Hunted

by Dean Murray

  "I'm sorry, that sounds pretty terrible."

  "It is, but I just keep telling myself that it was the living in ignorance that was awful. Knowledge is power and sometimes even freedom. As much as it feels like the sky is falling now that I know, it's better this way."

  I swallowed a couple of times. "If I choose wrong then I probably won't live long enough to correct my mistake. There is a decided chance that we'll never see each other again."

  "That's true, but you don't necessarily have to choose right away, you don't even know that you'll ever see the Native American again. There are a lot of different ways that your life could go from here and not all of them are bad."

  "You don't seem worried."

  This smile was less sad, like he was still mourning the past, but the future wasn't as bleak as maybe it could have been.

  "I'm not. I can't tell the future any more than you can, but I feel a profound connection to you. I can't believe that the universe would put us together for just these few moments and then make it so we never meet again. You'll choose the right course and I'll somehow make it out of the morass I'm currently mired in."

  I knew that my smile was a bit hesitant, a bit forced, but I was smiling, which was more than I'd expected to be able to do a few minutes ago when I'd realized I was in someone else's dream again. Instead of fighting for my life, I'd found that missing piece of myself that I'd only recently realize was absent.

  "Do you think we'll remember this dream when we wake up?"

  He looked at me oddly. "Why wouldn't we?"

  "I don't know why, but these dreams tend to fade away once I'm awake. It's like I'm two different people and the other person can't wrap her mind around what happens in the dream. I can remember basic stuff like the fact that I'm in danger or that someone helped me, but so much of the actual emotion is nothing more than vapor."

  "Well then, I hope that we both buck the trend where this particular dream is concerned. I would hate to lose this connection with you, slight though it is, because my memory wasn't up to holding onto the full measure of what I'm feeling right now."

  "It doesn't feel like a slight connection."

  I wouldn't have said that he could look shy. Bashfulness had no place on that justifiably confident face, but there was no arguing with my eyes. He was unsure of himself, possibly even as unsure as I was.

  "No, you're right, this isn't a trivial thing, but it feels like it could be even more, like it could be something truly epic and not in a way most people use it these days."

  "I know. It's actually a little scary."

  "Yes, scary, but wonderful and exciting in a way that I thought I'd lost the ability to feel. Little kids get excited about Santa Claus and Christmas. Adults just cautiously anticipate."

  I smiled as he slid imperceptibly closer. "Santa Claus and Christmas, and birthdays and the Fourth of July. That's a pretty good description of what I'm feeling right now."

  Alec moved in slowly. He took forever to cover the painfully small distance between us, but when his lips touched mine it felt like my heart was going to explode.

  His kiss was soft and gentle, but there was a sense of controlled power to it, like I was doing something dangerous, like I might not survive if he relaxed his control for the briefest of instants. He pulled me closer, effortlessly sliding me across the bench with one arm as his other hand cradled the side of my face.

  There was more heat to his touch now and I could feel the iron control that I was realizing was an integral part of him, start to fray. It was terrifying and exciting all at once. I was scared to death of what might happen if he ever really lost control, but at the same time I wanted to know all of him, even the dangerous, feral parts that he normally kept tightly locked away.

  His teeth bit down on my bottom lip, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to tell me that he was even closer than I'd realized to losing control.

  I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. I gasped for air, I needed it, needed to be able to talk, but I didn't know if I was going to tell him to stop or if I was going to beg him to just let go of the inhibitions that were the only thing ensuring my safety.

  I opened my mouth to say something when I heard a howl that made my skin crawl. Alec was shaking as he drew back from me.

  "Even here, even in my dreams it seems I can't be happy, can't be free of the demons that chase me out there."

  Now there was more than one creature howling and Alec looked up at me with eyes that had gone a paler, colder shade of blue.

  "Get out now if you're able to, Adri. What comes next won't be pretty."

  I shook my head. "No, I want to stay. I can help you."

  "It's my dream, remember? I can influence it more than you can. Besides, I'll fight better knowing that you're safe."

  I meant to argue with him, but before I could really get started something stepped out from behind a large rock. My heart skipped a beat as I took in a beast that should only be able to exist in nightmares. It was tall, somewhere between seven and eight feet, darkly furred with a face that was too unfinished to describe other than that it seemed to have hints of both canine and feline characteristics.

  Claws that were nearly as long as my forearm tipped its fingers, gleamed darkly in the moonlight, but it was the fangs that I couldn't seem to look away from. If madness had been made flesh and bone and then given teeth they would have looked like this, impossibly big but still somehow fitting in a mouth that was obviously designed for rending and tearing.

  The creature seemed to be in no hurry and a second later I realized why as a second and a third of its kind stepped into view. Alec looked back at me with concern on his face.

  "I'd hoped not to expose you to this, to the monster I carry inside of me."

  Alec's transformation tore through him before anything else could be said and my breath caught as I saw what now occupied the space where he'd been standing. A second ago I would have said that the three monsters that were approaching us looked like the Native American when he was in his wolf-man form, but now that I had Alec's wolf-man shape to compare them to I realized how wrong I would have been. They were larger than he or the Native American had been and where the creatures were unfinished and bestial, Alec looked like someone had taken human intelligence and simply crafted a new home for it.

  He looked back at me with the same ice-blue eyes he'd had a moment before, and then lunged towards the closest beast in an explosion of speed that I somehow knew I shouldn't be able to follow. The first creature tried to dodge out of Alec's way, but he materialized a large rock in the direction it was trying to move and then shoved his fist into its chest as it bounced off of the rock that hadn't been there a second before.

  The second creature jumped Alec, crashing into his back before he could spin around after finishing off the first enemy. Claws ripped across Alec's back, but rather than tearing through flesh in a spray of blood as I'd expected them to, they skittered off in a spray of sparks.

  Alec tried to turn around to capitalize on the surprise he'd created by manifesting armor underneath his skin, but the second creature had hold of him and although its claws didn't seem to be making any headway on his flesh it had him effectively immobilized.

  Alec's third enemy struck, and again the claws bounced off, but this time there was blood along with the sparks. The second creature bit down on Alec's shoulder with its fangs and even I could see that Alec was weakening. He could only manipulate the dream around him to a certain degree and the attacks he was dealing with were already pushing him beyond his capabilities.

  I stepped forward, wanting to help, and then I remembered my certainty that I could be killed in the dream. Oddly enough, it wasn't my vulnerability that stopped me, it was the fear that my being here was imparting the same weakness to Alec. In a normal dream Alec might be defeated, but he'd wake the next morning unharmed.

  I didn't know the limits of my power, but he'd said that he couldn't normally dream in this level of detail.
If that meant that I'd sucked him more strongly into the dream then the most helpful thing I could do was simply flee as fast as I was able.

  The two creatures had him on the ground now. There was more blood and his struggles seemed to be weakening, but I forced my worry for him to one side and focused on the real world. It was surprisingly easy to return to the feeling of cotton sheets on my bare arms. As I lapsed back into a normal, dreamless sleep I had two thoughts.

  The first was to hope that he was okay, that he would survive, both the dream fight and whatever real-world conflict he'd said was so imminent. The second thought was to wonder if it had been so easy to come back to myself this time because part of me didn't believe any reality that included someone like him—especially someone like him who had such strong feelings for me—could possibly be real.

  Chapter 23

  The dream with Alec was still with me on Friday morning when my alarm pulled me awake. I reflexively hit the snooze button, but I didn't feel like going to sleep despite the fact that I was exhausted. I couldn't remember a time when I'd been more tired, but it was the kind of tired that wouldn't be solved by sleeping in an extra fifteen minutes.

  I knew I was worn out from dream walking with Alec, but I hadn't expected for it to hit me this hard. Either Alec was somehow more resistant to my gift than the other people I'd encountered in the dream, or he was much further away than they'd been. There was a kind of dull ache behind my eyes that seemed to say that I'd pushed too hard and stretched something inside of my head that needed some time to recover still.

  I was going to be feeling the aftereffects of my time with Alec for at least the next day or two, but I didn't regret the time we'd spent together. I now had a potential ally, one who said he couldn't do much for me, but who knew more about the world I was being dragged into than I did. One who somehow knew me without ever having met me. One who felt drawn to me in the same inexplicable way that I was drawn to him.

  I stayed in bed thinking about Alec, wondering whether my leaving the dream had been enough to save him, until my alarm went off again. One thing was for certain, in a few days, once I'd given myself a chance to recover from this last excursion, I was going to try and reestablish contact with Alec. Maybe he was right and there wasn't much else he could do to help me, but I had more reasons to be with him than just the possibility of safety.

  I got an unexpected call just before I walked out the door to go to school.

  "Hello, this is Adri."

  "Hi, Adri, it's Missy. I'm just calling to tell you to bring your light uniform to school with you today."

  "I thought we always wore our dark uniforms to away games."

  "Yes, usually, but there was some kind of screw-up somewhere so the team is wearing their light jerseys today."

  "Okay, thanks, Missy."

  I went back to my room and grabbed my light skirt and shell, but I left my other uniform in my duffle bag too. I knew I was being paranoid, but that didn't mean that I was necessarily wrong. I wasn't going to trust Missy any further than I absolutely had to.

  I practically flew to school. Classes went by in a blur that was eerily similar to the way I'd lost time after I'd realized that Jackson wasn't interested in me. This was better though because I was still aware of what was going on around me—I just didn't care about all of the stupid, petty crap.

  Without the constant distractions involved in trying to ignore the whispers all around me, I managed to catch up on most of the homework I'd missed out on earlier in the week. As focused as I was, I still remembered to keep an eye out for the rest of the squad. A lot of the girls just wore their uniforms all day on the day of a game, so I figured that was one way to settle the question of whether we were supposed to wear dark uniforms or light uniforms.

  Not too surprisingly, it turned out that none of them were wearing their uniforms today, which pretty much confirmed that Missy was trying to screw with me and she had all of the other girls in on it. I made a mental note to ask Sheree or Tristan what they'd been told as far as what color of uniform to wear and then just continued on with my day.

  I'd started to gain back a little bit of weight as a result of not dreaming for so many days, not enough for anyone to notice with my clothes on, but enough that I'd been feeling a little better about having to go to the doctor so that Miss Winters would stop worrying that I had some kind of eating disorder.

  All of that progress had been washed away as a result of dream walking with Alec. It was interesting that I hadn't gone below my lowest weight, but I was right back to it. I loaded up with an extra slice of pizza at lunch, wondering the whole time if my gift was somehow self-regulating. It was like my body had known that I'd pushed it as far as I safely could, so it had stopped me from dream walking until I'd had a chance to build back up the physical reserves that it knew I was going to need in order to be able to dream walk again.

  I ate until I couldn't eat anymore and wondered the entire time if I could solve my dream walking problem simply by keeping myself too skinny for my body to permit another midnight excursion. It was an interesting possibility, but one that came with some very real risks. I didn't want to think about what might happen if I was wrong and got sucked into an extended dream session when I didn't have enough body fat to supply the energy the dream required.

  It was possible that I'd just snap out of the dream once I couldn't sustain the exertion required, but it was also possible that if someone was holding me in the dream like the Native American had tried to do, that my heart would simply stop beating.

  Between thoughts about Alec, my classes, and worries about my weight, I forgot to track down Sheree and Tristan. By the time I realized my mistake I was already headed towards my last class. I told myself that it didn't matter one way or the other because I had both of my uniforms, but that didn't stop me from stewing over it for most of the next hour.

  The locker room had its normal complement of girls from the last PE class of the day, but not a single other member of the squad, which was even more evidence that something fishy was going on. I wanted to scream over the fact that Missy and the others were still being so petty, but I just took a deep breath and told myself that the worst that would happen was that I'd show up to the school bus in the wrong uniform and have to change once we got to the game.

  Either way, the most that Missy could accomplish at this point would be to tip Miss Winters off to the fact that she was still hazing me. I just needed to hold things together for a little bit longer. Alec had said that he couldn't protect me, but no matter how much danger he was in, I was pretty sure that I'd be better off with him than staying here.

  In another few days I'd dream walk to him again and try to convince him of that fact. Once that happened I could leave Missy and Cindi behind and never worry about them again.

  I paused midway through pulling my white skirt up as the full impact of what I was considering hit me. I was fully prepared to leave my family behind and go off to be with some guy I didn't really know and the only person I was going to miss was my dad.

  There were so many problems with that idea that I didn't know where to start. For all I knew Alec had used some kind of metaphysical whammy on me to create such an instant bond. I didn't think that was the case, but that didn't mean I was right. The fact that my life was so bad, that I'd connected so poorly with everyone around me that I was only going to miss one person, was just as scary.

  I'd been convinced all of this time that I wasn't the one with the problem, but what if I was wrong there too? Everyone else around me seemed to be able to make friends and have fun spending time with other people; I was the clear anomaly there.

  I forced myself to continue getting dressed. Those were all worries that I was going to have to deal with sooner or later, but being stalked by the old man, the Native American, and maybe even the wax woman had to supersede everything else. If Alec could get me away to somewhere safe then I was going to accept his help.

  I wasn't really surpri
sed when I went out to the bus and saw that all of the other girls were in their dark blue uniforms. I wasn't surprised, but that didn't mean that I wasn't mad. I was actually super-pissed. The one redeeming thing about the whole situation was that they hadn't screwed Sheree over too.

  Miss Winters was looking down at her clipboard when I walked up with Sheree only a couple of feet behind me.

  "Adri, what are you doing? You know that we always wear dark colors to away games."

  I tried to keep the anger off of my face, but I probably didn't succeed entirely. "I got a call from Missy this morning telling me that we were supposed to wear our light uniforms today."

  "Are you sure that's what she said?"

  "Yes, I'm positive. It's fine though. It sounded fishy so I went ahead and brought my dark uniform too."

  I could see the relief in the way Miss Winters' shoulders relaxed. My having outsmarted Missy meant that Miss Winters wouldn't have to further escalate things with the rest of the team.

  "Okay, I'll have to think about this, but at least you'll be able to change once we get there."

  Miss Winters waved me into the bus and I took my usual spot towards the front, only a little away from where Miss Winters sat to split the boys and the girls up. Jackson hardly even looked at me as I walked past him, but it wasn't exactly unexpected and it hurt a lot less after meeting Alec the night before.

  Missy walked forward as though wanting to talk to one of her spotters, but on her way back she stopped at my seat, resting one hand on the fake, brown plastic leather in front of me.

  "It's too bad that you didn't remember to wear the right uniform, Adri."

  "Yeah, if only someone hadn't told me that we were wearing the white ones today. Luckily I'm not as stupid as some people, so I brought both."