The Gathering Dark Read Online Free Page B

make the audience feel because I know how they make me feel. If I grind out something sexy, I know it’s going to go over because I’ve got every note inside me.”
    Kyle shook his head. “But these new songs, they came from inside you. The CD is really great, Nik, and I’m not just saying that because I’m part of the band or because I’m head over heels for you. It’s music that gets under your skin in the best possible way. The single is tearing up radio. Trust me, this is no different. People will feel what you feel when you sing the new stuff, just like when we do covers. Don’t be so terrified.”
    The words made her wince. Her eyes narrowed and Nikki glanced sharply at him. ‘I’m not terrified. Not of this. If you’d seen half the shit I’ve seen, you’d know what a joke it is to use that word about something like this. I mean, there’s fear and then there’s terror .”
    “So what are we still doing in here when the audience is out there?” Kyle hooked a thumb toward the door and raised one eyebrow.
    Nikki took another long draught of water, then put the cover back on and set the bottle down next to the flowers. They were fresh and the scent filled the room, mixing rather unpleasantly with the cat piss odor from the stained sofa. But they were pretty, at least.
    “You’re head over heels, huh?” she asked idly.
    “Pretty much.”
    “Good.”
    With a deep breath she shook back her hair and walked to her guitar. It was a beautifully crafted instrument with mother-of-pearl inlaid on the neck, and she picked it up and slid the strap over her head. The same strap she had been using for six years, since long before the horrors she had seen in New Orleans, when she had learned the difference between fear and terror.
    Without another glance at Kyle, Nikki strode to the door and flung it open. The buzz of the crowd washed over her, embracing her and lifting her up the way nothing else ever could. Rich was waiting in the corridor and gave her a look of utter relief.
    “So we still opening with ‘Son of a Preacher Man’?” Kyle asked as he followed her down the corridor that led through the back of the club and into the wings behind the stage curtains.
    Nikki cast him a quick glance over her shoulder. “Fuck that. We start with ‘Shock My World.’ We’re gonna show Philly how to groove.”
    The rest of the band stood up quickly as she swept into the wings. The curtains were open on a darkened stage, all their equipment and instruments up there already except for Nikki’s guitar. She did not wait for them, did not hesitate a moment longer.
    Nikki Wydra marched onto her hometown stage with her guitar strapped across her back and the crowd began to roar. Her nausea and her hesitation were forgotten. The band rocked right into “Shock My World” and the audience thundered their approval. When Nikki began to sing, she felt the ache in every word. It was more of herself than she had ever given to anyone, only she was giving it to hundreds of people at once. Her song. Her music. Her heart.
    This right here was what she lived for. This was home. Not this club. Not Philadelphia. Just the stage.
    This was home.
    On a shelf above the desk of Father Jack Devlin was a little jar with a perforated lid, the kind of thing a child might have kept a captive spider in. There was a tiny demon in the jar and it had been there so long that Father Jack hardly even noticed it anymore.
    It noticed him, however.
    In fact, during all the long hours Father Jack spent poring over dusty, decrepit, leather-bound books and tapping at his computer keyboard as he searched the Net, the demon never took its burning orange eyes off the priest. Father Jack knew this, of course. The little fucker stared hateful daggers at him day and night and had done so for nearly two years. He just couldn’t bring himself to care.
    The demon in the jar on the shelf above his desk was a problem Father Jack had solved a long time ago. There were so