow!

The feelings that overtook me, seeing him hostage on the stage like that— they were much worse than the panic I felt in losing Gennifer, worse than the disappointment over Mom throwing me out, and more powerful than the kick in the gut when I’d seen in the photos what April was doing to me.

I felt myself clinch, and something was cutting my bottom lip. I put my hand to my mouth, and when I pulled my fingers away, they were bloody. When I put my hand back, I felt my teeth, so sharp and pointy, like those horrifying fae I’d seen ferociously tearing one another apart on the floor of the casino, or flashing scary smiles at the girls on the roller derby track.

They were cutting Harlow’s bonds, which was good, because if they hadn’t, I was likely to jump the balcony and tear them off, myself. Why did I feel so tied to him, as if I were watching my own body be manhandled on stage? So bizarre. It had to have been some kind of magic—but magic was something I admittedly didn’t understand much about.

He saw me, and for a moment that feeling of warm sunlight I’d first experienced at the Rustic Fog filled me again. Sunlight, followed by …
was it rain?
I thought I could hear the low rumble of distant thunder, but we were indoors—no, underground, right? Was it possible this cave was large enough to host an underground thunderstorm?

I didn’t have time to think about it. Dave had let go of me for a few minutes, and now it was Jag’s turn to hook his arm around my neck, jerking me around like a pet.

“April, are you sure she’s still on board?” he asked. He was speaking to his daughter, but looking at me, hard in the eye.

If she answered, I didn’t hear. I couldn’t hear.

Harlow and a ragged band of what looked like dirty dishcloths with arms & legs were pushed to the side of the stage, and The Phalaxis bounded out, all flash and bang. Pyrotechnics shot off as the drummer climbed onto the drum set, a giant structure of bone. The mad glee in the eyes of all the band told me they were either high on the attention, or they’d been given faeth before the show. Probably both.

They started into their one and only hit, “Chainsaw Love.” The crowd thrummed and moved like a giant organism, with many arms and legs, and a million eyes, its hungry mouths bleating for more. It was nothing like the John Michael Montgomery show Mom had let Gennifer and me go to last summer at the Laurents County Fair.

They did another song, but it wasn’t one I knew, and the crowd didn’t approve. Seems there’s a time and a place for original music, but a Battle of the Bands in front of hungry trolls wasn’t that place. Some of the bigger, dumber-looking trolls pushed their way to the front of the crowd, and reached onto the stage. The singer backed away in the nick of time, but a scrappy fairy, thin, with broken wings had jumped the stage, and was pushing the bassist into Harlow and his friends.

I tried not to tense, but there was no hiding it. My wings quivered with anger, and I could feel blood pouring down my chin as my fangs pierced my face. More of the crowd had taken the stage, and Harlow and his bandmates were cornered, two Rhinomen behind them, barring the exit. The Phalaxis’s drummer was picked up and thrown off the drum set, and the crowd was chanting now. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Harlow grabbed The Phalaxis’s singer, and I saw him speaking directly into his ear. Was he trying to help him?

“Silence.” Jag’s voice echoed, reverberating inside my head, and seemingly inside the heads of others, simultaneously. He wasn’t shouting—there was no need. Only the sound of the unicorn squealing broke the silence in The Eerie at that moment. Someone had tied the poor thing to a stalagmite near the stage, and he was terrified. The word “Virgin” was scrawled on his hide in white paint, like some cryptic graffiti.

“You know what we expect, gentlemen. And lady.” Jag’s voice was patient. “Harlow, you may explain the price of failure to our musical guests.”

But if Harlow had a mind to work something peaceful out with The Phalaxis, he never got a chance to explain. The drummer’s blood-curdling scream as he launched himself, bone-in-hand, from the drum platform onto one of Harlow’s bandmates—a small but tough-looking girl—ignited the crowd once again.

“Fight! Blood! Fight! Blood! Kill! Kill! Kill!” They repeated the chant, and the magic it wove was visible, a blood-red cloud hovering over the stage, circling like a tornado of hatred. Harlow was holding The Phalaxis’s drummer with one hand, while the girl—who I saw now was actually a very angry troll—gnashed broken tusks in his general direction.

His arms spread wide apart, Harlow threw back his head and over the roar of the crowd, into the face of the blood-red clouds, he did the impossible.

He sang.

Chapter 36.5

I Wanna Rock

Harlow

“Biggie don’t fail me now,” I whispered, and then I threw my head back, closed my eyes, and believed.

The last thing I saw was The Phalaxis’s guitarist, his fingers dripping blood, swinging a battle-axe in my direction. Had it been an axe all along, only glamoured to look like a real guitar?

The glamours were melting in all directions, and the force of that ugly hatecloud knocked the unicorn out cold. Poor friggin’ beast. I told myself that if I got out of there, Deb and I would rescue that animal and set it free somewhere far away from this hellhole.

But I didn’t have time to concentrate on that. I thought of my favorite singing spot in front of the Bloomington library, remembered the sound of the acoustics, as my voice and the voices of my buddies reverberated, punctuated by the street sounds of so many cars or buses.

I launched into a classic doo-wop tune, “My Girl.” Behind me, I felt the stirring of Max and Harry on their instruments. I let go of Holly. In a moment, the drums kicked in, and I knew Harry and Max were grooving with me. Holly took a few bars to come around, but within moments, we were all the sunshine that cave had ever seen, and the cloud was at bay.

Beyond the stage, though, the crowd was a lot slower to turn. The Phalaxis bandmates were dumbfounded, completely out of their minds on faeth and from the looks on their faces, tripping hard. Although McJagger’s angry mob of concert goers were screaming for blood, the clouds were losing their potency.

We reached the chorus for the second time, and I shut my eyes again to throw my head back and lose myself in a run. For a minute, I thought I’d won over the crowd, at last. I heard their roaring thunder, and delighted sighing, and assumed it was Biggie’s thunderbird magic, turning the cloud of angry mist into happy rain.

I opened my eyes to see lightning flashing in three points of the cave, and as I tried to shake off the retina burn, I squinted into the balcony to check on my girl.

That was when I knew my perception of the crowd was off.

Whatever I thought they were doing, it wasn’t cheering for me and my classic crooning. I may have saved the lives of the band and The Phalaxis momentarily, but they were tearing each other apart beyond the bubble of sunshine I was pumping, just on the other side of the mosh pit. The front rows were exclaiming now as a mix of blood and warm rain crept up to their ankles. In the cheap seats, the crowd were tearing each other apart, and the heads were literally rolling. It was so dark, though, it was partially my memories of shows gone by that informed my perception. I tried not to let my stress creep into the song, as I pushed through the last verse and searched my brain for another song—one that would pack even more calming energy than this one.

Lightning cracked again, and then I saw her—my girl.

She launched herself off the balcony, and dove awkwardly, straight toward the bloodbath below.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Fly Like an Eagle

Deb

Jag poked me in the ribs with his bony elbow, sharp and hurtful despite the thick leather jacket he always wore. “If you think this is madness, you should have seen the night I set Ozzy against KISS.” He laughed at his own memory, another of his stupid guffaws. The laughter degraded into coughing, and he bent at the waist with the force of it. I thought he would choke. I hoped he would.

He straightened, suddenly, eyeing me fiercely, as if he could read my thoughts. Then, he gave a wicked smirk and lit a cigarette. Using it to gesture at the stage, “Just wait,” he said. “Here comes the grand finale.”

The Phalaxis guys were dropping like flies, only the lead singer still on his feet, now grasping the fallen guitarist’s enchanted battle-axe with both hands. Harlow was still radiating his magic in all directions and his bandmates were playing along, but a red cloud of blood and dirty rain was twisting its way through the crowd, taking fae body parts with it as it went. The crowd in The Eerie seemed to have taken on a life of its own, undulating, pulsing, shrieking with a thousand mouths, both crying in horror and welcome as the hatecloud bore down on them.

And then all the lights flickered, and went out. Even Harlow stopped singing, abruptly, and the roar of the crowd intensified like a sonic boom. My eyes adjusted to the pitch black darkness of the cave almost instantly, but around me I could see April and Dave reaching out blindly in the darkness, laughing.

Jag was watching me now, intently.

His voice boomed through the cavern like the MetaTron, himself. (I saw a movie once, where the MetaTron was the voice of God. It’s either that, or a Transformer.)

“Take us out, Harlow!”

As the crowd screamed in terror and rage, I heard Harlow start into another tune, the band behind him building in power and intensity.

A single spotlight cracked open the darkness, and there on the stage, at the rear of the melee like some macabre sacrifice, was Gennifer—tied to a stake. At her feet was a collection of incendiary devices, bones, tanks of gasoline, and God only knows what else. I was still too new in the ways of troll magic to begin to guess, but absolutely nothing at the feet of my sleepy-eyed, terrified sister looked like it was going to do her any good.

“Well?” Jag said, elbowing me again in the ribs. “What do you think?”

I wasted no time shooting him nasty looks or giving that twisted old fuck a piece of my mind. Before I could even process a thought, I had one foot on the balcony, and I could feel Dave reaching for me as I launched myself into space.

Wings, don’t fail me now.

But they did. As I fell like a rock toward a sea of bloody fangs and angry trolls, I pressed my eyes shut and thought of the pure sunlight of Harlow’s voice. Fly, fly, FLY, damn it!

Chapter 37.5

Here Comes the Rain Again

Harlow