The Devil's Metal (20 page)

I sighed and blew a strand of hair out of my
face.

“What’s up?” Noelle asked, flushing the
toilet and coming up beside me to wash her hands. She was looking
tired too, maybe even worse than I was. She’d lost a lot of weight
in the short time I’d known her and she’d already been skinny to
begin with. Her striped sailor dress with a ripped hem hung off of
her and the flowered headband she wore made her look like a wilting
stalk.

“I’m just…tired,” I said truthfully.
“You?”

Her eyes faltered for a second, then she
straightened up and eyed herself in the mirror with a hardened
gaze.

“Just tired.”

I felt like Noelle and I were dancing around
the same subject—the same fears—but I had no idea how to approach
her about it without sounding like a loon. I wouldn’t even know
where to start.

“I have a question,” I started, trying to
plan out my sentence. “About some of the groupies the band
gets.”

Her eyes dropped from her reflection, and
she cast her gaze to the ground with lowered lids, listening.

“I think you know—” I began, but shut my
mouth as soon as the bathroom door swung open and one the
girlfriends of someone in Grand Funk Railroad, the band that Hybrid
had opened for that night, came in. She shot us a defensive look at
first but relaxed once she recognized Noelle. She gave her a shy
smile and went into the stall.

I looked back to Noelle to tell her we’d
talk about it later, but she was already leaving the bathroom, like
she was trying to escape the subject. Given the way Mickey
sometimes was with groupies, I couldn’t really blame her. I
followed her out the door and into the hallway. The lounge at the
end was bumping tonight with tons of lucky fans and media
personalities around to see Grand Funk, but by the bathrooms it was
quiet and eerie.

I saw Graham leaving the lounge and heading
toward us, presumably going to the boys’ bathroom which was further
away. Noelle and Graham didn’t even acknowledge each other as they
passed and he sure wasn’t about to look at me. But, for some stupid
reason, I thought I could get to the bottom of something
tonight.

“Graham,” I called and trotted after him. He
wasn’t much over six feet tall but he covered a lot of ground with
his long, tattooed legs that were poking out of his black workman
shorts.

He didn’t stop and neither did I. I reached
out for his shoulder just as he was about to go in the
bathroom.

“What?” he snarled, whipping around to face
me with hate-filled eyes. I never liked being this close to him.
His skin was tight and pale, almost waxy. He was considered
handsome and dark by some girls, but all I could see was a black
cloud billowing deep behind those dark eyes, always watching,
always spiteful. An upside down crucifix hung from his necklace,
swinging along his tattooed collarbone. Always playing the part.
Wasn’t he?

I swallowed hard and took a few steps back.
“I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“Can it wait till I’m done pissing?” he
snarled.

I nodded, a bit scared. I didn’t know what
I’d been thinking, ambushing him just before he went into the
washroom.

He shook his head, cursing me I was sure, or
damning me. He went toward the door, his hand out to push it
open.

“I just wanted to know about your psycho
groupies,” my lips said before I even had a chance to think. Talk
about poking the bear.

I clamped my mouth shut but wasn’t prepared
for what happened next. In a whirl of black and limbs, Graham spun
around and grabbed me, his nails digging into my arms. The next
thing I knew I was being slammed against the wall and he was
holding me against it. His body was strong from years of wielding
drumsticks and I didn’t have a fighting chance to get loose.

“What the fuck is that any of your
business?” he growled, his face mere inches from mine. His breath
smelled rotten. His eyes flashed from within, going from a dark
brown to a burning red, like it was being lit from the inside. I
held my breath in fright.

“You don’t even know why you’re here,” he
uttered slowly in a raspy, wet voice and brought his face even
closer. The back of my head where it hit the wall began to throb
and my arms ached from where his grip cut into the muscle. “But I
do. You better forget about this story and go home. You aren’t
going to save him. You’re not going to save any of them.”

“Let me go,” I said, squirming. His eyes
began to go from a lit red to all black, and his pupils began to
widen until his eyes were one deep hole from corner to corner.

“What the fuck are you?” I cried out,
feeling horror spreading through my lungs and heart, seizing me,
paralyzing me.

“A debt collector,” he snarled through a
mouth that began to widen to a gummy, shark-like grin, his skin
cracking along the edges, blood dripping down toward pointed
teeth.

Around the corner we heard the door to the
bathroom open, and I took that opportunity of distraction to push
Graham back enough to knee him straight into the balls.

When I was nineteen, I was attacked on
campus by some potential rapist or mugger. I fought him off the
best I could, but it wasn’t until I kicked him right in the junk
that he fell to the ground in pain and I was able to run off and
call the police. I was counting on that reaction.

Graham did not fall to the ground. He didn’t
even register any feeling except surprise. And amusement, because
the demonic fucker just smiled even more. I was living a
nightmare.

“What the fuck?” Sage’s voice boomed down
the dark hall and in seconds he was shoving Graham off of me.
Before Graham had a chance to react, Sage punched him right in the
face. Graham’s normal, nasty face. Whatever thing I thought I’d
seen was gone and now Graham was on the ground, clutching his nose
that was dripping blood on the linoleum.

Sage turned to me, holding my arms..

“Dawn, what happened? Did he hurt you?” he
asked frantically. A vein pulsed on his tense throat.

I shook my head no, then yes, then no, and
feeling a torrent of tears building up inside me, I shrugged Sage’s
hands off and ran down the hallway, leaving him behind to yell
after me then say to Graham, “You fuck, what did you do to
her?”

I pushed my way past the crowd in the
lounge, getting a few looks of concern and sympathy. I looked like
nothing more than a girl who was tripping or crying over a rock
star’s rejection, and in seconds I burst through the back doors,
past security and all the way into the parking lot. The bus was the
last place I wanted to be, so I booked it past the main security
gate, my vision blurry with tears, and ran out into the open road,
where a few late concertgoers were trying to find parking on the
grassy curbside.

I ran blindly for a few meters and then
collapsed underneath a cherry tree. I was lucky the venue was a bit
out of the city and I didn’t have to face too many curious
passers-by. I leaned back against the tree and let it all out,
everything that had been cooped up in my heart for the last week.
The fears, the shame, the feelings of inadequacy, the confusion.
The feeling that I was in way over my head, alone on the road with
no one I could really trust. Everyone seemed to have an agenda, and
I was the only one open and honest about mine. I was scared, scared
to the bone. I was scared about failing. I was scared of the
unknown. And I was scared I was slowly losing my mind. There was
another two weeks left of the tour. How on earth was I going to
survive? When was I going to throw in the towel?

I cried, ugly and bawling, for who knows how
long. I didn’t come up with any answers. I just missed my dad, my
brother, and Mel more than anything in the world and felt an ache
spread in my stomach.

“Hey,” I heard a voice say in the darkness
and the sound of flip-flops that followed.

I looked up and wiped my eyes,. Sage stood
above me for a looming second before he crouched down to my level.
He looked me over with quiet concern, then took his hand and
stroked my hair softly. “I’ve been looking for you.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the
tree. I felt him sit down and lean against the tree beside me. It
would have been a funny sight for a concertgoer, the guitarist of
the opening band sitting on the side of the road with his trademark
open black shirt and flip-flops.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he
asked.

I shook my head.

“Can I talk about it?”

I shrugged, too tired now to care.

“Graham...,” he started. He paused, trying
to find the words. I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at
him. He was plucking grass out of the ground and tossing it at the
road.

“Graham wasn’t always like this,” he
continued. “When we first started out…he was an answer to…he was a
really good drummer and we needed a good drummer. I think…I know,
actually…that the moment I got on guitar and the moment we got
Graham on drums was the moment Hybrid really began. There was no
stopping us. And…I felt in debt to Graham. He was always an
oddball. Rough around the edges, didn’t have too many redeeming
qualities to be honest. But he worked well with us as a whole. He
kept to himself and when it came time to do his job, he did it
well. He was never one to get hooked on drugs. He was never late to
rehearsal. He was as steady as a drummer should be. He certainly
was no Bonzo.”

He paused and gathered his thoughts. The
headlamps of a passing car lit us up with garish light for one
second before plunging us into obscurity again.

“He was interested in the occult since high
school. None of us took him seriously. Then as Black Sabbath and
Alice Cooper got more popular, he started to indulge in it more. He
wanted to make it his thing. He believes it…”

“Do you believe it?” I whispered.

He furrowed his dark brows. “I don’t know
what I believe anymore. If there’s black magic and white magic,
this is one big gray area.”

“Is he human?” I asked.

Sage snorted loudly and shot me a bewildered
look. I suppose that sort of question deserved it. “Is he human?
What…of course he’s human, Dawn. He’s someone I wouldn’t mind
punching in the face again, but he’s human. He’s a human being.
Why? What happened between you guys?”

I sighed, feeling a little bit stupid. Part
of me wanted to believe that I saw his face contort into that of a
demonic hellbeast, and part wanted to blame it on paranoia, stress,
and sleep deprivation. “He…got all angry and like threw me against
the wall and got all up in my face. I just asked him about the
groupies. I may have called them psychos.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Sage said angrily.
“They are fucking psychos. And the only reason they never leave is
because he keeps inviting them around. Do you know how many times
during the last tour I discovered he had given them All Access
Passes?”

“They’re after you too, you know,” I told
him.

His eyes hardened like steel. “Believe me, I
know.”

He looked off at the auditorium as the
reverberation from Grand Funk filled the air, his jaw wiggling back
and forth. A light breeze came along and softly tossed up his black
curls.

“What do you want me to do?” he said, his
voice flat and emotionless.

“What do you mean?”

“He has no right to put his hands on you
like that. No right to talk to you like that. If you want him off
this tour, just give me the word and I’ll do it. Believe me, I’ll
do it. It would be my pleasure.”

His offer caught me off-guard. He would kick
a lifelong member of the band off the tour…if I asked? He’d do that
for me?

I watched him carefully, trying to see why
he’d do it. “You’d have no drummer.”

“We can always get another drummer,” he said
with a dry laugh. “We’re one of the more popular bands on the road
right now. We could probably even get someone big to fill his
shoes.”

I should have said yes. I should have asked
Sage to get rid of Graham. But there was that nagging doubt in the
back of my mind that I was just a girl and I was overreacting. If
Sage kicked Graham off the tour for someone like me, well that
would indeed go down in history. I couldn’t ask for that weight on
my shoulders.

“Don’t kick him off,” I told him.

He didn’t look happy at that prospect. “Are
you sure?”

“Yes, just…make sure he stays away from me.
You can bet I won’t be doing his interview anymore.”

“So you’re staying?” he asked, sounding
surprised.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Dawn…” he warned.

“Sage,” I retorted. “I don’t run away.
Remember? You said things have a way of finding you anyway.”

He watched me for a few moments and his
closeness brought about the smell of pipe tobacco that he kept
rolled up in his shirt pocket, the tobacco I never saw him smoke.
He exhaled, a sigh of acceptance.

“That may be right. But that doesn’t mean I
have to like it.” His expression grew serious and he leaned a few
inches closer to me. In the dark, beside me on the grass, he was
more brooding, more manly, more mysterious than ever before.
Another breeze wafted over us, smelling like foliage and heat, and
tousled his hair ever so lightly. Once again my body became
electric with nerves, and my lips tingled at the idea of being
kissed. It was hard not to think about that when his face was so
close, his lips so full, his eyes sexual and somber all at once. I
loathed myself for feeling this way.

“Dawn,” he said gravely. “I want you to
promise me something. Promise me that the first sign of things
getting…fucked up…weird…too much…that you’ll go home.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him
things were already fucked up, weird, and too much, but he went
on.

“Just listen, please. I know you hate the
idea of going home, but you’ve caught a lot of shows, spent a lot
of time on the road, you’ve interviewed most of the band. You’ve
really got everything you need.”