Van Bender and the Burning Emblems (The Van Bender Archives #1) Read online

  Published by Augury.

  Van Bender and the Burning Emblems

  Copyright © 2012 S. James Nelson

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or our used fictitiously.

  Cover art by Arthur Nelson. Contact him at [email protected].

  First edition: November 30, 2012

  Other works by this author

  The Demigod Proving

  Keep Mama Dead

  For Zachary. Dream big. Follow those dreams.

  Chapter 1: Security up the ying yang

  I designed the rules for the sole purpose of protecting Richie from magical mischief. I thought they would be easy to enforce. Then Richie got involved.

  -Elizabeth Van Bender

  As the helicopter circled the football stadium—and between dry heaves into my barf bag—I searched for security guards with machine guns. I wouldn’t put it past Mom to arrange for hundreds of them.

  All around the stadium, orange cones and people in black uniforms spotted the landscape. Many had dogs on leashes. Lines of police tape stretched everywhere. Vehicle barricades surrounded the entire stadium, including a section of parking lot that looked like a landing pad.

  There must have been hundreds of security guards down there, and the concert wouldn’t even start for another ten hours.

  You’d think I was a hardened killer, and not a 15-year-old rock star, heading to the first concert of my life.

  “Impressive, isn’t it, Richie?” Mom said. She sat across from me, on the other helicopter bench. Like the pilot and me, she wore a headset with a microphone.

  I raised my eyebrows at her, and lowered the boom mic to my mouth. “We’re not going to make any money on this concert, are we?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “The point isn’t money, now is it?”

  Nodding, I lifted the mic away from my mouth and dry heaved into the barf bag.

  In fact, the point of the concert was landing me with the Best Young Entertainer of the Year award. Somehow, after three years of telling me “no,” “no way,” and “not in your wildest dreams,” Mom had decided to let me hold this concert. I didn’t know why she’d changed her mind, but I had my suspicions.

  She continued, “The security guards and dogs arrived at the stadium yesterday morning. They searched closets, tunnels, ceilings, ventilation shafts, and secret corridors. Once they had every living thing out—”

  “There were people hiding in there?” A surge of panic made my heart leap. Had they found the CMI?

  She nodded, and ticked the list off on her fingers. “Six of your young lady fans hoping to meet you, three stadium employees intending to see the concert, a family of raccoons, and a hobo.”

  Despite the ginger ale I’d drank before we took off, my motion sickness surged, sending a wave of queasiness over me. I tried to focus on a distant object on the horizon, but the helicopter began to drop toward the landing pad in the parking lot, and my stomach jumped again. I dry heaved into the bag. Three other vomit sacks—all sealed, all full—sat in a container on the floor.

  Motion sickness blows. In more way than one.

  Mom had insisted that we fly to the concert venue. She worried about jams in the L.A. traffic, and ambushes by fans. Plus, leaving the concert in a helicopter would be easier than driving. And more dramatic.

  I reminded myself that holding this concert would be worth the small price of motion sickness. And meeting the CMI would seal the value.

  As long as Mom didn’t catch us.

  The next ten hours would pit her security planning abilities against me, my two best friends, and the Celebrity of Mysterious Intentions—whoever it was. All I knew was that the CMI was a rock star and wanted to meet me—and I wanted to meet the CMI.

  Mom reached over and touched my knee. “It’ll be over soon, honey. We’re almost on the ground.”

  She’d kept the security plans a secret from me, no doubt anticipating some shenanigans on my part—and justifiably so. For months, my two friends, Sandra and Kurt, had secretly passed notes to me, outlining the effort of the CMI to meet me at the concert. They said the CMI had something to give me.

  But what was the CMI up against?

  I made eye contact with her, and nodded. “So security cleaned the place out yesterday?”

  “They set up guard and established their perimeter. Since yesterday morning, no one has been in or out of this stadium without going through security.”

  “Wow, Mom,” I said. “All of this for me? I’m flattered.”

  She gave me a toothless smile with narrow eyes. “After what you pulled with Bobby Fretboard, I’m not taking any chances.”

  I couldn’t blame her. Three months before I’d made a Herculean effort to violate her number one rule, no meeting other rock stars. The stunt had landed me unconscious somewhere in the Devil’s Furnace of Arches National Park, momentarily paralyzed, and subsequently grounded for a month.

  I was lucky she hadn’t completely shut down my music career—something she’d always threatened to do if I didn’t abide by her rules for me.

  But I no longer believed her threats. If she wasn’t going to do it then, she probably never would.

  Big mistake.

  With a little bump, the helicopter touched down. The pilot flipped some switches so the motor cut off. The whirr of the blades deepened as their speed decreased. The pilot gave Mom and me the thumbs up.

  “You ready?” she said, still into her mic. “Or do you want a minute?”

  I shook my head and gripped the barf bag. “I’m going to need a minute.”

  She sat back, giving me a concerned frown. “Take your time.”

  My stomach had already begun to settle, and though I didn’t think I would puke again, it was still best to give it a little time.

  “I wonder if it’s more than motion sickness,” I said.

  I immediately recognized that I’d worded that wrong.

  She perked up. “What do you mean? Like symptoms?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.” I sure wasn’t going to tell her about that. Yes, I was feeling more tired than usual. For the past few weeks, my body had generally ached. But a cancer survivor does not tell his paranoid mom about that unless he wants the biggest concert of his life cancelled. Maybe I could after the award show in two more days. “I meant that I’m pretty nervous about all of this.”

  After a moment’s pause, she settled back into her seat. “Well, you can’t call it off, now.”

  She said it with such an even tone that for an instant I thought she believed I might really want to call off the concert.

  But she was grinning at her own cleverness.

  I played along. “What if I want to?”

  Still smiling, she assumed an even more serious tone. “Richie, if you cancelled the concert, we’d have a riot.”

  “Okay, okay, maybe I can handle this. But all this security only makes me more nervous.”

  Her smile faded. “You’ll just have to deal with it.”

  Truthfully, I was nervous. And not just about trying to meet the CMI. Ninety thousand people is a lot of people. I’d never performed live in front of anyone—studio recording excepted—although since the beginning of my rock career I’d dreamed about it almost as much as I’d dreamed about meeting other rock stars.

  In fact, chances were that most people coming tonight had already seen me in live concert, but never in person. I’d performed plenty of times on the Internet.

  In fact, that’s kind of how i
t all started.

  My buddy, Kurt, and his dad—my guitar teacher—had posted a video on YouTube, titled “11-year-old on a guitar.” It only took four days for it to snag a hundred and seventy million views. A week later, I had a record deal—under several conditions established by Mom.

  No meeting any other rock stars. No live concerts. No meeting fans. No media interviews. And no having lip gloss or a lighter.

  Whatever, Mom.

  I was eleven. I wanted to be a rock star. So, I agreed to the rules.

  Three and a half years later, it had come to this. Mom spending tons of money on security, and me trying to foil her controls.

  Because, you know, I wanted to meet the CMI, another rock star.

  Looking out at the stadium parking lot, and the massive security effort, I shook my head. “The president of the United States doesn’t have this good of security.”

  “I only have your best interest in mind, Richie. You know that.”

  I did know it. She said it like every freaking day.

  Three and a half years had worn off the enamor of performing concerts online, of selling millions of albums, and going for the occasional photo shoot—but never speaking to the photographer. My seclusion from the rest of the world had about led me to insanity. It just didn’t feel like I was a rock star.

  Sure, we’d moved to a nice house on Point Dume, at Malibu Beach. But mostly Mom kept the money tucked away for the future. She always said, “Your next album could flop, and you could be done.”

  That made perfect sense. But what about the rest of the rock star lifestyle? Why not hold huge concerts. Hang with other artists? Meet fans? Although admittedly, fans scared me. The two times some girls had broken through Mom’s security perimeter, they’d literally tackled me in their fervor. I could do without meeting people like that.

  Even though I knew fans like that were out there, I didn’t feel like a rock star. But I also didn’t feel like a real person.

  I didn’t go to school. I couldn’t go out to the mall or to a movie. I couldn’t chillax at friends’ houses. I couldn’t even use the Internet, because when fans started hunting me down on Facebook and Xbox Live, Mom cut me off from both—eventually removing all Internet privileges. I didn’t really want to meet fans in person, but it would have been nice to interact with them online. Heck, it would have been nice to watch a stupid “How It Should Have Ended” video on YouTube every now and then.

  When Kurt and Sandra snuck me a smart phone, and Mom discovered it two days later, she grounded me for a month and destroyed the phone.

  When I tried to sneak off with my band mates, and she found out, she fired all of them, hired new ones, and established clear rules of interaction between us. She’d canned three more of them since then, and they’d barely approached the remote possibility of breaking the rules.

  Mom took my seclusion very seriously. I didn’t understand why.

  Which made the concert all the more of a mystery. My best guess was that she knew how badly I wanted to win the Best Young Entertainer of the Year award, but couldn’t do it without actually performing in front of a crowd. Feeling guilty for restricting my life so much, she’d decided to give in to the pleas of my fans, the media, and myself, and let me hold a concert.

  I could come up with nothing else to explain her sudden change of gears.

  Whatever her reasoning, I sure wasn’t going to complain. In fact, I was going to exploit the opportunity to try to meet another rock star.

  I gave her a long look as she stared out the window. She had long, brown hair and a smooth face. Today she wore a navy blue business suit, as she usually did when acting as my manager.

  “Why this concert, Mom?” I said. “Why are you breaking your rules for me?”

  Her gaze met mine. She didn’t speak for a long time. I didn’t look away.

  “Because I love you, Richie.”

  “I thought you gave me the rules because you loved me. Can you break the rules and still love me?”

  She chuckled, waved a hand at the security guards, and said, “I hope so.”

  “Well... thank you. For letting me have a concert.”

  A pang of guilt struck me. She was breaking her own rule for me, and I was sneaking under her nose to break another. But for pity’s sake, I wanted to meet another freaking rock star! I wanted to live a little!

  “I think I’m ready. My stomach has settled.”

  With a glance out of the door, she nodded. “Okay. Let’s show you the rest of the security.”

  She opened the helicopter door and hopped out. I followed, and together we crossed the hundred yards of parking lot to the stadium. The security guards around the perimeter watched us.

  I saw none with machine guns.

  Inside, I came to the conclusion that the CMI didn’t have a chance to get to me.

  Chapter 2: The Inner Sanctum

  The security might seem extreme, but not when you consider the powers some of these people have.

  -Elizabeth Van Bender

  Mom gave me a tour of the entire stadium, kindly pointing out every little security feature along the way, as if trying to suck the fun right out of having a concert. Mostly, her security consisted of people, dogs, barricades, and temporary walls. She didn’t appreciate it when I pointed out that people could be bought with money, and dogs with steaks.

  We spent a great deal of time in what she called the “Safe Zone,” and which I dubbed the “Inner Sanctum.” It consisted of my dressing room, a hallway leading to the stage, and a set of bathrooms.

  Not including access to the stage, the Inner Sanctum had two entrances, each guarded by a handful of security guards and dogs. While they didn’t have machine guns, these ones did carry side arms. The guards did—not the dogs. Although dogs with guns would be awesome.

  “Once this area was cleared yesterday,” she said, “no one has been allowed in it. No one will be except for you, the show manager, and me.”

  “I thought Kurt and Sandra could join me?”

  She nodded in concession. “When they get here later on, they can join you. But no one else will have access to the Safe Zone.”

  We walked out onto the stage. The stadium seats rose up all around us, tall and empty—except for the security guards that already spotted the area. A white barrier covered the grass, including a space of about thirty feet between the stage and a waist-high concrete wall that stretched across the entire football field.

  Mom pointed at the swath of green. “No one will be able to get within thirty feet of the stage.”

  “Lame,” I said. “There won’t be any video shots of security guards tackling thirteen-year-old girls and dragging them off stage by their hair.”

  “Exactly,” Mom said. “Everything has been designed to keep fans at a safe distance.”

  I frowned. Here was an opportunity to get Mom thinking, worrying. Five minutes before I was to go on stage, I needed her to leave me alone long enough for me to enter my dressing room alone. Sandra, Kurt, and I had come up with a plan for that. We would pretend we were trying to get me to meet some fans. With luck, she would follow them, figuring I was in a secure enough location. As far as I could tell, I would be.

  After all, she’d named it the “Safe Zone.” She must have felt pretty good about it.

  Right now, I just had to purposefully let the wrong thing slip. As I’ve learned, it’s quite a fine art to let the wrong thing slip at just the right moment. But I’ve got the skills.

  “Hmm. So, the guards know what I look like, and what Sandra and Kurt look like?”

  She gave me a confused look. I widened my eyes as if in alarm.

  “I mean, ah, too bad Dad can’t come, tonight.”

  She narrowed her eyes. She was doing that a lot.

  I kept going, talking fast. “I really wish he could. Seems stupid that he can’t make it.”

  Obviously aware that I was purposefully changing the subject, she shook her head. “He tried everything. His job bas
ically depends on him being there today and tomorrow.”

  He worked at the Smithsonian in D.C. as some big shot. He’d indicated he couldn’t come to the concert the next day because he had some huge work meetings to attend to. He’d tried and tried to get out of his obligations, but simply couldn’t.

  I didn’t buy it. He supported me and my music career to the ultimate degree. He always wore my T-shirts and listened to my music. Every time I visited him in D.C., he had my music on in his car, or on his iPod at home. He would do anything to come to the concert. The only thing that could stop him was Mom. I was certain of it.

  They’d been separated for about four years—since just after my cancer went into remission. I’d thought their relationship to be cordial, but now I suspected she had something to do with his not coming to the concert. It infuriated me.

  “I think that’s stupid,” I said. “What kind of sucky job won’t let you go to your son’s first concert?”

  She shrugged. “It’s very complicated.”

  “Oh yes, very complicated. He wants to come. His work won’t let him. Simple.”

  Trying to calm myself, I looked out over the field, imagining the sea of ninety thousand people waving their arms and holding up their cell phones. Kurt and Sandra would be on the front row with Bryan, Kurt’s dad.

  I pointed down at the space between the general admission area and the stage.

  “Why can’t Kurt and Sandra and Bryan just sit in there? Why make them stand out in the general admission?”

  “Richie, if you’re trying to find a way to get fans closer to you, it’s not going to work.”

  My ploy was working. “They’re not fans, they’re—”

  “Yes, but if I let Kurt, Sandra, and Bryan, the next thing you would ask for would be if we could just let a few other fans is there, too. The answer is no.”

  I sighed, but wanted to smile. She was buying it. Now I just needed Sandra and Kurt to do their part later on. Mom would fall for it. I would get to meet the CMI.

  I acted like I wanted to change the subject again.