Hunted

by Dean Murray

  A supernatural freak. Parallels indeed. I took a deep breath and shook my head. "Listen to yourself. You really think someone our size overpowered and killed two burly football players? Even if she was capable of that why would she then let the four of you kick the stuffing out of her? It doesn't make any sense."

  I'd continued to carefully retreat the entire time we'd been talking. We were nearly a dozen yards away from where they'd been attacking the girl. If she was unhurt enough to run it should be more than enough room for her to escape, but she was just sitting there in a daze.

  "You're out of time."

  Even as she said it the head cheerleader sprang at me. I was still pissed, but four-to-one odds had gone a long ways towards calming me down enough to realize that I couldn't let any of them get their hands on me. I tried to turn and run but there was something unexpected in my way.

  Jackson steadied me with one hand as I bounced off of him and then straight-armed the head cheerleader with an open hand to her sternum. It wasn't a blow, more like he'd just let her run into his arm, but it knocked her on her butt.

  Somehow in all of the craziness I'd completely forgotten about Jackson and Tristan. They'd followed me, but stayed back far enough that apparently the cheerleaders from the other school hadn't thought they'd interfere.

  "Are you okay, Adri?"

  "Yeah, thanks. They'd knocked that other girl down and they were kicking her."

  One of the other devil girls spoke up for the first time. "You guys aren't going to hit girls."

  I stepped to the side a little so that I could see Tristan and Jackson without turning my back to the other girls. Tristan actually didn't look very happy at the idea of fighting with girls, but Jackson was doing a lot better job keeping his poker face in place.

  "Oh, I don't know. I probably won't actually need to hit you. Besides, girls who will gang up against one girl like that are nothing more than bullies. I don't like bullies."

  Jackson's comment apparently made Tristan feel like he needed to man up and defend me too.

  "We're not going to let you hurt Adri or that other girl anymore."

  Fighting another girl when you outnumbered her four to one was one thing. Throwing yourself at two guys the size of Jackson and Tristan was something else entirely.

  "The next guy she kills is on your conscience."

  All four cheerleaders started moving away from the building so that they could go around us without getting too close to the guys. Jackson just pivoted in place so he could keep an eye on them, but Tristan took a step forward as if to go help the girl they'd been beating on.

  I grabbed his arm before he could get very far.

  "She looks pretty traumatized. Let me go talk to her first, you guys stay back there and make sure that the devil girls don't bring a bunch of guys of their own."

  It wasn't until I said it that I realized just how skittish the other girl looked. If she'd been a small animal she'd have been right on the verge of running up a tree or otherwise fleeing for safety.

  A breeze had picked up. It was mostly running parallel to the building, but as I took my first couple of steps towards her a stronger than normal gust came in at a slightly different angle. The wind made the thin, white material of the peasant top she was wearing flutter and it came up far enough that I was able to see some of the bruises that they'd left on her stomach and side.

  I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that it was more important to make sure she was okay than it was to chase down the other four girls and beat their heads in. There would be plenty of time for the police to deal with the four devil girls.

  "My name is Adri. How can I help? Are you okay?"

  I reached a tentative hand towards her in an effort not to startle her, but something still set her off. She recoiled so fast that I almost didn't see her move. One moment I was only inches away from her and then she was a couple of feet away with her arms and legs underneath her as though ready for fight or flight.

  "I'm just trying to help. I won't hurt you, I promise. Do you need an ambulance?"

  It seemed a stupid question given how quickly she'd just moved, but people could move on broken legs and not even feel the pain if they had enough adrenaline in their systems. I could see her visibly trying to regain control of herself. She was breathing erratically, sucking in huge drafts of air in between each gust of wind, but finally after one last deep, calming breath she seemed to come back to herself enough at least to respond to me.

  "No, no ambulance. I'll be fine. They were just getting started, I'm mostly just bruised up."

  She accepted the hand I offered her and pulled herself to her feet.

  "I'm glad you're okay. Do you know those girls, I mean like names and stuff? You're going to have to file a police report and names would help."

  It was like a switch flipped inside of her. She went from normal to aggressive so quickly that I didn't realize what had happened until her hands clamped down on my arms with a grip stronger than I'd ever felt out of any girl before.

  We were about the same size but she'd crouched down slightly such that she was looking up at me with her lips pulled back slightly, less of a smile and more of a snarl like what you'd see out of a feral dog. That would have been plenty unnerving all by itself, but her eyes were molten yellow pools of rage.

  I told myself that it was just a trick of the overhead lights scattered around the parking lot. That was the only logical explanation, but I'd been dealing with a whole host of things lately that weren't rational, that didn't follow any of the rules I'd grown up believing were absolute. Even more than that was the fact that I'd never seen eyes like that anywhere before, not under any kind of light.

  "You don't tell me what I have to do."

  The words came out as a barely audible hiss that I almost couldn't make out over Tristan's question.

  "Adri, are you okay?"

  She'd used my body to mostly screen her from the guys, but Tristan must have caught my involuntary wince of pain when she'd clamped down on my arms.

  "Keep them back."

  The order was accompanied with an increase in the pressure she was exerting on my arms, but I managed to keep from gasping at the pain.

  "I'm fine! Stay back there, she's just scared." I dropped my voice to a whisper. "You're right, you don't have to do anything. I just thought that you'd want to make sure that they didn't come after you again later."

  "I'll be gone before morning arrives. It was a mistake to stay here for so long, a mistake to try and build a normal life for myself."

  She released my arms and seemed to shed the fury that had been so close to consuming her.

  "We all want normal lives, no harm in that."

  She gave me an odd look. "Not all of us deserve normal lives."

  "That doesn't stop us from wanting them."

  Her nod was a short, choppy motion. "Thank you for your help."

  "You're welcome. Do you want help getting somewhere? Do you need to call anyone?"

  "I don't know anyone who could help me."

  With that cryptic remark she turned to go, but she stumbled and only the fact that I was there to grab onto saved her from a nasty fall.

  "You're hurt, let me help."

  She shook her head and left without another word, walking with only a slight limp.

  Chapter 15

  It was silly, but as soon as the Hispanic girl disappeared from sight my thoughts went back to what had just happened with the other girls from my squad. Once that happened, I knew I had a very limited time in which to lose Jackson and Tristan unless I was willing to let them see me lose my composure.

  They of course didn't want to go. Honestly I would have liked for Jackson to stay, but I couldn't think of a way to send just Tristan away. Tristan was a self-centered jerk—he'd backed me up against the cheerleaders, which counted for something, but not enough for me to let him see me cry.

  Jackson had pointed out that it probably wasn't safe for me to hang around unpro
tected after having pissed off the devil girls, so we came to a compromise. We continued on around the school so that I could sit on the bleachers at the football field and he and Tristan would give me some privacy while staying where they could keep an eye on me in case the cheerleaders from the other team showed back up.

  Once I was by myself, I did cry, but only a little. I was still pissed at the other girls enough to take the edge off of the worst of my sadness, but there was no getting around the fact that I was sad. Hair seemed like such a stupid thing to cry over, especially considering the fact that I wasn't sure that I'd survive to graduate, but in a very real sense, Missy and the rest of the squad had won. I'd had to cut my hair and they were going to get off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

  I didn't want my eyes to get all red and puffy so I forced myself to stop crying after only a minute or so, but it didn't change how I felt, didn't change the fact that the world seemed to be closing in on me.

  Sheree found me a couple of minutes after I got control over myself again. "Adri, I just had the oddest conversation with someone."

  "What do you mean?"

  She handed me a phone which I realized after a second was mine.

  "This girl walked up to me and asked if I knew an Adri. I told her yes and she gave me this phone. It's yours, isn't it?"

  I unlocked it and confirmed that it was displaying my background and that the contacts were mine.

  "Yeah, I guess it is."

  "How did she get ahold of it?"

  I'd been busy asking myself that same question.

  "A dark-haired girl, Hispanic-looking and who maybe looked like she'd been in a fight recently? She would have been wearing a peasant top?"

  "Yeah, that was her, do you know her?"

  I shook my head. "Not really. I…ran into her earlier on the other side of the school. She must have stolen my phone when she stumbled and grabbed ahold of me for balance."

  "That's really odd, why would someone steal a phone and then give it back?"

  "I really wish I knew. It was kind of an odd conversation. Is everyone ready to go?"

  Sheree looked uncomfortable, like maybe she didn't like talking bad about the other girls on the squad, even though she knew that they deserved it.

  "No, Miss Winters only just barely let them go in and change. The football team was in there first, but it was the fact that she was yelling at everyone that kept them from changing earlier. The guys have been done for a little while."

  I nodded. That made sense seeing as how Tristan and Jackson had been back in street clothes when they'd found me.

  "She's really mad. Nobody admitted to having done it, but she said that you saw two girls and that they were wearing our uniform. She said that the fact they were all there waiting for you to come out of the locker room means that they are all complicit, everyone but Cindi and I, so between them they all need to come up with four hundred dollars to replace your clothes that they ruined or she'll kick all of them off of the squad and hold a new set of tryouts."

  My eyes went wide in shock. "Wow, I didn't expect that."

  Sheree nodded. "Yeah, she's pretty unhappy. She sounded like she was trying to come up with something else to punish them with too when the guys came out of the locker room and she told Cindi and me that we could go in and change."

  In the grand scheme of things making the girls pay thirty or forty dollars each to replace my clothes wasn't that big of a punishment, but it was actually far and away more than I was going to need, which meant that if I wanted to I could buy something really nice just to rub their noses in the fact that they'd had to pay for it.

  As far as revenge went, it was a pretty good option and I was pretty sure that Miss Winters had known that when she'd stipulated the amount. Visions of designer purses and jeans flashed through my head for a second until I remembered that the jeans I was currently wearing had been the cause of things boiling over between my parents. No article of clothing was worth that.

  I pushed away thoughts of the money and focused on Sheree again.

  "I'm really sorry that the girls have been so mean to you, Adri. I hope you don't feel like I've been mean too. I'm sorry if I haven't been as friendly as I should have, I've just been really, really tired for the last few days."

  I shook my head at her. "Sheree, you're a darling. You have nothing to be sorry about. Nobody else on the team has been as nice to me as you have."

  Even as I said it I realized it was truer than I'd realized. Sheree hadn't just been nicer than the other girls on the team, she'd been nicer than Cindi too. Cindi was my own sister and she'd been released to go into the locker room at the same time as Sheree. Why wasn't she out here telling me how sorry she was that I'd been pranked in such a mean way?

  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if she'd actually known what they were going to do to me. She'd been in the back of the bus with Missy and the others. Had they really not said anything to her?

  It was a nasty thought, but Cindi had been pretty nasty to me lately. It was a concern for another time though. I reached out and gently squeezed Sheree's arm.

  "I really do appreciate how nice and thoughtful you've been to me."

  Sheree blushed, but it was just a little darkening of her cheekbones. "You would have done the same for me."

  My phone picked that second to start ringing. I held it up to Sheree and asked, "Do you mind?"

  "Oh, no, go ahead."

  It wasn't a number I recognized, but I got so few calls that it went against my nature to let a call ring through to voicemail.

  "Hello."

  "Are you by yourself?"

  I recognized the voice—it was the girl who'd stolen my phone, the one who'd never actually told me her name.

  "No."

  "Then get alone and hurry. I don't have much time."

  I frowned, but I covered my phone with one hand and pointed out into the field.

  "I'm sorry, Sheree, I really need to take this. Do you mind if I just walk over there? I'd love to sit with you on the ride back home, if that's okay with you."

  "That would be nice, thanks, Adri."

  I waved goodbye to Sheree and then started across the tired green grass towards the center of the field at a fast walk.

  "Okay, I'm by myself."

  "How by yourself? Where is the closest person?"

  "I'm in the middle of the football field and my friend is back behind the bleachers already and headed the other direction."

  "That will have to do." She sounded tired, like maybe the beating from earlier had taken more out of her than she'd let show at the time. "You're in a lot of danger. Someone close to you, probably one of the two guys you were just with is extremely dangerous."

  "What do you mean?"

  I could almost hear her debating what to tell me through the silence on the other end of the phone.

  "It's not safe for me to tell you more than that. You need to stay away from the dangerous one no matter the cost. I tried to get close enough to figure out which one was the threat, but there are too many humans around. You're just going to have to trust me on this. You're better off staying away from both of them than risking that you'll pick the wrong one and get hurt down the road at some point."

  "You said that like you aren't human."

  There was more silence on the other end of the line, more debating as to how much to tell me.

  "If I said I wasn't, would that make you more or less likely to believe me?"

  My voice caught for a second. I swallowed a couple of times and then managed a response.

  "I'm not sure."

  "Yeah, that's what I thought."

  "What if I told you that I wasn't entirely…normal myself?"

  She sighed. "Are you faster and stronger than a normal person?"

  "No."

  "I am, but I wouldn't go up against him by myself, so I guess I'd say it doesn't make any difference."

  I was starting to shake. Everything I'd
ever learned growing up, every physical law I'd ever had explained to me told me that this girl was crazy. Intellectually I knew that she might be nothing more than some loony escape from the insane asylum, but something told me that wasn't the case. She had some of the answers I needed. Maybe not about how to survive in the dream, but about what I was going to have to do to survive in a world where things I didn't even know existed were going to try to kill me. I was so close, and out of all of the people I'd met so far she seemed the most trustworthy, but even before I asked my next question I knew that she wasn't going to tell me what I needed to know.

  "That's not what I meant. Would you tell me more about what kind of trouble I'm in if I told you I was different than other people somehow?"

  "No, I'm sorry, but I'm already taking too much of a risk as it is. There are people who would kill me for what I've told you already. Just because we're both different than other people doesn't mean that my kind doesn't want our true natures to remain a secret. Good luck. I suspect you're going to need it."

  She hung up on me. I called her number again, but it went straight to voicemail. I was pretty sure that she'd turned her phone off already. I knew I was going to try to call her again over the next few days, but I would have bet money that she would toss the phone as soon as she had another one.

  After everything else that had happened over the last few hours this was almost too much, but I didn't scream or throw things. Instead I just turned back towards the school and got a profound shock when I saw that Jackson was standing next to the bleachers.

  The girl had said that I'd probably be safe out in the center of the field with nobody closer than the bleachers, but the key word seemed to be probably. Just how good was this thing's hearing? I was pretty sure that Jackson wasn't the threat, but there wasn't any way to be sure. I took a deep breath and put the best smile I could on my face as I walked back to them.