Prelude

      ‘What a fucking tip! Every time I think I can’t hate that wanker any more, he gives me another reason to cave in his skull.’

      ‘Totally, because if attempting to kill you wasn’t bad enough he had the audacity to trash your stuff too.’ Paul ‘Rock Giant’ Reed followed Xane into the cramped tour-bus kitchen. What had been a pristine vision of black leather and brushed steel now resembled a scrapyard.

      ‘Bastard!’ Xane dropped into a low squat to scoop the remains of his favourite coffee mug from the piles of detritus. Only half of the ‘Sex Maniac’ slogan remained attached to the handle. A sigh rolled off his pierced tongue as he rubbed his thumb against the brown residue of a thousand or so caffeine hits. ‘It looks worse than the old rust-bucket did after a three-day blowout. Smells worse too.’

      ‘Reckon the bastard pissed everywhere.’

      The sickly stale reek of drying urine drifted along the central aisle from the rear of the bus. Iain Willows had a heck of a lot to answer for, and the fact that the Swedish police currently had him in custody for attempted murder did little to soothe Xane’s mood. He wanted to smash things over the bastard’s head – not primarily because Iain had nearly drowned him, but rather because he’d put Black Halo’s lead guitarist in hospital and Ash’s recovery looked as if it could be a prolonged affair.

      Ash had been the one who’d supported Iain and stuck up for him. He shouldn’t have been the one to get hurt. But the world never did seem to work in the way it ought to. The bad guys rarely got their dues, and people who deserved an even break rarely got one. It ought to have been him in that hospital bed with his hands clawed and struggling to talk, but yet again he’d somehow managed to emerge unscathed. So, OK, he’d required resuscitating, but he was here walking and breathing with no more than a few aches and pains to show for it. Xane Geist – they said he’d sold his soul to the devil. Well, he didn’t remember doing so, but the evidence kept stacking up to support it.

      ‘Let’s get some windows opened and some rubbish sacks in here,’ he muttered.

      ‘You sure you want to do this?’ Rock Giant curled his hand around Xane’s shoulder. ‘Shouldn’t you be resting? You’re fresh out of hospital. I’m pretty sure they’d have held onto you if they’d realised this was your first intended port of call.’

      Xane patted his friend’s hand in gratitude. Rock Giant had been the one who had given him mouth-to-mouth last night. He knew only too well how close Death’s scythe had fallen. But he wasn’t in the mood to sit idle. Everything he’d taken for granted had been upended again. He needed to create some order out of the chaos. There was nothing he could do about the tour dates they’d have to cancel, nothing more he could do to aid the police, and absolutely zilch he could do to fix Ash, who was wired to a few dozen machines having his blood filtered. ‘I need to do something, focus on something.’

      ‘Getting some rest, perhaps.’

      His mind was whirring even if his body was tired. ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t face the thought of a hotel at the minute. It’s too damned impersonal, and there’ll be a mob of reporters and desperate fans parked outside the moment they get wind of the fact we’re there.’ That would happen approximately three minutes after they checked in. It was the nature of things. If you were famous, and already headline news, then privacy was non-existent. Most of the time, Xane didn’t mind living in the limelight. Hell, he’d even go so far as to say he enjoyed it. Now wasn’t most of the time. Now, life had just walloped him with another curveball. He wanted silence, and the tour bus was the only place to get it. It was currently parked at the back of last night’s concert venue, cordoned off behind fencing and crime-scene tape. Forensics had already done their stuff, but the tape was helping to keep prying eyes away. Plus no one expected them to be here.

      ‘How did you get out of the hospital unmolested?’

      ‘Police escort,’ Xane explained. ‘They wanted statements, and they had fuck-off big guns to keep the crowd under control.’

      ‘Nice,’ Rock Giant drawled through his terse grin. ‘I gave them my run of the events last night.’ He closed the door of the humming fridge, hiding a little of the destruction and instantly halving the local noise pollution. ‘I dunno what cleaning stuff we have. The dust-buster and washing stuff’s normally in there.’ He pointed to a cupboard door that was splattered with a mixture of baked beans, ketchup and lentils.

      Xane deposited the remains of his mug on the draining board and gingerly inched open the cupboard. Miraculously the contents had escaped the destructive force that had whipped through the rest of the bus like a tornado.

      ‘Why am I not surprised that Willows didn’t know where to find the bleach and scouring pads?’

      ‘I’m not sure he even knew where to find the teabags.’ Rock Giant reached past him to grab a roll of bin bags and a dustpan and brush. ‘I vote for shovelling all the shit up and throwing it, unless you feel a salvage operation is necessary.’

      Xane pulled his long hair back into a ponytail. ‘There’s nothing on here that’s irreplaceable. Shovel away. I’ll start on the surfaces.’ He delved into the cupboard and rose again armed with two bottles of spray detergent.

      ‘You’re going to need a cloth too, super-spy.’

      Xane aimed the jets at the nearest defiled surface and let rip, before seeking out a cloth. Cleaning wasn’t exactly his forte, but sometimes focusing on labour-intensive tasks helped to clear the brain. In any case, if they were going to make the bus habitable again before tonight, they needed to put their backs into it, and more than likely round up a few additional pairs of hands.

      ‘Where did you, Spook and the girls stay last night?’ he asked after they’d been working for a minute or two.

      Rock Giant stopped whistling in order to answer. ‘Apparently, Ginny had a hotel room booked, so Dani went there. Spook pulled an all-nighter at the hospital, which is why he’s crashed out like a baby now, and Elspeth and I squeezed into the motorhome with Sally and Graham. It wasn’t ideal, but we managed. I think the road crew kipped in the van, or else found themselves some accommodating young ladies to slumber beside.’

      ‘I’d appreciate a hug from my accommodating young lady right now,’ Xane mused. Dani had only been permitted to visit for a few minutes the previous night before the staff had insisted he needed his beauty sleep. Considering the headache, and the invisible elephant he’d had pressing on his chest, he hadn’t objected. His head was much clearer today, but his ribs still ached, especially when he twisted.

      Having scooped most of the broken glass and crockery into a bag, Rock Giant paused to catch his breath. ‘Did I catch that right last night, that Dani’s agreed you can screw Luthor?’

      The crudeness of the remark irritated him a little, but he let it go. Rock Giant had a knack for making his hackles rise, but the important thing was that they were a team and there for one another when they needed to be. ‘Yeah, you caught it right.’

      ‘How the fuck did you get her to agree to that?’

      Xane shrugged. If he was honest, he wasn’t entirely sure himself. He’d done his absolute best to avoid acting on the chemistry that existed between him and Luthor, but Dani had got hurt all the same. Then right at the point when he’d been convinced he was going to lose everything, she’d announced she was prepared to give the notion of sharing a go. How it was