Lindsay awoke to the sound of a distant police siren cutting through the night like a banshee's shrill wail. He lay in the darkness of the tiny motel room for a few confused moments with his arm across his face, forgetting where he was, why he was there.
Memories returned and with them came the cold grip of fear. He quickly lunged over to turn on the lamp, assuring himself there was nothing else in the room. The dull light showed he was sprawled across the old, worn bed still in his underwear after a much needed shower. With a groan, he sat up and held his throbbing head in his hands. He had only meant to stay for a few hours when he had checked into the isolated, rundown motel earlier that afternoon.
The motel might have been modern and serviceable when it was built decades ago, but without the highway traffic to support it the place had fallen into disrepair. The bathroom and bed were clean if dilapidated and dingy, but Lindsay hardly noticed.
He was exhausted, physically and mentally. He had been running for so long, interminably fleeing his every waking moment until he could barely remember his life before this nightmare had started.
There were still some recollections in of the past buried in his sleep-deprived mind if he made the effort to dig them out: a decent, sedentary job as a computer programmer, no worries greater than his rent and car payments, blissful ignorance of what existed out there in the shadows of the so-called real world.
His money was running low, his bank account almost gone and his credit cards nearly maxed out, but he had to pay to stay in motels even for the inadequate rest he stole during the day. He couldn't afford to be taken in or detained by the police or highway patrol for even a few hours. Constant, headlong flight was his only chance.
He swung off the bed and staggered to the bathroom, his throat parched. In the stark, fluorescent light, Lindsay stared at himself in the dull mirror. Healed scratches were barely visible lines across the bare skin of his neck, torso and arms. He had lost weight, he couldn't remember his last decent meal. He couldn't remember how long he had been running, whether weeks or months had passed, but it had hardened him, mentally and physically, forcing him to find resilience and strength he had never known he possessed.
He splashed tepid water across his unshaven face and drank handfuls until his throat no longer felt sore. He had to leave at once. The day was his only chance for rest, he had to keep moving once it was night.
Lindsay walked swiftly back out to the bedroom, but before he could grab his travel-stained duffle bag and tug on his wrinkled jeans and shirt, the locked and bolted door of the motel room swung open.
She stood there. Lindsay had known who it was before the door opened, there was no one else it could be. A small, slender figure standing poised in the doorway in a baggy leather jacket and tight, black miniskirt, leather gloves on her hands and an expensive purse slung over her shoulder. Silvery-white hair, wild and unruly, was cut short in back and draped over in the front, hiding half her face. The silvery color of the tresses looked like a bad dye-job, though Lindsay knew it wasn't. Pale, smooth skin shown luminescent in the dim lamplight.
"Hi," she said simply and walked inside. She wore a tight pink top under the jacket and her skirt clung to curving hips, below elegant legs were outlined in black fishnet stockings.
"You're slowing down, Lindsay. You didn't get nearly as far today," her voice was musical and entrancing with an accent that might have been Irish but was actually something far, far older.
Her head turned toward him, Lindsay knew she could see perfectly well even with her hair hanging in front of her face. He stood frozen in terror, unable to move or make a sound.
"Maybe you're letting me catch up. Did you think about that?" she asked him, tossing aside the purse and shrugging off her jacket. Her firm breasts were clearly displayed by the meager half-top that left her sleek belly bare. Her skirt rode very low on her hips and Lindsay knew the only thing she wore underneath was her stockinghose. "Maybe you're finally getting tired of trying to get away. You can't you know. No human male can escape a Mahdron Sidhe."
Sidhe. Lindsay hadn't known what one was before he met her. Wouldn't have known to pronounce it 'she'. Wouldn't have believed the ancient legends which told of sinister faerie lovers who delighted in tormenting the men they chose as partners.
"Stay away," Lindsay croaked, finally able to speak and move, edging toward his duffle bag. "Just stay back, Sifania."
She ignored him, walked over to the bed and took a jumping seat on it, testing its springs with several bounces of her bottom. "I have some bread and biscuits, sorry cookies I mean, if you want to have something to eat first," she offered him.
Lindsay knew better than to eat any food offered by a faerie. At least all those computer role playing games had taught him something about myths. He never would have had the chance to run at all if he had consumed anything she ever prepared for him.
She was pulling off her gloves and kicking off her boots, tucking her stockinged legs underneath herself on the bed. Her hands small and slender but her fingers were inhumanly long and they had wickedly sharp claws on them. She turned her head up to him and her disorderly hair tilted to the side, from the nose down she could have been a beautiful, human woman, pert nose, perfect, heart-shaped lips and a slender chin.
Behind her hair and above the line of her nose, she was a monster, her eyes were feral, yellow pits of glowing malevolence, her brow curved forward and down where the bridge of her nose should have been, she had no eyebrows only only rows of small, sharp scaled ridges, it was a face reminiscent of a shark or some other sea creature even more ancient and vicious that had swam through primordial oceans.
"You better eat something, you're going to need your strength," she told him, and her mouth split into a voracious smile, her glinting white teeth were double rows of jagged fangs.
Lindsay made a wild lunge for his duffle bad and dragged out an old, rusted crowbar. It had been hard finding one that wasn't made from tempered steel. Gripping the crowbar in both hands, he brandished it at the slim, other-than-human woman sitting on the bed.
She looked at him calmly, her delicate nostrils flaring as she caught the scent.
"Pure cold iron. You are learning," she admitted. "No more silly guns and useless bullets. But that's not going to be enough to keep you from me."
"I'm not letting you get close this time," Lindsay threatened.
"I won't have to, Lindsay. You'll come to me," she said and rose up from the bed, turning her back to him and lifting her arms to pull her top off over her head.
Lindsay's hands began to shake as the Sidhe began to undress. There was a row of short spines that led from the back of her neck and down between the shoulder blades of her smooth, gracefully muscled back, a bare back that would have looked very enticing without the inhuman spines.
Then she turned around, her lips turned in small teasing smile and her arms crossed over her chest. She slowly dropped her hands and spread her arms apart and let him look at her without the slightest blush of embarrassment. He tried not to see the curves of her perky breasts or her translucent, flawless skin. He tried to remind himself what would happen if he let the crowbar drop and took her into his arms the way he was already longing to do.
"I told you. No human male can escape a Sidhe," she said, undoing the button down the side of her skirt. It snapped free of her hips, leaving her in only her fishnet stockings and Lindsay knew he was lost. The crowbar fell from his hands to the floor as a horrible, unearthly desire filled him as he gazed at the enticing, snowy white thatch of hair between her thighs. Unable to stop himself, he strode forward and pulled her into a crushing embrace, burying his face into her silky hair.
She sighed with pleasure and wrapped her arms around him, giving a squeeze in return with her claws digging into the muscles of his back. She pulled them both back toward the waiting bed and Lindsay felt himself respond to the soft luxury of her naked body.
"No. Don't," grunted Lindsay through gritted teeth, even as he arms kept her close, but she was already dragging him onto the bed with her, pulling him down on top of her. She was much smaller than him but there was inhuman strength in her limbs. She easily scrapped off his underwear with nimble hands as she leaned back on the bed, her lithe, stocking-clad legs sliding up and wrapping around him.
"Ah yes!!" Sifania gasped as she pulled at Lindsay with her arms and legs and the hard, throbbing erection he had not even been aware he had possessed suddenly slid into her warm, eager body.
"No, God no," Lindsay groaned in answer, unable to stop himself from letting his weight sink completely onto her and driving himself all the way into her. Pleasure coursed through him as he arched above the feminine creature squirming under him, supernatural delight washing through his mind, trying to claw at his sanity and tear away his will.
He might have been able to pull away in that first moment, but her fingers dug painfully into his shoulders and her legs were tense and clamped around his hips, allowing no chance to win his way free.
