Fever 4 - DreamFever (5 page)

My beast adores music. He has a pink thing he calls an eye-pod, although it does not
look to me as if it was ever a pod for eyes, and with it he makes many sounds. He plays
songs over and over and watches me carefully, even when I do not dance.

  Some of the songs make me angry and I do not like them. I try to make him stop
playing them, but he holds the eye-pod over my head and I cannot reach it. I like hard,
sexy songs, like "Pussy Liquor" and "Foxy, Foxy." He likes to play peppy, happy
songs, and I am beyond sick of "What a Wonderful World" and "Tubthumping." He
watches me, always watches me, when he plays them. They have stupid names and I
hate them.

  Sometimes he shows me pictures. I hate those, too. They are of others, most often a
woman he calls Alina. I do not know why he needs pictures of her when he has me!
Looking at her makes me feel hot and cold at the same time. Looking at her hurts me.

 Sometimes he tells me stories. His favorite one is about a book that is really a
monster that could destroy the world. Boring!

  Once he told me a story about Alina and said she died. I screamed at him and wept,
and I do not know why. Today he showed me something new. Photos of a man he calls
Jack Lane. I tore them up and threw the pieces at him.

   Now I have forgiven him because I have him inside me, and he's got his big hands on
my petunia--I do not know that word, or where it came from!--rump, and he's doing
that slow, erotic bump and grind so smooth and deep that makes me purr to the bottom
of my toes and kissing me so hard I cannot breathe around it and I do not want to. He is
in my soul and I am in his, and we are in bed but we are in a desert, and I do not know
where he begins and I end, and I suppose if his peculiar madness is music and photos
and stories that chafe, it is a small price to pay for such pleasure.

   He comes hard, shuddering. I match him, bucking with each shudder. When he
comes, he makes a noise deep in his throat that is so raw and animal and sexual that I
think if he merely looked at me and made that noise, I might explode in an orgasm.

  He holds me. He smells good. I drowse.

  He starts with his stupid stories again.

 "I do not care." I raise my head from his chest. "Stop talking at me." I cover his
mouth with my hand. He pushes it away.

  "You must care, Mac."

  "I am so sick of that word! I do not know `Mac.' I do not like your pictures. I hate
your stories!"

   "Mac is your name. You are MacKayla Lane. Mac for short. It is who you are. You
are a sidhe-seer. It is what you are. You were raised by Jack and Rainey Lane. They are
your parents and love you. They need you very much. Alina was your sister. She was
murdered."

  "Stop talking! I will not listen." I clamp my hands to my ears.

  He pries them away. "You love pink."

   "I despise pink! I love red and black." The colors of blood and death. The colors of
the tattoos on his beautiful body that cover his legs, his abdomen, half his chest, and
twine up one side of his neck.

 He rolls me over beneath him and traps my face between his hands. "Look at me.
Who am I?"

  There is something I have forgotten. I do not want to remember. "You are my lover."

  "I was not always, Mac. There was a time when you didn't even like me. You have
never trusted me."

   Why does he tell me lies? Why does he seek to ruin what we have? It is now. It is
perfect. There is no cold, no pain, no death, no betrayal, no icy places, no terrifying
monsters that can steal your will and turn you into something you cannot even
recognize and make you feel ashamed, so ashamed. There is only pleasure here, endless
pleasure.

  "I trust you," I say. "We are the same."

  His smile is sharp as knives. "We are not. I've told you that before. Never make that
mistake. We meet in lust. But we are not the same. Never will be."

  "You worry about things of no importance. And you talk too much."

  "You got me a birthday cake. It was pink. I smashed it into the ceiling."

  I do not know "birthdays" or "cakes," so I say nothing.

  "You like cars. I let you drive my Viper."

  Cars! I remember those. Sleek, sexy, fast, and powerful, all the things I like.
Something nags at me. "Why did you smash this `birthday cake' into the ceiling?" I

wait for his answer and am struck by a violent sense of d�j� vu--that I have waited for
many answers from my beast, and have gotten few, if any.

  He stares down at me. He seems startled that I have asked such a question. I have
confused myself with it. I do not ask questions. I have little interest in talk. There is
only now. I met my lover the day he became my lover. What do I care of things called
cakes and birthdays? Yet I seem to want his answer very much and feel oddly deflated
when he does not give me one.

  "I am Jericho Barrons. Say my name."

  I try to turn my face away, but his hands clamp like a vise on my skull and hold it
immobile, preventing me from looking away.

  I close my eyes.

  He shakes me. "Say my name."

  "No."

  "Damn it, would you just cooperate?"

  "I do not know that word, `cooperate.' "

  "Obviously," he growls.

  "I think you make up words."

  "I do not make up words."

  "Do, too."

  "Do not."

  "Too."

  "Not."

  I laugh.

  "Woman, you make me crazed," he mutters.

  We do this often. Get into childish arguments. He is stubborn, my beast.

  "Open your eyes and say my name."

  I squeeze them shut more tightly.

  "It would make my cock hard to hear you say my name."

  My eyes pop open. "Jericho Barrons," I say sweetly.

  He makes a pained sound. "Bloody hell, woman, I think a part of me wants to keep
you this way."

   I touch his face. "I like how I am. I like how you are, too. When you are ... What is
that word you used? Cooperating."

  "Tell me to fuck you."

  I smile and comply. We're back in territory I understand.

  "You didn't say my name. Say my name when you tell me to fuck you."

  "Fuck me, Jericho Barrons."

  "From now on, you will call me Jericho Barrons every time you speak to me."

  He is a strange beast. But he gives me what I want. I suppose it will not kill me to do
the same.

 And so we begin a different way of being. I call him Jericho Barrons and he calls me
Mac.

  We are no longer animals. We have "names."

I dream of his "Alina" and wake up weeping. But there is something new inside me.
Something cold and explosive beneath the tears.

  I do not know what to call it, but it makes me pace. I stalk the room like the animal I
am, smashing and breaking things. I scream until my throat is raw.

  Suddenly I have new words.

  Rage.

  Anger. Violence.

  I am all the fury that ever was. I could scourge the earth with my grief and madness.

  I want something. But I do not know what it is.

  He watches me in silence.

   I think it must be sex. I go to him. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me to
stand between his legs.

  My hands hurt from hitting things. He kisses them.

   "Revenge," he says softly. "They took too much. You give up and die, or learn how
to take back. Revenge, Mac."

  I cock my head. I try the word on my tongue. "Revenge." Yes. That is what I want.

He is gone when I wake, and I have a bad moment, but then he is there and has brought
many boxes and some of them smell good.

  I no longer resist when he offers me food. I anticipate it. Food is pleasure. Sometimes
I put things on his body and lick them off, and he watches me with dark eyes and
shudders as he comes.

  He leaves and returns with more boxes.

  I sit on the bed, eat, and watch him.

  He opens boxes and begins to build something. It is strange. He plays music on his
eye-pod that makes me feel uncomfortable ... young, childish.

 "It's a tree, Mac. You and Alina put one up every year. I couldn't get a live one.
We're in a Dark Zone. Do you remember Dark Zones?"

  I shake my head.

  "You named them."

  I shake my head.

  "How about December twenty-fifth? Do you know what day that is?"

  I shake my head.

   "It's today." He hands me a book. There are pictures in it of a fat man in red clothing,
of stars and cradles, of trees with shiny pretty things on the branches.

  It all seems quite stupid to me.

   He hands me the first of many boxes. In them are shiny, pretty things. I get the point.
I roll my eyes. My stomach is full and I would rather have sex.

  He refuses to comply. We have one of our spats. He wins because he has what I want
and can withhold it.

  We decorate the tree while happy, idiotic songs play.

  When we are finished, he does something that makes a million tiny bright lights glow
red and pink and green and blue, and I lose my breath like someone has kicked me in
the stomach.

  I drop to my knees.

  I sit cross-legged on the floor and stare at the tree for a long time.

  I get more new words. They come slowly, but they come.

  Christmas.

  Presents.

  Mom.

  Dad.

  Home. School. Brickyard. Cell phone. Pool. Trinity. Dublin.

  One word disturbs me more than all the rest of them combined.

  Sister.

He makes me put on "clothes." I hate them. They are tight and chafe my skin.

   I take them off, throw them on the floor, and stomp on them. He dresses me again, in
rainbow colors that are bright and hurt my eyes.

  I like black. It is the color of secrets and silence.

  I like red. It is the color of lust and power.

  "You wear black and red." I am angry. "You even wear it on your skin." I do not
know why he gets to make up the rules, and I tell him so.

   "I'm different, Mac. And I get to make up the rules because I'm bigger and stronger."
He laughs. There is power even in such a simple sound. Everything about him is power.
It thrills me. It makes me want him all the time. Even when he is dense and
troublesome.

  "You are not so different. Do you not wish me to be like you?" I yank the tight pink
shirt over my head. My breasts pop out, bouncing. He stares hard, then looks away.

  I wait for him to look back. He always looks back. He doesn't this time.

  "I have no business looking forward to pink cakes, isn't that what you said?" I am
angry. "You should be happy that I want black!"

  His head whips back around. "What did you just say, Mac? When did I tell you that?
Tell me about it!"

   I do not know. I do not understand what I just said. I do not remember such a time. I
frown. My head hurts. I hate these clothes. I strip off my skirt but leave on my heels.
Nude, I can breathe. I like the heels. They make me feel tall and sexy. I walk toward
him, hips swaying. My body knows how to walk in such shoes.

   He grabs my shoulders, holds me away from him. He does not look at my body, only
at my eyes. "Pink cakes, Mac. Tell me about pink cakes."

  "I don't give a rat's petunia about pink cakes!" I shout. I want him to look at my
body. I am confused. I am afraid. "I don't even know what a rat's petunia is!"

   "Your mother didn't like you and your sister to cuss. `Petunia' is the word you say
instead of saying `ass,' Mac."

  "I do not know that word, `sister,' either!" I lie. I hate the word.

   "Oh, yes, you do. She was your world. She was killed. And she needs you to fight for
her. She needs you to come back. Come back and fight, Mac. Bloody hell, fight! If
you'd just fight like you fuck, you'd've walked out of this room the day I carried you
in!"

   "I do not want to walk out of this room! I like this room!" I will show him fight. I
launch myself at him, a volley of fists and teeth and nails.

  I am ineffectual. He is as obdurate as a mountain.

  He prevents me from damaging him or myself. We stumble and fall to the floor.
Abruptly I am no longer angry.

  I sprawl on top of him. I hurt inside my chest. I kick off my shoes.

  I drop my head in the hollow where his shoulder meets his neck. We are still. His
arms are around me, strong, certain, safe. "I miss her," I say. "I do not know how to live
without her. There is a hole inside me that nothing fills." There is something else inside
me, too, besides that hole. Something so awful that I will not look at it. I am weary. I do
not want to feel anymore. No pain, no loss, no failure. Only the colors of black and red.
Death, silence, lust, power. Those things give me peace.

  "I understand."

  I draw back and look at him. His eyes are deep with shadows. I know those shadows.
He does understand. "Then why do you push me?"

  "Because if you don't find something to fill that hole, Mac, someone else will. And if
someone else fills it, they own you. Forever. You'll never get yourself back."

  "You are a confusing man."

  "What's this?" He smiles faintly. "I am a man now? I am no longer a beast?"

  It is all I have called him until now. My lover, my beast.

   But I have found another new word: "man." I look at him. His face seems to shimmer
and change, and for a moment he is shockingly familiar, as if I have known him
somewhere before here and now. I touch him, trace his arrogant, handsome features
slowly. He turns his face into my palm, kisses it. I see shapes behind him. Books and
shelves and cases of trinkets.

  I gasp.

  His hands close tight on my waist, hurting me. "What? What did you see?"

   "You. Books. Lots of them. You ... I ... know you. You are ..." I trail off. A sign
creaking on a pole in the wind. Amber sconces. A fireplace. Rain. Eternal rain. A bell
rings. I like the sound. I shake my head. There was no such place or time. I shake my
head harder.