Page 45 of Bottoms Up (Mythic Beast #4)

Silver

We flew into California the night before our slot on stage, since we’d take the stage a few hours after the sun went down, and we didn’t want to fly during the day with Hailey and Julian.

There aren’t any great hotels near the festival venue, so Will’s people had rented a huge house. Five bedrooms and a great pool, so most of the daywalkers spent the day lounging around the pool.

Well, all of us except Will and Davy. Will’s a bit obsessive about working out, and he makes Davy work out with him — pushups, crunches, laps, and their newest thing: handstand pushups, where they go upside down and bend their arms. Crazy fuckers, but it’s impressive. The rest of us lounged, however.

Okay, so Julian called me inside and downstairs three times for sex, and he still wasn’t letting me orgasm, but other than that, my day was mostly spent at the pool.

Tonight would be the first time we’d perform Man Up .

We’d recorded it both ways and had uploaded it to all the usual places, scheduled to release at midnight, and I was curious to see which got the most plays.

Tonight, for the debut, it was going to be the original version.

I hate having to be a specific gender at a specific day and time, but today I felt like a man, so it was okay.

And here’s a truth I don’t think I’ve mentioned.

I have to wax or pluck my upper lip and a little around my face.

It isn’t like I have a full mustache or beard, just stray bits here and there.

I hadn’t waxed my upper lip since about halfway through the Vegas trip, so I had a bit of a mustache.

The makeup people brushed something on it that made it look way fuller, and I liked the effect.

Atlas stuck with Julian on the way to the festival grounds, and the Drake people covered me along with the rest of the band. Atlas and Julian were both dressed as staff, since Julian and I weren’t going public with our relationship.

My vampire fully had the hang of the whole sex thing again, and damned if he isn’t a better Top now than he was before. He bends me over and fucks me whenever he feels the need to, and fuck me , but I’m pretty sure his venom is more potent now than before, too.

The construction firm building our house is owned by the Chattanooga werewolf pack, and since the wolves don’t have to pretend to be human while building our house, the frame was already up, and we should be able to move into it a lot sooner than I’d expected. Like, six to eight weeks.

I have the blueprint and dimensions of every room, and software so I can look at different ways to place furniture into each room, but I hadn’t let myself do that yet — not until we got the festival behind us.

One thing at a time.

And why was I thinking about our new house while I climbed onto the stage?

Because that’s what I do. Lists of things in my head, and when we finished this performance, my focus would be on deciding what goes inside our new home — flooring, fixtures, sinks, refrigerator, tub, shower, the paint on the walls.

And then, once we’d answered all the questions for the builder, we’d need to pick furniture, drapes, and even throw pillows.

I like my bedroom furniture, but Julian wants a bed I haven’t shared with anyone else, so we’re buying new for the bedroom, which is fine. It needs to be ours , not mine.

I obviously like my dishes and flatware, since I picked them out when I bought my townhouse.

I love my pots and pans. Julian doesn’t use those things, so I assume it won’t be a problem to bring them.

It isn’t like nothing from my old house will make it into the new one, but we’ll be buying all new furniture.

Everything that doesn’t come with us is going to the women and children’s shelter.

I haven’t been able to go every week, but I go to one of their rehearsals at least twice a month, often more.

One of the guys moved across the country with his mom, and the girl guitar player is about to move out as well, which means it’s going to break up the band, but I’ll keep working with the ones who are left as long as they want me to.

I was happy my towels, furniture, and such had a worthy place to go.

I heard our sound guys doing a quick sound check and knew we were just about up.

Our guys set everything up just for us — they never depend on whatever settings the band before us used, and that’s always in the contract.

Will’s a stickler about us sounding like the Mythic Beast everyone expects.

It’s one of the reasons I love working with him — it’s all about the art with him, and he’s the one in control.

We don’t have pencil-pushers and money people making those decisions.

The lights were already shifting into our preferred colors, reds, pinks, and purples bleeding across the haze, smoke machines low and subtle. My heart raced but my breathing was steady. The kind of high only live performance gives you.

The crowd roared when we came into view on stage, and adrenaline spiked in my system.

I breathed through it, listened for Mikey to start us, and then it was just me, my guitar, the music, and the crowd in front of us.

I sing backup on most songs, but there’s nothing quite like walking to center stage and standing behind the main mic.

I can start Man Up , and Mikey will pick up, but he started us off, probably to keep me from overthinking it, and he was right to do so.

Often, you don’t know what the crowd thinks of a new song until you get to the end, but they figured out the chorus and were fucking singing along a third of the way through. My heart soared and my stomach relaxed when I hadn’t realized it was tied up in knots.

They liked it.

* * * *

Julian

I was glad I’d seen the whole show from out front the week before, because watching from the side of the stage wasn’t the same. I could see Silver up close and personal, so it was more intimate. I could see her emotions more, but we didn’t have the audience’s view.

And when I say we were on the side of the stage, I mean that literally.

We weren’t in the wings because there was no curtain.

We were dressed in all black, but we were just up on stage, to the side of them.

No spotlights were on us, and I doubted anyone paid attention to us, but still.

I was on the fucking stage. I could look out and see many tens of thousands of people.

I’d looked it up when I first saw the crowds, and learned there were one hundred and fifty thousand people attending, not counting the other bands, their staff, and the festival employees.

The Royal Opera House in Versailles, the largest in my time, held between seven hundred and fifteen hundred people in the audience, depending upon what we were performing and the orchestra size.

We occasionally performed at some outdoor venues that could handle around three thousand people, but nothing like this. It was an ocean of people.

Mythic Beast in a warehouse with a half-dozen people watching was extraordinary, but Mythic Beast in a huge field with more than a hundred thousand fans was something to behold.

I wanted to taste my Silver while she performed, but shortly after would have to do. I couldn’t feed from her tonight, since I’d recently done so, but a few sips would be fine.

Near the end of the performance, Silver stopped playing and looked at her arm. His arm. The mustache made him look even more male. It made me want to fuck his mouth again — I’d dragged him inside three or four times today, to do just that.

The mustache was working for me.

He looked at me, looked around, and went back to playing. I tried to look to see what was different, and when I couldn’t see anything, I went into his thoughts.

The necklace, now a bracelet, coiled around her upper arm. On his bicep.

It was still alive. They hadn’t diluted it, or killed it, or whatever. It’d just bided its time until it could appear in public again.

I focused on it. Would anyone recognize it? It looked different. What were the odds someone would see the armband, made of three metals braided together and not just gold, and realize what it is?

I texted Kirsten and then Marco. Two words. It’s back .

* * * *

Silver

I wasn’t going to worry about the damned bracelet. I shoved it to the back of my mind and enjoyed the rest of the show.

The last song has tons more special effects, fog bursts, lighting patterns, quick pyros synced to the beat. It’s one of our fan favorites, so it’s always a blast to perform.

Well, with all the special effects, I suppose it’s several dozen blasts. We’re limited to the special effects we can do at festivals, but we always put on a good show. If we can’t include a minimum amount of extras, we don’t perform there.

Major adrenaline rush for the final song, a literal buzz in my fingertips, and then it was over. We waved. Did our usual end of show theatrics, and made our way to the back of the stage and off.

And suddenly the heat, the light, the tension evaporated. Security ushered us the twenty feet to the rented limo, and everyone piled in.

The doors closed to silence.

Julian pulled me into his lap, and I didn’t protest. I was sweaty and gross, but it didn’t matter. His arms around me made the world right again.

“Amazing. Ya’ll are fucking amazing,” Davy said. “Blew me away. It’s like ya’ll come alive more when you perform for a big audience.”

“Amazing is an understatement, but I have no better words. Magnificent, maybe,” Julian said, and he kissed my forehead. “ Mia stellina. Davvero magnifico .”

“It sounds so much better in Italian,” Davy said with a sigh, and he leaned into Will.

Will put his arm around his boy, kissed the top of his head, and asked Julian, “How do you say impertinent slaveboy in Italian?”

“ Ragazzo schiavo impertinente .”

“Not impertinent,” Davy muttered, and I couldn’t help but smile at him.