Free Savage Rhythm by Chloe Cox

she looked kind of nervous. He smiled.
    “Ever done this before?” he asked.
    “Oh, yeah, tons of times,” she said quietly, looking out the windshield. The venue, an old brick factory that had been converted into a concert hall, rose up out of the emptiness ahead. There was already a sea of cars in the parking lot. “Nothing unusual about this at all.”
    “So you’re not nervous or anything?” he said.
    Molly just chewed on her lip and kept her eyes on the crowd.
    “Don’t be a dick, Declan.” Brian yawned behind them. “We know you have giant coconut balls made of solid steel, but the rest of us get a little freaked out to see that .”
    There was an army gathering at the entrance to the parking lot. Even Declan didn’t expect that, at least not a crowd of this size. They looked rowdy, too. Some of them had Soren signs, some of them Savage Heart signs, or “WE LOVE YOU, DECLAN,” and they were on opposite sides of a goddamn police barrier. He could already see some shoving.
    “So how big is this show?” Molly asked in a small voice.
    “Tiny, for us,” Gage said. Even he seemed a little subdued. The crowd only seemed to get bigger the closer they got. “Or it was supposed to be. We’re playing smaller venues to build up a buzz, keep it in control until the fans get used to it. But this… Did they oversell the show?”
    “Don’t say ‘it,’” Declan said. “It’s Soren. They have to get used to not having Soren around. And they will.”
    “So what happens now?” Molly asked.
    “We go in. We wait. We do sound check. We wait. We kick ass. Simple as that,” Declan said. But he was watching the crowd, too. The bus was pulling into the parking lot now, going about an inch a minute, waiting for the crowd to part. He could see actual fights starting. He could hear them, even through the double thick glass of the windows.
    “So much for keeping it lowkey,” Gage said. “This is gonna be one hell of a show.”
    Declan, though, was looking at Molly. Then he looked at the crowd, who in his experience would get extra crazy when they found out most of them wouldn’t even get in to the show—if they hadn’t been told already. Then he checked out the piece of shit security the venue had provided, like eight pudgy guys in cheap black shirts, clearly not enough to do anything in this situation.
    “Molly, you sit this one out,” Declan said suddenly, surprising even himself with the urgency in his voice. “Stay on the bus.”
    He might as well have told her to stick to women’s work or something else equally dumb. She turned on Declan with such ferocity that even Brian took a step back, and the look she gave him should have turned him right to stone.
    Molly said simply, “Fuck. No.”
    “Do you see that out there?” Declan pointed, irritated even though he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. He just didn’t like the idea of Molly out in that swarm of crazy fans. “You think that’s safe?”
    “Then you stay on the bus,” she snapped. “I have a job to do, same as you.”
    “Can I stay on the bus?” Brian whispered.
    “You know she’s right, Dec,” Erik said quietly. They all turned to look at him. “We’re all going to have to make a run for it anyway. At least they don’t know I’m Soren’s replacement yet,” he smiled wryly. “After the show I might need Declan to carry me out, Bodyguard -style.”
    Brian patted their new guitarist on the back while they all laughed. Good. They needed to get rid of that tension. But that didn’t change the way he felt.
    “Fuck,” Declan muttered. He hated being wrong, mostly because it meant he had to freaking admit it. That had been one of Uncle Jim’s rules and it was a good one. It just annoyed him this time. He gave Molly a stern look. “Fine. You’re right, I can’t keep you on the damn bus. But you are staying close to me, you understand? Those people out there…”
    “They look crazy,” Molly said.
    There were warring