Jeremiah Quick (6 page)

So there.

"Sing more of it," he demanded.

Pretty shook her head. "It'll make me
cry."

Some horribleness only a teenage girl could
like erupted from the speakers, startling them both. Pretty cringed
and plastered her hands over her ears for a second, laughing, then
grabbed the iPod and encouraged it to shuffle faster.

She wanted to find something he knew. She
had almost a thousand songs. There had to be more than just one
they both liked.

She made suggestions. He shook his head.

"Oh, come
on
. There's got to be
something." Fuck shuffle. She scooched closer to the dash,
scrolling the song list.

Yeah, right.

She gave up and chose a Stone Sour song, and
he didn't say anything snarky.

They were on the freeway for what felt like
a long time, and she fought her anxiety by picking songs and
waiting for him to react.

He made a face now and then, but didn't say
much of anything.

He would change her some more, more than he
had already, and this time with willful intent. There was a… held
breath quality to that idea, a sense of inevitability about it.

After a while he said, "Come here," and she
slid to the center of the bench seat. His arm came around her,
pulling her even closer, until her thigh was seamless against his,
and her arm tight against his flank.

A thrill went through her, anticipatory,
sexual. She'd never caught him exactly that way, but he smelled
like her Jeremiah had always smelled, and she still wanted him in
whatever way he would allow.

He turned his head and pressed his lips into
her hair. "Your music sucks," he said, a rolling low growl, and all
she could do was shrug. She liked what she liked. And he was the
one who taught her to give weight to her own opinion.

Now that she wasn’t busy with her hands or
her mind, she started getting anxious, started thinking too much.
What the hell was she doing here? She should be at home.

Jeremiah took an exit off the freeway and
followed a flat, wooded secondary highway. There were turns every
so often. Pretty was lost. She suspected she'd be lost even if she
made a point to pay attention.

"What was the first song you couldn't hear
enough?" he asked. "Do you remember? Or the first album you ever
bought?"

She remembered, but didn't want to tell him.
And yet, there he was looking at her with his cool glass gaze, and
an almost smile, when he should have been watching the road.

"You'll laugh."

"I won't, I promise."

She shook her head. "Don't promise, because
I know you will. You won't be able to help yourself. I was ten or
eleven years old. I had a portable record player, probably a
Christmas gift. It had a red plastic lid that snapped over the
turntable for travel, and a built-in mini-keyboard. I don't even
know where I heard the song - the radio, I suppose - but it was
just occurring to me I could
buy
music."

His eyes gleamed. "One of the best things in
life, right? Records and a player. Second only to cassette tapes, a
walkman, and headphones. Or an Mp3 player. So? What was the
song?"

She cringed and could feel herself blushing.
It was so embarrassing. But she told him. "Air Supply.
Making
Love Out Of Nothing At all
."

She watched him try not to laugh, and he was
doing a decent job of choking it back.

"Oh, go ahead," she said, laughing a little
herself. "My mother didn't approve. I think I bought it at
Montgomery Wards, and it cost like a dollar or something. It was
the 45, small circle, big hole. Needed the weird little plastic
disk you had to put in the center of a 45 to play them on the
record player. I can't remember what was on the B side. Maybe that
song
was
the B side." She could hear the piano intro
tinkling in her head, and even some of the words. She decided to go
all the way and defended her choice. "You know, lyrically, it's an
amazing song."

He was grinning at her, a genuine goofy,
lopsided grin, and turned the radio volume all the way down. "Sing
it."

Her singing was only passable, and she
wanted to decline, but she couldn't resist the grin. She let the
piano notes start in her head, and ran a few lines of lyrics
silently, then sang. "
I know just how to whisper…
"

It took her, oh, two tries to get the first
verse right.

In the end, she thought he even agreed with
her, because he said, "Well, it's poetic."

"First full album?" he asked.

She didn't have to think about that, either.
"Air Supply, again, Greatest Hits or something. I planned it for
weeks, knowing I'd get ten dollars from my grandmother for
Christmas. That album fixed the terrible insomnia I'd started
having."

"That boring, hmm?" he teased.

"Not boring, relaxing," she said back,
enjoying the banter. It was almost like it used to be, the way they
would argue. Except he always won, because his arguments were his
own, and hers usually parroted what she heard others say. It had
taken her a long time to learn how to think for herself, to like
what she liked without needing someone else to validate her
opinion."Just thinking the first words of the first song still
makes me sleepy. Years of conditioning."

"You like awful things," he said, and he
looked young and fresh and beautiful. "Tell me another favorite,
from way back."

"Umm." Now she did have to think.
"
Paperback Writer
. The Monkees. Or maybe it was the
Beatles?" She tried to run the lines in her head, tried to remember
the tune. Didn't want to make any attempt to sing it, because the
song was terrible. But she'd grown up to be a writer.

And so the discussion went.

It had to have been almost an hour before he
slowed, murmured, "We're here," and she watched out the windshield
as he turned onto an unpaved track. 'Here' was a long driveway,
almost a country road by itself, reflectors on poles helping him
navigate the dark. He gave her a squeeze or a hug. Something. She
thought he intended it to be reassuring, but it wasn't.

Okay.

Deep in the woods.

"Are you going to hurt me?" Stupid. Of
course he was. That was the point, right? He wanted her to
experience hardship, pain. She didn't know what made her think that
– it wasn't anything he'd said, it was just… a feeling, the idea
that he would... what, beat her? It didn't even make sense. And
still, she knew. It was something in his eyes, the set of his
posture. Something that vibrated in the air between them on her
kitchen floor.

"Do you want me to?" he asked, and there was
an intensity to the question that almost made her say
yes
or
please
.

"I don't know," she answered.

"Oh, come on, Dark child. Tell the
truth."

She could feel herself blushing in the dark.
She wrote about kinky sex and BDSM, but she hadn't lived any of it.
And this – this was so wrong, but she did want him to. She wanted
him to push her to her limit, make her scream, then comfort her,
calm her, bring her back. Make her
feel
, and then make
everything okay again. She wanted him to be the one to do that.
Perhaps because no one else in her life would.

The driveway ended in a clearing and the
headlights lit up the front of a small wood-framed house. The trim
was dark, the rest of the house an ashy smudge against an acre of
trees.

Pretty was curious, somewhat excited, and
about to start asking questions when she noticed Quick's demeanor
had changed. Tension seemed to run the length of him, and he stared
straight through the windshield, void of facial expression. His arm
around her tensed, gripping more than holding.

"What?" she asked, asking not only what
happens next, but what was causing his tension.

"It starts now. Give me your voice."

He turned his head toward her, and his eyes
were vacant.

"My voice?" She was too startled to
understand right away.

The grip around her waist tightened, fingers
slipping beneath her jacket, beneath the hem of her shirt, warm
against her flesh, but then his fingernails pinched just the
tiniest bit of skin, and she squeaked, visualizing red crescents
marking the soft flesh there.

"One more word and I'll gag you."

Oh.

She was surprised it would start like this.
Somehow she thought there would be some kind of game –he would give
her a… task? Assignment? With the threat of losing something or
being punished if she didn't… complete, or pass, or learn. She
didn't even know why she thought it would somehow be
fair.
Apparently she had some fantasy about what he wanted. Stupid. She
didn't even know him. She hadn't known him well even back when
they'd been friends.

He drove along a faint track worn into the
grass beside the house, around to the back. Set into the tree line,
almost hidden, was a garage with an attached carport. He pulled
beneath the carport, held one finger to his lips, and said, "Shhh.
Now it starts. And this time we'll finish."

He slid out of the car, pulling her with
him, through a side door into the garage.

It was dark.

He stood behind her, the fingers of both
hands curled around both her shoulders, holding her in place. "If
you use your voice, you'll earn ten."

Ten what?
she almost asked, but
didn't want to earn ten of something she didn't understand just
yet.

Was he a little bit evil? What if he was a
lot of evil?

She tried to remember. He'd always kept her
off balance with his Otherness, but that was part of his appeal.
Certainly he'd never physically hurt her. He'd never threatened
her, or particularly frightened her, not on purpose.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

His Otherness was still part of the
appeal.

Why else would she have let Jeremiah Quick
drive her away? She'd admired him, wanted to be like him. Had
learned so much from him in a short time, and had never felt like
they were done with each other. This felt like the last chance.

His hands slid down her arms and then were
gone. A soft light came on and illuminated a host of horrid things,
a torture chamber, and Pretty gasped out loud, wondering for the
first time, in all seriousness, if Jeremiah would kill her. If
that's how this would end.

She felt the blood drain from her face and
head, racing to her legs and feet, readying her body to flee.

Chains hung from the rafters, crude wooden
structures leaned against the walls, a large upright, wooden X
stood in the middle of the floor with straps and chains, a table, a
bed… and gods, she couldn't even take it all in.

"Jeremiah," she said, and couldn't continue,
but turned her head to see him behind her. She didn't see any signs
of violence, no blood spatters, no plastic sheeting. So… he wasn't
exactly Dexter. She hoped.

His grin was crooked. "That's ten."

Her chin snapped up in shock, and she glared
at him. She had forgotten, for one second, and now swore to herself
she wouldn't speak to him again. Even if he wanted her to. Inside
her head, but only inside her head, she stuck her tongue out at
him.

Hands on her shoulders again, turning her
toward him, his hand coming into her view for a second, knuckles
brushing along the flesh of her cheek. "Ahh, scared now. I kind of
like that."

She didn't know what to do. Some part of her
wanted to bolt for the door, the car, her family. Home. Yet here
she stood.

There was this… something in her, a kernel,
a hard seed… had always been in her, that wanted this descent into
darkness. Craved it. Needed to let him do what he would do, because
she
deserved
his scorn. She hadn't learned enough. He was
disappointed.

He was still touching her face, looking into
her eyes. His were cold, serious, although now they looked beyond
her, staring into space.

"Once there was a beautiful boy," he said,
his voice gently lyrical.

And even though his eyes grew no less cold,
she could now see pain in them.

"This beautiful boy, the most beautiful boy
in all the world, inherited a cabin in the woods. And he asked his
lover for a playroom filled with deviant toys."

He took his hand away from her face and made
a gesture grand enough to encompass the whole space. "And I gave it
to him. And we had fun here, oh, yes, we did. And now he's gone.
And you're here, Sunshine Girl, just in time."

Oddly enough, his little story made her feel
better.

He undressed her here as carefully as he had
in her kitchen. She moved her limbs as he instructed her to,
shivered as her skin was exposed to the air, his eyes. Her body had
given birth three times, had fed three babies for a year each. It
wasn't ugly, but it wasn't perfect, and she refused to let herself
feel embarrassment or shame for her physical self. And still, fear
lodged in her throat, and pride, and a sort of desperation to
behave, to impress him somehow. As if being what he wanted her to
be, right here, right now, could fix him in some way.

He walked her past the St. Andrew's Cross,
the table, and the bed with its plastic mattress.

Pulled her over to a large cage tucked into
a corner.

A cage.

It was maybe four feet square, wire on all
six sides. It had a hasp-style lock and a padlock, which he opened
with a key from his pocket.

"In," he said, and it was an order.

Pretty balked, for a second, not because she
was claustrophobic or anything, but merely because she didn’t want
to be locked into a
cage
.

“Don’t make me force you,” he said, and she
didn’t know if it was a threat or an apology.

He took a step that had him looming into her
space, which felt exactly like a threat, so she crouched, stumbled,
and then she was falling in. The metal bars of the cage bottom bit
her knees when she landed. She let out a gasp and an audible
squeak, but he didn't comment on either.