The Devil's Metal (29 page)

I made my way toward the back of the crowd
to escape all the dust that was being stirred up, wishing I had
worn my cowboy boots instead of sandals. I stopped at the side,
grateful for a cooling breeze that chilled the sweat on my
forehead. I felt like I’d been sweating for two weeks straight.

“Nice shirt,” said a boy who had sidled up
next to me. He was skinny as anything, all legs and arms and thick
glasses. His hair hung down to the middle of his back and braces
shined on his teeth.

I looked down at the Bad Company shirt I had
snagged at their show and smiled. Any fan of my type of music was a
potential friend.

I learned his name was Aaron and he was from
just outside of Memphis. He was there with his brother who wanted
to see Electric Duck Bath, though he was more of a Hybrid fan
himself.

“I heard they can wail,” he told me as if he
had some insider information.

I smiled agreeably and made sure my All
Access Pass was still tucked in the back pocket of my shorts. At
first it was fun to wear it like a badge of honor, but now I just
wanted to blend in with everyone else.

Hybrid got off to a high-powered start. I
guess Robbie convinced them to start with the cover of Children of
the Grave to whet people’s appetites and it worked. All the metal
heads, sans me and Aaron, made a beeline to the front of the stage
and started pushing against the feeble barricade.

I was just about to remark to Aaron on how
boisterous the crowd was when my heart nearly froze. There, to the
side of the barricade and by the stage, was Sonja.

She was standing there, watching me. I could
barely see her through the crowd, but I could feel her eyes on me,
the immense feeling of dread, sinking, drowning dread, like I was
being submerged in thick black tar.

Aaron said something to me but I couldn’t
hear him. All I could do was focus on Sonja.

Then she was no longer alone. Sparky and
Terri had joined her, the first time I saw them all together. They
followed Sonja’s haunting, terrible gaze until they were all
looking in my direction.

“Do you see those girls?” I asked Aaron, not
caring to hide the pure panic in my voice.

“What girls?”

“By the stage, to the left of it. The two
blondes and the black-haired one.”

“I see one blonde and one black haired one,”
he said. “They look pretty freaky, man.”

I looked up at him and saw he was squinting
in the right direction.

I turned my head back to the stage and saw
that he was right. Now it was only Terri and Sparky. And they were
starting to walk my way.

“Oh fuck,” I yelped.

“What, what?” asked Aaron. “Do you know
them?”

“Oh my god,” I whimpered, my heart coming to
life with a thump. “Oh my god.”

I looked around me, wondering where I could
go. The right side of the crowd was my only option. If I could run
through the audience, I could make my way to the side stage and get
there before anything could happen. In a mob of moving people, I
was an easy target. At least on stage I was in open view, and even
though I had my doubts about Jacob, I still knew he would protect
me to the end.

At least I hoped he would.

“What’s going on?” Aaron cried out in
confusion. Terri and Sparky were closer now, violet and black eyes
glowing supernaturally.

I shot him a terrified look. “Whatever you
do, Aaron, stay away from those girls. They are bad, bad news. I
have to go.”

I left him and started pushing my way
through the crowd, trying to get to the front. I was panicking,
sloppy, and nearly fell a few times as acid-trippers freaked on me
and chauvinistic metal heads tried to grab me. I didn’t want to
look behind me to see if Terri and Sparky were coming my way—I knew
they were. I could feel them, hot on my heels, like heat-seeking
missiles from Hell.

I almost made it to the front of the stage,
the hotly contested property in any popular show, when I saw Sonja.
She stood between me and the guard who stood at the side stage
entrance.

She smiled at me, coyly, her eyes a vivid
lavender which was just as creepy as the black holes I saw in her
face the other night.

I looked up at the stage to see if the band
had noticed, if they could see her, but Robbie was jumping around
like he had a fire under his ass and no one else was paying
attention. At one point Mickey looked down at me and gave me a nod
of recognition but it was like he didn’t see Sonja at all. I looked
at her translucent, thin body and saw no type of pass on her. No
one should have been in this area except photographers and there
were none at this particular show. The security guard at the stage
wasn’t even paying her any attention. I started to wonder if I was
the only who could see her.

Then Sonja raised her chin defiantly and
exchanged a heavy look with someone over my shoulder. I felt two
pairs of hot hands close around my arms and I didn’t need to turn
around to know who it was. I was caught.

Sparky and Terri dug their nails into me,
puncturing my skin with a fiery stab, hot blood running down my
arms, and they began to drag me away from the stage. I screamed and
I kicked but no one paid me much attention.

That wasn’t the only thing that made my skin
tighten with terror.

Sonja walked toward the stage and, before
shooting a smug smile my way, disappeared under it.

She walked right under the stage and was
gone.

That couldn’t have been good.

That wasn’t good at all.

And while my brain was trying to process
what I saw, I was getting further from the stage. A few people
stepped up to me and asked what was going on but Terri and Sparky
said I was suffering from a bad acid trip. I opened my mouth to
tell them it was a lie but no words could form. It was like one of
those dreams where you try to scream and you can’t. I couldn’t
utter a word to save my life.

And I was trying to save my life.

I was almost at the back, near the paddock
fence that led into deep, oaky woods, when Sparky’s hands came off
of me.

I looked around and Terri’s hands came away
too. Suddenly I had dropped to the ground, landing on my ass on the
hard dirt.

Aaron was standing above me with a similar
looking kid I assumed was his brother. They were standing between
me and the GTFOs and they weren’t mincing words.

“You get the fuck out of here before we call
security,” Aaron sneered through his braces. Sparky made a hissing
sound and made another move for me but Aaron’s brother put out his
hand and held her back.

“We have brown belts in Tae Kwon Do,” he
warned. “And I’ve been waiting to go all Bruce Lee on a couple of
chicks.”

I tried to catch my breath and got to my
feet. I took a proud stand behind them.

“Now it’s three against two and I’m a fan of
Bruce Lee too,” I threatened with false bravado. “Oh look, I can
talk again.”

Sparky and Terri exchanged a look before
Sparky hocked a loogie my way. I ducked just in time and it landed
on the dirt with a steaming hiss. Yeah, these chicks were totally
normal. Not Satanic at all.

“Enjoy the rest of the show,” Terri snarled,
and together they disappeared into the crowd.

Aaron and his brother turned to look at me
and I could only give them a smile of relief and thanks before I
remembered it wasn’t over yet.

“There’s another one,” I cried out. “She
went under the stage.”

“What?” one of them asked but I had already
started running. Sonja wouldn’t have been under there with that
disgustingly smug look on her face, unless…unless…

I was halfway back to the front when it
happened.

At first there was a terrific, inhuman
groan, followed by confused looks from the band members and hushed
words of bewilderment in the crowd. Then the stage began to buckle.
There was a crackling sound, like fireworks, and the scaffolding
above and behind the stage began to twist and snap just as the
ground beneath the band’s feet began to splinter like broken
toothpicks.

I screamed and tried to push harder through
the crowd, who were also panicking. The scaffolding collapsed
straight down, slamming into the stage and taking a bit of the
first row as well.

It was pure chaos. People were running
everywhere, screaming, crying. I was pushed back and back with the
incoming tide, further away from the place I needed to be.

When I was finally able to ride it out, when
the mass of people stopped pressing against me, I was able to run
toward the stage, the only person who, along with fire trucks and
paramedics, was just arriving at the scene. Their red lights and
sirens echoed in the night air, a too timely sense of déjà vu.

The security guard emerged from the stage,
holding his ripped off shirt to his head where it was bleeding
profusely.

“Stay back, miss, please.”

“I’m with the band!” I screamed. I fumbled
for the pass in my pocket, showing it to him just as Fiddles and
Graham emerged from the wreckage, looking dazed but uninjured.

“Where are the rest of them?” I screamed,
breaking out of the security guy’s grasp and getting in Graham’s
face. I was ready to blame this whole thing on him and the fact
that he was unscathed didn’t help either.

Graham just ignored me and walked off. He’d
probably blame that on some sort of post-accidental daze. But
Fiddles, god bless his weirdly named soul, grabbed hold of my hand
and brought me back to the stage, which was more or less a pile of
ruins and broken equipment. The huge banner that said Hybrid and
Electric Duck Bath was flapping in the wind at the bottom, and we
heard a few groans. As we lifted the banner off the ground, we saw
Robbie lying on his side, gritting his teeth in pain.

I dropped to my knees and touched him on the
cheek. “Robbie, are you okay?”

He nodded painfully. “My wrist. I think it’s
broken. Something hit it.”

I smoothed his golden hair from his face.
“Hang tight. I’m going to check on your brothers.”

The security guard was soon on my tail,
staying with Robbie as I climbed onto the rest of the stage.

“Sage? Mickey?” I cried out, my eyes
searching the collapsed areas where they should have been.

“We’re okay,” came a voice to the back. I
looked up and saw Sage and Mickey’s head poking up. They were off
the stage, completely behind it and standing on the ground.

I let out the breath I was holding in.

By the time I picked my way through the
stage rubble, the paramedics were busy treating people. So far,
somehow, it just seemed to be Robbie with a banged up wrist, the
security guard, and two concertgoers who were treated for minor
injuries. It looked far, far worse than it actually was.

I dodged the reporters who had gathered
around the scene. I wondered how they had gotten here so fast and
if there was some sort of journalist convoy that was following the
band around just like the GTFOs. Only they were the reporters not
the destroyers. I had come to the very weighty conclusion that the
psychotic, demonic girls were the cause of everything that was
plaguing the band.

And I had a feeling it wouldn’t come as a
surprise to either Sage or Jacob.

With those new thoughts forming in my head,
I ran around the collapsed stage looking for either one of them,
wanting answers, but neither were around. I did run into Aaron and
his brother, whose name was Dave, and I practically fell to my
knees in praise of them. I think they were pretty stoked to have
saved a young lady and played it off, but nonetheless, I gave them
my name and told them if they were ever at a Hybrid show to tell
security that Dawn Emerson had sent them. I didn’t know if it would
work, but I wanted to give their brave hearts just a bit of
hope.

I climbed on the tour bus and saw Mickey and
Sage sitting in the near dark with silent, grim expressions on
their faces. I looked at Bob.

“Where’s Jacob?”

Bob sighed. “He’s probably going to be a
while. The promoter of the show is blaming him and the band for the
stage collapse. He says Robbie’s bouncing around caused it
all.”

I shook my head but was unsure how much I
should say. Bob shot me a warning look and I decided to keep my
mouth shut for the time being. We were almost sure that Sage
wouldn’t bat an eye about our curse theory—and if he did it was a
well-rehearsed eye—but Mickey most likely had no idea. And he had
already gone through too many traumatic events for one lifetime.
Poor bearded dude deserved a medal.

I moved to the back and plunked myself down
beside Sage.

“Can I talk to you?” I whispered in his ear.
He still smelled like that sweet pipe tobacco, a scent I would
forever associate with weakening knees.

He seemed to think that over. Then he
whispered back, low voice and hot breath on my skin. “Can we talk
tomorrow? I’m having a hard enough time thinking as it is.”

I nodded. Even though Sage might know
something, he was still the leader of the band and still human. His
thoughts were obviously with Robbie, hoping that one of his best
friends, if not his best friend, was going to be okay.

I must have fallen asleep where I was,
because when I woke up, my head was on Sage’s shoulder and Jacob
was just coming on the bus. Robbie was behind him.

There were a few claps and I realized that
Graham and Fiddles had joined us on the bus too.

“It’s just a sprain,” Jacob announced. His
eyes glinted, unreadable. “He’ll be able to play in New Orleans
tomorrow, isn’t that right, Robbie?”

Robbie nodded and raised his wrapped wrist
in the air. “And the show goes on.”

I felt Sage stiffen up next to me. It lasted
only a second. But it was enough to tell me that we’d be talking
tomorrow no matter what happened. We were lucky. If things had gone
the wrong way there would be no show to carry on.