Jack-O-Lantern: Lady in White
Elizabeth Jewell
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Copyright ©2006 Elizabeth Jewell
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ISBN (10) 1-59596-540-8
ISBN (13) 978-1-59596-540-0
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Editor: Maryam Salim
Cover Artist: Bryan Keller
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Lady in White
Illegal or not, it wasn’t uncommon to see hitchhikers along the mountain roads of Colorado after dark.
It was less usual, however, for them to be dressed in diaphanous white nightgowns that exposed long, pale legs and barely covered gratifyingly large, round breasts.
Cam’s first thought when his headlights caught her billowing form by the side of the road was that she must have escaped from a mental hospital. Then he had another thought, this one even less pleasant, and he pulled over.
She was what he’d been looking for.
She stood watching his car, her hair drifting back in the breeze as he came to a stop in front of her. Her eyes narrowed slightly, but otherwise he could see no reaction to his arrival. She just stood, waiting.
He checked his glove compartment before he got out. Flashlight, garlic, bags of salt, a sports bottle full of holy water. He opted for the flashlight. Wielding it in one hand, he walked toward her. She still hadn’t moved. She looked pale and fragile in the silvery moonlight. The moon was full tonight, the high altitude and clear sky making the flashlight almost unnecessary.
He pointed the beam down toward her feet to keep from blinding her. Still, she blinked at him, as if uncertain what he was doing. Taking a step closer, he looked her over. Her dress was torn and ragged. Her feet were bare.
“Can I help you, Miss?” he asked. “Do you need a ride? I could drop you somewhere.”
She looked at him and blinked slowly. Her eyes were dark and large, and glittered in the moonlight as if they held tears. “I just want to go home.” Her voice was airy and broken, and ended on something close to a sob.
Cam eyed her narrowly. “Are you all right? Did someone hurt you?”
She nodded. A tear rolled down her cheek, a glistening diamond caught in starlight. “Can you take me home?”
Cam considered her -- the wide, frightened eyes, the torn dress. Her arms and legs were mud-streaked, in spite of the continuing drought. Pressing his lips together, he made his decision. “Yes. Come on. I’ll take you home.”
He clasped her arm gently. Her skin was chilly. The night breeze, perhaps, but he thought it likely to be from another cause entirely. It surprised him that he could touch her at all. She looked up at him with those wide, dark eyes and followed him to the car.
He held the door open for her, making sure he didn’t close it on the tattered remains of her dress. Then, watching her through the windshield, he crossed in front of the car and got in on the driver’s side.
“So,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “Where to?”
“South.”
“Just south?”
She nodded. Seeming a bit less disoriented, she pushed her hair back from her face. “I’ll say where to turn.”
“All right. South it is.”
They drove for a few minutes, cool night air pouring through the open driver’s side window, clean moonlight through the front windshield. Finally he said, “What’s your name?”
“Lydia,” she answered promptly.
“I’m Cam. Nice to meet you.”
She turned and smiled at him, a small, gamine smile. “Nice to meet you, too.” She held her hand out and he took it. Her fingers closed on his in a firm but not overly strong grip, then she let go and looked back out the front window.
They drove on.
“You said someone hurt you,” Cam ventured. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Her smile faded. She looked at him again, but this time only out of the corner of her eye. “Not… not right now.” Her hands shifted in her lap, her fingers trembling. “Are you… are you going to hurt me?”
Cam smiled reassuringly. “No.”
She nodded, her eyes wider now, frightened, like a deer’s eyes, brown and limpid. “Good.”
There was another long moment of silence, then Lydia said quietly, “It’s late for you to be out. Away from your family.”
He looked at her sidelong. He had no family to speak of, but he’d expected her to bring it up. “Yeah. A little late.”
“I’m sorry to keep you out. I really am.” Her hand moved to rest on his thigh. Her fingers felt cold even through his jeans.
“Should I turn on the heat?” he asked her.
Her small smile twitched into a smirk. “If you like.”
Cam reached over and flipped the switch for the heater. Lydia’s fingers tightened on his leg, and the car made a sudden “thunk.”
“Shit!” Cam exclaimed. The steering wheel jerked half out of his single-handed grip, the car wrenching to the side, toward the shoulder. Cam panicked for a split second, unable to remember how steep the drop-off was here, unable to see in the dark in spite of the strangely bright wash of moonlight. Then he had the other hand back on the wheel.
He yanked at the steering wheel, but the car didn’t respond. Instead it chunked loudly along the shoulder with a metallic tearing sound as if the entire undercarriage were being ripped out. Then, with a final, screeching clank, it came to a halt.
In the sudden silence, Cam panted, trying to get his breath back as the surge of panic-induced adrenaline faded. As the buzzing in his ears diminished, he realized Lydia’s hand still gripped his thigh, fingers digging into the muscles almost painfully.
“You can let go now,” he said. “It’s over.” He grabbed the keys, turning them in the ignition. Nothing. Not even a burp from the engine.
“Are you sure?” Lydia’s voice was breathy. Her hand loosened though, to Cam’s relief.
“Well, for now --” He broke off. The chilly fingers touched him again, higher on his thigh this time. He looked at her. You have got to be kidding me. He didn’t say it aloud. Instead he looked into Lydia’s eyes. She still looked frightened, and seemed unaware of where her hand was going.
Deciding not to make an issue of it for the moment, Cam pulled out his cell phone to call for help. He punched in the number for his auto club, then realized nothing was happening.
“What the --” He shook the phone a few times, unbelieving. He’d just charged it that morning, and he knew he normally had service through this stretch of highway. “Shit.”
Lydia’s eyes widened, and he was almost certain her hand crept a bit farther up his thigh. “Can’t you call for help?” Her voice was breathy. It didn’t sound like panic anymore.
“Phone’s dead.” Cam laid it on the dash
board and let his head fall back, thinking. “I think there’s a gas station maybe a mile up the road. I can walk. You stay here.”
“No!”
Her reaction startled him. She looked genuinely terrified, eyes crazed in the darkness, random tears streaking her face. “No, no! Don’t leave me!”
Her hands scrambled at him, jerking at his shirt hard enough to tear it open. He heard a button hit the inside of the window.
“Shh… shh… calm down.” He tried to soothe her, but she kept flailing in panic, beating at him with her open hands.
“He’ll hurt me. He’ll hurt me…”
“Nobody’s going to hurt you, Lydia.” He grasped her arms as gently as he could and still have some control over her, stopping her flailing before she bloodied his nose. He’d be lucky not to have bruises in the morning. She’d ripped half the buttons off his shirt, and he was pretty sure his lip was bleeding. “You’re fine, Lydia. You’re safe.”
“Oh, God,” she sobbed, and fell into his arms.
He let his embrace settle around her, patting her back comfortingly and making appropriate Shhh noises. She lay against him for several long seconds, her tears soaking through his tattered shirt, dampening his half-bare chest. Finally she drew away, pushing her hair back from her face. A frown compressed her delicate brows.
“I hurt you. I’m so sorry.” She reached out, one finger gently touching his lip. It felt sticky beneath her touch, and tender. Drawing her finger back, she looked at the smear of blood on it, then looked at him, her eyes wide and wet. She wavered, leaning away from him, then toward him again. “I’m so sorry…” She moved closer, their faces only a breath apart.
Cam bit back a wholly inappropriate grin. He leaned toward her, bending his head so his lips brushed her ear. “If you want to fuck, why don’t you just say so?”
Lydia froze. They sat that way for the space of a long breath, Lydia perfectly still, Cam sitting awkwardly angled forward, his lips just against the shell of her ear. He could smell her hair, and the scent was like flowers that had been crushed in the clay.
Finally, she bent back. Her face had changed, her eyes hard and glinting. Slowly, she pressed her finger hard against the wound on his lip. He flinched, but didn’t pull back.
“You want to fuck me?” Her voice was thin and brittle, angry.
“Of course I do. What healthy man wouldn’t?”
Her finger shifted, the nail now digging into the cut. Pain lanced into him from the sharp invasion, but he refused to react.
“What about your family? Your wife?”
He shrugged. “Is she here? What she doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt her.”
She jerked back, her mouth twisting into a snarl. Then she grabbed him, one hand on either side of his face, and kissed him. Hard. He could taste his own blood as she shoved her mouth onto his, further aggravating the tear on his lip. He grasped her shoulders and pulled her against him.
He’d expected it to go this way. Not quite from the moment he’d seen her, but close. This wasn’t the first time he’d run into something of her ilk, though every time he did, there was always that chance it would be the last.
But she obviously hadn’t expected it to go this way at all. Which didn’t stop her from trying to wrest back control of the situation, flinging herself against him, her hand shoving down inside the front of his jeans.
Cam gasped, half in surprise, more in a combination of discomfort and intense arousal as her fingers closed on his thickening cock. Fingernails scraped the sensitive skin, and he grabbed at her hand, trying to stop or at least impede its inexorable pursuit of his privates. “Lydia --”
She broke him off with a literal snarl of frustration, anger, disgust -- he wasn’t even certain he could read the myriad of emotions that filled her eyes, none of them pleasant. She pushed toward him, shoved herself half into his lap, and kissed him again.
Her mouth was brutal on his, forcing it open, her tongue thrusting past his teeth. He tasted blood, but wasn’t sure if it was his or hers. Pushing at her, he tried to maneuver her away from him, but with no luck. The small space in the car was too cramped, leaving him without enough room to combat her.
Then her hand closed around his cock and he lost the urge to fight at all. She was far too rough, manhandling him as if she meant to break him, but the tight arrow of pure hurt that shot through his body at the touch broke him. He wanted her.
He’d hunted malevolent spirits for a long time, but he’d never fucked one before. First time for everything, he supposed. And so what if he had to take one for the cause now and then?
In the close quarters of the car, there was little room for finesse. Finesse, though, was not a priority. She tore at his zipper and the button on his jeans, shoved them out of the way, pushed aside the flimsy white material of her tattered dress. Her body did not so much take him in as engulf him, and for a split second he panicked, seized by the utter certainty that he would not get his cock back. Ever.
She took him in deep and hard and tight, God, so tight it hurt. Even so, he automatically pushed in deeper, until he could get no more of himself inside her. She clenched impossibly tighter, and he moaned. He was so close to orgasm, yet at the same time so close to pulling completely away from her, out of her, before she strangled the life out of him --
She reached up and grabbed his face, her fingers digging into his cheeks, bruising them against his teeth. Her legs wrapped hard around him, ankles crossed at the small of his back.
“How can you do this?” Her voice had become a snarl, her eyes hard and strangely red in the moonlight. “How can you do this to her?”
Cam reached up to grab her wrist, pulling her hand away from his face. “She doesn’t love me. She never did.” He thrust his hips beneath her, though there wasn’t much room for him to penetrate her any more deeply.
“Bastard.” Her hands reached for his shirt, fingers curled as if to claw him open. He grabbed both her wrists and pulled them roughly away from him, holding her hands away from her body.
“No,” he said.
She snarled. “No?”
“You won’t hurt me.”
“I will. You deserve it.”
His fingers tightened on her wrists, and he gave her a thin smile. “Let me rephrase that. You can’t hurt me.”
With a sudden show of strength, she tore her hands free and dug her fingers into his chest. He knew what she expected -- her fingers should have sunk into him as if into warm butter, torn into his body, deep and brutal, to tear his heart out. But her nails only scraped across his skin. Unpleasant, to be sure, but hardly deadly.
Disbelief rose in her eyes, followed quickly by rage. Her nails dug deeply into him, and he grabbed her wrists again, pulling her away. At the same time, arousal poured through him on the heels of the flashing pain from her nails. He could feel his balls pulsing as he hovered on the edge of orgasm. His cock flared with pain from the frightening tightness of her cunt, his chest on fire from the wounds her nails had inflicted.
He took a deep breath, steadying his thoughts, his body. “I told you, you can’t hurt me. Not the way you want to.”
She fought him, trying to drag her hands back toward his chest. The movement only tightened her hold on him, dragged him deeper inside her. He blinked, clenched his teeth. He was so close to orgasm, holding it back by sheer force of will, knowing control right now could literally mean the difference between life and death.
“Why?” She was furious, but also terrified. He could see it in her eyes.
“You know.” He grinned, showing teeth in a way that felt more predatory than amused. “You can feel it.”
Her body began to undulate on his, and he moaned involuntarily. It was literally the most painful sex he’d ever experienced yet also the most intense. He’d protected himself well enough to avoid death by disembowelment; whether he lived through the orgasm was a different issue entirely.
There was no other choice left to him now. Closing his hand into
a fist, he pressed the ring he wore against her chest. She gasped at the contact. “No…”
“Yes,” he said. He lowered his hand, slid the smooth, round stone over her clit.
She screamed as she came, and so did he. And then all went black.
* * *
In the swirl of darkness, Lydia saw all the men she’d killed. Their faces loomed past her, white and dead, then they opened their eyes and spoke to her. “Why?” they asked. “Why?”
But they knew why. They had broken their vows, been unfaithful to the women who loved them. Like Brett had, Brett who she’d found bent over her own kitchen table, his bare ass between the spread legs of Amy’s Kindergarten teacher, and Lydia had run, run, run. To the car out into the night and the black and the slick rain, and it had all ended in a screeching slide off the cliff down into the red, fiery darkness with Amy buckled into the back seat. Now they paid, all of them, with their blood and their screaming as she tore them apart…
Not anymore. Never again.
The voice was Cam’s, but echoed like something else. Something more powerful. It seemed to shake down into her soul, if she had a soul anymore. And there was pain. Intense, rending, turning her inside out.
The stone. The stone in the hands of a faithful man.
It was supposed to have ended her.
It hadn’t.
* * *
Lydia woke. She hadn’t thought she would. She’d thought the man -- Cam -- had sent her back, to wander again until another man came to draw her out of the shadows. But she woke, and she was still in the car, sprawled over the passenger seat. The tattered ends of a dream -- if ghosts could dream -- swirled through her mind, then away, their sense lost to her forever.
Cam was still there, too. He, too, was sprawled across his car seat, one square hand resting limply over the steering wheel. Freezing, she evaluated him. He appeared to still be unconscious, or at least asleep, his dark blond hair tousled, bloody scratches evident across his chest. She straightened quickly and reached for him. If he was still unconscious, she could take the ring from him, finish her mission…
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