Living Proof (Tyler G Book 2) (30 page)

"Damn.
Damn
."
She locked eyes with him, her blood red orbs not having any whites to them, or
anything except the one color. "Accept them all? We should use it as the
title track. Hell, we should name the album after it. Can I try singing
it?"

"Sure. We can try everyone
on it, if you want?" He didn't care about who sang things, really. Whoever
did it best worked for him. It would probably be the woman, but after she did
it a few times, making little changes, she shook her head.

"I'll do backup for you on
it. I do have something for us to try, once the boys get back. I wrote it, but
I think it's okay." Given that she'd written three hit songs, that was
probably just the truth. None of them had been number one on the charts, but
they were all top one hundred.

He didn't know how close town
was, but it seemed to be in the other direction from the one that he'd run
earlier, when he met up with Mike. The pizza was there inside half an hour and
was still warm and made to order, which meant the place had to be pretty close.

It was decent, for takeout. No
better than that, but he wasn't
that
picky.

As he ate, the slice in his hand
dripping a little bit of sauce, the cheese still gooey, the scent hitting his
nose on waves of warm air, Tyler counted up the days in his head.

"Hey, um, is it all right if
we don't get the studio on Wednesday or Thursday? I have to work." It
seemed an innocent enough thing to say, to him, but Scotty and Steve both
looked at him like he was insane. Possibly on drugs, even if that wouldn't have
worked on him. They didn't know that yet, of course. It was the Bat Vamp that
spoke, his voice holding a slightly thicker accent than normal. It was English
though, for all his name could have been taken to mean he was from elsewhere.

"I'm pretty sure that the
idea of being a carefree musician is so that you won't have to keep your nine
to five, mate. That and getting groupies. What do you do anyway?"

Rebekah just nodded a bit
abstractly, and looked into the mug she held, which, if he had the right idea
had warm water in it. It was kind of an affectation then, since Vampires didn't
need water any more than he did. He still drank it however, though liked his
cold. The raw fact was that, even if he didn't need that kind of thing, his
body sort of magically handled it a lot better than theirs did, as a group. He
still had to go to the bathroom, but it was a pretty normal seeming thing that
way.

As far as he knew, Vampires
couldn't do that kind of thing. It just didn't work for them.

"I'm a clerk in a bookstore.
Wednesday and Thursday are order nights, and the boss asked if I could stay on
for that, since it's kind of labor intensive."

The Vampire lady, her red eyes
shining a bit seemed fine with that.

"We can schedule around it.
Thanks for letting us know ahead of time. Studio time is expensive. I need to
see to my businesses too, anyway. Those are good nights for that. We can call
that our weekend? It isn't like we aren't just playing around the rest of the
time. The life of a musician isn't that hard, and drugs do nothing for me.
Literally."

Tyler didn't know about that one
for himself for certain, but was willing to guess it was kind of the same
thing. He didn't need them anyway. That had simply never been a thing in his
life. No drinking either. It had always seemed a bit off to him, in health
class, back in school, how they had to warn everyone away from those things so
strongly. It had been enough that he'd been told the things were bad for him.
Lucy had done it early on, when he was about twelve.

Now
he got that she was just getting
out of the work that him being high would require of her that way. Telling him
how to feel high would be harder than him just not seeing the need for that
kind of thing.

Steve, rather cutely, nibbled a
slice of pizza that had three kinds of meat on it. That smelled... Really good.
Better than what he was having. The green peppers were nice, but for a few
seconds he felt a nearly overwhelming urge to grab one of the other pieces and
go to town.

Resisting that was harder than it
should have been.

It was the pork on it he knew.
The smoked and cured ham. It was, essentially, Human flesh, from a biological
perspective. How he knew that, well, he had no clue, but it was the truth. It
was why he had to avoid it. No matter what.

Distracting himself by looking at
the new boss, he nodded abstractly.

"I don't need them either.
Drugs... Not my thing. We should do some kind of anti-drug thing, if we ever
make it big enough. 'Hey kids, we're rich and famous and don't need drugs to
escape from our lousy lives, so you shouldn't either!' Oh, wait. That one might
not work too well." Grinning he ate more, trying to ignore the hunger that
never went away.

Normally he managed it pretty
well, really.

There was a long pause, then a
group laugh at what he'd said. Scotty, moving faster than Calley ever did,
flapped his hands like he was trying to fly. It didn't work in his current
shape, but the movements made a certain amount of sense now. He was, in a very
real fashion, using his wings. It was micro-movements, but there
because
of his other shape.

How he'd never gotten that about
his own girlfriend he didn't know.

The Bat fellow gave him a long
look and shook his head.

"That wouldn't make us look
cool. We have to keep that in mind, at least until we hit so big that being
straight edged losers won't harm us anymore. No one wants to idolize the stick
in the mud. You should know that one, bad boy."

Steve changed the conversation
then, his voice higher pitched than it had been, but not fake. It made him
sound younger however. Like a kid, instead of a man that just happened to be
not all that old yet. It made a big difference to how Ty thought of him, even
if they were pretty much the same age.

"There's a lot of things
that go into this that I never considered. I mean, should I get a job too? What
if this fails and I can't make it playing? I worked all my life, practically,
to try and get good enough that wouldn't be a problem, but there's luck
involved, too. What do I have to fall back on if I can't make it happen? I
don't control what other people like, or what becomes popular." It was a
real enough, and deep enough thing.

After all, nice house to practice
in or not, they were just starting out and most groups didn't make it.

Rather than tell him that he
could do it, because they were all pretty good, Ty nodded along for a bit.

"That's a real enough point.
Even if it works, it will probably only be for a limited time. That makes
keeping my day job a good plan. I have two of them anyway."

That got him going for a bit
about the bookstore, of all things, and then the Coalition of Nations, which
everyone agreed was far more impressive sounding. Rebekah had her bottled blood
business, so she was set that way.

Even Scotty had invested some of
his money in a chain of clothing stores, for when the inevitable changes came.

"That's the good and bad of
living for a very long time. Everything will eventually fail. You never get to
truly rest for long. The money you make today will be gone tomorrow, or at
least sooner or later. Even if you don't spend it, there will eventually be
wars, and social upheaval. The government goes from capitalist to a monarchy,
to socialist to something we've never heard of and nothing you had before means
much. All we can do is work and keep in front of it as best we can. Save your
funds, of course. A nice car now won't help much, but land is a good
investment. Buy cheap and build with your own hands. Be modest that way and
you'll end up with a lot more in the end."

That sounded like really good
advice to him, since Tyler understood that he was going to be around for a
while that way. Nothing had killed him yet anyway. One day that might change,
since nothing lasted forever, but until then he had to start planning for it
like it might. Saving what he could, investing it in the right places and being
ready for the fact that, if he existed long enough, it would all go away. Not
just once, but over and again.

It could have been dismal, but
when he thought of it, the idea of working to make it just seemed fair.
Everyone else had to as well, one way or the other. He could accept that,
actually.

Steve seemed really troubled by
the idea, but the others were older. Actually, a lot so, he was willing to bet.

"Say, I don't know a lot
about any of you. I... What's the deal with you? How old, and all that?
Favorite color?"

The bone white, many fanged, and
brilliantly red eyed woman smiled at him. It could have looked mean, but
didn't.

"So you want all my secrets?
I'm two-hundred or close enough that I stopped counting. My favorite color is
pink. I'm a Manthori Vampire, obviously. I have a boyfriend, Jonas. He works
with Richard Swerlin, as his office man. I also own the Human blood
concern." She said it like they were all meeting for the first time, but
it was important.

Pink. It might be useful to know
that some day.

Scotty looked around and then
shook his head.

"Now me, I'm a youthful one
hundred and sixty, myself. I enjoy blues and greens. I hold a majority share in
the Brand Village chain of stores now. I'm not currently seeing anyone in
particular, being a Bat Shifter. That's rare for my kind, until we marry. Also
Classic Vamp."

Steve made a face, but brought up
a great point.

"I'm in a band? Nineteen,
and single, more or less. So I call dibs on the groupies, when they start
showing up. Brown is my favorite color, because I'm manly that way. Tough and
butch. So, what do we call ourselves anyway?
The Band
has been used
before, so we might want to be a little more original than that."

No one spoke for a while,
thinking of things then. Nothing came to him, in particular, so he started to
play one of his songs. One that they'd all practice together the day before.
After the first bit they all started in on it too. There was no reason not to.

When they stopped Steve smiled.

"That's it! What we should
call ourselves."

The others stopped and nodded,
Rebekah doing the speaking.

"Living Proof? That... Isn't
bad."

The red headed boy shook his
head.

"No... The Steve York
Experience. It just came to me. What do you think?" The guy seemed
endearingly serious about it, but Scotty tilted his head, then promptly ignored
him.

"So,
Living Proof
? I
can work with that. There's a certain amount of irony in that, don't you think?
This is coming together really well. We should go over everything."

That got a long drawn out sigh by
Steve. It nearly sputtered at the end.

"So,
no
to the
awesomeness of the Steve York Experience? Darn. I was kind of hoping we could
go with that. I mean if I have to save all my money, and can't buy expensive
cars to impress women, I need
something
, don't I? My looks aren't going
to be enough."

Their Vampire leader looked at
him and shook her head slowly. At first it seemed to Ty that she was going to
be upset with the name thing, or even her new friend putting himself down, but
her words were totally different.

"Nope. We can put makeup on
you and turn you from a six to a nine. Pretty easily, too. You have good bones.
That and being in the band will be enough. If you need more than
that
, I
suggest you work on your game. Really though, don't go crazy that way. We don't
need you coming down with fifty different diseases. You are Human, so we need
to protect you that way. I... Ty, can you get anything like that? I can't.
Scotty either."

"I was told that I couldn't.
No extra copies of myself running around either. Kids are out for me."

That got Steve looked at hard,
like he was planning to impregnate women as soon as they all left the room or
looked away for too long. It wasn't really fair, but it
was
funny.

"What? Don't look at me, I
believe in safe sex. I'll be careful. Just because I'd like to get me some,
that doesn't mean I'll go crazy with it. Especially without a cool car. I
should get something anyway, even if it isn't that nice. That probably means a
job, until the cash comes in from this,
if
it does. I don't suppose you
know of anything?" He looked at each of them, one by one.

Tyler let his face become
considering and then nodded.

"I might. Something that
pays pretty well, too. Working in a Candles and More. That's the Mage Embassy
at Westfield. Other places too, I think. Like a chain? It's in Washington, but
I bet I can get Zack to take you back and forth a few times a week for that.
I'll ask?"

Steve might not have gotten
everything in the world that was going on, like the fact that he was the slave
of The Mistress of Souls, but oddly enough he got that part.

"Right! Zack. Oh, hey, you
work at
his
bookstore? I should have thought of that. He has all those girls
working there. Hot ones."