Rock Star (Dream Weaver #2) (2 page)

Chapter 2 Missus Hyde

              The dreams began the first night I saw the inky-eyed stranger in the crowd. Dreams that I wasn’t me, that I was living someone else’s life, in some other time, so real and surreal at the same time. I ran through fields of towering cornstalks, pursued by hounds and men with guns. I ran until my lungs fairly burst from exhaustion and my legs cramped and folded underneath me. Curled in on myself in a gasping, sobbing heap, the face of a beautiful flaxen-haired girl that I loved with every molecule of my being tortured my heart. Her hair lay fanned across the mud by a rumbling creek, her face pale; once-rosy lips now blue; and her sky-blue eyes gazed to the heavens, empty of life. Her skin was cold to my touch when I grazed my fingers over her cheek and discovered, with the first frigid surge of understanding, that she was dead.

             
My hands wrapped around her throat. Her eyes grew large and frightened. She tried to scream for her brother. But I choked the words from her. Her eyes no longer saw me. Her chest no longer swelled with life; her throat no longer trembled with laughter but cocked oddly to one side and was ringed with the print of large fingers.

             
All the air in the world was sucked away. The deepest part of me iced over. My body was emptied. Nothing left but a dark, cold cavernous waste. If her brother, my friend, sees what I just saw…I knew he would blame me. How could he not, when even my own eyes betrayed my innocence? How could he not hate me ever more, when even I saw my own hands choking the life from her body? Run. I needed to flee, but I couldn’t stop touching her, caressing her face, raking my fingers through her corn-silk hair. Surely, my kindred brother would listen to reason, hear my side, that I hadn’t done this thing. But I feared his hatred. The life of his beloved, beautiful sister, ravaged by my hand. Yes, he would hate me. He would hunt me down. And mete out blood for blood; life for life.

             
On the feet of a startled deer, I ran, scrabbling and bounding in fear. His rage and sorrow echoed behind me. And then, the bays of hounds pursued me. In a numbing daze, I wandered for days on end; not knowing where I was going, but just going. I slept whenever, wherever my legs collapsed beneath me; but sleep brought nightmares, visions of her lovely face, stilled forever. Fog devoured time. My only coherent thoughts were of the girl; memories of her smile, her laughter, her gentle touch. But, that one last memory tainted all others. Always the vision of her cold, still body eclipsed my heart.

             
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Drey’s fist slammed on the connecting door between our rooms. “Em! Get your ass outta bed! We got a plane to catch!”

             
I rumbled a lazy growl and spat a colorful metaphor back at Drey, then rolled to the side of the bed, entwined aching fingers in my frazzled hair. My brain throbbed.
What a bizarre dream.
I’d never had a dream like that before; like I was this guy from the 1700’s or something.  His passion for the girl still thrummed in my chest, the bitterness of fear still singed my throat with bile. With shambling steps, I dragged my dream-sore body to the bathroom to prepare for our flight to Seattle.  My muscles protested as though all my labors from the dream manifested in my wakeful world. I raked polished black fingernails through my hair and tossed on a satin newsboy cap with tiny white skulls all over it. After scrubbing my teeth, I tossed everything in my carry-on and headed for the guy’s room.

             
“Effing bangover, dude,” I whined to the room in general. All of them had experienced the repercussions of over-exuberant head banging during a concert. My complaint was met by knowing nods and shrugs of ‘whatever.’ Jack bolstered my mood by comparing me to something nasty in the toilet, so I snarled and flipped him off. I didn’t even have the energy for a smartass retort. Not today. Not after the nightmare from last night.

Chapter 3 Stand Up (Let me see your hands up)

              Mid-day found us winging away toward the Emerald City for a quick gig before the short hop over the mountains to home. Seattle was tolerable, if it wasn’t raining, which it was most of the time. I was grateful to have a driver, as the city always left me feeling upside down, with all its ‘slight rights’, this-highway-North and that-highway-South, and this street North not to be confused with the same street Northwest. I nodded off as we flew toward the Cascade Mountains.

              The wind blew the world sideways. Overhead, trees swayed precariously, branches heaved and popped. Leaves skittered like small animals across the path. My horse, a young stallion procured from an injured farmer as payment for services rendered, snorted and tossed his head; his body vibrated beneath me. His steps were tentative, his muscles rigid. Something small and grey scuttled across the path. The tight-wound steed stopped, danced nervously from foot to foot, and blew jets of breath from his nostrils into the cold night air like an Arthurian dragon. 

             
“Just a leaf,” I told him, and patted his neck in reassurance.

             
I found shelter for the night in an overhang of rock, and loosely tethered the stallion to a tree. Sleep came hard. I was agitated and restless. Every flash of lightning lit the woods daytime bright. Agitation crawled over me like a nest of ants, and my muscles spasmed with restlessness.

             
I must have finally dozed off because I was suddenly awakened by the blinding light of morning and the snap of a nearby branch. Probably just the horse, I told myself. But the telltale sound of the hammer of a gun being cocked, destroyed all hope. Then, a familiar face stepped from behind the trees and he aimed a shotgun at my chest. I raised my hands in surrender.

             
“William. I can explain. Please. I didn’t kill her,” I pleaded with the man with a weary scowl and dark circles under his eyes.

              My ears popped and my nose stopped up, as we descended toward SeaTac. The pain extracted me from the dream, but all of the dread remained. I thrashed in my seat.

             
“Whoa! Whoa! Get a grip chica!” Kylen grabbed my arms to calm me.

             
“He’s gonna kill me!” I rasped.

             
“Who? The guy from the show? No sweat, Sweets. He’s long gone.”

             
“No…” Realization of where and who I was flooded my mind. “Oh, it was just a dream.”

             
Kylen released me. “Yeah. Some helladream.”

             
“Yeah. Some helladream,” I echoed.

              That night’s gig went well, not nearly as great as last night at the 8150, but it would be impossible to top that gig. On stage, the euphoric vibrations of the music saturated my body and absorb into my soul. Love, lust, passion. All the same. Hot, soothing, immersion into a roiling tide. The stage was another planet, another totally different world. Its atmosphere hot and heavy and electrically charged. I closed my eyes; tasted it in the sulfuric air; smelled it in the human sweat and alcohol. The lights, like tanning bulbs, singed my skin, changed me, drew from within the truth of who I am. The crowd, my friends. The band, my family. The stage, my home.

             
Fans passed up double shots of Fireball to me. My racing heart amplified the numb in my head. Sweat seeped from my pores. My body, drenched. The music, loud. The music drifted through me, body and soul, my life’s blood. Before the crowd, I basked in the hot and passionate waves that rolled across the arena. I hummed the tune of the song, while the crowd sang the words back to me. I started each phrase and they finished it for me.

              We were all starved after the show, and decided on Asian food at a little restaurant around the corner from our hotel. The restaurant had a name that sounded like a swear word in English and we took turns taking pictures in front of the sign, flipping off the camera. The food was great, though, and it didn’t take long for inactivity, a full stomach and a couple of beers to have my head nodding. I yawned and stretched.

             
“I’m gonna head back and hit the sack,” I announced. Jack and Kylen offered to walk me back, but I flashed them a grin and the balisong I kept tucked in my waistband, resting comfortingly on my hip bone. I withdrew the knife and flipped it open in three quick moves, then shut it again in three quicker. “That’s not a knife…” I said in my best, and really horrible, Aussie accent, and tucked the knife back in my pants.

             
My bandmates rolled their eyes at reference to an old 80’s movie. “I pity the fool,” Drey pitched out his own movie reference and chuckled at me. The rest of the guys laughed. They knew I could hold my own—if necessary. I pulled my best ‘bad ass rocker chick’ sneer and headed out the door.

             
The city smelled of rain, of course, and late night restaurant leftovers. I tugged my leather closer around me to keep out the moist chill that always seemed to hang in the air here, and tapped a cigarette out of my pack. Just a couple quick hits before I hit the sack. The guys didn’t like it when I smoked, so I tried not to do it around them.

             
Seattle didn’t really intimidate me, not even at night, but I kept my head up and my eyes open, ever vigilant to those around me. I
would
take the knife out and play with it as an intimidation factor to any would-be attackers, but carrying a butterfly knife was kind of illegal in Washington state, so I kept it tucked away. I turned the corner a block from the hotel. As I neared the alley at the center of the block, a figure stepped out of the shadows but not fully into the light. He just stood there, looking my direction, his hands stuffed in his pockets. I stopped dead in my tracks. I flicked the smoke and my hand moved to my waistband, but I didn’t extract the knife. Yet. I stood staring at the man in front of me. He shifted subtly, his face now fully illuminated; his eyes glowed an incredible obsidian blue. It reminded me of the color I’d seen glinting off the wing of a raven in the summer sun. My mouth dropped open and my hand fell to my side.

             
There before me was the rock-god from last night’s show. His raven-dark eyes spotlighted in the light of the street lamp. My heart and stomach leapt, and I staggered forward a step, before I thought to restrain myself. Hot or not, he’d followed me. I didn’t know what kind of man this was, if he was to be trusted. Everything in me was caught in the riptide of his gaze, but I couldn’t let him pull under. I opened my mouth to ask if he really was following me, but he stepped back into the shadows and retreated into the darkness of the alley. As if by compulsion, I stumbled forward, but the stranger disappeared. I scanned the darkness of the alley for his silhouette, but found nothing except trash cans and shadows. He just—vanished.

             
I shook the cloud of confusion out of my head, but scattered shreds of memories still drifted in and out of clarity. No amount of concentration could shake the pieces into place. “What the f…?” My chest tightened with anxiety, and fear twisted a cold hand around my gut. I turned and jogged the rest of the way to the hotel. Relief swept through me as I stepped into the safety of the walls and lights of hotel lobby. I breathed in the scent of Seattle-moist air mixed with antiquated dust.

             
Kylen was not amused when I told him later about the fan from Vail showing up in Seattle. The rest of the guys laughed it off, saying it was about time I had a little fun, about time I got laid.

             
“And what about Jesse?” I demanded of Jack who was being the biggest smartass of them all.

             
“What about Jesse? You oughta know the road is like Vegas, ‘what happens on the road, stays on the road’.” Jack intoned in a solemn voice, his hand over his heart as though making a solemn vow. I snorted and turned away.

             
“Don’t sweat it, for now,” Kylen suggested. “If he shows up again, we’ll know for sure it wasn’t a coincidence.”

             
I conceded, though I was reasonably sure there was no coincidence in his appearance here. “One thing’s for sure, I’m not telling Jess about this. He’ll freak.”

             
Ky nodded.

             
Life on the road is one of hardest parts of being a musician. Significant others struggled with the loneliness, and often felt like second best. Jesse DeLaRosa was no exception. Jesse loved me. And I guess I loved him. But our ‘on again, off again’ romance was tumultuous at best. He was kind, gentle, protective—a great kisser, with those sexy Puerto Rican lips. But his personal insecurities caused him to become very possessive, almost smothering at times. Which is what caused a lot of our ‘off again’ times.

             
No, it was best not to tell Jesse just yet.