Right Here Waiting-Book 2 Of The Mad Mad World Series

Part 1

Chapter 1

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The world of a touring rock band is a country all to itself, with its own rules, fiefdoms, customs and the like. It's ever changing, never boring, and for some people, would be too chaotic to deal with even for a few hours. I get to live with it 18, sometimes 23 hours a day, seven days a week and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way. Especially after the nearly six months of hell I barely lived through not too long ago.

Being a band's tour physician is interesting to say the least. You're not only looking after the band, but usually everyone involved with the band from the roadies, to the lighting crew, and so on. Not only do I bandage up bumps, bruises, and in the case of the band I'm with, the occasional burn, I also play physical therapist, drill sergeant and many times, den mother. Especially that on the days their manager, Emu, is at the end of his rope with the band and leaves them to my "tender mercies." Luckily for me on those days all I have to do is threaten dire consequences for doing stupid things, such as tying boot laces together, being late for rehearsal, things like that.

It does help that not only am I a very strong, and may I say it, talented telepath, but so's the band I'm touring with. We're telepathic with each other, bound on a deeply spiritual level. Top that off with each of us having empathic skills of varying degrees, the ability to heal up from injuries quicker than most people, hard as steel nails and fanglike teeth that thankfully don't look like fangs, and you've seven people that wouldn't be out of place in a science fiction or urban fantasy story. Oh, add enhanced hearing, eyesight and sense of smell to that list. Yeah, we're an odd bunch.

But this isn't a story, this is real life for us till (when, if) the day we die.

Thanks to a crazed madman who kidnapped me, and then the band's lead guitar player to be used as guinea pigs for his experiments with deadly, mutated viruses, this is our new reality. To save the rest of the band who'd come on a rescue mission, we infected them with the viruses in our blood, not knowing if they would take and at the worst, what they would do to the others. In the end, we walked out of that hell house alive, bruised and battered, while our jailor lay dead behind us. If I hadn't shoved a pair of butcher knives through his head, the cocktail of drugs and viruses he'd shot himself up with would have killed him within days. The chance that he would survive long enough to hunt us down, most likely leaving a trail of dead and/or infected people behind, was too great. You don't let a dog infected with rabies go running around your city, right?

I'm learning how to live with what I've become. I'm learning to deal with killing what was once a human being to save my life and the lives of those I care for. I'm learning how to look in a mirror and not be shocked to see a gorgeous woman with scarlet hair, sapphire blue eyes and slightly-too long canines looking back at me where there used to be a nerdy, reclusive workaholic.

The flashiest thing on me before becoming a "Changeling" as we've come to call ourselves, was my elaborate "fallen angel" wings tattoo on my back. I've added to my body art recently; now a mermaid twines up my left calf, dolphins and bright tropical fish chasing each other around the mermaid and up my leg to just above my kneecap. I've several more tattoos planned but I don't have the time right now to sit down long enough to get something elaborate done.

I've also gotten both of my ears pierced multiple times, my most recent a tragus piercing in my left earlobe that now sports a tiny diamond earring. Out of all the piercings and my tattoo, that one hurt the worst, and everyone in the band let me know about it, especially Till Lindemann, the band's lead singer. I came back from the piercing studio to six very annoyed men, one of which was grumpy and annoyed because I hadn't asked him along.