‘We’re still a thing.’ He grinned. ‘And I’ve a notion or two about how I’d like to stick you with my thing.’
The remark at least raised a chuckle. Joy shone in Luthor’s mismatched eyes for a moment, before he turned away. ‘What makes you think I’m going to let you stick your thing in any part of me?’
‘Maybe the beautiful poem you sent me the other day. What was the title again? “Ode to Your Cock”.’
‘I did not send you any such thing.’
‘You didn’t? Fuck – you’re right, that was me, after I wanked myself silly for forty minutes thinking about how much fun I was going to have playing with yours once we got here. I think it went in the lyrics book.’ He took the rolled-up pad out of his back pocket and made a show of flicking through the leaves.
Luthor made a grab for the book, but Xane bolted out of reach.
‘Please tell me the first song you’ve written for the new album isn’t a ballad about his cock,’ Rock Giant sighed. He drubbed his knuckles against his forehead.
‘Nah, it’s more of a folk-metal fusion.’ God, they were easy to wind up.
‘I refuse to record a track about his drumstick.’
‘Brings a new meaning to the concept of cock rock,’ Ash said with a chuckle.
Luthor had turned pink all along the ridges of his cheekbones. It made Xane want to pin him against the wall and smooch his full, expressive lips until that wash of colour was evident in a place or two more.
‘Are we going to start?’ Spook asked.
Several shouts of ‘yes’ came in response.
‘“Hole”,’ someone proposed, prompting scattered laughter. It wouldn’t have been Xane’s first choice, but it was one of their bigger and most beloved hits, and it would give his voice a decent warm-up. It was a heck of a long time since he’d rested his vocal cords for this amount of time. He hoped they hadn’t got rusty.
He opened with a long wail.
Actually, that felt damned good.
Luthor had been psyching himself up for this moment ever since he’d played with these guys on stage and won their approval. He’d been both itching to repeat the experience and shitting himself over the prospect. They were all first-rate musicians, and, while the sound was a little different without Elspeth here to play keyboard, the quality wasn’t lacking. Not for the first verse at any rate. After that, things got a bit wibbly. He was concentrating hard, following Ash’s lead since he was the main guitarist, but Ash’s timing was waltzing all over the place, with the knock-on effect of Luthor constantly having to adjust the tempo. By the time Xane had obliterated the chorus, he was focused so hard on keeping pace with Ash that he’d temporarily forgotten about the rest of them.
Suddenly he was two bars behind and they were all so out of synch that the only sensible thing to do was stop.
‘What the hell was that?’ Rock Giant came straight at him and slammed a fist down on top of the snare. ‘You’re supposed to keep it steady, but you were all over the place, revving it up and then tootling along for the next bar.’
‘I was following Ash.’
‘You’re not supposed to follow Ash.’
He didn’t mean that literally, but a decent drummer knew how to keep a steady beat going and how to keep time for the band, while at the same time taking cues from the guitars and the vocalist.
‘Let’s do it again,’ Spook suggested. The guy was a natural mediator, always so soft-spoken and willing to hear all sides.
Xane counted them in, but they had the same problem over again, this time before they’d even reached the chorus. And it wasn’t down to Luthor. He’d done as he’d been told and hadn’t followed Ash, but Ash wasn’t with the rest of them, so it got discordant pretty quickly.
‘It’s like fucking Willows all over again.’ Rock Giant deposited his bass on the sofa. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘Paul, leave him be.’ Xane shoved the microphone stand away with such force that it toppled. ‘This is nothing like what we went through with Willows. That wanker was out to sabotage us from the get-go. Luthor’s just getting to grips with our style.’
‘He’s incompetent.’
Luthor shook his head. He knew how to play drums, and no one was about to tell him otherwise. In any case, Rock Giant being a dick about it didn’t account for the rest of the band’s behaviour. They were experienced musicians, for fuck’s sake. There was no way they could fail to realise what was going on. They had ears.
OK, so Xane realised, hence his stand-off with Rock Giant, and the pained expression on Spook’s normally composed face suggested he knew too, which only left Ash himself. Black Halo’s lead guitarist had his head bent forward so that his hair masked his face. Only his lips were clearly visible, and they were set in an irritable moue. The definitive piece of evidence, though, was the arthritic claw-like curl of his right hand. It would seem that Ash wasn’t as healed as he’d like them all to believe.
He caught Luthor looking, and two angry black eyes glared back through the curtain of hair.
‘Maybe we should try this again tomorrow,’ Luthor suggested.
Xane muttered an affirmative, Spook too, but Rock Giant stomped his foot.
‘We do it again now. And again. Until it’s right.’
‘Paul,’ Spook warned him.
‘Let’s do this.’
Ash removed the strap from his shoulders and dropped the guitar. ‘I can’t.’
‘What? Come on. Don’t let this idiot get to you.’
‘It’s not him.’
‘Sure it is.’
‘It’s me.’ He held up his clawed hand and strained but couldn’t straighten out his fingers. ‘My hand’s fucked. I can’t play. You guys are going to have to find yourself another guitarist.’
‘The hell we are, Ash.’ Spook smacked him across the back of the head. ‘We’re here for you now, and we’ll still be here for you no matter how long it takes for you to get well. The tour’s dates have already been moved forward six months, and it’s only been three weeks since you took your little dive. Give yourself a chance to heal. I expect you just need some physio.’
Hurt flashed within Ash’s eyes. ‘Yeah, right,’ he drawled. ‘’Cause time and stupid exercises solve everything. Well, what if they don’t? Have any of you thought about that? What if I’m fucked up for good? We’re not going to be all buddies in a band together then, are we?’
‘We’ll always stick by you, Ash,’ Xane claimed cautiously.
‘Had-to-think-about-it-there-didn’t-you.’ Ash seemed to realise thirty seconds after they all did that he was slurring his words. He kicked the nearest chair hard enough to make them wince. ‘Bastard-fucking-wanking-hell.’ The stream of expletives rolled off his tongue as one giant, mashed-together ‘Fuck you!’ to the world. He aimed for the chair again, but Spook sideswiped his arm and Ash turned his rage upon the nearby sofa instead, throwing the cushions from it, pummelling the heck out of its back and tearing at anything else he could lay his hands on.
‘Ash,