Fangs And Fame

by Heather Jensen

  “I’ll be sure to tell her you said that,” I said with a laugh.

  “You do that,” he added, winking at the nearest fan.

  “Just ask him,” I heard a girl in the back say to her friend, who, in turn shook her head nervously and took a step backward. They both looked up at me, and I knew there was something they were hesitant to talk to me about.

  “What’s up?” I asked, enjoying the surprise on the girl’s face when her eyes met mine and she realized I was speaking to her. “It’s okay. Don’t be shy. Ask away.” But the girl was so shocked she couldn’t get two words out. She held up an open magazine and stepped forward, handing it to me. I glanced at the pages, and what I saw was a picture of Aurora and I at the hotel pool we’d swam in days ago. We’d had the pool to ourselves because the hotel had opened it late for us. Since we’d been alone, we hadn’t bothered to airbrush my tattoo on that night, which meant I was completely tattoo-free. I should have known better than to let myself believe we could enjoy one night of privacy at the pool. Someone had obviously gotten close enough to take a picture. The headline that ran above the image, and the adjacent article, made my blood boil.

  “Catalyst “Frontman Trey Decker Spotted Without His

  Signature Band Tattoo! Is He Calling It Quits?”

  “Did you buy this today?” I asked the girl as O’Shea peered over my shoulder to see the spread.

  She nodded and finally found her voice. “Is it true?”

  I looked her in the eye and saw genuine concern there. My heart broke a little under her gaze, and it took me a second to find my own voice. “No way.”

  “I told you he wouldn’t leave,” her friend added.

  But the girl didn’t look completely convinced, like what I was saying was just too good to be true. I opened my arms and waved her toward me. “Come here,” I told her. She took a few tentative steps forward and then fell into my arms. I felt her giant sigh of relief as I patted her back, hugging her. “Don’t worry.” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “All it takes these days to start a rumor is a little photoshopping,” O’Shea muttered. “It’s completely careless and irresponsible.”

  “It’s okay,” I said again as the girl stepped back and gazed up at me. “I promise,” I assured her. She nodded and smiled at me for the first time. I held the magazine up, my eyes scanning the pages again. “Can I take this?” I asked.

  She nodded again without hesitation. “It’s got your name on it.”

  “Thank you,” I said as I rolled the magazine up and slid it into my back pocket. “Thanks for coming out tonight, everyone,” I called out to the rest of the fans gathered around. “I’ll see you all from the stage.” I ignored the funny look Chase gave me as I turned around and headed for the building. When I opened the door to the dressing room Aurora was setting out tonight’s zombie make up by the mirror. She smiled as I closed the door behind me. Jonas and Neon were arguing about which one of them could best pull off having a mustache. “Neon could totally rock a stache,” I said, to Jonas’s great chagrin.

  “Thank you,” Neon said, a satisfied smile on his face.

  I pulled the magazine from my pocket and got comfortable on one of the couches. I silently read the entire tattoo scandal article so I could see what kind of damage control it required.

  “Maybe now that Trey is married he’s finding he has less and less in common with his bachelor band mates. Is the laser tattoo removal just the first sign that Trey has other priorities above the band?”

  They even went so far as to suggest that I had other projects in the works, even hinting that a solo record was underway. I’m not naive. I know that scandals sell magazines. Apparently the media-blitz that had come with the wedding wasn’t enough. There always has to be something else to print. It wasn’t enough that the guys and I were touring and giving our hearts to our fans every night on stage.

  I dropped the magazine on the couch and headed for the door again, needing to clear my head. “I’ll be on the stage,” I said as I left, not waiting for a response before I was out the door. Crosstalk had just finished up their soundcheck, and the crew already had all of our gear in place. A few guys were just double-checking some of the equipment. “How long until we start soundcheck?” I asked the nearest roadie.

  He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got about half an hour.”

  I nodded and selected a guitar from the rack and sat down at the front of the stage, my legs dangling off the edge as I played the first thing that came to mind. Aurora found me ten minutes later. She sat down next to me, holding the magazine I’d left in the dressing room. She’d obviously found the article, but she didn’t say anything; just took in the view from the center of the stage and patiently waited as I finished strumming my song.

  “You okay?” she asked after a moment of comfortable silence.

  I sighed. What I didn’t say was some of the things from the magazine article had really struck a chord. My marriage wasn’t creating a rift in the band, but the more and more time I spent living as a vampire, the more I worried that not being human might eventually cause me to lose interest in some of the things we used to have in common. Not the music. I would never lose my passion for the band and our music, but I couldn’t even enjoy a good burger these days. How was I supposed to believe I wouldn’t start to get bored with other mundane things I would normally do with my brothers? I was probably just being paranoid, but I didn’t want to discuss any of it just now. Instead, I put on a smile and nodded at Aurora to answer her question.

  “Yeah.”

  She knew better than to believe it, but sensed my need to shelve it for now. She glanced around at the set up on the stage before turning to look at me again. “Ditch the guitar. I’ve got a surprise waiting for you on the bus.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her as she got to her feet and offered me a hand up. I did as she asked. With my hand on the small of her back we walked through the backstage maze until we reached the exit. The bus was parked twenty feet from the doors, and all of the fans that had been hanging around earlier had wandered away. Aurora stopped as we reached the bus’s steps, gesturing for me to go inside.

  “Go on. She’s waiting for you.”

  “She? You mean someone’s in there?”

  “Her name is Kelly. Don’t forget to sign something while you’re at it. I told her you felt bad you didn’t get to her earlier.” She bit her bottom lip and looked up at me innocently. “What? I know it’s been four days already. Besides, it wasn’t exactly hard to convince her to come with me.”

  “Maybe I’ll just do a shot from the stash,” I said hesitantly.

  “You obviously need blood, and I don’t think the stash is going to cut it. If you won’t drink from me more often, you’re going to have to get it fresh somewhere.”

  She had a good point, though I hated admitting it. I knew drinking Aurora’s blood twice a week might be taxing on her, and I wasn’t willing to do that to her. The question was, could I really stand to feed from our fans?

  “Let’s pretend this girl knew exactly what you were going to do,” Aurora said. “I’m not convinced she would even mind. Would she?” Sensing my obvious internal debate, Aurora opened the bus door and said, “Here he is,” to the girl inside. Then she gestured for me to go in again, and I knew I didn’t have much of a choice. I climbed the steps of the bus and Aurora closed the door behind me.

  Chapter 5

  Trey

  A GIRL ABOUT MY age was sitting on one of the leather sofas, but she got to her feet when I approached.

  “Hey,” I said, offering my hand to her. “I’m Trey. Nice to meet you.”

  “Kelly,” she said, shaking it. It was clear from the start she wasn’t going to stutter and squeal just because I had shown up. For some reason I found that mildly reassuring. She had long brown hair and looked like your typical fresh-faced college student. She was probably here with a bunch of friends from her dorm.

  “Sorry I took off
earlier,” I said, sitting down and gesturing for her to sit next to me. “I didn’t mean to rush off like that.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, smiling. “You probably have a lot to do before a show.”

  I noticed a binder sitting on the couch and said, “Aurora mentioned you have something you wanted me to sign?”

  “Yeah.” She picked up the binder and opened it to show me the pages inside. It was a scrapbook she’d made of pictures of her and her friends at some of our shows. She’d been to several concerts during each of our last two tours. Wristbands and ticket stubs accompanied the photos, along with official Catalyst merchandise stickers.

  “Wow.” I took it from her, flipping through the pages to get a better look. “You’ve put a lot of work into this.”

  “Any excuse to put off studying for a midterm,” she joked.

  “It’s ... incredible.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Let me find a marker or something,” I said as I got to my feet again and rummaged through a few drawers. “I can never find anything in here,” I offered as I searched. Finally I found a Sharpie and sat down again. I asked her where she wanted me to sign, and she flipped to a page at the back that had a picture of her with another girl, both of them holding copies of Until Sanity. I signed the bottom of the page and then said, “We’d better take a few pictures to add here.”

  “That would be great,” she said, her smile growing wider. She pulled out her phone and I held it out to snap a couple shots of us together.

  “How about one outside in front of the bus?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but how-”

  “My wife is still hanging around out there,” I said. “She’ll take it for us.” When I opened the bus door, Aurora gave me a disapproving look, and I knew I was going to have to answer to it once we were alone. “Picture time,” I said to her.

  “Of course,” Aurora said, grinning at Kelly. She took Kelly’s phone, stepping back until she could get us both in the shot with the big Catalyst picture plastered on the side of the bus.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Kelly said to me. “No one would believe me if I didn’t have proof.”

  “Thanks for coming out the shows,” I told her. “We couldn’t do this if you didn’t support us.”

  She threw her arms around my neck to hug me, and I held my breath until she let go, avoiding the scent of the warm blood pumping through her jugular.

  “And thank you for being so cool about this,” she said, surprising Aurora by hugging her, as well.

  “Sure thing,” Aurora said, smiling at her.

  “Good luck tonight,” Kelly said, waving as she walked away. “Thanks again!”

  “You’re welcome.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Enjoy the show.”

  Aurora waited until Kelly was out of earshot before saying, “I practically delivered her on a silver platter. I don’t know what more I could have done.”

  I took her hands in mine and said, “Maybe next time you could try and find a fan who isn’t so – I don’t know – nice?”

  “Assuming there is a next time,” Aurora said in an over-exaggerated tone. “Do you even have fans that aren’t nice?”

  “I tend to like them all,” I said. “Which is why that just won’t work.”

  “You have to feed,” she insisted. “Having an aversion to nice is going to make you an insanely hungry vampire at some point.” She pulled me back onto the bus by the hand and went directly to our bed where she sat and gathered her long hair with her hand, pulling it all to one side.

  “No,” I said, holding my hands up. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re not fine,” she argued. “But I will be, and since when do you say no to your maker?”

  Her tone was amused. “She taught me everything I know,” I quipped.

  “If that were true you’d have sank your teeth into the girl I just delivered to you like a pizza.” She frowned, but quickly covered it up by saying, “Come on. You don’t have all night.”

  I shook my head. “I know what it does when I feed from you. I don’t want to zap your energy.”

  “Because watching a concert and doing a little zombie makeup is almost more than I can handle,” she said sarcastically. I’d known I needed to feed soon, but this tattoo scandal had seriously taken it out of me. “Now do what you’re told, and drink, Decker,” she insisted.

  And this time I did.

  My fangs pierced the perfect skin on her neck, quelling an ache as old as time as her blood seared pleasantly down my throat, hot and revitalizing. Aurora’s fingers combed through my hair gently as I drank. I only took enough to satiate my thirst, and then I healed the puncture wounds with my tongue and sat up.

  “Why do I even bother arguing with you?” I asked her, grinning in defeat.

  “I ask myself that all the time,” she said, smiling as she pulled me down to kiss me.

  Jonas and Chase were in the middle of a vicious ping-pong match when Aurora and I got back to the dressing room.

  “Look fellas, the newlyweds decided to make an appearance after all,” O’Shea teased, wagging his eyebrows at us from his spot on the couch.

  With great satisfaction, I snatched the ping-pong ball out of mid-air and flung it at him, nailing him right in the forehead. His eyes grew big, and he froze in surprise for a second before he fumbled to find the ball. Jonas and Chase were laughing so hard I thought Jonas might pass out from lack of oxygen.

  “You couldn’t do that again if you tried,” Chase said, trying to catch his breath.

  “One show only,” I said stoically as I pulled my phone out and sat down.

  Show off, Aurora thought.

  I winked at her, biting back a grin.

  “So, apparently the rumor that magazine has started is going viral,” O’Shea said after clearing his throat. He was obviously trying to change the subject, but I let him.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “Check your Twitter feed,” Neon added, and I realized Neon had probably been monitoring the situation since I’d brought the magazine in. I spent a few minutes going through my Twitter feed and Facebook posts before I’d seen enough. Rumors of Catalyst breaking up were spreading like crazy. Fans on the message boards of our Fan Club were even going back and forth about the possibility. The ones who didn’t believe I would ever leave the band were left trying to convince the others. It was even worse than I’d imagined, and it certainly wasn’t fair to anyone. I dropped my phone on the couch next to me and sighed, running a hand through my hair.

  “It wouldn’t be such a big deal if fans didn’t believe stuff like this when they read it, but they have no way of knowing differently unless we tell them,” O’Shea added. “I wish the media understood that.”

  “They do,” Jonas said. “They just don’t care. Scandals sell.”

  I hated the thought of something so mundane as a tattoo driving a wedge between me and my brothers. The fact that my tattoo was actually gone just added another layer of guilt to my already stacked conscience. I needed to fix this, and not just because the fans might get the wrong idea. If I could put the right spin on this – make it go away – then maybe I could start believing the old me and the new me could co-exist in all the ways I so desperately needed.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to the guys. “We’re going to address this tonight. There will be enough cameras in the crowd to take care of it. If the rumor can go viral, so can the truth.”

  Chapter 6

  Aurora

  I WAS ENJOYING THE show from the front row tonight. Trey was determined to set the record straight and I wasn’t about to miss that. The show was incredible, like always, but there was something just a little different in Trey’s performance. He was playing and singing like he had something to prove, which made sense. The crowd roared in applause as Trey sang the last line of “Left of Center,” the final song before the encore. I clapped and whistled eagerly along with everyone else. This was normally the part of the show where the guys would all tha
nk the fans for coming out, say their good-byes, and then disappear backstage to get changed for the encore. Instead, Neon appeared on the left side of the stage just long enough to hand O’Shea the infamous magazine responsible for today’s turmoil. O’Shea walked to the center of the stage, holding the magazine up for the crowd and the cameras to see. The article was suddenly magnified on the big screens that hung on either side of the stage. The audience grew quiet so they could listen.

  “Has anyone here heard this rumor?” Trey asked into the microphone, not offering an explanation. “Raise your hands.”

  I glanced around and saw more hands in the air than I would have expected. It was no wonder Trey was worried. Word spread fast these days. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it earlier, but I knew this transition was taking a toll on him. The rumors and the magazine article were symbolic of some of his deepest fears. I’d promised him that I could help him make this work – that he could be a vampire and still be the Trey the band, and their fans, knew and loved. He was new at this vampire thing, and he was doing great, but that didn’t mean it was easy. He still hadn’t fed from a human, and maybe I should have been more concerned about that than I was, but I wanted to let him go at his own pace. Eventually he’d come around and decide that the humans who were most accessible were the very ones who adored him. He’d either learn to feed from Catalyst fans, or he’d have to somehow find the time to get away from the venue and the scene long enough to feed. That would be extremely hard to pull off long term, especially if he continued needing blood as often as he did now.

  “The tabloids are trying to convince the world that we’re on the rocks,” O’Shea added for the benefit of those fans that hadn’t seen the article. “They’re trying to act like this guy here – my best friend – is leaving the band.” O’Shea put an arm around Trey’s neck, and Trey lightly jabbed him in the ribs. The crowd booed loudly in response to the announcement. “They’re trying to convince all of you that Trey had his band tattoo lasered off, that he’s had enough of all of this.” O’Shea made a sweeping motion with his hand that included the whole venue and the band. “But you guys don’t believe everything you read, do you?” he asked. A big resounding No! came back.