54 - The Bronzed Tail

Latoya found another black candle. She held it up, and then took something from her pocket. It was a small curl of bronze, tapering to a point. Thicker than a pig's tail, but not too dissimilar.

"Myra MacGregor's daughter Lyra gave this to me," she said. "She was born with this tail. Not too uncommon in Dagon's Hollow, and bronzing them isn't unusual either. I'm sure there's a story in that. But I want to talk about teenage rebellion when your mother thinks you're the daughter of the devil. I call it...

THE BRONZED TAIL

The black metal scene in Dagon's Hollow is unusually robust. Goat's heads and inverted crosses, mostly, but it was centered around The Cloven Hoof, the only record store in town. A place that had started in the 60s as a front for dealing weed and pills and had become, in its own way, an institution. I bought my first Bathory album there. Used to study the corkboard where bands advertised. Looking for members. Telling where the next gig would be.

"Poseurs."

Lyra MacGregor had a darker complexion than her mother. Small and dark, voluptuous rather than spare. The plain blue dress, which wouldn't have looked out of place on a novitiate for a nunnery, couldn't hide thick thighs and biceps, broad shoulders. She had the thick middle that implied considerable raw strength, like a shot-putter.

"Aren't they all?" I asked, and gave her a smile. I don't always feel attracted to women, but that didn't mean much with Lyra. She had physical presence. Not beautiful, but handsome in her own way, and the rather severely plain dress she affected was, in its own way, as distinctive as my Victorian skirts.

"No," Lyra said, her face absolutely serious. Then realized what she said and turned her face to not meet my gaze.

"So who's the real deal?" I asked. "Where are they playing?"

"I gotta go," Lyra said.

Well, that cinched it. I followed her out of the store and toward the campus library. She was a classic introvert. Blisteringly intelligent, socially awkward wallflower. So I played the extrovert. Kept pushing, prodding, questioning. Drawing her out of herself. Pried out her name, that her mother was a professor at the university. There was a way she talked about her mom that caught my attention.

"Religious studies?" I said. "Is she, ah, devout?"

"Yes," Lyra said.

"Strict?" I said. When an answer didn't come forward immediately, I pressed. "Is she the reason you dress like that?"

Lyra shot a glance at me.

"Sortof," she said. Then her voice dropped low. "She's a true believer. I'm not."

We were in the library now, on the third floor, near the back. Alone. I leaned in close.

"You know what I think?" I whispered, still smiling. Her face darkened, blood flooding her cheeks. "You're a rebel."

Her shoulders sank down.

"Yes," she said, with a kind of resignation I couldn't understand. She turned away from me. "I guess I am."

I was working on instinct, trying to figure out what key would open this lock. Without knowing what else to do, I slipped my arms beneath hers and grabbed her breasts, through that plain dress. She was so much bigger than me I had to press my body into her warm, broad back, her buttocks pressed against my hips.

She froze. Absolutely still as I groped her.

"If she's that uptight," I said. "Then let's really rebel. You know some group that isn't just posers? That's really fucking real? Then let's go. I'll make it worth your while."

Lyra seemed hesitant. I couldn't guess, then, at the internal struggle. Of course, I was also squeezing and groping her tits, really pushing the hard sell.

"There's a copse of trees, north of the tracks," she said after a long moment. "Saturday. Starts half an hour before midnight."

"It's a date," I said.

The moon was dying when we met by Eastside cemetery to go to the show. Lyra was still dressed like a wannabe nun, but I'd gone for practical boots instead of heels, and no panties beneath my skirts. I crooked her arm in mine and we walked in darkness, stepping over the tracks. I could hear the dull thud of drums from the dark patch of trees, see the light of a fire.

Every step Lyra took seemed to be heavy, ****. Shoulders tense. I still couldn't figure her out.

"Are you scared?" I asked.

"Not the way you think," she told me. "I guess all my life, I've been fighting...not to become like my parents. Like those hippies whose kids turned into yuppies and Silicon Valley types. Or the kids of punk rockers who grew up and became cops. That's the weird thing about it. We don't want our parents to define who we are, but at the end of the day, maybe they were right. Maybe they were on the right side. I never wanted to be a **** for order or stagnation. It's really hard to get that across, even to the black metal types. You can't fucking tell the poseurs anything. You have to show them."

They'd set up a little stage, not far from the fire. Just a frame of boards on cinderblocks. The crowd was small, but looked damn hardcore. Not all young or old, real mixed. A couple in corpsepaint, someone in biker leathers with drawings from Eliphas Levi's book of black magic and pacts inked on his bare chest, a girl with a shaven head and filed teeth. Nerdy types with steel-rimmed glasses and an odd intensity.

Lyra walked straight toward the stage. As she passed the fire, she pulled her dress up over her head and tossed it aside.

A strip of black fur ran down her massively muscled back. She stepped onto the stage and turned, and I saw those huge naturals...and below them, in a line, two sets of smaller breasts, the pink nipples hard in the cool air. The bronze tail hung on a thong about her neck, and she took it off and tossed it to me. I caught it in shock, as Lyra tossed back her head and gave a sound somewhere between a howl and a bleat.

All around me, the others tossed back their heads and gave answering cries. Clothing came off, the band behind her began to play—and in a voice like a Princess of Hell, Lyra MacGregor began to sing the invocation of the Black Mass.

Latoya held up the bronze spiral and gave a strange, wistful smile. "We can't escape who we are. Deny it for a time. Hide it. Yet I think Lyra really was happier once she realized that whoever her father was, whatever faith her mother espoused, it was up to her to decide to be fucking real."

With that thought, she blew out the black candle.