The Lamb and the Gray Battle

October 28, 2022

Once again, Brantley had lied to her. The Banned Music rally was too controversial to be held on the OSU campus, so they were relegated to a high school a few miles away. Halloween was the one time demons were allowed out in PC. She was sitting on the piano bench, chimes ringing as the wind blew. The stage was set up on the football field and the music groups were preparing in the locker rooms.

"Soon, Evie," Brantley said. He sat on the piano bench next to her. The notes were random, so he started playing, Heart and Soul.

A news crew filmed the various groups, talked to kids at the school.

"Are you worried about riots or government retaliation? Jail time? A yellow mark on your lineage papers? What about your family? Neighbors?"

The Pure and Clean citizens were at home, knelt down, praying. Police patrolled the streets, not just outside the high school, but at the college houses known to shelter demon lovers.

Evie shifted toward the grassy field. Kids were setting up chairs. The burly guys and athletes toted four and eight chairs at a time. Some rally. The kids would sit like they were at church with programs in their laps.

Brantley took Evie's soft palm, ran a finger over her skin. He'd had a couple of girls in high school, then it had been Ashley for two years in college. Evie pulled her hand back into her lap.

"I've never felt this way before."

Evie tapped the piano keys with her left hand, her back to Brantley, her glazed over eyes staring at the little insects crawling over the grass and chairs.

"You hold onto our age difference, like it matters. But age is just a number. When I'm forty, you'll be forty-four and it won't mean a thing."

"You won't listen to me. No one ever listens to me," she said.

"I am listening, Evie. Stop talking like you're a decrepit swamp monster."

Evie was trudging through an abyss, no escape. "Dragon," she said. "Not a swamp monster."

Wringing every last drop of courage from his heart, he said, "When I was young, when my father first died, I felt invisible. I wanted to be special. I dyed my hair and I bought a demon-hacked hard drive from a friend at school—a piece of junk, by the way."

The piano sounded like a trickle of water in a fountain.

"I know you're adopted," he said.

"I'm not adopted," Evie said.

"Mom told me—"

"She's wrong. I'm not adopted."

Brantley said, "I know you feel alone. But you're not."

"You have no ability to understand me. No one here does."

Evie scratched at the sedation patch, picked at it until she could rip it off. She was beginning to think only one person really understood her and she'd hated him for centuries for the wrong reasons.

A hum like a pashmina wrapped around the stadium. Evie attacked the piano keys, tapped out an arpeggio.

"I don't dye my hair," she said.

"Liar," Brantley scoffed.

"You should know better. Your mother can't dye her hair and she has almost no demon blood."

"Don't talk about my mother like that."

"I used to dye it black with ink and hide it under bonnets. When white men started to settle here, when they got so numerous that I couldn't just slip away to my home," she said. "I'd use mud when I was desperate. White people have always been cruel to us."

"Evie, stop it."

"It used to be this faction against that faction, this faction supported this descendant of Hades and this faction supported that descendant of Hela. Then it was this demon slayer clan against that one. This demon slayer clan was descended from the Mighty Fiadh. This witch clan descended from the Mighty Quinn."

"Now I know you're joking."

Evie said, "Ireland was a battleground for the strongest. I hated it."

"Evie, this is Columbus, Ohio. It's not some legend that you're role playing for Dylan."

"I know where I am."

She spread both hands over the keyboard. The words spilled off her lips, Irish, but Brantley didn't know that. It was throaty, like she was forcibly trying to dislodge phlegm. Brantley understood the words. His skin covered in goosebumps.

"The world wants to hide me away, kneel under their boot. Conform to their ideas, hate, absolute."

Latin dripped from her mouth as easily as the Irish words, but smoother.

Evie rose as if by the control of another, slipped each foot forward, paused at the lip of the stage. The students and volunteers gathered, hypnotized.

Wings. She shot into the air.

"Gloria," she cried, soaring into the sky, her hair a mass of clouds, rolling out, a fog over the crowd.

Brantley fell off the piano bench, scuttled back.

Fireworks burst, but it was her. Her form shifted into a gigantic wine red dragon. She disappeared in the sky, then blasted down onto the ground, the earth rumbling. She filled the football field.

"Gloria," she cried again and the audience echoed. "Alleluia!"

Brantley searched the audience, a chorus singing with each note she trilled. Evie shook her body, lapped up the worshipers obeying every twitch of the hip and every smile she dazzled them with.

When she twirled to him, her tail encircled her. The face was human, but dragon red.

Newsmen had cameras on her, but just as the zealots were blind to her hand, so were the cameramen.

"You think you can drown me in a lake, throw water on me until I wear away?"

Brantley sputtered, "I don't want to."

Her head of curls shook.

"Good."

She turned back to the worshipers, shifted between her human form and dragon form, the pied piper leading the children in a parade. Impossible that a dragon that enormous could revert to that human female. The music was a cascade, rhythms beating out, but no one was at the drums, no one played the guitar. She made the music from nothing and everything.