Devil Sent the Rain - D. J. Butler Page 0,4
other like they were circling for a fight. Adrian shook his head and made sure he had the MAC-11 close to his hand if he needed it. He had the taser in his jacket pocket, too, repaired by hand as they’d cruised across the nothingness of Kansas, but he couldn’t be sure how much charge it had in it. And if he absolutely had to pull out the big ones, he had a candle stub and knew how to summon fire with it.
He was ready for any barroom brawl that might come his way.
He saw Mouser at the back of the room, talking to the big Swedish-looking bartender. She looked like she might be looking at him, so he nodded during the chorus.
Whoa, whoa, my kingdom’s come.
Whoa, whoa, my kingdom’s come.
My kingdom’s come.
By the end of the chorus, the crowd’s dancing had become really erratic, but as Adrian dropped away the left-hand power, they cooled down a bit. Not drunk, he decided. Maybe they were stoned, high on something that was twisting their perceptions. He’d done LSD himself, and mescaline, more than once on his climb to power. It hadn’t strengthened his ka, it hadn’t given him any great insights, and all that toxic stuff, not to mention the weird memories, piled hard and heavy into his shadow, much worse than steak or any carnal romp. It had taken him months of fasting and flushing to get it out of his system when he’d realized it was slowing him down and gone cold turkey. Something like that might be throwing the crowd off-kilter, he guessed, making their movements all herky-jerky.
Jim sang another verse.
“In a plywood hotel downtown lies a girl with no name.
“She’s got a twelve-year-old body and dry withered eyes.
“She pushes the breath through her lungs and the blood through her veins.
“She stares out a bullethole window at the darkening skies, and she says.”
Mouser and the big Swede seemed to be arguing now, and Adrian frowned a little, without losing track of where he was in the song. She was a cool enough kid, even if she couldn’t get her mind off sex, and she’d let him play with her toys, so it bugged him to see her picked on. If, he reminded himself, that was what he was seeing. Besides, it didn’t bother him all that much; he didn’t believe in liberty and justice for all, and if it turned out such a thing did exist, he wouldn’t want it. What Adrian Pew wanted was power.
He kicked his sound up for the chorus again, careful not to drown Jim out this time. Not that he was afraid of Jim, but he respected the guy, and he needed him. Jim was the one who was carrying Azazel’s hoof, taped to his belly, and he was the one who would connect them with Hell. Eddie did all the talking, but he was really just Aaron to Jim’s Moses.
Whoa, whoa, my kingdom’s come.
Whoa, whoa, my kingdom’s come.
My kingdom’s come.
The second chorus transitioned into the bridge and Adrian pulled out the stops, flooding the stage and the hall with the rotary tones of his Hammond. As the big A chord, seven notes strong including a low A played by Adrian’s foot, blasted out into the crowd, they stopped dancing.
Wrong reaction. Adrian frowned and piled on more notes as he climbed into the C.
The dancers straightened. It wasn’t a natural movement, they straightened with the stop-gap, spastic motions of a rictus smile, like some unseen power had jammed a rod up each dancer’s spine, turning them into grotesque puppets. People in the crowd who’d been sitting slammed their backs upright first, then lurched to their feet like the rod was extending downward through their hips and legs.
Jim, silent during the bridge, backed away from the edge of the stage, and Adrian saw that he was standing close to where his fencing saber hid behind a stack of amplifiers. Mike and Eddie edged back from the front of the stage, but it was small enough that there wasn’t much of anywhere for them to go.
Could they all be on drugs? Was the water laced?
Or was the shit about to hit the fan … again?
Adrian pushed up through the D and into the E, Twitch carrying him forward on a thunder of snare drum beats, the dancers straightening their entire bodies though their heads hung limp, like screen doors pinned to the frame by single hinges.
And then they began to vomit.
“The hell with this!” Adrian