Come Undone
Rock Hard: Book 1
Madelynne Ellis
Table of Contents
‘Leave it – leave it. Ginny, don’t.’
Daniella struggled to keep the excitement out of her voice as Ginny seized the lanyard and tugged. It slipped readily enough from beneath the handles of the half-open handbag and slithered into her palm, bringing the prized backstage pass with it.
‘Bingo!’ Ginny took a moment to sway her hips in a triumphant wiggle, before the sound of the toilet flushing caused her eyes to widen. She and Dani lurched towards the exit and somehow managed to squeeze through together. After a ten-metre sprint down a corridor they turned a corner and collapsed against the wall with stupid grins stretched across their faces.
‘Mmmwha.’ Ginny smacked a kiss upon the stolen pass. ‘We’re in, Black Halo all-access.’ She gave Dani a thumbs-up, only to roll her eyes a second later at the sight of Dani’s frown.
‘We shouldn’t have done that,’ Dani wheezed, still bent over from the exertion. ‘Are you insane? She’ll probably get into awful trouble for losing it.’ Not that her concern was entirely for the woman in the loos. What she really meant to say was that
they
’d get into trouble. Arrested, probably, and definitely escorted off site. Her mum would disown her or, worse, exact sanctions, and she’d only recently managed to fly the nest and move into student digs.
‘Gin, why did you do that?’ Dani pushed away from the wall, and straightened her skirt, which had somehow got twisted during their insane flight. Even set to rights, she wasn’t entirely comfortable in the ensemble, which was one of Ginny’s and far too short and clingy. She hadn’t shown off this much leg since her pre-teen days. ‘You’re going to get us into so much shit.’
Ginny stuck her head around the corner to check the way was clear. ‘Don’t be soft. It’ll teach her to take better care of her property. She’s lucky it’s only this little baby –’ Ginny wafted the laminated card before Dani’s nose ‘– that she’s lost and not her purse and credit cards too. Admit it – it’s pretty dumb to leave your bag unattended in a public washroom.’
‘Suppose.’ Depressingly, that was true, no matter how much Dani might wish otherwise. Not that it excused their action. Now the thrill of the moment had passed, she rather wished she’d put more effort into stopping the theft, instead of behaving like a teenage mug. She was older and smarter than that, and having a crush the size of a mountain on the Black Halo front man didn’t excuse juvenile behaviour.
‘The main act’s starting,’ she said, thinking they could hand the pass in to one of the security guys working the doors before they went to their seats. They could say they found it. They might even get a legitimate reward for their honesty. ‘Let’s go in now.’
‘What’s the rush?’ Ginny stalled, dragging her heels as they walked back towards the main foyer. She stopped before a poster advertising the tour to fluff her jet-black hair.
Despite Ginny’s black-only wardrobe, Daniella suspected that her friend didn’t actually like Black Halo’s music as much as she did the band members, or at least some idea of them, or just the notion of snogging them. She’d already vetoed watching the two support acts in favour of hitting the bar and then scouting around for a route backstage. Dani hadn’t been too bothered by that. Godwatch’s lyrics strayed into uncomfortable territory for her, but she hadn’t forked out for a ticket to miss seeing her favourite band. ‘I came here to see them, please let’s just do that,’ she pleaded.
‘Don’t you want to see where this baby can get us?’ Ginny kissed the laminate again. ‘Come on, admit it, an all-access pass to the group is way more exciting than standing in a crowd and yelling, “Black is my heart” until you go hoarse.’
Actually, Dani had been looking forward to shouting along with the several-thousand-strong crowd. The resulting sore throat would be totally worth it. Plus, they had seats right at the front so she’d get to see vocalist Xane Geist close up. And oh, she had to squeeze herself just thinking about that, and how he might look at her even for a second.
Xane was Dani’s secret piece of rebellion, her Lucifer wrapped up in an unbearably erotic package. He was all tight muscle and temptation. His snaky hips alone were an enticement to sin. Then there was his voice, unique even within the gothic metal scene, and his disturbing but oh, so very pretty face.
‘Dani Fosbrook, don’t pretend you’re not up for this. We both know how wet Xane gets your knickers. You’re literally dying for him to get into them.’
OK, her not so secret fantasy. Yes, she’d struggle to say no to him if he asked her to kneel and worship him, but that didn’t make the notion of sneaking into his dressing room and throwing herself at him any less abhorrent. That was the sort of stunt that, if anyone were to find out, would earn her a one-way ticket back to St Agatha’s home for the benevolently disturbed. And she was so, so done with that messed-up place.
‘Think on it, you can have him right after he’s walked off stage.’
Nnn-gh! Dani bit down so hard her teeth hurt. She ought never to have come with Ginny, who had the morals of an alley cat and the sex drive of a Duracell bunny. Her friend’s plan for the night appeared to be not only to get laid but to do every member of Black Halo before they’d even hit the showers.
Yet until now Ginny had seemed her best option. The only other people Dani knew who were there were Ellen, Tony and Reg, and the thought of Reg accidentally on purpose nudging against her every few seconds so he could cop a feel of her butt gave her hives.
‘Come on, Saint. Don’t sweat it. Let me do the talking.’
Dani bristled at the use of her recently acquired nickname. Other people seemed to find it amusing that she’d been brought up in a religious commune. They hadn’t a blinking clue! There was absolutely nothing amusing about St Agatha’s.
Ginny linked their arms and swung them around. ‘You, me and Xane, that’s all you have to think about. Now, let’s go and grab a piece of his ass.’
And, like that, Dani allowed herself to be tugged away from the auditorium.
There was a second, a single sprawling moment between two beats during which Xane genuinely believed he could make it through the show. He’d worked for this; no one could say he hadn’t. The crowd before him screamed his name, sometimes so loudly he could hear it over the top of the thundering guitars and the crackle of his own voice. But he could only see them in snapshots between the curls of dry ice and the near-blinding array of overhead lights, and that wasn’t enough to keep him grounded. The first time his voice cracked it was pretty easy to cover, the fifth not so much.
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.’
