Power Trio

She’ll play crowds this big again, she’s sure of it. Much bigger, even, if her golden dreams come true. Vail. SXSW. Samhain. Glastonbury. But Kell will never forget her first.

So many people they form a sea, a singular roiling entity. Their cheers are a physical force. The laser lights fret the fog and sweep across individual faces in the dark, but the immensity of the whole reminds Kell of the rolling forests along the highway.

Her tangr’ak flares and roars. She feels Evan’s bass rumble in her chest, an extension of her heartbeat, locked in tight, pulling her back into cocksure grooves and spurring her forth into furious fusillades. Thekla’s voice unfurls over her Alfons’ staticky typhoon, interweaves with Sion’s razorwire tone. They ascend to soaring, glittering peaks of sound.

Is it the best they’ve ever been? Is that just the fervor talking? She has no idea. Time becomes strange, a substance flowing across her, each second an eternity and each minute an eyeblink. And the crowd, impossibly, is still growing.

“New York City!” Thekla screams. New York City screams back at her. “This is our last song. We fucking love you. Kell, baby. Count us in.”

Kell isn’t sure what Trapped Like Rats feels like for everyone else, but for her it’s as if she’s being fashioned into a weapon, every piece of her mind aligned and pointed at some great invisible target. Sion’s song closes around her like the hand of a constellation-sized archer. She feels powerful and terrifying. It’s almost a disappointment when he swerves out of his spellcasting pattern, and the bowstring snaps.

Some day soon, she thinks, as they caterwaul their way to the finish, we’ll fire. And we’ll make fucking history.

Is our home a trap? Thekla sings, and then the silence flowers into a roar of applause.

Kell shrieks in triumph, her voice lost in the cacophony. These people aren’t here for her. That dwells at the back of her mind. But next time. Next time we are here, we will make you scream our name.

Her skin is itching. She feels as though she’s on fire. She doesn’t stay to watch Conna this time. Her tangr’ak howls for conquest. As soon as her goblin and her human have packed their instruments away, she seizes them and pulls them close, her heart leaping as she crushes their beautiful bodies to hers.

“So many people.” Thekla is breathless. “Baby, it’s happening.”

“That was biblical,” Evan says. His voice is muffled by the blood rushing in her ears. “Should we—” he cuts himself off, because Kell is dragging her tongue across his neck like a wolf.

“I am going to take you both to the van,” Kell says, “and fuck you until the suspension breaks.”

“Oh.” Thekla swallows. “Cool.”

* * *

“Opening act Legendary, also from New Laytham, are new to the touring circuit, and indeed new to the scene, having been a performing unit for just over a month,” reads Kell. “But already this quartet’s fundamentals are well ahead of the curve, if this weekend’s set is any sign. Before a pummeling-but-danceable backdrop of double kick drum percussion, filtered through a quasi-tribal lens by drummer Kellax Falrak and bassist Evan H, we were kept on our toes by the twisting passages created by lead guitarist Sion Benefice, while singer and guitarist Thekla Kami—oh, dude. They misspelled your name. The Y.”

“What?” Thekla grabs the phone. “Fuck’s sake. Singer and guitarist Thekla Kamion. There’s only like five hundred of us. Mom’s gonna be pissed.”

“Evidently they filtered this review through a quasi-competent proofreader,” Sion says.

Thekla scoffs. “I’m throwing this shit out the window.”

“You don’t get to joke about throwing people’s shit out the window anymore.” Kell grabs her phone back. “They dropped a link to the ‘gram, at least.”

“How are we doing with followers?” Evan chances a look back. Why not? They’re on this big open stretch without traffic. He’s taking them off highways and onto backroads when possible; they didn’t fuck the suspension out, but he’s been having misgivings about their creaky old van. “We were close to a thousand, right?”

Kell pulls up their account, but everything’s gray boxes. She refreshes and nothing changes. “No service,” she says. “We must be in a dead zone.”

The engine chooses that moment to cough and give out.

“What.” Evan jiggles the keys. “Oh, no. No way.”

Thekla sits up. “Are you kidding?”

“Shit. Uh, hazards.” Evan hits the button to turn their lights on.

“Hazards, my ass.” Thekla swivels her head up and down the road. “Who’s even around?”

They pump the brakes and coast off the edge of the road, onto the shoulder, one of their piece-of-shit van’s wheels hissing into the grass and the gravel. The van comes to a complete stop, and then there’s stunned silence.

Evan tells them they’ll wait a few minutes and then he’ll try to turn the van back on. The attempt is greeted with a plaintive grinding noise, then another, and then Evan kills the ignition and lays his forehead on the wheel.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll let it cool down and then I’ll pop the hood.”

“Do you know cars?” Thekla asks.

“Like the back of my head.”

“Back of your hand, you mean?”

“Nope.” He swings the driver's side door open. “I see the back of my hand all the time.”

A handful of cars pass in the next half hour. Every time, they jump up and down and wave their arms and holler. Nobody stops.

“There have got to be more people than this trying to get to fucking Philly,” Thekla says.

“There’s plenty. They’re all on the highway.” Evan slaps the hood shut. “This is on me, guys.”

“It’s on the van.” Thekla gives its front wheel a kick. “So it’s on us for not listening to Benefice and getting a stretch limo.”

“Okay.” Kell sits in the back with the gear, her legs dangling out of the open rear doors. “So the move is one or two of us walks up the road for a while until we get service again, then call for a tow, right?”

Thekla pushes her glasses up her nose and peers into the distance. “Do we even know where we are?”

“I have an alternative proposal.”

Sion steps out of the backseat. He has his acoustic guitar in his hands.

“Oh, no.” Thekla steps back. “No, no, no.”

“There’s another six-string with the gear,” Sion says. “We can bootstrap an impromptu drum setup in the rear. Evan won’t be plugged in, but someone needs to be driving anyway.”

Thekla stomps. “No goddamn way, Benefice. No way.”

“I have a theory.” He keeps going like she didn’t speak. “If we continue the song, we can continue the effect. This is the perfect opportunity to test it.”

“Are you listening to me? We are not using magic.”

“Thekla.” Evan lays his hands on her. Kell watches him struggle with what he’s about to say. “I think we should try it.”

“Evan.” The shock is clear in Thekla’s voice. “What if—what if the van blows up, or we lose control, or—”

“That’s not how it works,” Sion says. “The worst that can happen is nothing.”

“Sion, shut the fuck up,” Thekla hisses. “Shut up.” Her attention lands beseechingly on Kell.

Kell stands up. “They’re right, Thek.”

Thekla squats to the ground, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t believe this.”

“Thek.” Kell kneels next to her. “Thek. Three Good Reasons.”

“God dammit.”

“One. The experiments are gonna keep happening, we’ve got another one scheduled for after the tour. Why not do a field test? Why not make it work for us?”

Thekla peers at her through her fingers. “I’m scared.”

“I know you are. It’s scary. Two. We know what the spell does. The lamp didn’t blow up. Evan didn’t lose control over his amp. This is something we’re controlling, Thekla. It’s not controlling us. And we have you. Evan and me. You know we have you.”

Thekla nods, face still covered.

“Three. You’re our emergency brake. Like I promised. So if it’s really time, if we’re through with this, you’ll tell us, and it’s over. But I don’t think you want that.” Kell folds her hands around Thekla’s and lowers them from her face. “You’re afraid of this power you have. But you have it. And there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to let that go.”

She stands up and helps Thekla to her feet. “If we can do this, then we’ve used magic. To solve a serious, shitty problem. Think about that. And then throw the brake or don’t.”

Thekla stares at the dirt. Kell waits. Another car rushes by; nobody tries to get this one’s attention.

“Benefice.” Thekla sticks her hand out. “Give me that guitar. And don’t say a goddamn word.”

They do everything they can think of to supply the spell with power. High beams on, phone flashlights at full. They find a camping lantern in the supplies and light it. Thekla sets half a pack of Kobold Blues on fire in the van ashtray.

They pile in. Sion takes shotgun, Kell stays in the rear with the gear, and Thekla stretches across the backseat. Kell squeezes a cymbal between her knees and wedges one of her bass drums between two amps. She’s going to use the van wall as an improvised snare.

“Okay.” She does a warmup timpani roll against a strapped-down tom. “Here goes nothing, kids. One two one two one two three…”

They’re unamplified, but inside the van’s metal shell it hardly matters. They fill the air with sound. Kell rounds the “kit,” lets out her aggression against this shitty rental. Thekla’s strumming is harsh and bleating on an acoustic, and Sion replaces his overdriven sustain passages with rapid trills, but it’s definitely Trapped Like Rats. Thekla belts the song up to the ceiling and lets its curve carry her voice to the corners of the van.

They round the first chorus. It’s not working. It’s too slapdash. Evan’s bass isn’t there and Thekla’s ringing low strings aren’t replacing it.

“Come the fuck on,” Kell bites out to herself. Her foot slams the song’s ersatz rhythm against the armrest, bouncing Thekla in her seat. The goblin stands up, head brushing the ceiling, and shreds her acoustic so hard the strings buzz and rattle.

And as the noise solidifies and melds in the final chorus, Kell sharpens…

“Loop it!” Sion yells to be heard over the cacophony. “Again!”

And as they thunder through the intro, she feels herself drawing back…

“Don’t stop when I cast, you understand?” Sion’s guitar is getting even louder, somehow, sharpening into biting focus. “Keep it up! Keep it loud! Evan!”

Evan’s knuckles are white on the ignition key. The lights die. The flames smother.

Sion’s voice fills Kell’s skull. “Drive.”

Kell jerks as the van lurches forward.

Thekla’s voice falters, then girds itself with steel. The rushing of air and the growl of the engine joins the music.

It’s fucking working. Kell crushes her wonder back down her gullet, keeps her ferocious focus. She feels the heat in her shoulders. “Floor it, Ev,” she calls. “Can’t keep this up forever.”

Thekla’s eyes are screwed up tight. She sits heavily back down as the van accelerates.

By the time the gas station breaks the horizon, Kell’s body is burning. She does not know how long they’ve played. Thekla’s voice is stripped and raw.

“We’re there, we’re there!” Evan whacks his palm into the roof of the van. “I can cruise the rest of the way.”

Kell falls backward, drops her head onto a gig bag.

The engine coughs and cranks and then cuts out, leaving only whipping air. Evan coasts them into the parking lot. He drags his hands down his face, looks back at everyone.

“I’d like to see Freebird do that,” he says.

* * *

They get a tow for the van and a quart of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Sion goes with the truck to keep an eye on the gear and pay for whatever fix they need. The rest of Legendary explain the situation (minus the ancient magic) to Anise by phone as they catch a cab to their next hotel.

It’s a crummy highway motel in various shades of beige, but there’s nothing that needs to be killed with fire, at least.

Thekla drifts into the room like a ghost, stripping her shirt and pants off as she goes. She bundles herself wordlessly into bed and stares at the ceiling.

Evan and Kell tarry outside the door. Evan takes the half-empty tub of ice cream from her. “I’m going to see if reception has a place we can put this,” he says. “You want a few minutes?”

Kell gives him a grateful forehead kiss. “I’ll talk to her.”

She pads into the hotel room, cutting the lights as she goes. The early evening casts them in cool blue as she gets out of her clothes and eases into the bed with Thekla. “Hey, girl.”

Thekla gives a small “Hi.”

Kell pulls her close, wraps around her. “I always knew,” she says. “I knew from the day I met you that we’d change the world together. I knew you were powerful. I should have guessed you were magic.”

Thekla curls up within Kell’s grasp. They fit together so perfectly, like two puzzle pieces.

“I feel strong when you’re with me.” Kell runs her fingers through Thekla’s hair. “You saved my life, Thekla. You made me worthy of your love. If you stay with me and Evan, we’re gonna get you through this, okay? We’re gonna keep you safe. I promised you we were gonna help you dropkick the moon. And you will.”

The AC switches on, hums into the silence.

Thekla turns in Kell’s arms. “Don’t tell that to Sion, okay?” she says. “Don’t give him any ideas.”

Kell cracks a grin.

“Kiss me,” Thekla says, and Kell obeys. The goblin relaxes and softens under her touch.

Kell parts from her, buries her nose in Thekla’s neck and inhales her girlfriend’s scent. “Will you be a wizard with me?”

“Kellax Falrak.” Thekla’s small hands cling tight to her. “I would be anything with you.”