Hunted (19 page)

I
looked down at myself as he forced the branches to rearrange
themselves to better display the school name and mascot. I'd managed
to blur them slightly, but I was pretty sure that I hadn't managed to
hide enough of the detail.

He
came even closer, touching my uniform and then looking up at me and
smiling. "I thought as much. Your accent is a dead giveaway, you
know."

My
hands were free so I did the only other thing I could think of. I
punched him in the throat. It wasn't a great punch, but he'd leaned
down to look at the lettering across my chest so my hand didn't have
to travel very far, and I put everything I had into the blow.

He
grabbed his throat as he collapsed to the ground. I envisioned the
tree disappearing and my legs coming free of the ground, but when I
tried to push my version of reality into the dream I met with
resistance so strong it might as well have been real iron.

Even
choking and gagging like he was right now, his will was just too
strong for me to affect his reality. In that instant I realized that
I'd run out of options. I was going to die here and nobody would know
why my heart had just stopped beating partway through the night.

As
the old man pulled himself back up to his hands and knees, still
gasping for air, a host of regrets washed through me with shocking
force. The startling thing wasn't that I had more regrets than I'd
anticipated, it was how different some of them were compared to what
I'd been expecting.

I
was sorry that I hadn't worked harder to bury the hatchet with Cindi
years ago. I wished that I'd realized just how bad things were
between my parents and tried to do something there instead of being
so self-involved all of the time.

Those
were the more or less predictable regrets, but I also regretted the
fact that I'd never applied myself to anything with my full heart and
soul. School, cheerleading, having a social life, I'd never gone
all-out in an effort to excel at any of it. I'd just wasted a lot of
time when I could have been doing something worthwhile.

Most
of all though, I was sorry that I'd never acted on the persistent
urge to fill the absence that I'd spent so many months denying. It
wasn't a lack inside of me so much as it felt like a missing
potential. I was a key without a lock, a bow without a violin. I was
perfectly acceptable as I was, but I could be so much more with the
right person.

I
didn't know whether or not Jackson was that guy, but I should have
tried harder to find out. I was going to die never having even kissed
him.

The
thought of Cindi waking up tomorrow morning to find me dead, my body
already cold, wracked me with grief. I could see her in my mind's
eye, tears streaming down her face, darkening my sheets wherever they
landed, and the fact that it hadn't actually happened didn't matter.
That was real, that was what was
going
to happen.

I
looked around at my surroundings one last time and realized just how
dreary and artificial they looked. My conscious mind didn't know what
to do with that knowledge but some deeper level of my subconscious
reached for Cindi and my parents.

Strength
gushed out of me like blood from a mortal wound.

And
then I sat up in my bed. I was shaking from exhaustion and my sheets
were soaked in sweat, but I was alive. I even managed to make it to
the bathroom before throwing up.

I
stumbled back to bed, more because I didn't know what else to do with
myself than for any other reason, and fell asleep despite the terror
I was still feeling. I wouldn't have said it was possible to sleep
when you were that scared, but I literally had no reserves of energy
left.

I
felt a little better when I woke up, but I was starting to look
gaunt. I'd gone beyond skinny and if this kept up I was going to look
like a famine victim pretty soon. The fear was still there. It was
muted compared to what I'd felt during the dream the night before,
but it had been too strong for it to be completely washed away by the
arrival of daylight.

Cindi
seemed almost back to her old self. She smiled at me as I was going
into the bathroom. I say almost because there was a definite edge of
smugness to her manner. It was kind of annoying that she was so happy
about having maneuvered me into not saying anything about the party
she had planned, but I had much bigger problems to worry about.

I
pulled my clothes off and stepped into the shower, letting the water
wash away the sweat that was the only physical sign of my near brush
with death the night before while my mind worried at the invisible
results.

I'd
never come so close to dying before this, and it hadn't just been
death in the dream that had been threatening. The old man had very
nearly unmasked me, which would have put my whole family at risk too.

As
it was, if he'd really recognized the uniform like he'd seemed to,
then all of the other girls on the squad were in danger already, but
I had a feeling that he wouldn't do anything drastic until he'd
narrowed the possible targets down to just one or two. Surely even
supernatural creatures couldn't get away with killing or kidnapping
more than a dozen girls at once.

I
debated quitting the team, but that didn't particularly seem like a
good idea. The key to staying safe right now was to blend in as much
as humanly possible. Quitting the team would make me an anomaly,
which would make anyone who knew that the new dream walker in town
was a cheerleader, examine me more closely. No normal cheerleader
would go to all of the time and effort of getting on the team and
then walk away from that accomplishment without a really compelling
reason to do so, and I didn't have an obvious reason for doing
something crazy like that.

What
I really wanted was to tell someone else what was going on, but that
also felt unacceptably risky. Mom and Dad would be convinced that I
needed counseling, and I'd already established that I couldn't tell
Cindi, at least not right now, not while she was acting like
Machiavelli.

Actually,
I could probably convince anyone I wanted as to the existence of my
powers. All it would take would be to spend a couple of nights
sharing their dreams and then telling them exactly what they'd
dreamed about. The only problem with that was that it would either
freak people out because I'd been invading their privacy, or they'd
immediately start trying to figure out how to profit from what I
could do.

If
I didn't play my cards just right then the best-case scenario was
that I'd end up in a government lab somewhere, locked up while they
ran every test under the sun on me and then figured out a few hundred
different ways to weaponize me. The worst-case scenario probably
involved me disappearing without warning and then spending the rest
of my life locked up inside someone's basement.

Just
because I was now pretty sure that there were actual supernatural
beings out there didn't mean that every monster was of the
creepy-crawly variety. There were plenty of sickos out there of the
purely human variety and I didn't even want to begin contemplating
the kinds of things that someone who was really demented might try to
use my power for.

Telling
other people about what I could do was undeniably dangerous, but I
was still tempted to do it anyway. In the end, the only thing that
stopped me from choosing that route was the fact that I couldn't take
it back once I started telling people.

Right
now I just wanted to have as normal a life as possible, which kind of
precluded running away as a solution to my problems. The chances of
having anything remotely like a normal teenage existence were rapidly
approaching zero, but there was still
some
chance and I wanted
to cling to that possibility for as long as I could. Maybe it was the
wrong thing to be doing, maybe I was already past the point where the
smart thing would be to go ahead and get whatever help I could from
the adult in my life, but I knew I was going to wait a little longer
in the hopes that the old man hadn't seen enough last night to act.
If he didn't come after me in the next few weeks then maybe I'd be
able to get enough of a handle on my abilities to avoid continuing to
attract supernatural threats.

It
was a long shot, but by the time the hot water started to run out I
knew that it was the route I was going to try for.

As
I walked back into our room, I happened to look at the calendar that
Cindi had hung on the wall. Today had a big blue border drawn around
it, which meant that we had a football game today. I looked closer
and realized that it was an away game.

I
looked at our clock and then muttered a swear word under my breath as
I realized just how far behind schedule I was. I pulled on the rest
of my clothes—a mixture of the stuff that Mom had bought for me
a couple of days ago, Cindi's old clothes, some of which were even
long enough that the school administration might not send me home for
being indecent, and some of my old stuff that probably wouldn't fall
off of me before the day ended.

I
double-checked the calendar to confirm that we were headed to an away
game, and then packed my duffle bag up with my away game shell and
skirt. Dad was already gone, and Mom was rattling around the kitchen
still looking like she was half asleep as I blew through it on my way
out the door.

"Hold
on there, young lady, you need to eat
something
."

There
was some cold pizza in the fridge, the greasy, fatty kind that Cindi
would never dream of eating, which was perfect because unlike her,
right now at least, I didn't need to worry about getting too big to
fit into my cheerleading uniform. I grabbed three slices out of the
white cardboard box and promised Mom that I'd eat them on my way to
school.

School
went by in a blur. People were still whispering nasty rumors about me
just loud enough to make sure that I'd overhear them, but it bothered
me less than it had before. It was still mean and completely
unjustified, but now I was also able to see just how petty it was
too.

A
lot of what had happened in the dream with the old man was already
starting to fade into a distant, untouchable mist—which was
simultaneously frustrating and welcome—but I could still
remember how it had felt to see my death barreling towards me with
enough advance warning for me to realize just how badly I'd messed up
my priorities. There was a lot about that experience that my mind
seemed still unready to deal with, but that wasn't one of those
things and I tore into my classwork with a zeal that astonished my
teachers and surprised even me.

I'd
never actually realized that I was capable of focusing on one thing
for more than four or five minutes, but while the old man had
probably lied about a lot of things, I was pretty sure that he was
right about mental discipline leading to more power and strength in
the dream. I didn't know what mental exercises he'd done to gain such
an incredible level of mastery, but I figured that I could at least
start by getting to the point where I could complete an assignment in
one sitting rather than it taking an entire evening.

I
was working on my U.S. Government assignment when my fingers started
hurting. At first I thought it was just a side effect from doing so
much writing, but when my left hand started hurting in almost the
exact same fashion I realized that there was more going on than just
that.

I
didn't have an explanation though, so I just gritted my teeth and
kept going. It wasn't until after lunch, which consisted of another
slice of pizza and some French fries again, that I realized what was
causing the pain that was threatening to stop me from being able to
continue with my homework.

The
pain I was feeling wasn't the result of anything I'd done at school,
it was a shadowy reflection of what had happened in the dream. I'd
mutilated my hands clawing at the branches that had been holding me
up against the tree. At the time, I'd been too freaked out to worry
about the damage I was doing to myself or how badly it hurt, but now
I was experiencing some of the pain that I'd been feeling in the
dream.

My
fingers weren't bruised and bleeding and my nails looked fine, so it
had to all just be inside of my head, but it felt like I'd just run
them over a cheese grater. It represented one more unpleasant side
effect from my dream walking that I was going to have to deal with. I
filed it all away, along with the fact that it had taken hours after
the actual 'injury' for the pain to start up in the real world.

Jackson
walked me to my last class again, which was super nice, but I was too
worried about everything else going on in my life to get as
googly-eyed at him as I normally did. I was actually so caught up
inside of my own head that when the bell rang to dismiss us I left
without waiting for Jackson.

I
was a third of the way back to my locker when I felt someone brush up
against me. It wasn't quite a groping, but it was right on the
border, something that could possibly be explained away as an
accident, but a very unlikely one.

I
turned around and saw the guy Jackson had punched smirking at me. His
expression dared me to react, dared me to say something so that he
could claim that nothing had actually happened.

I'd
been through so much crap in the last few days that I didn't even
think. I slammed my foot down on his instep as hard as I could and
then smiled as he collapsed to the ground with tears streaming down
his face.

"I
hope it's broken, you piece of trash. The next time you try that kind
of sleazy crap on me you'll really be sorry."

I
turned and walked away without looking back, but a few seconds later
I felt someone following a couple of steps back from me. I turned,
ready to give the perv a piece of my mind, but it wasn't him, it was
Jackson.