People in New York can be the most selfish and needy of people, especially the young. In what most people call �the underground� (less underground, actually, than a scratch in the surface), a large number of cheap enterprises cater to the desires of these people: girly bars and kitsch-themed restaurants, for example. But the most frequented places are the drinking holes that double as starting points for budding musicians, accepting the dirt and indignity of these places in the hope of moving on to something more. Audiences do come to hear them, wanting to find something different from the usual wannabe or trash band...everyone comes to these little places wanting something.

Of course they rarely get it, as Keith Silver Fox happens to be reflecting at this particular moment. It's Goth night at one of the places, a rock club called Chartreuse. The band on stage, whose name seems to have something to do with vampires, is a bunch of earnest but bad players whose repertoire so far consists of a flawed Joy Division cover, an even worse "original" piece that reeks to Keith of Bauhaus, and a few more dreadful songs. The ones before them were better, but not by much. It certainly isn't what Keith�s been looking for.

One more band, he promises himself. He�s just about ready to give up and just go home to the tiny apartment he moved into yesterday. It's only a short set. One more and I'm out of here.

Another night, the second night since he arrived here on the small island of New York, spent bar-hopping, searching for something he can't even name, let alone find. This is so different from what he had envisioned. His grandmother would be so amused.

~

Buffalo Creek, Montana, was exactly what its name promised--an "Injun"-viewing tourist paradise. Small shops selling beaded and woven handcrafts peppered the small town, and people were often at the reservations to "get in touch with nature", participating in sweat-lodge and peace-pipe ceremonies that the remnants of what were once the feared Comanche conjured up for their entertainment.

It was all for show, of course. The real crafts, the secret ceremonies of smoke and earth and pain, were all conducted out on the plains, usually in very small groups. Real peace pipes were made alone, never shown to outsiders. The townfolk laughed at the post-hippies and the New Agers who came to the sweat lodges Keith's people had built on the outskirts of the town. Those weak nature-talkers would never have been able to stand the true lodges, where the steam hit the skin at almost the temperature it left the glowing rock.

Keith stood at the window of the room over the souvenir shop, gazing sourly down at the latest batch of tourists who stood chattering outside the door. He felt his lip curling as he watched them "commune" with his aunt, who had just emerged to invite them into the shop.

"Now, boy, they mean well, you know."

Chagrined at having been noticed (again), Keith turned to smile shamefacedly at the old woman who had come into his room. "I'm sorry, Grandmother," he said. "I try not to, but it's become something of a habit to sneer at them."

She sighed, joining him at the window to peer down at the tourists. Although she was old, Camilla Silver Fox was relatively tall, the top of her head reaching her grandson's chest. She was also strong for her age, able to move about easily without a cane or any of those contraptions devised for making the old feel even more useless.

It was hard to believe she was dying.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

He held her as tightly as he dared. "I'll go when you do," he replied fiercely, and they both knew what he meant by that.

~

The half hour allotted for The Thirst is (finally) over; Keith watches the next band set up with indifference. This one at least seems to be paying a little more attention to its instruments than to its image: they're checking mikes and amps properly, tuning up a little. The pale-haired singer blows a little, delicately, into the mike, and then sends a tentative glance toward a tall, beautiful black woman nearby. She gives a final stroke to her guitar strings, and a resonating chord ripples, making Keith sit up.

He notices the crowd then. They're a little warmer, a little more tightly packed around the foot of the little stage. Powdered-vampire faces tilt up a little hungrily toward the stage. Now and then someone calls out a name: "Damien", or "Maaya", "Christian" or "Ciaran" (or are those the same name?) and the band members grin or smile back...Except for the tall bassist in the black leather coat, who doesn't talk or smile, or even look up.

The singer is a boy...a very pretty one. There are a lot of pretty boys here, but this one is...different. He smiles out at the audience, and his eyes shine pure gold in the hot stage lights.

Keith finds his mouth open and wonders how it got that way.

The singer tosses his cream-colored hair out of his eyes, and it falls right back again. "This is Laine's Innocence," he says in a clear sweet voice that washes over the whole bandhouse and its black-clad occupants. "It's good to be here."

It's the most unbelievable voice Keith's ever heard. It's like hearing light; honey-colored, sweet, thick light. When Keith hears the boy's ordinary words in that extraordinary voice it takes a while before he actually comprehends them.

When the boy says "Laine's Innocence" it doesn't sound like the name of a kid Goth band playing in the low-Manhattan circuit. It sounds like something shining and lovely that's been kept in a locked jewel box for years, and is being given away. When he says "It's good to be here", Keith can hear the real excitement in his rich voice, and feels as if this dingy little place is the best place on earth to be.

The boy nods to the beautiful black woman with the guitar, and she leans over to her own mike and continues, "We'll be starting with an original called 'Purple Cat'. Hope you guys enjoy it!"

No doomsday lines, no vampire speeches. Keith waits to be disappointed. He won't be, and he knows it when the singer takes the mike in his slender white fingers and puts his lips breath-close to the chrome head, narrows his lupine eyes to languid slits, and sings softly.

"Purple cat whispered in my ear last night

Something in Keith twinges as the bass line hums suddenly into the song, low and dark, followed by the hissing beat of the drums and underlaid by the shivering cymbal. When the lead guitar washes in smoothly like cold stars singing Keith trembles, forgetting all his earlier cynicism. He stares at the singer, whose magnificent gold eyes are shut; the boy seems to be lost in his own world. Keith wonders where it is, and how he can get there.

A tall boy right in front of the stage, with long black hair that shows caramel at the roots, reaches out and lays his black-gloved hand on the singer's left boot. "Damien," he cries, "I love you!"

Shock pulses through Keith as he sees the hunger in the boy's face. His eyes snap back to the singer...Damien. The boy opens his gold eyes and smiles down briefly and warmly at his adorer as he continues to sing, his face full of sweetness and almost female tenderness as he stares into the other's hungry eyes.

More cries from the crowd, male and female: "Damien!" "Damien, drown me." "Take me." "Love me." "Damien!" "God, Damien!"

And Damien flings his head back like a young god being worshiped, and his beautiful neck glows in the halogen blaze, and his voice soars beyond the flimsy wooden walls of Chartreuse. He's suddenly joined by the formerly silent bassist, who bends to his mike and sends a rich baritone into the song to support Damien's crescendo.

"Imaginary souls still walk the pathways of my heart

The song ends with a cresting-over of voice and guitars and splashing drums that crashes over the livehouse like a wave, then smooths out gradually and ruffles to a gentle stop. Damien opens his black-lashed eyes and gasps, and laughs as the audience begins to scream.

"Thank you," laughs Damien in his honey-colored voice. All the band members look jubilant, even the stone-faced one. Their eyes flash and their cheeks are tinted with excitement. Keith feels his own skin heat in response, his breath coming short. That was beyond anything he'd been expecting, even though he'd come to New York hoping to find something like this.

"Our next song is a cover," he adds a little apologetically. Keith can almost taste the mingled hesitation and excitement and the unspoken question in his voice. It's immediately answered by a roar (or as much of a roar as more than a hundred kids in a small bandhouse can make) from the audience. Damien looks surprised, then gratified.

"Don't ya wanna hear what it is first?" asks the red-haired drummer into his mike, his voice dripping acid Brooklyn as he grins, and the kids laugh.

The lead guitarist smiles and says, "It's a song by Dark Orange--" Screams almost drown her out, rising even higher when she finishes: "The Sailor's Secret."

As the music begins, Keith can only shake his head. The band moves as one, speaks as one, its members all coming together, blending as perfectly as their music in spite of their obvious disparity. He wonders who they are, and where they come from, imagining the tall elegant lead guitarist growing up strong and happy in the suburbs, the drummer living with his noisy Jewish family, the serious-faced bassist struggling to survive in a tiny, dirty apartment with parents who scream and hit and stagger through the door drunk--if they come home at all.

"Broken nights tempt me into dreams that reflect your face," breathes Damien, his pale-cream hair glowing brilliant white in the spotlights. "Then you give me a sun-warm kiss...I catch myself falling in love..."

The crowd moans, and Keith feels a stirring in a place that surprises him. Bisexuality has been a part of his life since he first got into the whole Goth movement, but he never really wanted a boy before. He stares for a long moment at Damien, trying to imagine his story, and realizes he can't see it. Damien looks like he's always been Damien, and always will be. Looking at him, Keith can almost believe that he was never born, will never die, an otherworldly creature come down to sing for lonely and hungry humans. An angel.

Again Damien throws back his head, his lovely eyes shut and lashes trembling in near-orgasm, and again the kids scream. Damien parts his lips, and Maaya's slightly deeper alto melts over his own voice as it soars: "Storms in your eyes..."

Keith shuts his own eyes, and Damien's voice pierces him in a way he's only known on hot dark summer nights, with that girl from high school who sucked him off for the first time. The boy is far across the room, but his voice envelops Keith in passion and violent emotion, tugs at his body in a very physical way, and Keith joins in the cries of the young death-rockers as he comes in his black jeans.

~

Dizzy, shocked, and ashamed, Keith struggles through the crowd to the bathroom, where he hides in a stall and frantically wipes come off the inside of his jeans with tissue. He stares at the whitish goop spattered over the tissue for a moment, then crumples it up and flushes it. He has no idea what triggered that reaction, and he feels afraid, but strangely elated.

Realizing he can't hear any music from the stage, Keith leaves the bathroom. His body still trembles when he slides into his seat.

The bassist is handing Damien a plastic bottle of mineral water, and Damien takes it with a grateful smile, which the tall one responds to with a small smile of his own. This doesn't surprise Keith. By now he knows Damien could make rocks crack a smile.

Damien sits on the edge of the stage, letting his legs dangle down, kicking the wooden side like a child. He's immediately surrounded by black-clad teenagers.

Keith once read some fantasy book describing courtiers as "fawning" all over a prince. He's always thought of that word as silly and senseless, made up so that the writer could sound intellectual. But now he knows what it really means.

Of course, if courtiers treated a prince that way they'd be executed. The kids are kissing Damien, hungrily and desperately, and he's letting them. His eyes are closed and he's smiling, letting their mouths wander over his lips, neck and shoulders, down his bared white arms to his slender wrists and delicate hands. The girls he merely appears to tolerate with sweet patience, but for the boys--particularly the good-looking ones--he leans into the kisses and caresses. Sometimes he kisses back, taking the boy's chin in his palm and mouthing him gently, his tongue visible against the boy's open jaws.

Watching him is getting Keith hard again...he wants to go down there, take his chances with the crowd. Maybe Damien will kiss him. Maybe not. But he wants to know.

It's too late now though. Damien's already standing up, drawing away. He takes hold of the mike again, smiling and more than a little flushed. "This song's called 'Laine�s Elegy'," he says simply, and the bassist strikes up again.

END CHAPTER 1