by Arden Powell
“There’s no fighting at a Chokecherries’ concert,” he said sternly, his voice reverberating without the music to back him. “We’re here for peace and love, guys. Get your shit together.”
“He tried to grab me!” a girl yelled from the front.
Rayne’s frown deepened. “Okay, PSA time, kids. Now, I know my fans are better than that. You’d never grab anybody without permission. So listen—you see somebody doing that? Touching, grabbing, trying to throw somebody into the pit who doesn’t want to be there? You punch them in the face.”
“Peace and love,” Kris muttered from the side.
“Peace and love take a back seat when people are getting harassed. We’re all here to have a good time, right? So look out for each other.”
Security finally succeeded in hauling the cultists off one another. Rikki glowered at his cohorts, who spat at him. They finally separated, security letting them off with a warning, and skulked away into the twilight. Kris saw Calloway disappear into the crowd, away from the site of the brawl.
“Look out for each other, be kind, and take no shit. We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. Go forth with love!”
How he could deliver a halfway rousing speech dressed only in fishnets, boots, shorts, and a garter belt, Kris had no idea, but Rayne managed it. They traipsed backstage, trailing costume parts in a parade of glitter and sequins.
“I heard something going down, but I couldn’t see from side stage,” Angel said as she helped Kris unlace his corset. Rayne had disappeared to find Calloway right after the show, and Kris tried not to feel abandoned, missing his post-show dog pile of sweaty hugs and bright smiles. The rest of The Chokecherries were still there, but it wasn’t the same without Rayne. Angel, probably sensing that, had stepped in to neatly fill the void. “What happened?”
“Cal’s cult friends started shit, and Rayne yelled at them. Well, not yelled, but you heard him. Security dragged them out; I didn’t see what happened after that.”
Angel dropped the corset and turned her back as Kris shimmied out of the shorts and pulled his real clothes on.
“Well, I’ll be happy if we don’t see them again for the rest of the festival,” Angel said. “And I doubt it’ll do Cal any good to run into them, either.”
“No, well, Rayne’s keeping him pretty busy.” He bit his tongue, aware that had come out more bitterly than he’d meant. “I’m dressed; you can turn back around,” he added as he put his guitar away and avoided meeting Angel’s eyes.
“Come on,” she finally said. “Let’s go get food and distract you from all that pining.”
“I’m not pining for anybody,” Kris retorted as they headed into the sea of tents again. “I just have to get used to Rayne spending all his time with somebody else. It’s no big deal.”
Angel mm-hmm’d skeptically, but as they turned the corner of a large but empty tent, they stumbled smack into the middle of a fistfight that stopped whatever Angel had been about to say.
It wasn’t a fight so much as a beating: the three older cultists were surrounding Rikki, Boar and Red laying into him with boots and fists as he curled up on the ground, trying to protect his face and underbelly, while a third man stood back a pace, his arms folded as he looked on impassively. It was with him whom they collided when they turned the corner, and they all tripped back as the fight paused.
“Sorry,” Kris said automatically, and then frowned. “Hang on, what the fuck.”
“Walk away,” the man warned.
“Get off him,” Angel countered. Rikki curled up tighter, like a hedgehog.
“Mind your business,” Red growled, pulling himself up tall to loom toward her.
Kris bristled and tensed his hands into fists, knowing full well that Red could crush him like a bug but willing to throw a punch if he had to. But before he got the chance, Angel swung her handbag and hit Red full in the face. The buckles caught his cheek with just enough force to cut, and he staggered back with his hand pressed to his face in shock, like he’d never seen his own blood before.
“Get lost before I set security on you,” she said, and hefted her bag up again when they didn’t immediately leave.
They fled.
“Shit,” Kris said. “That was amazing. Do you carry a brick in there in case of emergencies?”
She handed him her bag and he peeked inside. It was mostly makeup, and very hefty. Angel toed at Rikki, still on the ground, with her boot. “Hey, pretzel-boy. You alive?”
He uncurled inch by inch, but didn’t try to get up. She knelt down and put her hand on his shoulder. Her touch was gentle, but he flinched away all the same. Kris held Angel’s bag in both hands and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“You want me to call the paramedics?” he asked.
“No,” Rikki said, finally lifting his face. “I’m okay. I can’t afford the hospital.”
“No broken bones?” Angel asked. “Internal bleeding?”
“I don’t think so.”
Angel kept her hand on him as he righted himself, pushing up on his elbows and checking himself for injuries as he went. His nose was bleeding, his lip split, and at least one eye was going to go black, but he was all in one piece, even if that piece looked the worse for wear.
“You got somewhere safe to stay?” Angel asked. “Somewhere away from them?”
Rikki sat, pulling his knees to his chest. His eyes were shiny with unshed tears and he seemed impossibly young. He shook his head. “We’re family,” he explained. “We came to the festival together. They said they were going to trash my bike.”
“How come they turned on you?” Kris didn’t trust the other cultists as far as he could throw them, but it was hard to look at Rikki and see any kind of threat.
“Boar took offense when I called him out for getting handsy with that girl,” Rikki said, eyes downcast. “Leif told him off, but he still said I was causing more trouble than I was worth today.”
“Listen,” Angel said. “I don’t want to leave you by yourself out here. You might have a concussion, or those guys might come back for another round. You sure we can’t call the paramedics?”
“I’m fine,” Rikki repeated. “I’ve been kicked around enough to know when to worry.” He offered a wan smile, ruined by the blood in his teeth. “I’ve done some kicking of my own before, anyway. Not like I don’t deserve it.”
Kris glanced at Angel. Her gaze was fixed on Rikki, who hunched his shoulders against her scrutiny.
“Right,” she said decisively. “Up you get. Come back to the bus. Let me keep an eye on you through the night to make sure your brain’s not going to fall out.”
“Can I do anything?” Kris asked her in an undertone. “Should I tell somebody?”
She hesitated. “Hang out with us for a minute, just to make sure there’s no trouble.”
He nodded and pulled his phone from his pocket, ready to call for help if things went south. Rikki let Angel help him to his feet, and he swayed there a second before steadying himself against her. He was taller than Kris by almost a head, but he was all gangly limbs and coltish proportions, no matter how the leather jacket tried to bulk him up. They set off at a careful pace and he went along meekly, letting Angel keep her hand on his arm. Kris suspected it was the first time in a long time he’d been touched gently by anyone.
When they got to the buses Rikki shuffled obligingly onto the bus couch, and stayed quiet while Angel checked his pupils.
“You’re probably right about being fine,” she mused as she held his jaw, shining her phone’s flashlight into one eye and then the other, “but I ran into a beating or two back in the day, and I know exactly how much it sucks.”
Kris fetched Rikki a water bottle from the minifridge and perched in the driver’s seat while Angel finished her examination. As soon as she proclaimed him unlikely to keel over and die, Kris tugged her aside to whisper, low enough that Rikki couldn’t hear, “You can’t just adopt a stray skinhead. Rikki might be okay, but he’s sti
ll in a cult, and those guys are nuts.”
“We couldn’t leave him there to get beaten to death,” she objected. “And he seems all right. He gave me a pretzel, remember?”
“Cult,” Kris stressed.
They both glanced down the bus to Rikki, on the couch. Rikki smiled hopefully.
“You said you guys were a family,” Angel said, at a normal volume. “You mean related?”
“Oh, no. I don’t have a real family. A blood family, I mean. I don’t think any of us do.”
“What do you guys do? You said you have bikes.”
“Yeah, we’ve got our motorcycles. We drive around, we do . . . well, I guess most of it’s illegal.” He rubbed his hand over his head sheepishly. “Leif—he’s our leader—he hustles people at poker. Carjacking too, stuff like that. Just to get enough money to stay afloat and keep the Avatar safe.”
Kris and Angel exchanged looks before coming to a mutual agreement that they didn’t want to dig into the avatar part yet.
“Have you ever been arrested?” Kris asked.
“No.” Rikki blinked up at them with earnest eyes. “We’re protected. We have the favor of the gods.”
“Right,” Angel said slowly. “Of course you do.”
“Cult,” Kris mouthed to her.
“You know a guy called Calloway?” she asked Rikki. “Redhead, Irish? About your height?”
“I know the name,” he offered. “The others talk about him sometimes, but I’ve never met him. I think he used to be in the order before I came.”
Kris resolved to press Calloway for details as soon as he saw him again. “What do you guys do besides the hustling and carjacking?”
“We serve the Avatar. We spread His message and we worship Him as He deserves.”
Kris could actually hear the capital letters, and he did not like the sound of that one bit.
“Okay,” Angel said. “What are we talking about, exactly? Should we be looking out for sacrificial altars? Black magic rituals?”
“Oh, nothing like that,” he said earnestly. “No, it’s all . . . love. Love, and beauty, and unraveling the secrets of the universe. Leif preaches it much better than I do. And we come to places like this to listen to the music, too. Leif knows almost every band here. You’re with The Chokecherries, right?”
“We are.”
Rikki nodded. “He’s a fan. Anyway, I’m just grateful they took me in.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Hang on one sec.” She flashed him a smile before turning away to tap out a text to Rayne, which Kris read over her shoulder. Apparently Cal’s old cult has a god. Also, they’re violent. Steer clear of them.
On the couch, Rikki rested his head against the arm, a bruise already forming around his eye. He didn’t look dangerous so much as lost, and if Kris knew anything about The Chokecherries, it was that they weren’t good at leaving people to fend for themselves.
Rikki stayed on the bus to rest, promising not to wander off or get in trouble, while Kris and Angel returned to the stage. Evening was setting in, the sunset sweeping over the festival grounds in a great pink and gold wash like the desert was on fire, and people were lighting up their glow sticks like fireflies as the music and the dancing continued.
“You think Rayne and Calloway are meeting the press again tonight?” Kris asked. “They got off to a good start, so I guess they’ll want to keep pushing it, right?”
“Yeah, Rayne said he was going out with Cal again this evening,” Angel said.
“Cool, cool. Get some pictures, give some interviews . . .” Kris let the sentence hang. He didn’t know where he was going with it, and it was too late to reel it back in now. “What should we do about the cult?” he asked instead.
“We’ll tell security to keep an eye out, and try not to run into them again,” Angel said firmly. “Come on. Let’s go find you a distraction.”
“From the cult, or from Calloway?”
She grabbed his hand and dragged him backstage with a wink. “Both.”
Angel set her purse on the table where she normally did the band’s makeup, digging through its many hidden pockets before triumphantly pulling out a packet of semitranslucent, crystalline drugs. Kris had never done anything besides weed or booze, not because he was leaning toward straight edge, but because back home those were the safest options. Everything else was liable to be cut with so much crap that it would as soon kill you as get you high, and Kris had never been curious enough to take the risk.
Angel guaranteed that she had good drugs.
“I get my weed from a friend in LA who runs a dispensary, and I get everything else from another friend in Louisiana,” she explained, holding the packet up between her thumb and her forefinger. “I don’t fuck with the hard stuff, but as far as recreational drugs? I know them, I’ve got them, and I only carry the best.”
Footsteps sounded from the stage, and she and Kris looked up as Rayne came around the corner.
“I was just introducing Kris to my stash,” Angel said by way of greeting. “You joining us?”
“Yes, please.” Rayne ambled over to sling his arm around Kris’s shoulders, leaning into him in a brief hug before straightening again. “What have we got lined up?”
“I know it’s not weed, but that’s as far as I can guess,” Kris admitted. “It’s not cocaine, is it? Because I’m not sure I want that.”
“Nope, no coke,” Angel said. “That’s a hard drug and I’m not about it. This is pure MDMA.” The little plastic bag was full of pearly shards of crystal that sparkled in the light. “Or as pure as I’ve ever found, anyway. You want to try?”
Kris wet his lips. “Should I be worried?”
“If you are, you won’t be for long. But no pressure, hun.”
She eased the crystals from their bag onto the table, and Rayne took first choice, licking his finger and picking up a single shard on the tip. It glittered there for a second like fairy dust before he wrapped it inside a bit of tissue, put it in its mouth, and let it disappear. Angel followed suit.
“Can you have a bad trip on MDMA?” Kris asked, unable to tear his gaze from the crystals. “Like, if it’s my first time, will anything like that happen?”
Rayne and Angel glanced at each other.
“In my experience?” Angel said. “You should be pretty chill. Worst-case, you might get panicky wondering how hard it’s going to hit, but if you only take a little, you should be coasting on good vibes all night long.”
“If you start feeling weird, find security or one of the paramedics,” Rayne advised. “They’ll take care of you. Or we will.” He ruffled Kris’s hair. “Whatever you need, we’ve got you.”
“You want, or should I pack it up?” Angel asked.
“Hell with it,” Kris said. “No, I want to try.” He dabbed a shard on his fingertip and stared at it for a second. “You guys will watch out for me, right?”
“Course we will,” Rayne promised. “Here, wrap it up like this. You don’t want to taste that shit.”
“Drink lots of water and don’t get overheated,” Angel said. “It should hit you in about half an hour.”
Kris popped his finger in his mouth and swallowed. “Half an hour.”
Rayne caught his hand and tugged him toward the door. “Come on, baby. Let’s dance.”
“Wait. You and Calloway have to—”
“He’s meeting us in a bit. I’m not waiting by myself until he shows up. Come dance with me.”
They wound up in a tent on the far side of the festival grounds, where electro music blared and neon lights that hung in the air like jellyfish lit the place up as if it were underwater. Kris danced with Rayne at his back, rubbing up against him in teasing brushes, simultaneously reveling in it and shot through with tension, waiting for Calloway to arrive and put a stop to things. Angel danced with anyone who looked at her, her smile flashing white in the darkness.
The drug hit him at the half-hour mark like it had been on a countdown. Between one breath and the next,
the entire universe rushed into him. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the neon lights were brighter, the music sweeter, his body cleaner from the inside out, like every bad thought had been scrubbed away. His heart leaped in his chest from the sheer wonder of it all, and he turned to Rayne for confirmation that it was real. Rayne put his hands on either side of Kris’s face and drew him in, and the touch was electrifying: it ran through Kris’s whole body, top to bottom, and he shivered with the pleasure of skin against his skin. He couldn’t understand why he’d waited so long before saying anything, or why he’d thought burying his feelings was a good idea. He had love in him, and he needed to let it out, into the world where it belonged.
“This is perfect,” Kris said, and it was.
He felt sparkling, like he had never done a bad thing in his life and nothing bad could ever happen again—he was nothing but love, and love surrounded all of them—it was the only thing that mattered in the world. When he looked in Rayne’s eyes, he knew Rayne understood it too. He put his hands on Rayne’s waist and petted him there, just to feel the fabric under his hands.
“Dance,” Rayne told him.
Kris turned and danced. He danced like nothing else mattered, and maybe nothing else did—only his sweat and his heartbeat and the feeling of Rayne pressed against his back, his hands drifting over Kris’s body, closer than they got onstage. The lights glowed and made patterns in the air; he could see the shape of the music as it pounded from the speakers in a rhythmic thump thump thump that demanded his body move to meet it. He danced until the music filled him up and he breathed in colors and his head flooded with elation, and he had to stagger back from Rayne just to breathe.
“You okay?” Rayne asked, following after him.
“I’m perfect,” Kris said. “I’m perfect—I never knew I could feel like this.”
“Like what?”
Kris didn’t know how to describe how he felt made of love—the same particles that made up the whole universe, but not the universe he had lived in up till now: a different one, a purer one, like it had been at the time of the Big Bang, or even earlier, before anything else got in the way.