The Devil's Metal (30 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“What happened to your arms, Dawn?” Fiddles
asked with his crooked brown eyes.

I had just rolled out of the bunk and was
rubbing my eyes at the murky daylight that was filtering in through
the dirty windows of the bus.

Oh right, my scabby, cut arms. The places
where the GTFOs had made their presence known.

Even though the band knew all about them, I
held back on filling them in on what happened to me. Everyone
except Sage.

“The crowd got pretty crazy,” I replied
casually.

Close to New Orleans, we pulled into a diner
off the main highway. It was white and intricate, like a small
version of a plantation house, and the parking lot was bordered by
waving sweet gum and magnolia. It was the perfect place to grab
Sage’s arm as we got off the bus and lead him toward the shade of a
towering oak.

We stopped by the rough bark, eyeing each
other like we’d been separated for months and weren’t sure where we
stood.

“We have to talk,” I said, letting go of his
arm.

He smiled and my heart melted. “Are you
breaking up with me, Dawn? I thought things were going well.”

I couldn’t help but smile in return. I
quickly composed myself.

“What happened last night?”

He frowned but I didn’t believe his
confusion for a second. “The stage collapsed.”

One of my eyes began to twitch. “Aside from
that. You didn’t see or hear anything strange?”

If he was surprised by my question, he
didn’t act it. He calmly folded his strong arms. In the swampy
setting around us, the snakes tattooed on his forearms took on a
whole new realism. “Please elaborate.”

“I will. And keep in mind that I know what
I’m about to say sounds ludicrous but I’m past the point of caring.
I’m past the point of most things now.”

He nodded, his full pink lips pursed in
anticipation.

I ignored them and went on to tell him
everything that happened at the concert. I didn’t fill him in on
the backstory, about what I saw with Noelle, or my talks with Bob,
but I told him everything else.

When I was done I could tell it was taking
time to sink in. A range of emotions flashed in his eyes and his
chest heaved as if breathing became a chore. He bit his lip like if
he didn’t, the truth would spill from his mouth.

Acting on that and nothing else, I swear, I
took a step toward him, closing the gap, and reached for his lips
with my hand. I put my fingers on them softly, and said, “Whatever
it is you’re not telling me, I think I deserve to know now. Whether
I’m just an annoying journalist to you or something more. Or
something less. I’m still a person. And, believe it or not, I care
about your stupid band. I care about you.”

He grabbed my wrist with his hand. He
stepped closer, so his face was right up to mine and said in a
lowered and smooth voice, “You do deserve to know everything. Even
the things that I can’t come to terms with. But not now. Not here.
This isn’t the place.”

I looked around me at the green lawns and
swampy surroundings. We were about to board the bus and head into
the city of voodoo, the city of New Orleans. If Sage said whatever
he had to tell me needed to wait, I believed him.

“Okay,” I said, shoving my finger in his
face. “But before the show and after the show, wherever you are,
I’m going to be there. You’re going to tell me what the fuck is
going on and after that, you’re going to give me my god damn
interview.”

I thought he was going to lick my finger for
a second. Instead he said, “Deal.”

We made our way back to the diner, grabbed a
bite to eat, and were back on the road. The road to answers.

***

I stayed true to my word. I pretty much
became Sage’s shadow, following him everywhere he went, my tape
recorder tucked firmly into my messenger bag. He tolerated me,
barely, and I never pushed him for answers. I just waited and made
sure he knew I was waiting.

The band was understandably jittery when it
came time to perform. Robbie was hopped up on painkillers for his
hand, something he was happy about considering he usually paid a
lot for the same pills off the street. Everyone else was
double-checking the stage every five minutes. Luckily the venue was
small, sturdy, and fairly new.

Despite that though, barely anyone showed
up. It was the most timid, lackluster, and small crowd I’d seen yet
on the tour. I would have thought New Orleans and its occult and
black magick leanings would have brought out the fans and music
goers with morbid curiosity, kind of like a car wreck, but that
wasn’t the case. People were scared of Hybrid and stayed away.
There were maybe fifty people there, tops.

The band looked scared of themselves too.
They played subdued and with an air of defeat. Robbie went through
the motions, containing himself (the drugs probably had a hand in
that), and even Graham’s drums sounded faint. It was a sad, sad
show, and as I stood on the side stage with the increasingly
mysterious Jacob, I could see the lines of worry on each and every
band member’s foreheads.

I had thought about asking Jacob some more
pressing questions about Graham and the GTFOs but judging from the
swears that spilled out of his lips every five minutes and the
hate-filled glare in his eyes, I decided against it. Whether he had
something to do with it all or not, he was the band’s manager and
for once he wasn’t able to manage everything. There was no doubt
that a lawsuit was going to follow from the stage collapse and
there was certainly no way the band was going to make a profit from
the New Orleans show. Things were slowly spiraling out of control.
Maybe Jacob didn’t care about needless deaths and mental illnesses,
but he did care about money and now it was finally hitting him
where it hurt.

When the band was finished and slogged off
the stage with heavy hearts and shoulders, I walked to the
backstage area to go wait for Sage. There was more than one
dressing room for the guys, so Sage had taken one for himself and I
sat on the chair outside, waiting patiently. I only left his side
for a few minutes when I had to go to the bathroom and when I came
back, the door was still closed.

One of the other dressing rooms opened and
Mickey came out.

“Hey,” I said to him, almost tempted to call
him ‘boyo’ as the others did. “Did you see Sage come out?”

Mickey finished buttoning up his plaid shirt
and shrugged. “I haven’t seen him.”

He started to walk off.

I called after him. “Mickey. I know I
haven’t had the chance to tell you this, but I’m really sorry about
Noelle. I liked her you know.”

He twitched for a second and stopped. He
looked at me over his shoulder.

“Don’t talk about her like she’s not coming
back,” he said. His eyes held mine for a brief second and I could
see a wealth of sadness in them before he disappeared around the
corner.

I sighed, feeling lost and stupid, like I
overstepped my bounds, and sat back in the chair for a few moments.
Finally I got up and rapped lightly on the door.

“Sage? Are you in there? It’s time.”

I put my ear to the door and listened. I
heard something from inside the room, like a chair being pushed
back.

“I’m coming in,” I said. “You better cover
up what you don’t want me to see.”

Was it wrong to hope he wasn’t covering up
anything? I nearly drooled at the thought. I wiped my mouth
cautiously then opened the door.

It was empty. What I could see of it anyway.
It was obviously never meant to be a dressing room and had an extra
room that was separated by half a wall. There were stacks of chairs
and old PA equipment spilling out from around the corner.

That’s where I heard the noise again,
followed by the sound of a chair being pushed back.

“Sage?” I ventured again. I walked toward
the noise, wondering what he could be doing back there. I wished
the light from the middle of the room reached far enough, but most
of the chairs and equipment were lost in shadow.

I was nearly at the wall, ready to peak over
the side, when I heard another noise.

One that made my blood run cold.

It was a wet, slopping sound, like something
slimy and heavy was being dragged along the tile floor, heading in
my direction. I had heard and seen the shadow of the same thing on
the bus, and I was in no hurry to see it again. In my head I
pictured a giant earthworm with two legs, dragging its slimy gray
segmented body along, leaving trails of goo and blood, a round
mouth filled with rotating teeth, open and ready for sucking.

I almost vomited from fright.

“Dawn?”

I gasped and whipped around, startled to see
Sage standing in the doorway, rubbing a towel at his curls.

His eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

I looked back at the wall. The noise had
stopped. That was probably the only chance we were getting.

I turned and ran toward him.

“I think we need to get out of here,” I
said, grabbing his forearm. My fingers barely fit around it. He
didn’t budge, his eyes on the back of the room.

“Did you see something?”

“I didn’t see something, I heard something,”
I told him, panic rising in my voice. I tugged on him again. “And
if you know what’s good for you, you’re not going to stick around
and let it show itself to you.”

He bit his lip, almost as if he was deciding
whether to explore it or not. He looked down at me, a knowing twist
to his lips.

“Is it something bad?”

“Sage,” I said, pulling him closer, keeping
my gaze steady. “It’s the worst.”

He nodded quickly. “I thought it might come
to this.”

We scampered out of the room and slammed the
door shut.

“Should we warn the others?” I asked,
nodding at the other dressing room.

He shook his head. “If we tell them not to
go in there, they’ll just go in there.”

We crossed the hall and he knocked on the
door. “Guys?”

“Do you know what it is?” I whispered.

He gave his head a slight shake. The
dressing room opened and Fiddles popped his head out.

“What’s up, my good man?”

“Dawn and I are going to meet a friend of
mine,” Sage told him.

This was news to me.

“It’s like, getting late, man,” Fiddles
said.

“We won’t be too long. And if we are, hold
the bus. This is very important.”

Fiddles shrugged. “All right, catch you
later.”

He went back in the room and Sage was
walking fast toward the exit. I ran after him, my bag bouncing
against my thigh.

“Where are we going? I thought I was going
to get some answers.”

“We’re both going to get some answers.”

He opened the door and we stepped out into
the humid night that smelled of coffee and gasoline. I’d always
dreamed of visiting New Orleans, having some beignets and wandering
around the French Quarter, reveling in the atmosphere. Of course
life had different plans for me and I soon found myself in the back
of a dodgy cab with Sage as he read out an address from a business
card.

I snatched it from his hand and peered at it
in the light.

“Mambo Maryse,” I read out loud. There was
only the name and an address. “What on earth is a Mambo?”

“Someone who hopefully can help us.”

“Help us?”

He gave me a grave look. “Sorry, Dawn.
You’re in this now, too.”

I looked at the cabbie who was eyeing us
suspiciously in the rearview mirror. “Do you know what a Mambo
is?”

His eyes grew wide and he shook his head
vigorously. “No man, no I don’t want any part of this. No part.
I’ll drop you on the corner of the street and then you’ll have to
walk.”

Sage scrunched up his forehead with his
hands. “Whatever, just get us as close as you can.”

I wanted to throttle him and demand he tell
me what was going on. But getting answers from Sage was like
pulling teeth, and he had a fear of the dentist.

I sat back in the seat and tried to compose
my thoughts that were flying all over the place. It didn’t do me
any good. I couldn’t come up with any conclusions. I had no choice
but to wait until we met this Mambo Maryse.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Twenty minutes later the cab pulled to a
stop at the end of a deserted street. We had left the city a while
back and the land had changed from built-up and bright to dark and
spacious. This street bordered what looked to be swampland, maybe a
bayou or a river. Dark, depressed trees waved their long leaves in
a building wind. The houses facing them were scattered apart with
messy lawns and rusting trucks in the driveways. I suddenly wished
we had stayed back at the venue, but with that horrible sucking
creature in the dressing room, that wasn’t much of an option
either.

The cabbie didn’t waste a second and took
off when we closed the doors, the wheels spinning.

“Didn’t even have a chance to pay him,” Sage
muttered as it disappeared in the distance.

That wasn’t good.

He looked warily down the street we were on
where the faded streetlamps stopped The houses down that dark way
looked old and forgotten, almost swallowed up by the wild
vegetation.

“Looks like we’ll have to head down that way
for a bit.”

That also wasn’t good.

We walked, keeping a vigilant watch around
us for anything out of the ordinary. We passed one house where an
old lady sat in the shadowy porch chair, swinging with the breeze,
not moving an inch. I had to wonder if she was dead or alive.

“Can you at least tell me how you knew about
this person?” I whispered.

“My uncle,” was his answer. “He’s good for
this sort of thing. You meet a lot of strange people when you’re in
a traveling Mariachi band.”

“Unlike a traveling rock band?”