Page 40 of Of Flame and Fate
We reach the steps leading into the sunken dome. I barely keep from falling when the crowd lunges forward.
Bodies big and small shove me through the narrow opening, and down the first step. No one is checking tickets, the ushers appearing as taken by the music and the presence as the rest of the throng.
I’m squeezed between two large men, cursing when I realize I lost Shayna and Emme. My first thought is to move to the side and into a row, but everyone keeps bustling forward, piling into the front section and anxious to get close to the stage.
The guitarist playing stands near the corner, his fingers flying over the strings. He feels the music, and so do the rows of people raising and lowering their arms, bowing before him.
My guess is he’s the one with mojo, the music he’s playing a hypnotic melody, snagging those who hear him and refusing to let them go.
I play with the idea of zapping him. Not enough to kill him, just enough to stun him until we get a fix on what’s going on. The crowd is oblivious and might not notice. But he’s too far away and I can’t be certain how those around me will react. It could snap them out of their fog, or harm them in some way and turn them violent.
The latter keeps me from acting, that, and because I can’t be sure he’s the man behind the magic.
Again, I stagger forward, the fans too eager to care who they trample.
The next person who pushes against me is more aggressive. This time, I don’t keep my feet. I fall into the woman in front of me, rushing to stand when the lights go out and the music abruptly cuts off.
Darkness stretches across the arena, and good God, do I feel alone. I can’t see anything. All I feel is the mound of bodies closing in, keeping me immobile and making it hard to breathe.
Panic sets in the longer I’m blinded. I tug the cuff of my glove, hoping Sparky will light up and give me a fighting chance. Except no one is fighting, or yelling, or moving.
No. It’s time for Johnny Fate to start the show.
The stage explodes with pyrotechnics, reenergizing the crowd as the larger than life Johnny Fate takes center stage. “Santa Barbara,” he yells. “Do you crave Champagne and Guts?”
Everyone shrieks at the top of their lungs, banging their heads as the bass guitarists and lead drummer rev up the music, morphing it from a staccato of loud obnoxious noise to a mash-up of classic metal mania and garage band awesomeness.
Johnny Fate’s image takes up every super-screen. Some images show just his face, others his full frame. I’ve never seen him, and didn’t bother to look up anything about him. Maybe I should have. Maybe, it would have prepared me for what I see.
His bleached blond hair is cut short all around except on top where a mop of long strands drape to one side, resting against his sweaty cheeks. To my right, I see all of him, his entire upper body a working canvas of tattoos. The only visible part unmarked with ink is his face, the exception being the three blacked-in tears cascading from his right eye.
His arms stretch out, parting the sides of his fringed leather vest and exposing a tattoo of a green serpent devouring a bleeding heart. Across his flat stomach is a mural of his bandmates, their black and white faces inked into a large and eerie image of a full moon.
The tats are powerful, dark, and violent. They don’t quite fit someone who is on the small side, and whose bandmates tower over him like overinflated gym rats.
Black leather pants hug what looks like muscle developed just enough to add definition to Johnny’s slender legs. He’s cute, and I can see why some young, impressionable women would fall for him, but not older women, or even men—especially in this crowd. If the majority were on parole or on probation, it wouldn’t shock me. Their response to him does.
I zero in on his arm sleeve tats. One looks straight out of Tolkien’s Mordor, desolate darkness without hope. His opposite arm is all jungle, hidden predators lurking in the shadows and behind wide jumbling leaves. I zero in on what might be a rhino, a wolf or two, and a couple of boars.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I find myself saying. The music is good, bordering on great. Except it’s not the rage-filled kind I expect this group of people to fall for. There’s a heart rendering melody to it, I feel each tug and pull, like I would my own sadness.
“That’s him?” Shayna says.
I didn’t see her muscle her way through, she’s just there, Emme clutched close to her side. Good, I’m glad she has her. Regardless of her power, Emme’s small stature makes her vulnerable in this mad horde.
“T, he is sonotwhat I expected,” Shayna yells over the music.
Like me, Shayna probably can’t get past how young he seems. He can’t be older than me, but he’s trying to be, embracing a persona that appears forced.
Strip away the overload of ink running along his neck, arms, and torso, and he resembles a softer, slighter version of Justin Bieber, rather than the heavy metal rocker the audience can’t get enough of.
The opening melody seems to take forever. Like the Meatloaf songs of years ago, each note is designed to tell a story long before the lyrics unfold. But when Johnny’s hands wrap around the mic and he leans in close, and his first words spill across the arena, the energy erupts, detonating in an atom bomb of power.
Unlike the lead singers who took the stage before him, Johnny doesn’t screech. Hesings, beautifully, his emotion and agony stopping everyone in place.
“Your love was meant to heal me.
Your words were meant to cure.