Out for Blood

by J. L. O'Rourke

  “Okay.”

  Mum scuttled back to the lounge and by the time Grant had parked his car and come inside, she was posed in her armchair as if she had been there for hours. Good acting. As he came into the room she faked a surprised look.

  “Is that the time already or are you home early? Sit down and put your feet up, I’ll get you a beer and make us all some sandwiches so we can eat before we go to the show.”

  “Thanks, love,” Grant said, “but coffee instead of beer, please. I’ll save the beer until after the show. I’d hate to have it go to my head and make me forget my lines, or fall over my sword.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first actor to do that,” Mum said. “How was your day?”

  “Drone overload. All day. Nobody could talk about anything else. If one more person mentions that damned video I swear I will go postal!”

  Mum swivelled in her chair and grinned at me. I gave her a thumbs-up sign. One conversation avoided.

  Chapter 17

  We couldn’t avoid the video at Mona Vale. Everyone was talking about it. Except us. We kept our heads down and pretended we were too busy running cables and hanging speakers to get into any discussions. Aiden was especially quiet.

  I had fully expected him not to turn up at all, but he was in the driving seat when they pulled up. As I walked over to join them, I could see the Rev talking and Aiden hanging his head and when he got out of the car he was definitely not his usual ebullient self. I thought I had better warn them what to expect.

  “Everyone is talking about the video,” I said. “So far it’s an even split between animated fake and a drone, although at least three of them are voting for demon and wearing crucifixes around their necks.”

  “Oh shit,” Aiden said. He looked down and scuffed the ground with his boot, looking so dejected I actually felt sorry for him.

  “At least nobody knows the truth,” I said.

  “And we’re going to make sure we keep it that way, aren’t we, Aiden?” The Rev’s tone suggesting he had already laid down some ground rules for expected vampire behaviour.

  I could see Aiden wanted to reply, but he bit his words back. “Let’s just get this done,” he said. “And don’t worry, I’m just going to shut up and do my job.” He looked up and shook his finger at us. “Same goes for you lot – just don’t talk about it.”

  “I agree with that,” the Rev said as Aiden walked away. “Let’s all be too busy to talk. Don’t take part in any conversations about that damned video. The less it’s talked about, the sooner it will be forgotten. We will talk about it – together – after the show and in private. There are things you should know.”

  “Things?” Severn asked, his head cocked to one side, one eyebrow raised quizzically over his glasses. “I suppose you could call Meredith and Olivia things. They mightn’t like it though.”

  The Reverend looked at Severn in genuine surprise. Severn just tucked his head to the other side and curled his lips in a knowing smirk.

  “Later!” the Rev glared at him. “We will discuss this later.”

  “Yes, boss, anything you say, boss.” Severn flicked a facetious salute, grabbed my hand and followed Aiden, leaving the Rev standing, glaring at our departing backs.

  “Not a happy camp?” I asked.

  “Happy? No. Volatile, simmering, volcanic are more the words I would use. But, I will give him this, Aiden is genuinely shocked he got caught on camera. You have to remember, he’s older than photography. It was invented about fifty years before I was born but Aiden’s a lot older than me. In his head, photographs are still bits of paper developed in fluid – he might have the latest cell phone in his pocket but he hasn’t really got his head around the speed technology has developed in the last ten years or so. It had honestly never occurred to him that someone would see him flying and capture that on their phone. The last few hours have been a big learning curve for him.”

  “Yeah, he looked pretty ashamed. I’ve never seen him so meek and quiet.”

  “Me neither. I missed the blow-out. If they did have a shouting match, it was over by the time I caught up with them. By then, they had simmered down to that angry-Rev, sulking-Aiden situation you just witnessed. But I know Aiden too well. There’s no way he didn’t give as good as he got at one stage in the proceedings.”

  “What’s the story with Meredith and Olivia? Are they part of what’s going on? The Rev didn’t seem to happy that you knew about them being here.”

  “Yeah, that was a bit of a shock to him, wasn’t it?” Severn gave me a wicked little grin. “I guess tonight’s discussion could get interesting.”

  “I hate it when you use that word.”

  “What word?”

  “Interesting. Around you, interesting always equals trouble.”

  “Interesting you should say that.” Another evil grin. “Watch this space. Now let’s get this show on the road, shall we? You’re on radio mics.”

  For the next hour we kept our heads down, ran cables, set up speakers and avoided any attempts to draw us into conversations about the video. The Rev worked alongside Severn and me, setting up the sound desk, but Aiden made himself scarce by scuttling up the lighting tower to help Cameron and Danny. He didn’t come back to us until the stage manager had called “beginners” and we were seated behind the desk, headphones on and chocolate resting on the script in front of us. I was doing a final paranoid piffel check of the radio mics when Aiden appeared beside me. For a moment I ignored him to ask Severn a question.

  “Why do you call that piffling? That’s the sort of thing I should know before I start my course. I don’t want to look like an idiot.”

  Severn laughed at me. “Piffel. P.F.L. Pre-fade listen. You are hearing the sound on that channel before you fade it up to go through the speakers. When that button is pushed, you can hear it through your headphones but no-one else can. Watch it, your chocolate is disappearing.”

  I looked sideways just in time to see Aiden’s hand retreating with half my chocolate bar clutched tightly in its fingers. I slapped my hand out to grab the rest of my bar.

  “No!” I held the remains protectively against my chest. “Mine!”

  Aiden just laughed and jumped off the scaffolding tower, holding the stolen chocolate aloft as he ran away.

  “He’s back to normal,” I said,

  “Damn,” Severn answered, then spoke into his headset microphone. “Sound standing by.”

  He nodded at me. I adjusted my headset and poised my hand over the faders for the musicians, listening for the stage manager’s call and watching the band’s conductor who had lifted his baton. I was finally getting the hang of the timing. The conductor lifted his baton, the musicians straightened in their seats, their instruments ready, and I slid the faders up the sound desk. The conductor brought his baton down, the music rushed through the speakers and the show began. I remembered to breathe.

  “Nice.” Severn gave me a thumbs-up, his ears tuned to his own headset for the next cue which would be his to bring up the radio microphone for the first actor to hit the stage. I faded the musicians down as the overture ended and popped some of my remaining chocolate in my mouth.

  It wasn’t until we stopped for interval and she came running up to the tower that I remembered Anita was coming to the show with Caleb and his parents.

  “Show me what you do,” she said, clambering up the side of the tower to stand beside my chair. She looked at the two side-by-side sound desks – the bigger one under Severn’s control and the smaller one that I controlled the musicians from. “Wow! So many slidey-thingies. How do you know which ones to push up and down?”

  “Who says we do?” Severn smiled over at her. “Maybe we just push them at random.”

  “I’m not that gullible,” Anita replied. “It was a serious question.”

  “They’re all labelled,” I explained. “See? These sticky labels say what mic is which and the notes on my script,” I pointed to a page, “ tell me which one is needed when. T
he stage manager is telling me in advance, too.”

  “Where does he sit?”

  “Beside the stage.”

  “So how can hear him?”

  “It’s a her, not a him, and through these,” I patted my headset. “We can talk to each other. In fact, all the technical crew can talk to each other. Cameron up there on the top of the lighting tower can hear us too.”

  To prove the point, Cameron waved at us.

  “So you can’t gossip about anyone or say anything rude?” Anita said, waving back.

  “The lighting guys tell rude jokes all the time,” I said, “and we all swear at actors who do stupid things.”

  “And musicians. We swear a lot at musicians,” Severn added. “But, yeah, we do have to remember that others can hear us, and remember that they’re trying to work and not miss their cues. We also have to remember that we are not backstage – we’re sitting out the front of the stage, at the back of the audience, so we can’t interrupt their enjoyment of the show. People don’t pay to hear the sound guy’s voice ruining their show with dumb jokes.”

  “I am impressed. All this,” Anita swept her arm over the desk. “It’s all so cool. I always thought what you did backstage must be really boring – all in black and in the dark – but it looks really fun. And interesting.”

  “We’re not allowed to say ‘interesting’ around Riley,” Severn said as he stood up and stretched his muscles.

  “Why not?” Anita asked.

  “Because Riley says interesting always equals trouble, so she’s banned the word.”

  “I have not,” I said. “It only equals trouble when you say it. Anita can use the word, she’s safe. You can’t. Well, you can but I will treat it with deep suspicion. Anyway, can we get off this tower. I need to move. Where’s Caleb? Let’s go say hello.”

  “Sorry,” Severn reached out to stop me climbing down the scaffolding. “You can’t run away. We’ll be on standby again in a few minutes and we need to make sure the radio mic changes have happened.”

  I was just about to apologise for forgetting my job and dash off to the dressing room tent when Aiden jogged up.

  “Done,” he said, in answer to Severn’s comment that, of course, he had heard. “But I’ve just come to tell you to keep an ear on mic three. It was flashing red so I changed the batteries but they were fresh before the show, so either they were faulty or there’s a problem with the pack itself. Let me know if it cuts out and I’ll switch it for mic twelve.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Severn said, leaning over to his script and flicking through a few pages. “She’s only on for a short scene, then she’s off until nearer the end so check it when she comes off and let me know how it’s holding out. Good spotting.”

  “Is it worth chocolate?” Aiden gave me his best hopeful puppy look. I was torn between rewarding him for doing what was, actually, my job and wanting all the rest of my stash for myself so I felt mean but relieved when Severn pulled yet another block from one of the copious pockets of his coat.

  “My shout,” he said, handing the block to Aiden. “It’s all yours.”

  For the first time since we arrived at Mona Vale, I saw Aiden light up, a wide smile spreading across his face, flashing white teeth with just a hint of sharp fang.

  “Thanks, mate,” he said in a bad attempt at a Kiwi accent. “I needed that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Severn smiled back. “Now head off backstage because our comms just flashed, so we need to be back at our stations. Sorry, Anita, you need to climb down – the show’s about to start again.”

  Chapter 18

  The night was falling as the show ended to rapturous applause and the actors raced out front to greet their families and friends. Severn said he would coil the cables for me but I hadn’t been on the ball at interval so I couldn’t let them do my job again. I was unplugging a speaker and flicking the cable into a neat coil when Anita found me.

  “I am a converted fan of live theatre,” she gushed. “That was so good. Your step-dad can act, can’t he? He was funny. And you and Severn. You look like professionals, all in your black clothes and so organised. I didn’t realise what you did was so important.”

  “Severn looks like a professional because he is one,” I said. “And I will be soon.”

  “Who was the other guy – the one who came for chocolate?”

  “That’s Aiden. He’s a professional too. Same crew as Severn. They travel together and at the end of the year, that will be me too.”

  “How long does it take to clear this up?” Anita asked. “Can you sneak off and come with us?”

  “No, sorry, I’ll be ages. It takes a while to pack all this up.”

  “If you’ve got another show tomorrow, why can’t you just leave it set up?”

  “Because it’s outside. If we were in a theatre, it would have been set up a week before the show and stay in place until the show ended but here, outside, it’s too risky. It would cost the company too much to have security on site every night, so we spend an hour or so before and after each show setting it up and breaking it down again.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yep, it can suck, it’s hard work, but it’s good training for me. I’ve learnt heaps about what can, and will, go wrong, and how to fix it on the fly while the show is happening. I couldn’t have done this without Severn, though. If he and the others hadn’t flown to my rescue I would have folded in a screaming heap before rehearsals finished.”

  “He’s pretty confident, isn’t he?”

  “He is now, yes. He wasn’t when I first met him. There were a couple of others in the crew who bullied him, but he finally stood up to them and put them in their place.” Yes he did – Seth’s place was totally dead and Severn put him there. “Plus, on this show, they came to help me specifically with the sound, and that’s Severn’s area of expertise - the other two are lighting and set – so, although the Rev is technically the boss of the crew, Severn’s in control when we’re behind that desk.”

  “But they’re not much older than we are – how come they know so much?”

  I hate those questions. “They started young,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing. I needed to change the subject, or get rid of her quickly. “Sorry I can’t come with you, but I really need to get these cables packed up.” I started coiling the cable again to give her a subtle hint.

  “Okay, have fun.” Anita took the hint. “I’ll text you later.”

  With Anita gone, I worked faster, coiling the rest of the cables and delivering them to the container to be locked away. On my way I passed Aiden, nonchalantly carrying a giant speaker in each hand. I had tried to carry one on the first day and couldn’t lift it, and he was carrying two as if they were bags of bread. Vampires!

  “Hey, Riley,” he called out. “Can you go back to the women’s dressing room and get the box of radio mics please? I haven’t had time to collect them.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’ll just dump these first.”

  Which is why I saw the shadow.

  I handed the cables to Severn at the container then sprinted around the back of the makeshift stage to reach the small bridge that would take me across the creek to the dressing room tents. I had my head down as I crossed the slippery bridge and as I looked up again, I saw a movement behind a large grove of trees. I stopped, stared straight at the spot and put my hands on my hips.

  “Bring it on, bitch,” I said, almost under my breath. I was tempted to yell it, but if it was Meredith or Olivia, I didn’t have to shout. They would’ve heard me. I stood and watched, daring it to show itself, but nothing moved. After a significant pause, I gave the trees a two-fingered salute and continued on my way to collect the microphones, which I found neatly packed into their carry box. Mum would have done that. I grabbed the box and ran, not looking back at the grove of trees in case the shadow was still there.

  I was puffing by the time I reached the container. I handed the box of microphones to Severn who tucked them in with the
rest of our gear, then I leant against the container to get my breath back. I risked a glance back towards the stage, trying to make my movements look casual and unplanned, but it was getting too dark to see the stage, let alone the trees behind it. I had a quick debate with myself – do I tell Severn, or not? I decided on not. If I told him, he would tell the others and they would all rush off to look and, to be honest, I was tired and getting cold and I just wanted to leave. So I said nothing. Instead, I helped pack the last of the items away, watched Danny close the padlocks to secure the container door, and walked to the car. If Meredith was hiding out there in the dark, watching us, I hope she was entertained. No, actually, I hoped she was bored witless and freezing cold. I never did like her very much.

  Severn caught up with me when I was halfway across the car park.

  “Your mother has a very weird sense of humour. She gave me this.” He pulled the toy bat out of his pocket to show me.

  “Oh yes, weird is the word. I apologise for my mother. She spotted it in a toy shop and couldn’t resist. Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t apologise. I think it’s funny.” He held the bat up to his face and peered at its oversized eyes. “He’s kinda cute.”

  “You’re as weird as she is. Mum liked the way his wings unfurl then fold up again. She thought you would get the joke.”

  “I will find a suitable gift in return,” Severn said, although the stress he put on the word ‘suitable’ made me think a game of one-upmanship may have just begun. The bat might only be round one of an escalating contest. Severn tucked the bat back into his coat pocket and gave me a smile that looked far too pleasant. Mum was in trouble.

  We waited at the car for Aiden and the Rev to arrive with the keys, chatting with Cameron who tried and failed to tempt us into joining him on a junk food run. The talk of food made me hungry, though, so I convinced Aiden to take us through a drive-through when we got to our side of town. Back at the motel I tucked myself into a corner of the couch and stuffed myself with a burger and chips while I waited for the Reverend’s important talk to begin. Severn tossed his coat, with bat in pocket, over the arm of the couch and joined me.