Devil Sent the Rain - D. J. Butler Page 0,3
held together by duct tape, and I haven’t pimped it six ways to Sunday like you do to everything, Adrian. But my shit works.”
“Huh.” Adrian didn’t really want to get into a fight with the guitarist, who was a combat vet and a karate guy, but he couldn’t leave a target that easy be.
“What do you mean, huh?”
Adrian shrugged. “I have a different strategy.”
“Yeah?”
“My stuff isn’t shit.”
“Aren’t we on any minute now?” Twitch asked.
The intensity of the rain kicked up another notch, rattling the skylight in its frame and sending spritzes of cold water down through the gaps in the glass. Adrian pulled his jacket collar up around his neck and shivered. The silver suit was summerwear, really, lightweight and comfortable but not warm at all.
“You can go on now,” Mouser said. She smiled and held up the tablet for Adrian to see. “I’ll be listening to the songs.”
She disappeared out the far door leaving Adrian trying to ignore the faintest hint of perfume she left behind. Jim turned and led the way through the nearer exit, into a haze of cigarette smoke and the pungent biting tang of alcohol on the air. At least here the club owners had replaced all the fluorescent tubes with hooded yellow incandescents, neon signs and other lighting more appropriate to a temple of alcohol service. Rock band, hell, Adrian thought. Really, they all funded their quirky quests to undo their own personal damnations by working as traveling salesmen of beer.
He had the heavy feeling that he’d forgotten something, something that might turn out to be important, but he couldn’t figure out what it might be.
Maybe he was just missing his smartphone.
The stage was small; they always were, in the dives this band played in. Jim plucked his microphone from its stand and retreated into the shadows on the stage while the other players took their places. Twitch scooted onto the seat behind her minimalist drum kit and produced her drumming-and-fighting batons while Adrian sat behind his arsenal of sonic devices. With a touch in just the right spot, a door dropped open in a special compartment he had bolted onto the underside of his organ, revealing the stubby little Ingram MAC-11 inside. The subcompact submachine gun was his weapon of choice, when the lead began to fly—it only fired .380 ACP rounds, but it fired an awful lot of them, and it was small enough to hide on his instrument.
Just in case, he told himself.
The hall had a high ceiling and tall windows that struggled to hold back the wind and rain outside, which were starting to sound like a hurricane. Adrian took a moment to edge his volume knobs up. No self-respecting rock and roller could let himself be drowned out by mere weather.
Then, also just in case, he bit down on two sticks of nicotine gum.
He’d never been a smoker; he just really, really wanted to stay awake.
“Evening,” Eddie doused the polite and slightly high applause that scattered around the room. “We’re the Notarized Genuines.”
“Notorious!—” Adrian snapped, but it was too late—Twitch had already kicked into the tattoo that launched their opening song, “Kingdom Come.”
Eddie shrugged at Adrian, turned his back and staggered into the A-C-D chord pattern that made up most of the verse.
“Down on the corner stands a man with his back to the wall,” Jim sang. He had a haunting voice, that out of sheer gravitas and charisma sounded like it had reverb in it, even when he talked to you face to face. Which he didn’t do often, since he kept his mouth shut other than when he sang, for fear of being overhead by his father, His Lowness Lucifer, High Prince of Hell, the former Messenger of Heaven Azazel.
Adrian played the modest right hand arpeggio that went with the verse, adding single bass notes with the thumb or ring finger of his left hand.
He leans on a streetlight he thinks is a tree.
He opens his tired fingers, lets the bottle fall.
To an invisible friend, he says hey, do you see?
Adrian added a full chord with the left hand, jumping big and powerful into the mix. This was how he liked his music, how he liked everything—Adrian overwhelming and dominating. Even Jim struggled to be heard over Adrian’s sound, and shot him a glare out of the corner of his eye that made Adrian back off just a notch.
The crowd must be drunker than he thought; their dancing was an erratic shuffle, and they bumped at each