It stood there a second longer, staring at me. Then it vanished, but not into thin air. It was too corporeal for that. Instead it leaped backward, moving so quickly that an unskilled observer might have claimed it disappeared. But I heard the slap of its taloned feet scrabbling away in the darkness. I panned my light, caught the streak of its second leap, and then it was gone.
I stayed up all night, standing watch in my living room while Ariana slept on the couch. She got up late the next morning, alert but looking worse: the side of her face clearly infected. I changed the dressing, then crashed on the couch while she monitored the Quicksilver forum for word of a second weekend event.
I wasn’t sure I could sleep, but I did, falling into dreams that swirled with images of ordinary people dancing and singing, forgetting the bad luck and wrong turns that had stifled their lives. But the people in my dreams were not Silverheads. At first they were the disenfranchised youth at Golden Gate Park in 1966, drawn together by The Grateful Dead and a desire to end the war in Viet Nam. They were the people of Czechoslovakia in 1989, defying Soviet oppression by attending Prague’s first appearance by The Rolling Stones. They were Hindu kids in 2008, rocking to the power chords of a Pakistani band that defied decades of blood-feuding politics to play live in Kashmir. I knew of these events. I was a student of music and politics, of rock and war. My life may have gravitated toward the latter, but I had not forgotten my roots . . . nor my disillusioned hope that rock ’n’ roll might one day save the world from the politics of hate and division. I had believed that once. But I was older now, too disillusioned not to wonder what might happen when the music stopped and the thing called Quicksilver revealed its true agenda.
“Lorcan!”
I woke. Afternoon light spilled through my windows, illuminating a hovering silhouette. A bandaged hand grabbed my shoulder, shook me hard.
“Lorcan. It’s in central West Virginia!”
I sat up.
Ariana turned, her face catching the light. She looked tired, but there was no pain in her eyes. “I mapped it, Lorcan. It’s a hundred fifty miles south, show goes live in two hours.”
“Too far,” I said. “Not enough time. We’ll have to wait for the next—”
“No! If we leave now—”
“We’ll have to speed the whole way, do eighty . . . eighty-five through those mountains.”
“Right. Like I said. We can do it!”
I packed my gear.
The site was a derelict foundry, dead smokestacks and yard houses standing dark behind chain-links, razor wire, and no-trespassing signs. The Silverheads had cut the fence. Inside, the mill’s yard had filled with cars.
I parked on an access road outside the lot, then got out and started toward the crowd as it made its way toward a cavern of concrete and iron beams.
Ariana waited in the car. This was a one-man mission.
I didn’t enter the building with the Silverheads, but made my way to a rusted ladder that led to a catwalk one hundred feet back from the band’s stage. Here I unpacked my rifle, assembled the pieces, plugged my ears, and watched the crowd converge.
There was no sign of Quicksilver. But he’s here! I felt his presence in the air, in the pulse of the people, the shadows they cast in the spotlight as they took the stage.
Electricity came from a line running in through a broken window. It connected to a box on a wooden pole. The setup looked improvised, a patchwork of spliced wires. I could only imagine what the other end looked like, the side that connected to a power company box somewhere beyond the derelict site. But from what I could see the work looked functional—the improvisations of skilled tradesmen who had learned to make do with what they had. It made me wonder again, as I had while dreaming on the couch, at the things such people could accomplish when they set their sights on bigger goals, when music shifted to political action. But such concerns weren’t my reason for being here. My motivations were personal. I couldn’t spend my life waiting for the thing that called itself Bobbie Quicksilver to come for me. I needed to be preemptive, stop the monster before it stopped me. If my actions served