Hunted

by Dean Murray

  "I'm safe?"

  He nodded. "None of this should be even remotely possible, but yes, she's no longer a threat."

  A wave of relief crashed through me. I knew that later I'd start second-guessing what I'd done, start worrying about the fact that I'd helped kill her, but right now I was just glad to have survived. I started to thank Dream Stealer for his help, but was cut off when the dream flickered around me.

  "Did you see that? Is that supposed to happen?"

  "Did I see what?"

  "Everything flickered. Like someone had turned off the light here in the dream."

  He'd shifted back down into human form and I noticed that much of the damage from his fight with the vampire and the flying shards of glass seemed to have been healed in the process. My question brought a frown to his face.

  "Is there someone else in the house with you? It sounds like you're being woken up against your will."

  My stomach dropped. In all of the terror and adrenaline of the fight I'd forgotten about Jackson, forgotten that he'd be heading over to my house as soon as he got back from the game. I didn't know how much more time I had, but it couldn't be long.

  "I think there's another vampire. They were working together and he's the one who finally figured out my real identity."

  "Hold on. Try not to let him get you into a vehicle. I can track the two of you as long as there is a scent trail, I'll be there as soon as…"

  I didn't catch the rest of what he said because I was ripped away from the dream and back into the waking world.

  Chapter 26

  Jackson looked down at me impassively. "I'm impressed, Adri. I wouldn't have thought you capable of killing Pamela like that. How did you manage it?"

  I debated my response, discarding several ideas before deciding that my best bet was just to cooperate as much as possible. I didn't want him to know about Dream Stealer, but everything else was fair game if it would keep him talking and buy more time for the cavalry to arrive.

  "It's not supposed to be possible. I'm not even really positive how I did it or if I could do it again, but I managed to pull her so strongly into the dream that she couldn't flee when her dream body died."

  "Hmm, interesting. That means that you're an even better weapon than she originally thought you would be. We've spent weeks looking for you, you know. She knew you were somehow special when the two of you ran into each other that first time. She's a mentalist, so she was able to pick up bits and pieces from your mind, mostly that you'd been developing this incredible dream power but that you didn't fully understand how to control it. It's really too bad she didn't get your identity then."

  I swallowed nervously despite my best efforts. "She could have if she hadn't killed me. I mean she didn't really kill me, but she choked me and when I passed out in the dream I came back to myself here in the real world."

  Jackson nodded. "We figured as much. We didn't know for sure, but we suspected that you had to be fairly close by. Most psychic powers don't work very well over extreme distances. When there weren't any cheerleader deaths in the news over the next couple of days we were pretty sure you'd survived."

  I slowly sat up. "Then when I met you in the dream you knew that I was still alive and you knew I was on the team with you."

  Jackson snorted softly as though laughing at a joke that only he understood. "I suppose you're right in a way. The truth is that it was me, but it also wasn't me. You actually met Alan in that dream, he's the part of me that couldn't…deal with what Pamela demanded of her minions. She split the two of us up early on when I proved harder to break than she anticipated."

  "Wait, you mean like split personalities?"

  "Yes, exactly, only there's more bleedthrough between the two identities than you'd normally see in your typical textbook case. I'm actually quite fond of Alan. He's weak and completely useless outside of his particular area of expertise, but he makes it a lot easier to deal with you humans. I find it quite fatiguing trying to maintain a facade of normality, so I spend much of the day taking cues from him."

  "How does he feel about you?"

  I couldn't actually identify anything different about Jackson's smile than normal, but there was an edge to it that made my skin crawl.

  "Oh, he positively loathes me. And rightly so. I've done things with our body that he never would have agreed to. Then again, I would have never said that Pamela would be able to recruit him to help track you down. I wonder what she promised him, he's been awfully quiet where that particular bit of information is concerned. Probably something ridiculous like getting rid of me altogether. We both know Pamela would never have done that, but he does refuse to give up hope."

  "I thought he couldn't hide anything from you."

  "No, things bleed through, but not everything and Pamela can temporarily shut down one personality if she wants to keep something a secret. That's really the heart of the problem that you've left me with, Adri. Jackson and Alan functioned solely because Pamela continued to tinker with our shared mind. With her gone, I'm not really sure what will happen. Likely the two personalities will try to reintegrate."

  "Isn't that a good thing? Wouldn't you like to be free?"

  "Alan would certainly say so, but it's not a good thing for me because I like…working for Pamela. I'm exactly what she intended me to be. Don't be fooled into thinking that I'm all of the bad and Alan is all of the good. The truth is that I'm all of the attributes Pamela thought were useful and he's everything she didn't want. Normally vampires scheme nonstop looking for a way to be free of their master. Alan certainly does, but I've never seen the point."

  "Because you love her?"

  "Hardly. No, because the weak will always serve the strong. As much as I might prefer for it to be otherwise, I am weak. Given enough years for my powers to grow, Jackson could eventually become strong enough to become a vampire elder, but Alan wouldn't last five minutes without Jackson's help. I'm weak because Alan makes me weak and you've made it so that eventually Alan will assume partial control over me."

  "I'm sorry."

  Jackson waved my words away. "Your regret or lack thereof makes no difference. That's the thing you never quite understood. Jackson expressed interest in you because Pamela ordered it, but when you didn't react more strongly to the sunflowers that Alan told us to send to all of the cheerleaders, Jackson moved on to Wendy. It was simply orders. Your feelings never entered into the equation in any manner other than as a possible vulnerability to be exploited."

  Listening to him made my skin crawl and not just because of the way that he'd convinced me he was interested in me.

  "Is there a third person in there too? Is there someone else besides just Jackson and Alan?"

  I'd caught him by surprise for the first time all night, maybe the first time ever. He tried to hide it, but his face had been so dead and expressionless that even a slight change was as good as if he'd gasped.

  "You know, I'd never even considered the possibility. I suspect that particular blind spot was created intentionally by Pamela. Possibly that is how she's managed to keep the two of us in such a static balance of power for so long. It explains so much."

  He'd turned his back on me, but I was under no illusions when it came to my ability to escape. If he was even half as fast as what Pamela had been inside of the dream then nothing I could possibly do would allow me a big enough head start to get away from him.

  A flash of movement from the front door caught my eye, but I forced myself not to move. If it was Tristan or Dream Stealer then I couldn't risk alerting Jackson to their presence and if it wasn't them then it didn't matter who or what was out there. Instead I tried to regain Jackson's attention.

  "What are you going to do with me?"

  "Yeah, back to the problem at hand. I don't actually know. You represent an astonishing weapon by any measure, but you're equally a liability to whoever tries to master you. The fact that you were able to kill Pamela while she was dreaming means that you'd almost certainly be a
ble to kill me in the same fashion and locking you up would do absolutely nothing to prevent my demise."

  He was tapping the side of his face as he looked at me, but the thing that struck me the hardest was the fact that his face wasn't the expressionless, dead thing it had been a few seconds ago.

  "I'm talking to Jackson again, aren't I?"

  "Of course. Alan…and the other one aren't qualified to deal with vampire politics and frankly they are both a little nervous at the idea of reintegration. They don't want to know everything that I've done over the last few decades."

  "How old are you?"

  "Old enough to be your grandfather, which still makes me little more than a child compared to most of the vampires who served Pamela before we were run out of Atlanta. I thought that bowing and scraping to them for all those years was the most miserable existence possible, but it doesn't have anything over on being forced to pretend that I'm still a teenager."

  "You could drug me."

  Jackson smiled. "There's the spirit. I like that you're a problem-solver. You're right, if drugging you ensures that you sleep without being able to get inside of my head then that would be one way to make sure that you were safe. The problem is that I won't know whether or not the drugs are working until you make your first attempt at killing me. Do you already know that certain drugs don't work on you, Adri?"

  I couldn't get over how genuine his smile looked, especially considering the fact that I was pretty sure he didn't actually feel emotions.

  "How did you learn how to pretend to be normal so well when you don't actually feel any of the same emotions?"

  "I actually do feel some of the same emotions, but mostly I've just been practicing for longer than you've been alive. You still haven't answered my question though."

  I licked my lips. I knew it was a bad visual cue, a sign that I might be lying, but I couldn't help myself. The next couple of seconds were going to decide my fate one way or another.

  "I don't know. I've never tried it. I wish I would have thought of it because then I could have stayed drugged as a way of ensuring that I didn't run into you or Pamela again."

  "Indeed. I almost believe you, Adri. You paint a tempting picture. If you can be controlled then it would mean that I could take you to another vampire elder in return for leniency. I'd have to select another mentalist, a fairly powerful one, and I'd have to hurry. There's no telling how long I have before integration starts happening. It could actually work."

  I'd been concentrating on looking at Jackson, so as not to tip him off to the fact that Tristan was creeping towards him, but I'd still been able to see that Tristan had a shiny aluminum bat in one hand, which short of a gun was probably the best equalizer he could have brought with him.

  Tristan made it almost to within striking range without being caught. He was a natural athlete and he had some pretty powerful incentive to be quiet. If the floor hadn't creaked he might have even been able to take Jackson down, but instead of his blow taking Jackson in the head, the vampire spun around and got an arm up, deflecting the bat away even as his arm crumpled from the force of the blow.

  For a split second, I thought Tristan still had a chance. Jackson seemed to be moving quickly, but not that much more quickly than a normal human. It wasn't until Jackson hit Tristan in the stomach with his uninjured left arm that I realized Jackson wasn't moving slower than expected, I was just somehow still able to process what was going on around me extra fast, just like in the dream.

  Jackson's blow hadn't seemed particularly quick or powerful, but it sent Tristan crashing back towards the living room wall in painful slow motion even as it pulled a scream out of me. My scream seemed to go on for forever, but eventually I had to take a breath. Only the scream didn't go away as I sucked air back into my oxygen-starved lungs.

  It wasn't until Jackson took two quick steps back towards the front door and backhanded Cindi that I realized there were actually four of us in the room. Cindi crumpled to the ground, her scream dying away instantly as her head hit the ground. For one heart-wrenching second I thought he'd killed her, but then I saw that her eyes were fluttering and she started groaning and trying to pull herself back to her feet.

  "Really, Adri? If you were going to call for reinforcements you should at least have gotten the police. Tristan and Cindi are just going to end up as more collateral damage."

  Tristan had been gasping for air, but he gamely grabbed the baseball bat up from off the floor and tried to pick himself back up off of the ground. Jackson was obviously keeping an eye on things though because he once again hit Tristan with his uninjured hand, this time in the side of the head, and then he held his hand out and the bat flew through the air towards him without any visible force propelling it.

  "You actually did manage to take me by surprise, Tristan. If I'd had even a fraction of a second more time to react I would have just stopped the bat in the air using my telekinetic gifts. I really am sorry to do this, believe it or not, I'm actually a pretty big fan of your work on the field."

  Jackson slammed the bat down on Tristan's lower leg and I heard both bones in his right leg snap. Tristan screamed, but that didn't mask the sound of his other leg breaking as Jackson lifted the bat again and slammed it down on Tristan's left leg.

  Cindi was crawling towards Tristan, sobbing his name softly. My altered perceptions gave me enough time to notice trivialities like the fact that her favorite blue purse was still dangling from her left shoulder, dragging along the floor as she crawled.

  Jackson turned back to me and sighed. "As much as I'd like to take a chance on you, Adri, I just don't think I can. You have this alarming way of convincing people to help you almost in spite of themselves. You're going to have to die."

  Cindi's voice was calm, without even the slightest trace of the hysteria I'd been expecting.

  "You'll have to go through me first."

  Jackson turned, bat raised to strike, and got a face full of pepper spray.

  Cindi had pulled the tiny black cylinder out of her purse and fired from the ground in one smooth motion that told me she'd practiced this dozens of times already. Her aim was true and although Jackson didn't scream, he let out a hiss of pain that told me that the unnatural strength and vitality of a vampire wasn't completely proof against the burning pain in his eyes. He brought his bat up again, doubtlessly intending on incapacitating Cindi like he'd incapacitated Tristan, and I threw myself off of the couch.

  I was moving in slow motion just like Cindi and Tristan had been, which proved that my altered time sense hadn't done anything to break the rest of the laws of physics, but I did the best I could with what I had.

  Jackson was still moving faster than I was, but he'd brought the bat way up over his head, which meant that it still had a long distance to travel. I was pretty sure that I could make it to him before he hit Cindi, but I wasn't under any kind of illusion that I was strong enough to actually stop the bat, so I kicked the back of his knee, the front one that had all of his weight on it.

  He went down with another hiss of pain as his broken arm hit the ground, but he kept ahold of the bat and before I could step forward to try and kick him in the head something hit me from the side hard enough to knock me to the ground. I caught the barest glimpse of it as I fell and realized that Jackson had launched the ugly, gray, stone idol that my mom had picked up on her trip down to South America before she and my dad got married.

  At first I thought the shooting pain in my arm was from how hard I'd hit the ground, but then I realized it was the wrong arm for that. I was pretty sure my left arm was broken, but I levered myself up into a sitting position as Jackson slowly walked towards me, involuntary tears still streaming down his face.

  "You had a good run, Adri. Honestly I never would have expected a mere human to last this long."

  Jackson raised the bat one last time, but the crash of breaking glass interrupted his swing. It was dark enough that at first I wasn't sure what I was seeing. It looked like a piece
of the night had detached itself from the rest of the darkness and thrown itself at Jackson, but just before it collided with him it shifted from a shape with four legs to one with two.

  Dream Stealer shed his wolf form and tackled Jackson with his towering wolf-man form despite a glancing blow to his side from the bat. Dream Stealer didn't move with the kind of speed and strength that I'd remembered from the fight against Pamela, and Jackson still displayed the same kind of unnatural strength and vitality that had kept Pamela going long after she should have died, but with one arm broken and Dream Stealer's bigger, heavier body pinning him to the floor there wasn't much he could do to resist.

  It only took a couple of seconds for Dream Stealer to impale both of Jackson's legs with the long talons that seemed to be standard issue for guys like him and Alec. Once that happened, Jackson had even less leverage and Dream Stealer was easily able to pin Jackson's uninjured shoulder to the floor and execute him.

  I wasn't prepared for all of the blood. It wasn't any more than I'd seen in the dream, but I'd known that wasn't real. This time I did throw up, or least my body tried to throw up, there wasn't actually anything left in my stomach.

  Once I was done, Cindi helped me back up to a sitting position. Dream Stealer had changed back to his human form and was checking Tristan for a concussion.

  "He'll be okay once his legs heal, but we're all going to need to talk about what happened."

  Chapter 27

  Nearly every single part of my body hurt. Dream Stealer—he'd told me I could call him Taggart—said that it wasn't normal for the mind to induce phantom pain in the body like this after a dream, but apparently that was one more side effect of the different way that my power worked.

  My arm hurt of course, and would be hurting for a while, although when it came to broken bones I'd come out quite a ways ahead of Tristan. In addition, every single square inch of my skin felt like it had been peeled off with a cheese grater, and I had a couple of different spots in my stomach and chest where I felt stabbing pains every time I moved.