Unanswered Prayers-Book 6 Of The Mad Mad World Series

Chapter 4

"But...!" Schneider began, only to back away and hide behind Ollie as Till turned around and stared him down. I caught a momentary look at Till's eyes and they were a deep greeny-blue with nearly-insane rage simmering under the surface. He turned to Richard, who'd shrugged off Flake's hands and was standing with his arms over his chest, glaring down at Till with every once of arrogance he could muster. Yeah, we were in for a donnybrook of epic proportions. I hurried to get past Till and on the other side of the stage, not wanting to be in his line of sight for all the money in the world.

The air crackled with anger as Till walked up to stand in front of Richard, who had come down from his perch and was standing on the stage, chin up, arms folded back over his chest again and radiating his usual "fuck you sideways I'm fabulous" attitude that he put on when he was pissed off. Stopping scant inches from Richard, Till said very softly, "Either settle your ass down, monkey boy, or we're going to have words."

Richard didn't budge an inch. ::Oh fuck you, Till! It's perfectly okay for you to have days where we're all running for cover because you got up on the wrong side of a groupie but one of us have a bad day? That cannot be! It's just you who can have a shit day, not any of us!::

"Richard..." Ollie began, only to come to a stuttering halt when he saw Till's face go red, then white. Flake ran down to try and push between him and Richard then stopped. I don't know what was said between him and Till but he gulped, nodded, and inched around them until he could dash over to my side of the stage. The four of us stood frozen, waiting for someone to throw the first punch; we'd been through episodes like this before and while it was nothing new, nobody wanted to see Richard and Till pummeling the daylights out of each other.

"Apologize, Richard," I whispered, sweat ticking down my back and making my shirt damp. "Apologize now or you're going to end up flat on your ass with a broken nose."

It was like watching two angry tigers facing each other down in an alleyway. Neither Till nor Richard moved; hell, they barely seemed to breathe! Something was going on between them, something they'd locked the rest of us out of. I tried to touch one of them through the link and got one hell of a static like "shock" along my nerves that told me to keep my nose out of things. I could tell by the way Schneider was shaking his head that he'd done the same and got zapped.

::Something or someone's got to give:: Flake said.

::I'm not going to try and break them up!:: I yelped. ::I like my nose unbroken, thank you very much!::

A blur of movement to my right pulled my attention away from my angry friends and I saw Ollie throw Schneider a length of broom handle. Moving silent as a cat, our drummer crept up behind Richard and without warning, smacked on the ass with the broom handle. Richard yelled, jumped a foot in the air and spun to meet his attacker. He saw Schneider behind him with the broom handle and flung himself at him, only to have Schneider catch him in the gut with the end of the handle. Richard folded over at the waist with a grunt of pain but stayed on his feet. I knew there was no way on this Earth he'd be able to get in range of Schneider to lay a hand on him. Schneider knew this and kept Richard moving, kept swiping the broom handle along the floor to try and knock him off his feet, went for his head a couple of times and every chance he got to swat Richard on the ass, he did. He chased Richard down off the stage and onto the main floor, never saying a word, just kept him from landing a punch. And it's not like Richard didn't try, he put in a good effort, I'll give him that.

By the time Schneider was starting to tire, Richard was stumbling, sweating and blowing like a horse that's been raced half off its feet. We were all in excellent shape thanks to the Changeling virus but Schneider had been working with the staff every day for at least an hour, plus his endurance from being a drummer for so long, so he had a lot more stamina than Richard did going into the fight. And Richard's strength was partially coming from being so angry, anger which when it burned out, left nothing to draw on.