Blood in the Wings Read online

  Blood in the Wings

  The First of Severn

  J. L. O’Rourke

  Copyright 2015

  Published by Millwheel Press Limited

  (originally published 2012 as The Flyman)

  Discover other titles by J. L. O’Rourke

  Chains of Blood: The Second of Severn

  Power Ride: An Avi Livingstone murder mystery

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be distributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoy this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorised retailer. Thank you for your support.

  ISBN 978-0-473-31767-6

  Acknowledgements:

  While the majority of the characters in the Severn series are fictional inventions of my imagination and are not based on any real person, my thanks to the two real theatre crew who gave their permission to allow me to exaggerate their personalities and reinvent them into vampires. Those people know who they are – thank you. If anyone else thinks that they recognise themselves in a character – I guarantee that it is purely unintentional. Thanks, too, to my cover models, Skip and Tama.

  Cover photo by Bethany Nehoff.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Other books by J. L. O’Rourke

  Chains of Blood excerpt

  Power Ride excerpt

  About the author

  CHAPTER ONE

  The rain came down red and Severn was gone.

  The police asked me lots of questions, both at the theatre and, later, down at the police station but I couldn’t tell them much more than that. No, that’s not true. I could have told them heaps more, but I didn’t. Anyway, I wasn’t sure myself. No, don’t tell anyone anything. Just answer their questions, get out of here, find Severn and hope the answers are wrong.

  “Tell me again, Miss Lowe, take it slowly.” The policeman, a detective inspector I think he said he was, kept tapping his pen against the table. It was driving me crazy. The policewoman sitting by the door smiled. That was driving me crazy too.

  “What do you know about this Severn?”

  I have to think about the answer. I know things about Severn that nobody knows but I hardly know him at all. And I desperately want to keep on learning.

  So, really slowly like the cop wants, I start from the beginning again.

  “I met Severn two weeks ago when we packed in.” It feels like forever.

  “Packed in?” the cop inquires.

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. Pack-in. It’s theatre-speak, Get used to it!” This guy was so dumb.

  “All right, Miss Lowe,” the cop snapped. “There’s no need to get abusive. Let’s just get on with it so we can all go home.”

  “Yeah, well don’t butt in then!” Okay, it was well after midnight and I was tired and cranky, but he really was a jerk. “I told you, I met him at pack-in. That’s when we set up the show in the theatre.” I added the last bit slowly, just in case he was as stupid as he looked in his prissy black jacket and his ugly blue tie,

  Then, as he still looked blank, I explained.

  “Until pack-in the show is all over the place. The actors will have been rehearsing in one place, the orchestra somewhere else and the dancers somewhere else again. The props and the wardrobe have been made at the main rehearsal rooms over the last few months and the sets have been made in a hired warehouse. At least that’s how our company usually works.”

  The cop was rapidly taking notes.

  “On pack-in day the set and all the technical stuff such as the lights and the sound gear arrives at the theatre and the crew take over; rigging, wiring, hauling things into place. It’s organised chaos. I love it.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “Mum’s been in the society for years. Even before she went to Australia and met Dad. When they split up she came home and joined up again. I go with her.”

  “You act?”

  “No, I’m the family disappointment. Backstage, that’s my job. I’m doing theatre arts at school but only because it’s easy, not because I ever want to act!”

  He was actually writing this down, he really was a jerk!

  “But you were at this show?” he asked, looking up from his paper.

  “Yeah, I just told you, I work backstage. My theatre arts teacher also happened to be the choreographer for this year’s show and she talked to the stage manager who agreed I could work as floor crew, moving bits of set on and off stage when the scenes change.

  This year’s production is the biggest show we’ve done. The director decided to have all the scene changes happening with the curtains up but in a black-out and there’re about twenty-one scene changes so they needed a lot of crew. That’s how come Severn and his lot were there at all. We didn’t have enough people to move all the sets by ourselves, or do the complicated lighting the show needs, so the stage manager rang somebody who rang somebody else who suggested Seth Borman.

  “Seth Borman,” the cop repeated as he wrote the name on his piece of paper.

  “That’s what I said.”

  The cop glared at me.

  “It was a good idea,” I continued. “Even if it is costing the society an arm and a leg. He runs a professional travelling stage crew. Technical wizards.”

  “And Severn was one of these?” the cop asked.

  “Yeah,” I snapped back. “I was just getting to that.” I carried on.

  “Seth Borman’s the leader. The head flyman.” I could see the cop’s eyebrow start to rise with a question so I jumped in first. “Flymen are the guys who work on a little platform about fifteen metres above the stage, hauling the big backdrop cloths and bits of set in and out. They are immensely strong. Seth Borman has an upper body to die for,” I added wistfully.

  The cop glared at me again. I continued.

  “There are six more of them. The women, Olivia and Meredith, work floor crew like I do. So does Aiden, Meredith’s twin brother. The older guy, Finn, is the floor electrician. The guy in charge of lighting is a strange little dude they call the Reverend. He’s about five foot nothing tall and wears a huge black floor-length coat that makes him look like a miniature version of Darth Vader. I’ve never seen him without a can of coke in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other.

  Severn operates the sound board.

  I didn’t notice him for the first four days.

  Tasha saw him first. When it comes to men, she always does. She’s got some sort of inbuilt radar detector that homes in on good-looking men. Mind you, it must be a sending as well as receiving device because they home in on her just as fast.

  Tasha was in the show as a dancer. She clicked around backstage in tap shoes and a scarlet bathing costume covered in ostrich feathers, all up in front and out behind. I hate Tasha, she’s such a bitch.”r />
  “Tasha? Would that be Natasha Moreland?” The cop looked up at me. I nodded. “You said you hate Natasha?” he inquired, tapping his pen again. “Why is that?”

  “No, no,” I backtracked fast. “I don’t hate her really, I just said that, you know, like you do, I don’t mean it. She’s my friend, actually. She’s just, you know, so pretty and everything, And she knows it. She knew it that night, that’s for sure.”

  It was during interval at the final dress rehearsal. We had gone out into the alleyway at the stage door to get some fresh air. It was even darker outside than it had been backstage. We were standing by the open stage door where there was still a bit of light, watching Aiden and Finn playing hackey. I barely noticed Severn and the Reverend leaning against the fire escape off to one side, sharing a can of coke. Until Tasha nodded her head in their direction.

  “They’re a weird unit, those two.”

  “You reckon?” I replied automatically as I stole a glance in their direction. They made an interesting study.

  Severn, the taller and probably the elder, stood shyly, shoulders hunched and arms folded protectively across his chest. He had one leg folded over the other so he kind of resembled a nesting stork. In complete contrast was the Reverend. Younger, smaller but full of confidence. He stood firmly, his head back, his shortish brown pony tail bobbing against the collar of his oversize coat as he punctuated a sentence with much waving of the coke can.

  “Nicely put together though,” I finally answered.

  “Hmmm,” Tasha snorted. “More your type.”

  Tasha always says that when she means she doesn’t fancy a guy herself. Mind you, she’s often right. She was this time. Tasha is into bodies. Big work-out-at-the-gym-every-night type bodies. She was already torn between Seth Borman and the leading man who was the only other import into the company. He’d been brought in from Auckland especially to play the lead as none of our men came up to scratch. A move that was causing ripples of discontent.

  I looked again at Severn’s long, slender body packed so nicely into his black jeans and long-sleeved black T-shirt with the show’s logo and the word “crew” in red so it won’t show up on stage, and agreed. Kind of cute.

  “Definitely.”

  “So let’s do it.” Tasha was into direct action. She pushed herself away from the wall which had been propping her up, flicked her scarlet ostrich plumes and clicked her way across the alley. I followed bemused.

  “Spare any of that coke for a gasping dancer?” She broke into their conversation, whipping the can from the Reverend’s hand before he could reply. She took a drink and handed it to me before turning back to them. “I’m Tasha, this is Riley. You can talk to us, we don’t bite.”

  The Reverend tilted his head back and managed to look down at her from below. He gave a maliciously sweet smile. “We do.” With a wicked giggle he plucked the can from my hand, drained it, crushed it and tossed it into the nearby rubbish bin. “They call me the Reverend. This is Severn.”

  “Why?” Tasha sounded confused.

  “Because he is.”

  “Not him. You. Why the Reverend?”

  “Because I am.”

  Beside him Severn sniggered. I looked up at him and he flashed me a smile. Without speaking he reached over and felt in one of the Reverend’s voluminous pockets, pulled out another can of coke, broke it open and passed it to me.

  “You’re floor crew, right?” he finally spoke, his voice a light tenor that matched his laugh.

  “Yeah. Why Seven?” If Tasha didn’t want to know, I did. “Is it because there’s seven of you?”

  “No. Not the number seven. With an R, like the English river.”

  “Oh, right.” I felt stupid. I also felt the all-too-embarrassing heat of a blush creeping up my neck and into my face. I gave a quick prayer of thanks that it was dark in the alley. Cover it up. “What are you? Follow spot or something? You’re not on the floor, I would have seen you.”

  “Nah,” he shook his head with a slight grin. I was sure he had seen my face go red. “I’ve passed you lots of times. You’re right, I’m not floor crew, I’m sound, but I’ve been backstage every night with the radio mics.” He laughed self-depreciatingly. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

  Now I felt guilty, like I’d snubbed him on purpose but I was saved from having to reply by a call from the stage door.

  “Act two beginners on stage!”

  I took another quick gulp from the can before handing it back as we headed back into the backstage gloom.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When it came, opening night was great. The air was full of nervous tension you could feel. I surprised myself though. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I’d be. I suppose it was because I wasn’t on stage. I was used to Mum and Grant panicking about their make-up and their costumes and whether or not they’d forget their lines. Grant? Oh, sorry, he’s my stepfather-to-be. Dad stayed in Australia trying to go professional and failing miserably. Grant’s the president of the musical society. He moved in with Mum two years ago. Personally I think Mum would have been better off getting a spaniel. Anyway, I was used to their endless last minute rehearsals over dinner and voice warm-ups in the car on the way to the theatre. I didn’t need to bother with any of it.

  I could hear Mum’s contralto voice warbling her character’s solo as she fed the cat. I could tell she was nervous. I showered and changed slowly into my stage blacks, pulling my long blonde hair into a plait then winding it into a bun at the nape of my neck. Mum’s song ended in a dramatic crescendo just as I pushed in the last clip.

  Grant called out to ask if I was ready to leave and I hastily checked my pockets for the last time. Yeah, I had everything, my idiot sheet listing all the set moves I had to make and my brand new black maglight, a tiny torch with a pencil thin beam. I’d saved for weeks to buy it.

  I switched it on and it glowed blue through the gel the stage manager had told me to cover it with after the Reverend had told her he could see it bleeding. I must have looked a bit blank at that because Meredith had to explain that this meant it was showing onto the stage and the Reverend could see it from out the front in his lighting box. The wide black-rimmed glasses that covered most of his delicate, almost girlish face must be very powerful.

  It wasn’t until much later that I realised Meredith can’t have heard what the Reverend told the stage manager as they were communicating through the headsets we call comms, but then I often don’t realise things until it’s too late.

  Yeah, opening night was great. The actors channelled their excitement and nerves into their roles and the show was a thousand times better than it had been at rehearsals. The stage manager was smiling.

  I caught up with Tasha at interval. Even dripping with sweat she still looked gorgeous. Right then, for a full ten seconds, I really did hate her. I was sweating myself but I didn’t look elegant. Just wet. The set moves were all called by numbers and I had hardly stopped for breath. Every time I got one hulking great piece of set stashed away in the scenery dock, they would be calling the number for something else to be on stand-by ready to be pushed on stage. Fake brick walls, garden benches, banquet tables laden with false food, even a piano although Meredith and Aiden did that. I was dying for a drink

  I finished my pre-set for the next act then followed Tasha outside into the alley. Severn and the Reverend were already there, propping up the fire escape, drinking coke. Severn looked up as we approached his face lighting into a smile. He held out the coke.

  “Here, you look as if you need this.”

  I sprinted forwards, passing Olivia and Meredith who were huddled together in the shadows against the wall, grabbed the can gratefully and drank heavily.

  “Hey!” Severn laughed in protest. “Leave some for me!”

  He leaned forwards to take the can back but I was hyped up with all the excitement and feeling a bit silly. I didn’t want to give it up so I spun away from him, holding the can at arm’s length. I didn’t exp
ect to outreach him but I did expect to keep hold of the can. I play netball and I’m reasonably fast and strong. Plus I wouldn’t have been surprised if I outweighed him, he was so slim.

  I didn’t stand a chance, retaliation was swift. First I’m held fast, a strong arm across my chest. Just one arm and even though I’m struggling, I can’t move. A soft laugh and the can is wrested from my hand. I’m spun around, facing the end of the alley. Another laugh and I’m all alone. It was uncanny. One minute I’m being held in this warm, if all too brief, embrace and the next minute he’s disappeared altogether. Tasha was right. He’s a weird unit.

  He smelt great though. Not the fake musky stuff Grant sprays around or the sickly sweet muck that the men’s dressing rooms reek of. This was subtle, masculine, edible. From being someone I hadn’t noticed a few days ago, Severn was fast becoming someone I couldn’t forget.

  I looked around. He was not in the alley. The Reverend had gone too and Tasha looked as bemused as I felt.

  “Did I miss something?” She shook her head.

  “If you did, so did I. Where did they go?”

  “Thataway?” Tasha pointed in both directions at once. We looked at each other in silence. “Don’t think about it,” she finally advised. “Let’s go back inside. It’s getting cold out here anyway.”

  We wandered back through the stage door and I followed Tasha mindlessly towards the dressing room stairs. I passed Beth, the assistant stage manager, preparing for the second act. I tried to sound casual as I asked her if Severn and the Reverend were around.

  “Oh, no,” Beth replied, adjusting her headset. “They’re out front. They’re on the comms if you want to speak to them.”

  “They can’t be. They were in the alley two seconds ago. Are you sure?”

  Beth took off her headset and held it out to me. “Sure I’m sure. Here, talk to them yourself.”

  I took the headset and pressed it to my ear. She was right. I heard the Reverend’s cultured accent deliver the punchline to an extremely uncouth joke and I recognised Severn’s light tenor laugh in response. Without speaking, I handed the headset back and walked away.