Epilogue
Bowie
“What’s going on?” I asked as we sort of drifted along at the edges of a surge of people, since fighting it would take way too much effort.
“The annual shred-off is going to start soon,” Pressley explained, as we maneuvered around vendors, slowly making our way back to our bus.
“I hear they’re doing it a little different this year.
Instead of two guys up there at a time, they’re sending four up, since the turnout has been overwhelming. ”
“Maybe next year you should throw your name in,” Tony offered.
“There’s no list.” A guy I thought I recognized explained. “You just show up backstage with your guitar, and you’re good to go.”
He had a guitar slung low on his back and a little girl in his arms with something green and sticky-looking staining her lips.
Dwarfing him was a massive guy with a mohawk and a meaner resting bitch-face than Shadows, which was truly terrifying, until I looked down and noticed that he was holding the hands of two kids that looked to be slightly older than the other one.
“Which means you need to get moving,” the mohawk-wearing guy said, letting go of one kid so the guy with the guitar could put the other on his back.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” the guitarist replied, though watching him try to peel the child off him was comical as she clung like a koala and complained about not being able to go up on stage with him too.
“When you’re a bigger, I promise,” he said, which seemed to placate her as she finally allowed herself to be passed over.
“And make sure you drink a bottle of water before you get up there,” the guy with the mohawk said. “I don’t need you passing out on me like last year. At least with Masterson running things now, there’s plenty to go around, so drink it.”
“I will, I will, sheesh!” the guy declared before bolting off.
Even with three kids hanging on him, the guy managed one of the fiercest scowls I’d ever seen. “You damned well better.”
“Unca Hawk…” the smallest child began.
“I know, I know, swear jar,” the big guy muttered, followed by a longsuffering sigh. “Gonna go broke dropping dollars in that thing.”
The guys and I all chuckled at that, though there was a thought worming through my head, one that I was almost too afraid to think too hard on, before I talked myself out of it.
“So just show up backstage with a guitar?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the guy, Hawk, replied. “I’d be up there myself, but, um, these guys are a handful, and we got separated from the rest of Aaron’s band members.”
Aaron Hawk. Oh shit!
“You…” I stammered.
“Are retired,” he finished for me with a tired shake of his head. “And I better get moving if I want to find a good spot to watch him from.”
With that he took his leave, while I took off at a dead sprint, rushing the rest of the way to our bus. My old girl was the only one I’d not entrusted into Wolf and Vance’s care along with the rest of the gear. I snagged her and was almost out the door again when Pressley stepped onto the bus.
“Bowie?” he asked, looking a bit perplexed when he saw me clutching her to my chest.
“I’m gonna do the shred-off,” I declared.
“Whoa, no shit?” Tony asked, looming behind him.
“No shit,” I said. “Now would you guys please get out of the way before I change my mind?”
The scramble was almost comical, as was our dash in the direction of the stage, Tibby’s voice and laughter ringing out when he told me he was gonna record the whole thing and that I’d better shred up there because this would be Imminent’s first high-profile bit of exposure.
The Bowie I’d been when I auditioned might have shrunk back from that, but the guy he and the rest of our bandmates were coming to see as their leader, well, he was eager as fuck to get up there and show the world what they could expect from us.
Backstage was organized chaos, as someone went through asking what band we were from and moving us into lines until there were four long ones we were expressly ordered not to move from.
It was impossible to tell who I’d be up there with, being in the middle the way I was, but holy shit, all around me was rockstar royalty.
My inner fanboy went into overdrive, not because of my scars for once, but because of the impulse that had driven me to get into the line in the first place.
No way was I good enough. Maybe if I just sidestepped and slunk away no one would notice.
Only Tibby’s words crashed through my head, and I knew being a coward wasn’t an option here.
This wasn’t just about me, this was about Imminent Danger and building our band into what we wanted it to be.
Which meant being seen in the best light, being heard, and showing off just how talented we were so that when that first album dropped, the people ate it up and fell in love with us.
Shivers, goosebumps, I experienced it all before it was my turn to get up there, and then the bottom nearly dropped out of my stomach when I saw who I was up there with.
Now I was glad I’d passed on the bottle of water someone had tried to pass me, despite hearing about the way Aaron had passed out last year.
I’d much rather pass out than puke all over Stoli, Dez Conway, and Winter fuckin’ McCarty. No fuckin’ way!
“You better bring it, Bowie!” Stoli snarled, shocking me out of my frozen stupor. His words cracked over me like a whip, but the nod, smile, and wink he gave me loosened the knot in my belly, allowing me to do what I needed to do.
Play.
Play while keeping up with some of the greatest guitarists in the industry right now.
For five minutes we shredded, with Stoli and I ending up face-to-face in the middle of the guitar solo in Social Sinners Never Enough, taking me right back to the days of that audition.
Laughing, I made sure to nail it, especially with Dez and Winter fucking bringing the damned power on every chord.
The look on Stoli’s face when he realized that they not only knew it but knew it well enough to keep up with him was priceless, especially after the way we’d blasted a chunk of Tattered Angel’s End of Innocence out of the fuckin’ park.
We had people going absolutely insane by the fucking end, no easy feat, when we’d kicked off with, of all things, Pantera’s Walk.
Maybe one year it would be an Imminent Danger song I played up there, but for now, I was just happy to have kept up with the guys I’d looked up to for years.
“You fuckin’ slayed!” Stoli said we came down off the stage, and he slung an arm over my shoulders. “No one is gonna forget what you just did up there!”
I hugged him, not just in thanks for the tutoring and mentorship, but because he’d become almost as close a friend to me as Tibby and Claude were becoming. This Masterson family was truly a remarkable thing, and I couldn’t wait to see the future they had in store for Imminent Danger.