Book 1: Bone Cold-Alive Series
It was the music. Always the music. It started somewhere deep in his soul and coursed through his body in a mad rush to explode on the surface. He had felt it as a small child, this urgent need to touch the piano keys, to hear the notes, to reach inside the old upright in his grandmother’s parlor, close his eyes and feel the strings and make the vibrations. To release the music from within himself and then take it back inside, remold it and start all over again.
He felt it now. Eyes closed, hands splayed on a keyboard, his foot pumped, his head moved, his body swayed. He felt the music, was the music and both started and stopped with the music. Smoke, lights, crowd, video screens, revolving stage—all enhanced his music, helped others feel it. But no one knew the music as he did. No one was the music as he was. Not the four other members of Bone Cold—Alive, not even his twin brother, who lolled his head as he sang to the 75,000 fans that screamed and yelled and gyrated with them. The drums modulated the rhythm, increased, called to him. He felt them. The crowd called to him. He felt them. Shifting his weight, he took a deep breath, and began to sing into the mike attached to his headphones. His words, his song, his music.
His soul.
The crowd exploded, chanted. “EddieT! EddieT!” He was surrounded, engulfed. The vibration consumed him through his ears, his skin. The adulation was better than sex, better than the drugs that were just now taking hold of his mind and body, pushing his music to the edge, taking him with it. Take, take, take: the drugs, the message, the music.
Then he saw her. How she got past the guards to the stage was security’s problem, not his. Young. God, they just kept getting younger, so he sang to her as she tripped on a cord and then crawled to him, her leather mini hiked up past the point of decency. Tears streamed down her face, her ecstasy at being this close to him so complete. She reached up to him, and he stopped playing and took her hands and slid them up his thighs. He unhooked the mike, dropped it to the stage and leaned down to kiss her, pulling her to her feet as he did. Her lips were hesitant, then hungry, and she came to him so easily and they moved together so well. His hands rested on her hips, moved both of them in an ageold rhythm.
He caught sight of Eddie C out of the corner of his eye. His brother grinned broadly, picked up the lyrics. “Score, bro” his lips said and Eddie T’s hands moved to his jeans waistband.