The Devil's Metal: A Rockstar Romance (The Devils Duet Book 1)

by Karina Halle

  I pursed my lips, pretending I was thinking when I wasn’t.

  “Oh, seriously?” Mel caught on. “Ryan?”

  I shrugged. “I’d be on the road for who knows how long. They say a couple of weeks but if I don’t get the story, that might turn into three or four. I might be there for the whole tour, I don’t know. So what if I come back here and Ryan has already left for Seattle?”

  She palmed her face and shook her head. “You’re crazy, woman. Crazy fucking city, that’s what you are, that’s where you live.”

  It was crazy city. But it was the truth. The sad, pathetic truth.

  She sighed and snatched the beer back from me. “So, you’re considering not going on tour with one of your favorite bands. With one of your favorite musicians, the man you call the musical genius of our time, Mr. Sage Knightly, who happens to be one fine piece of ass. Because you’re afraid that your loser creep ex-boyfriend might be gone?”

  I cringed and opened my mouth to defend Ryan. Sure, he didn’t break up with me in the nicest way, and I had caught him cheating on me (though it was only a kiss, he swears), but Ryan had my heart for the better part of my life and—

  “Turn off your brain!” Mel yelled, interrupting my deluded thoughts. “I know what you’re thinking! And guess what, he is already gone. I’m sorry girl, I hate to sound mean but you really ought to get it through your thick skull that you and Ryan are dunzo. And because of that, your life is about to get awesome. You’re going to let some boy who wasn’t even good enough to stay with you, you’re going to let him prevent you from actually reaching your dream?”

  “No,” I told her. I wasn’t.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “No!” I repeated.

  She cupped her ear with her hand. “I can’t hear you.”

  “I said no!” I yelled. Moonglow snorted from down below.

  Mel grinned. “That’s better. Now slap me some ace.”

  We high-fived. She brought out another beer from the cooler and tossed it to me and we clinked bottles over floating dust and summer sweat.

  “So, back to my question…which one of them are you going to shag?”

  I laughed. “Oh, Mel. You know me.”

  She watched me carefully, deep in thought. “Actually, I don’t think you even know you right now. But you’re about to find out exactly who Dawn Emerson is. And you might find that after being on a bus with some of the hottest, most virile men in the USA, you’ll be coming back a whole new woman. And the only way you’ll get there is by being shagged to death. Preferably by more than one man.”

  She finished that off by wagging her brows. I giggled, my face going uncharacteristically red. I knew there wasn’t going to be any “shagging” going on, but I didn’t doubt for a second that I was going to come back a whole new woman.

  The question was: What kind of woman was I going to be?

  “First time flying?” the woman next to me asked.

  I looked at her kind face, fear flashing in my eyes. My hands were gripping the armrests until they turned blue, the safety belt tightened across my stomach as far it would go. Gee, how could she tell?

  I nodded, swallowing hard. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to tear off the belt, run down the aisle, and jump down the emergency slide. The bus back to Ellensburg had to still be waiting outside the Seattle airport. I could use my return ticket, hop back on, and within a few hours I’d be back in my father’s arms and squeezing Eric to death. I’d never left home before. I’d never been on an airplane before. Today was full of way too many firsts and my queasy, panicking body wasn’t having any of it.

  On top of that, I was sad and already missing everyone. Mel was right when she said that my brother and dad would be fine with me leaving. But it didn’t make it hurt any less. And it definitely didn’t ease the pressure. That morning I saw the sorry sense of relief in my father’s face. It made him look years younger. He was happy that I was going, knowing I was fulfilling a passion, and relieved that I’d be bringing home a check at the end of all of it. His salary as a repairman was barely enough to keep us going in this recession and it was peanuts compared to the farm when the cattle were grazing and the hay was growing. My contribution would help us out a lot, financially and mentally.

  As for Eric, well I could tell he was putting on his brave face. But he could never fight the tics that came with emotion, and that’s what eventually gave him away. Plus he was my brother. He was as close to me as anyone could be and I would have done anything for him. If he had opened his mouth and said, “Please, Dawn, don’t go,” I wouldn’t have gone. But he hadn’t, because he loved me too and he wanted to prove that he could take care of Dad, even if Dad couldn’t take care of him. He told me to do good, to write every day, that he’d take Moonglow out on walks in the field to keep her active, and that he’d listen to Hybrid albums and send good vibes. I knew he would too. He was a good kid like that.

  Then there was Mel. I’d never seen the girl cry in the eleven years I’d known her, but damn if I didn’t see some extra moisture welling up in those big brown eyes of hers. Of course she had to send me off with a few extra things that she shoved in my suitcase. One of them was her favorite t-shirt, white with stars on it that said “Mel Rocks Your Socks.” She had picked it up in Portland once at some funky shop and wore it at least once a week. She said she was giving it to me for good luck, “like a lucky Mel’s foot—except a shirt instead of my foot.”

  She then proceeded to give me a blue dress with wide sleeves and a deep v-neck in both the front and back. I had only three dresses: a light cotton one that reached the floor, my tacky rodeo queen one, and the one I wore to prom. Those definitely weren’t coming with me on my trip and Mel knew it.

  “You might have to look like a woman,” she said with a wink. “I thought this was a bit rock-ish too.”

  I held up the dress against me. It would reach my knees at least but the top was a bit too risqué for my liking. But I thanked Mel anyway, brought her into a big embrace, and I was off on the Greyhound, looking down at the three of them as the bus left the station, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

  I spent most of the bus ride earlier trying to busy myself and keep my mind occupied from the pangs of sadness that hit my heart, and the fright that fluttered around in my stomach as I took on the unknown. I decided the best course of action would be to prepare myself as much as I could for Hybrid. I started by looking back at what I had written, including the piece that examined the evolution of their sound.

  Hybrid. According to Webster’s, it is “anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or incongruous kinds: a hybrid of the academic and business worlds.” In the music world, Hybrid is a bastard combination of sexual prowess, chugging guitars, and swaggering bass with delicate hints of country blues and Latino flavor. It is a mess of a band, who, with their upcoming third album, are already pushing the envelope with their energetic live shows and intense fearlessness.

  Yeah, it was a bit cliché to have that dictionary definition, but whatever. Hybrid won me over with their sound, the way they took a band like Led Zeppelin and made it roll like a freight train. They wanted to take on anything—anything—and do it louder. Harder. Better. I loved them for that.

  Sitting beneath the ominous shadow of the snow-capped Mount Shasta lies the Northern California town of Redding. There’s not much to it. Dry, rolling hills spread lazily about on both sides of the interstate, dotted with farms and orchards. It’s a slow pace of life here, good, honest and humble. So where the hell did the band Hybrid come from as they clawed their way out of Redding’s dusty belly? How did that town produce the heaviest, most groundbreaking band to ever grace American soil?

  I had often wondered that. That was one thing I hadn’t seen in many interviews with the band—how everything really got going, what inspired them all as individuals?

  To answer this we have to look back to where it all started. Imagine
a fifteen-year-old Robbie Oliver strutting about in his parent’s garage to Mickey Brown’s thunderous guitar and Mickey’s brother, Austin, on bass. On the lead guitar they had Bill Watkins, a skilled guitarist who was a friend of Robbie’s father. They’ve even got a neighborhood kid on the drums just trying to keep up. Fast forward a few months, and the band has gotten rid of the neighborhood kid and put in Sage Knightly instead. Yes, little Sage started on the drums but it wasn’t long before things were shaken up. Bill suffered a mild heart attack, and Austin Brown came down with a good ol’ fashioned case of mono. Sage jumped at the opportunity to do lead guitar—not a far stretch since he was the key songwriter and could play any instrument—and Noelle Clark, Mickey’s girlfriend, took over the bass. Soon, Graham Freed answered an ad in the Redding classified section, and they had a new drummer as well. This was the real start of Hybrid, a band that mixed genres and their own musicians.

  My own obsession with the band started with Ryan, actually. We were into a lot of music together, and though his tastes leaned more towards the blues and country, he picked up Hybrid’s first self-titled album on a whim while visiting San Francisco. There had been no radio play for the album at all, so no one had really heard of them. But for whatever reason, Ryan bought the record, took it back home to Ellensburg and played it for me in my room. I wasn’t hooked right away. Sometimes it sounded too loud. Other times, too weird. But it got its claws in me, and pretty soon I was learning everything I could about the band.

  Which, at the time, wasn’t much. With no radio play, they also had no press. I’d written a fan letter to the address on the back of the record but never heard back. They were reclusive and mysterious. It made me love them more.

  Then the second album, Asteroid, was released on Elektra Records and things exploded. Their first single, “Red Blues Sun” got airplay everywhere. It was the song for the summer of ’73. They started touring and making appearances on The Midnight Special with their quieter numbers like “Pieces of Ash” and “The Deal Fell Through.” Robbie and Sage became the focus of the band. Robbie for his extraordinary voice, his manic, monkey-like behavior on stage, and his foxy Californian good looks. Sage for being a 6’3” powerhouse of pure talent, the driving force behind the band, and the one code the press couldn’t crack. Where Robbie loved nothing more than to talk about himself and the music (and the women), Sage never said much of anything at all.

  I was going to have to change that.

  The roar of the airplane engines coming alive shook me out of my thoughts. We had coasted up the runway and now we were headed for the sky.

  I looked over at the lady next to me. She had a book out and was thoroughly engrossed, not paying attention at all to the fact that we were about to be launched into the air in a metal tube with wings. I had brought a book too, Carrie by some new author, but there was no way I’d be able to concentrate on it while 35,000 feet in the sky. I didn’t even know why I’d picked that book as it looked kind of scary and scary stuff wasn’t really my thing.

  I wasn’t sure if it was because I was thinking of the book, or because we were now in the air and I was terrified of us falling to our deaths, but an incredible chill passed over my body, causing every hair on my arms to stand up. My eyes had been squeezed shut for the last few minutes so I opened them to the circulated air and fluorescent lights.

  The chill intensified.

  In the narrow space between the seats in front of me was the shadowed face of someone staring in my direction. I could barely make out that it was a little boy, maybe around six years old. He kept his dark eyes on me. He opened his mouth to grin.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  It lasted only a second, only a flash of white teeth, but I could have sworn his teeth were fanged. Sharp as razors and entirely inhuman.

  Then the smile vanished and the boy turned around.

  I spent the rest of the plane ride with my eyes locked on the back of his seat. I didn’t fear the airplane anymore—I feared something else.

  It wasn’t until we were getting up to get our bags that I got another glimpse of him. He was smiling, perfectly normal teeth, chatting to his parents, a cute young boy overall. He didn’t look my way once, and by the time I was walking into the airport, dragging my carry-on behind me, I’d come to the conclusion that it was all in my head.

  Why on earth had I just spent a couple of hours on an airplane focused on some random little boy when I had more pressing things to think about? Was it just a distraction for my mind? Because it had worked.

  Now, as passengers dispersed in the arrivals terminal, I had to look for a man carrying a sign that said Dawn Emerson on it.

  The man would be Hybrid’s manager, Jacob Edwards.

  The man who would take me to the band at the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

  The band who would become my shadow for the next few weeks.

  I was hit by such a burst of excitement that I thought my heart was going to bounce its way out of my chest. My knees began to quiver, the handle of my bag starting to slip out of my clammy hands. Could I do this? I didn’t even know where I was.

  Denver, right, Denver, Colorado. I was Dawn Emerson in Denver, Colorado, having survived her first plane trip ever with a non-demonic little boy. I was thousands of miles away from home, standing in an airport full of strangers going back and forth. I was on the verge of something epic. It could go well, it could all go bad, but it was going to be epic in whichever way it went.

  I was going to throw up.

  I spied the signs for the bathroom and began to hurry my way there when I heard someone call out my name.

  I stopped and forced the vomit to stay down. I tried to compose myself. Smoothed the fringe down on my shirt.

  I turned around and looked. Over by the baggage claim was a tall, red-headed fellow holding a plastic sign that had my name on it. His eyes lit up at my gaze and he gestured for me to walk over to him with a quick shake of his head.

  “You’re Dawn, right?” he yelled, full-on Cockney accent. People in the terminal turned to look at us, perplexed at the ginger invasion.

  I nodded, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “Well hurry up and piss and get your ass over here, time is money.”

  Yes, he certainly did just shout that at me from across the airport.

  I was a little too annoyed to piss or vomit now. So this was the Jacob Edwards, was it? What a rude dude.

  I straightened my shoulders, gripped my bag tighter, and hurried off toward him.

  “Dawn, nice to finally meet you,” he said as I neared him. “I’m Jacob Edwards, but you can call me The Cob. Actually don’t. I can tell I might like you and I only let buggers call me that.”

  Now that I was up close, I could see he was quite the brutal looking character. Oh, he was handsome in a peculiar way with a large sloping forehead and broad chin. His eyes were small and sparkling, a weird amber color, and his nose had been broken a few times. Freckles dusted the tops of his cheeks along with pockmarks.

  This was the man who kept Hybrid under control. Given some of the rumors I had heard, I wondered how often he was able to do his job. Guess I’d be finding out.

  A little thrill ran through my body at that thought, and I held out my hand. I needed to act professional, assertive.

  “Nice to meet you, Jacob. Thank you for, you know, thinking of me,” I said. He took my hand in his and gave it a bone-crushing squeeze. I had no doubt he could have broken it in two. So much for being assertive.

  He held on to it for a few more seconds, looking deep into my eyes like he was testing my pain threshold or something. Then he released it and smiled. “It was nothing. Now let’s get started. I have a cab waiting for us.”

  I couldn’t help but feel shy while looking at him. There was something magnetic about his presence and it was hard to guess his age. His mannerisms and skin made him look older, but his eyes and smile placed him at about thirty. He was a beefy guy, wide at the
waist, built like a tree. His knuckles looked fat and he had a bunch of gold rings on them. His suit was checkerboard and ugly.

  He turned and started marching toward the door. I followed behind him, my long legs trying to match his, my brain lagging behind. I ignored the tingling sensation in my hand.

  We burst through the main doors and into the Colorado sunshine. It was brighter here than at home, the air smelling fresh from the mountains. I immediately imagined Moonglow tossing up her white mane, Arab nostrils wide, soaking in the oxygen. This was horse country, a more rugged version of home.

  But now wasn’t time to be thinking about home. We had stopped at a cab that was running at the side of the road. Jacob tossed my sign in the trash (kind of a bummer because I would have liked to have kept that as a souvenir), then opened the door to the backseat, taking my suitcase from me with the other hand.

  “Get in,” he gave me a little shove toward the door. “And be careful, she bites.”

  She bites?

  I got in and sat in the back of the cab, expecting to see a dog or something. Instead I saw the very unamused face of Miss Noelle Clark. Bassist. Girlfriend of Mickey Brown. An original member of Hybrid, and one of the hottest chicks in the music industry.

  She was looking at me like I’d already tested her patience. Despite the dullness in her heavily-lined eyes and the tightness of her normally full lips, she was prettier in person than I’d seen in photographs and on TV. She was thinner than I imagined, but dressed straight out of a magazine spread, a headband on her head, her dark, wild hair trailing down her shoulders. She wore a slightly transparent black lace dress and tall platform boots. It was sexy and hard-edged all at once. She was one of the few musicians who could pull off the Alice Cooper look without being Alice Cooper.

  And I was very aware that I was shoved in the back of a cab with her and staring at her blatantly.

  “Hi,” I said awkwardly. I wiped my sweaty hand on my cords and put my hand out for her. “I’m Dawn. I’ll be—“

  “I know why you’re here,” she said quickly. She turned her attention to Jacob who was just coming into the car. “Can we get a move on or what?”