Bitter Angel

by Megan Hand

  “A lot of things happened in this dream, and I can’t tell you everything yet, but something happened to Nilah and Heather—to all three of us—in this dream. And I know I can keep it from happening to them, but I need to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.” I take a long pause. “Will you help me?”

  He lets out a heavy sigh. I’m asking a lot of him, and I don’t expect him to believe me fully. All I need is for him to be on my side.

  I squeeze his hand in mine. “Do you trust me?”

  “I don’t know whatever the hell this is but,” he squeezes back, “yeah, I trust you.”

  I lean my head against the seat in relief, my eyes on his profile again. “Thank you.”

  He sneaks a glance at me, and I can tell he might trust me, but a part of him—a really big part—is still worried for my mental health. “What now?”

  I pull my phone out of my front pocket. “Now…we wait.”

  His hands return to the steering wheel as he settles into his seat, slightly more relaxed. “While we’re waiting,” his eyes cut to me, “you talk.”

  By the time we reach the university exit, my nerves are raw. Heather has texted me eighty times, unable to get a hold of that guy, unable to give me the information we’re traveling all this way for, but she’s questioning me incessantly.

  WTF is wrong with you? Nilah is freaked. Are you okay? Did something happen? WTH happened, Lil? You’re not responding. Now you’re freaking ME out.

  I texted her after every ten messages or so to let her know I was okay, just taking a day trip, and to let it go. She doesn’t believe me. Her multiple texts prove that, but it’s all I can give her right now.

  We take two turns, and we’re minutes away from campus when my phone finally rings. I answer it before the first ring ends. “Hey. Did you reach him?”

  “Yes. He told me he thinks the med geeks stay in Manchester Hall, but he’s not sure if they’re all pre-med or pharma-whatevers. Is that all you needed? You really freaked Nilah out. She hasn’t left the room all morning. Now I’m freaking out. Lil, I swear, if you’re doing something dangerous—”

  Nilah’s staying inside. Good. “I’m okay. I swear. Thanks, babe.”

  I press end, cutting off the argument that was sure to come. My phone will no doubt be exploding in a few minutes with more texts. I put it in my jeans pocket. “We need to find Manchester Hall.”

  Jay turns left onto what looks like the main drive that weaves us through the center of campus. “If you don’t find this guy from the dream, then what?”

  “We’ll go back home.”

  After my initial win-the-trust speech, I explained what I could without risking him pulling a U-turn and carting me back to campus. If I expected his support, I had to be honest, and like he said last night—what I thought was last night—his Lila radar would be able to tell if I was lying.

  He was more than mildly horrified when I told him a gang of rapists were prowling the Knoxville streets, but I could tell he was still skeptical that what I was experiencing was aftershock from a wildly lucid dream. If he only knew how much I wish that were true.

  I also explained who Trigger was and why I wanted to find him. We argued a little about whether this was necessary. Couldn’t we just call the police and report them, he asked me. No, I told him. I had to do this the right way. The way that meant tonight would not happen. Which required in-person work. Then he went quiet. I probably should’ve been apprehensive about that, but I was just glad to be done talking about it for a little while.

  I’m hauled out of my thoughts as I realize we’ve stopped. Manchester Hall is a hulking brick building sandwiched between two equally enormous dorms. There are so many floors that my eyes feel like they’re rolling back into my skull as I look up and up and up.

  “You sure about this?” Jay regards the uncertainty on my face.

  My hands hesitate only a moment on the seatbelt. “Absolutely.” I unbuckle and claw my fingernails into my jeans. “Is it too much to ask for you to wait here?”

  I can’t bear to look at him, but I can hear his disapproval.

  “Lil, you haven’t exactly proven that you’re okay to be alone right now.”

  “Please. I need to do this alone.”

  Seeing Trigger face to face is not going to be easy. He’s not a stranger to me, but I am to him. Honestly, I don’t want to divulge personal details in front of Jay about how he touched me, how we dance-grinded, how he kissed me…and how the things Alpha almost did to me… My face is heating, throat clogging at the thought.

  Jay clenches and unclenches his hands around the steering wheel. “I hate this. You know I hate this.”

  “I know.” I can feel my blood pressure rising. I don’t mean to upset him. What I’m about to do is upsetting enough. “You said you trusted me.”

  He blurts out, “That doesn’t mean I believe this is real.” Then he backpedals, “I didn’t mean that, necessarily. Not that way. Lil—”

  “Yes you did,” I reassure him. He doesn’t owe me an explanation. In a way, I’m grateful he doesn’t fully believe me. It speaks to his good sense. “I’ll be really quick, though. It’s not like someone can hurt me in there. People are everywhere. I’ll be fine.”

  He still doesn’t look convinced, so I clear my throat, sit straighter, and pull out my most commanding tone. “Just park the car in the visitor’s zone over there. If a cop comes by, tell him your girlfriend’s just picking up someone, which is what I plan on doing. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  Cross your fingers.

  I throw open the door.

  Jay catches my arm. “Look at me.”

  I comply.

  The worry in his eyes breaks my heart. “Ten minutes or I’m coming in after you. Got it?”

  I pull away from him, a little miffed. My attitude is peeking through. “Got it.” The last thing I need is him bossing me around. Maybe I don’t want him to be more assertive. I slam the car door, the T-shirt tucked safely under my arm.

  The glass doors of the building are keycard access only, but I see someone coming and I slip in as they head out. The interior is nice and modern. It makes me wonder why I didn’t come here. Our building is crap compared to this.

  Down to business. Heather may have given me the name of the building, but technically I don’t even know if Trigger—Franklin. Need to start thinking of his real first name now—lives in this building. While I’m prepared to knock on every single door, my best timesaving bet is to check with the RAs first.

  In a building this size, there’s probably one to every floor. I pace up and down the halls. The floor is laid out in a square with rooms on both sides of me, but there are no cuts through the square, only four long hallways. I almost complete the entire square when I finally reach the door marked Resident Assistant.

  I knock and a girl answers. Pretty. Brunette. Serious face. “Can I help you?”

  “Uh, hi. I’m looking for Tri…uh, I mean Franklin…Turner.”

  Damn, my memory’s good. I said the name to myself like a bazillion times. Still, I usually suck with names.

  She thinks for a moment and shakes her head. “Sorry.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I take the stairs up to the next floor, not bothering with the elevator. The next RA’s room proves easy to find. It’s directly inside the hall, first door to the left. I knock again. No answer this time.

  I do the same for the third floor. Another chick. She’s never heard of him. I let out a sigh of frustration, but I refuse to give up. Not until I’ve at least searched all the floors. If I have to, I’ll go back to the floors where the resident assistants didn’t answer and start pounding on random doors.

  The fourth floor RA’s room is at the back and to the right. A half-awake guy answers. He has brown hair sticking out in every direction, no shirt, and ugly, ugly green plaid pajama pants on.

  It takes a few seconds to find my tongue. “Um, I’m looking for Franklin Turner?” It’s not su
pposed to be a question, but it comes out like one.

  The dude rubs a vigorous hand over his face and scrutinizes me. “Are you family?”

  His words are slurred. He’s drunk. Awesome.

  “Yes,” I lie. “I’m his…sister. Does he live on this floor?”

  He sticks his drunk face in mine and tilts his head up a couple inches because he’s short. His eyes go all slanty. “You don’t look like his sister. No way he has a sister as hot as you.”

  Whoa. His breath knocks me back a step. The smell of alcohol reminds me too much of puking, and I press a hand to my stomach just to calm the urge. “Look. I just need to find him. Which room?”

  He sways back. For a moment, I think he’s going to fall flat on his butt, but he catches himself with both hands on the doorknob, swinging the door wide open. “Can’t say. Privacy shit.” He offers me a one-shoulder shrug. “You understand.”

  I smack the door, which causes the bastard to lose his balance again. “No. I don’t understand. I’m his sister. Now tell me which room he’s in, or I’ll report you to…” I swing my arm aimlessly “…whoever it is you report to.”

  Cool. Good one. Maybe he’ll offer me a job as door security.

  I fold my arms and jut my hip to give myself a hint of authority.

  The guy turns away, slurring, “You’re not his sister. Leave me the hell alone.” He doesn’t even close his door. He just collapses face first onto his tangled sheets.

  I check my watch. It’s already been almost eight minutes. Jay is only going to give me another two to five, max. What now?

  From the way that douche bag was just acting, I could assume Trigger—Franklin—lives on this floor for sure. Then again, he didn’t seem very reliable in his drunken state. I have two choices: I can check with other RAs, or I can start beating on every door on this floor.

  I choose this floor. What’ve I got to lose? It did seem like the guy knew Trig—Franklin. God, who names their kid Franklin these days?

  I begin my door-to-door search. The first three are no answers; the next two say they’ve never heard of him. I try describing him, but all I can come up with is “really tall” since I decided it’d be rude and unhelpful to say unattractive, nerdy, or twenty-year-old virgin.

  My phone rings. I ignore it.

  At the sixth door, a girl answers. She tells me she thinks a “loser nerd that might have a loserish, nerdy name like that might live down the hall in the four-fifties.” I ignore her lovely use of adjectives and turn the corner. I spot four-fifty-three, four-fifty-one, four-forty-nine. The other side of the hall is even numbers. I pick one at random and get a short, chubby kid holding an Xbox controller.

  “Yeah?” He barely looks my way as he continues gaming, physically moving to dodge fake bullets while gunning down some creature with fifteen arms.

  Did I just step into the junior high wing? I roll my eyes impatiently. “I’m looking for Franklin Turner.”

  By the thirtieth door, I finally managed get his name out. My phone pings in my pocket. I ignore it again. Jay has resorted to texting me. Or maybe it’s still Heather.

  “The Bill Nye guy?” Gamer Guy asks without missing a beat of his fake mission.

  “The who?”

  “You know, Bill Nye, the Loser Guy.” He actually sings it to the appropriate tune.

  It’s weird, but my heart steals an extra beat. I don’t recall Franklin resembling that geeky science dude from TV, but this kid seems awfully confident. I think I’ll take my chances. “Yes, the Bill Nye guy.”

  He waves a finger behind him, pointing nowhere in particular because he’s still glued to the screen. “All the future White Coats live on the left half of floors four through eight. I think he’s in four-ten. Gamed with his roommate once. Seen him in the lounge, but he never talks to anyone.” Some weird noise explodes from the TV. “Damn it!” After the words Game Over flash on the screen, he finally takes a good look at me. His face goes slack while the controller hangs limp in his hand. “You family?”

  Why does anyone care? I don’t have to answer this geek’s question now that I have a number, but I tell him “no” as I start to walk down the hall.

  I hear him behind me. “Go easy on him. He’s not good with girls. Or people.” He swears again, the slam of his door resounding up the hall.

  I don’t know what all that means if the kid doesn’t even know Franklin, but there’s no time to analyze it now. Four-twenty-four, four-twenty-two, four-twenty. I round the hall, my attention only on the numbers, and I smack straight into some dude.

  No. Not some dude.

  Alpha.

  Shit!

  My gut instinct tells me to run.

  Run like you ran last night. No, better than you ran last night. Adrenaline pumps down into my toes to prove my point, but then I see his face. The wide-eyed interest from body slamming into a pretty girl, but he also has the absence of recognition.

  He doesn’t know me—not yet anyway. His eyes aren’t bloodshot like I remember. He grins in a sexy, boyish way. “Hello,” he coos all slow.

  This is a superficial but charming side I was not privy to last night when I was offered up as his sacrifice.

  Feed the devil. Keep him at bay.

  I rifle my scrambled mind for a reply. A word, a syllable, anything. But seeing him in the flesh, I swear is like seeing my future flash forward. Though my bones have turned to mush, I can still run. However, my brain reworks the situation.

  What happened last night wasn’t his first time. This is a business, or something he’s done before. If I run, he will run after me. Whether he knows me or not, he’ll think he’s done something worthy of a sudden takeoff.

  Since all working synapses are currently fried or on vacation, my only available response is to repeat his word back to him. “Hello.” My throat is dry, and it croaks out. I feel like one of those dolls with a string coming out of her backside. If he says, “You have a nice ass,” will I echo that, too?

  Where is my pepper spray when I need it?

  “You okay? Looking for someone?”

  His confidence twists my gut. I want to gouge out his pretty green eyes.

  He leans in, winding his fingers around my wrist, probably to check my pulse since I’ve been standing here for at least two minutes, saying nothing.

  Finally, a coherent thought clears out the fog, and I’m quick on my toes again. I laugh to cover my sudden rudeness and clear disgust that he’s touching me. “Oh my gosh! You look so familiar. No!” I pluck my cell out of my pocket and use my jitters to my advantage. I flap my arms excitedly. “You look just like my friend Cooper. I mean, not just like him but just like him.”

  His eyes narrow. He knows something’s up.

  I’ve played the dumb girl card once or twice before—I love my friends, but they’ve had their moments, and having spent almost a lifetime with them has given me a lot of practice—so I keep playing along.

  I press the camera button on my cell and manage to touch his arm without flinching. “Could I take your pic? I mean, not for me, for Cooper. You guys look so alike, and he’d really get a kick out of it.”

  He keeps his smile intact, but a bit of the evil I had a front row seat to last night leaks into his expression. “Nice try.” He laughs. “I’m not fallin’ for that one.”

  I do my Bambi eyes. “Whad’ya mean?” My cell is positioned at my eye level. All I have to do is click, but he confiscates it and holds it in the air like I’m a kindergartner reaching for a sucker.

  He stiff-arms me into the wall. Hastily, I decide to go the pissed-off route instead of showing my fear. “Hey! Lay off.” My hands lock around his forearm at my collarbone. I try to pry him off, but he holds me hostage. His breath smells like cigarettes.

  He smugly watches me squirm for a few seconds. “You tell whoever the fuck you work for to lay the fuck off, or he’ll see me in court.”

  He tosses my cell a few feet away. It lands on the carpet with a muffled thud and pings with a
nother message. I have a feeling I’m in big trouble with Jay. Alpha snickers his way down the hall at a leisurely pace.

  I’m torn between being incredibly relieved and wanting to go after him. I faced him. That was huge for me. Now I feel a rush of energy, of control. Maybe I could go after him. People everywhere, right? The idea is so tempting.

  I should, but I won’t.

  I should ram him and beat the crap out of him. Tear his burly arms from their sockets. Pluck his perfectly styled hair out one follicle at a time. Kick him in the family jewels, hopefully sterilizing him for life so he can’t impregnate anyone with his hideous spawn. Or maybe I’ll just neuter him and be the salvation for all females. Problem solved.

  But I don’t.

  I’m way out of my league here, and it won’t fix all of my problems.

  Once he vanishes around the corner, I press my hands to my face and suck in breaths to calm myself. I’m flustered, hot, nervous, and about ten other things, and this day has barely started. If I keep this up, my body will crap out on me from adrenaline shortage.

  My phone buzzes several times from the floor. Another phone call, not a text. Time’s definitely up.

  Trigger’s—oh hell, screw the name—T-shirt is still wedged under my arm. I recover my phone from the floor, pressing end to ignore the call for now, and stuff it in my pocket. Jay might hunt me down, but it’ll take him a little while to find me. I stand in front of four-ten, dig my heels into the floor, and knock.

  “What now?” a male voice bellows, ripping the door open.

  Oh. Man.

  It’s him alright, only not so done up. He doesn’t really look like Bill Nye. Don’t know what that was all about. His hair is a frizzy mess, not mussed, and he’s wearing pleated khakis—yuck. Completing his rise to the dork throne, he’s also in a red button-up shirt that appears to be the same material as his pants.

  I swallow. Get a grip, Lil. You just confronted the enemy. This should be nothing.

  He frowns, then his features shift into something I sort of remember from last night. It’s that mysterious face when he caught me daydreaming. I expect him to ask me who I am, what I’m doing here, et cetera, but he takes me completely by surprise.