Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (16 page)

J
ina
chased after Lewis.  Room after room went by in a blur.  They might as well all
be the same.  Ah, here were the damn stairs.  Where had they been before they
all got separated? 

She descended and whirled into
the room. 

Lewis had stopped screaming.  She
saw him lying on an antique couch with wooden trim and claw feet.   He slept,
clutching the kaleidoscope like a teddy bear.  Poor thing.

She was glad to see the
kaleidoscope.  She felt safe to know it was near, that anything S.A. could try
would be dispelled by its magic and by the power Sandy had infused within it. 
Why hadn’t Lewis tried to use it on whatever it was that had frightened him?

And now where were they? 

It seemed a little like the room
they had started in.  Only now it was furnished.  And where was the old
telephone?  Instead, dim lamps lit the base of the stairs.  A violin graced a
small table.  An old style phonograph player rusted near it.  A music room? 

But best of all, her heart’s joy,
an upright grand, sat close to the stairs.  It was half falling apart, and
unlikely to be tuned, but... It had been so long since she had felt ivory under
her fingertips.

She listened to Lewis’s soft
breathing for a few moments.  Thinking again of the piano, she remembered back
to the times when she had played to impress guys.  Nice guys had actually asked
her out back then, guys that were going somewhere.

Lewis was going to be a lawyer.

Jina sat on the rickety stool and
prayed that most of the keys would work.  She tested them with an arpeggio that
spanned the entire keyboard.  Surprisingly, the keys
did
work, and even
more surprisingly, it was in tune.  Even her mother’s piano wasn’t in tune.

She heard Lewis stir behind her,
so she hastily chose a difficult, yet quiet piece out of her memory.  She wanted
to show off.

Her wiles were working.  Midway
through the piece, Lewis sat up.  Still clutching the kaleidoscope, he crept
over to the piano and knelt on the floor beside her. 

“You play well,” he whispered
when she finished with a delicately rolled chord.

“You liked it?  I didn’t pin you
to like classical.”

He shrugged.  “And I didn’t think
that of you either.”  He looked up at her and their eyes met.  “Got any more?”

Jina turned back to the keyboard. 
Lewis interrupted.  “No— Not now,” he said.  “I’d rather... I’d rather just
look at you.”

He swiveled her seat around
smoothly and resumed his gentle gaze.  She touched her forehead to his, and
they kissed.  The kissing turned frenetic.  Lewis stood, and guided Jina
backwards to the couch where they sat and began to make out.

After some minutes Jina pulled
away, and said, “This is really nice, but Sandy’s lost in this place.  We
should stop fooling around and find her.”

“No, Jina, I want you.  I love
you.”  He kissed at her neck.

“We can’t just leave her.”

As if in answer, they heard
screaming from far away in the house.

“It’s her!”

“There’s nothing we can do to
help.  S.A. wants us here.”  He touched her cheek.  “We might as well stay put
until he’s done... doing whatever it is.”

“How do you know he wants us
here?  Maybe he wants us to go looking for her.”

Lewis quickly glanced upward. 
There came a scraping sound from above, as if very heavy furniture were being
moved.  Jina leapt to her feet.  Now it was coming from the stairway.  She ran
to the base of the stairwell and looked up.  Where there once had been a
passage to the second floor, there was now a brick ceiling. 

She ran to the door on the
opposite side of the room.  To her relief it swung open.  But on the other
side, a brick wall.  Looking towards the two doorways at the base of the
stairs, she saw more bricks.

“I told you.”

“Fuck!  What is he doing to her?”

“Who knows.  We’ll find out soon
enough.  Maybe through firsthand experience.  We might as well enjoy ourselves
in the meantime.”

Jina walked over to Lewis and
held out her hand.  “Give me that.”  With a shaky hand, he surrendered the
kaleidoscope into her palm.  She looked through it and turned it towards the
door.  Still bricks.  A kaleidoscopic array of red bricks.

“They’re real.”

Lewis shrugged. 

She leaned over the couch and
pulled back the thick curtains.  There were windows, but they, too, were
bricked over.  Handing the kaleidoscope back to Lewis, she sat on the couch,
unzipped her gym bag, and started digging through it. 

“If he wants us stuck in here
because he’s concentrating on Sandy, that means he’s distracted and we can try
something.  Anything.”  Desperation made her voice quaver.  “Sandy found some
things in a closet.  She put them in here.  Maybe some of that crap will be
useful.”  As she spoke, she tossed out the coke bottle, twine, and a wire coat
hanger.

“To get through bricks?  Look, I
was trapped in a room for, I don’t know, weeks or something,” Lewis’s voice
grew increasingly louder.  “And it wasn’t even bricked in, so how in the
fuck
do you think we’re going to escape
if he doesn’t want us to!
”

Jina calmed down, stood, and
embraced Lewis.

“Shhh... I know it seems
hopeless.  I know you feel trapped.  I do to.”  She held his shoulders and
looked him in the eyes.  “But we have to try, right?  We have to do something.”

Lewis was crying.  “We could just
make out and enjoy what we can while we have a chance.”

Jina sighed.  “I have to help my
friend.”

She sat back down and dug.  She
stumbled across her baggie of weed.  A small temptation came over her, but she
remembered what happened last time.  Sandy was the expert here, and if she said
no drugs, then no drugs.  She would need complete clarity of thought to fight
S.A.’s illusions.

“Ah ha!” she exclaimed in
triumph, hefting out the heavy railroad spike.  “See?  This might be useful. 
Didn’t Sandy say fairies were afraid of iron?  I’ll bet this is made out of
iron.”

“But how does that help?  S.A.
isn’t here.”

“If he were, this would be really
bad for him.  Especially if I shoved it in his heart.  Like a stake through a
vampire.”  Jina waved it in the air with a flourish.  Holding the spike firmly
in hand, she walked over to the doorway, and began chipping at the mortar.  It
was going to be slow going.

“By the time you get done with
that, he’s going to be back anyway.  Jina, it can’t be done.”

He approached behind her, and
placed his hand on her waist.  It felt nice and warm.  She tried to ignore it,
and kept chipping away at the mortar, though nothing but a little dust was
coming loose.  “Put that down.”  He turned her and kissed her. 

There was a feeling in the air
that made Lewis seem very persuasive.  Very alluring. 

“Put that away.  I’ve got
something about that size... and shape... right here.”  He pressed into her,
and she melted into his arms.

Before too long, they were right
back on the couch.

T
hey lay
on the canopy bed in the seelie room, his naked body curling around hers.  She
felt her breast cupped under his hand.  Through his eyes, she saw the burns on
her shoulders and legs, and remembered how good it had made him feel.  That,
and the moment of penetration.  The thrill of possessing her.  The power of
ownership.

She basked in his contentedness. 
He had never been more happy.

With access to his thoughts, she
sought to know him, sought to learn all about her dearest love.  There were
indeed dark things lurking in this mind, but she understood all of them. 
Unflinchingly, she let each thought roll through her.  Her own human
understanding seemed remote, alien, incomprehensible, unreasonable.

She quickly learned there was no
curse.  Of course not.  No need to marry to break a hex.  Lies, all lies.  She
laughed.  How very clever he was, S.A.  But he was right in doing what he had. 
How else would someone like her come to love someone like him?  Nothing else
would have convinced her.

He was a poor thing, alone in
this house for so long.  The abuse, that part was true.  His step mother, she
hated him, hated that he was not human.  She was forced to rear him, her own
child taken in trade, abducted, screaming, to Tir Na Nog, leaving little S.A.
behind.  She had vented her anger out on him, little S.A.  Little darling. 
Little boy. 

That vile woman had bought every
book on fairy lore, magic, the occult, every grimoire and spellbook she could
get her hands on, and she tried every possible spell — to banish him, to summon
her son, or to travel to Tir Na Nog.  Anything she thought might work. 

When she ran out of spells from
books, she resorted to inventing her own, experimenting with S.A.’s blood in
the hopes of getting her way.

Fucking witch.

But now here he was, here with
Sandy.  She felt his love for her overcome him.  She basked in it.  He squeezed
her breast tightly, and she heard herself squeak.  She felt the swelling again,
felt her thigh through his growing erection, excitement coursing through him. 
It would all be delightful, the endless torments, amusements, orgies.

Soon they would need to prepare
for the wedding.  Very soon.  But for now, just a few moments longer here in
their bridal bed.

She heard the girl, herself,
whisper something.

“What, my dear?” he asked.

“I asked, what is your name?”

Sandy wondered how she could open
her mouth to ask such a question, when she was here, inside of him.  Maybe the
same way she had screamed before.  Instinct?  Automatic nervous reactions, the
way a bug still twitched after its head was bitten off? 

He laughed.  “I told you.  I can
never tell you that.”

But she knew it now.  His name. 
It had passed through his mind.  There was a time when she would have used it
against him.  Now, the thought of it just made her tingle with joy.  What a
beautiful name!

Inside she sighed and then smiled
with relish as he rolled her over and raped her again.