Hunted (36 page)

The
whites of her eyes had gone a dark red, like she'd had massive
hemorrhaging inside of her eyes, but it didn't seem to interfere with
her vision. She lunged forward again with her claws extended in an
attempt to rip my throat out, but I effortlessly sidestepped her and
raked my fingernails across the side of her face.

She
wasn't any faster than me, but that didn't mean that she wasn't a
better fighter. She spun around and sprang at me again, and this time
as I dodged to the side I tripped and fell down. I tried to roll to
the side, but I could tell I wasn't going to make it. Her claws
slashed down towards my unprotected body, but a split second before
they tore into me, Dream Stealer grabbed her from behind and whipped
her through the air.

"What
did you do?"

The
pain had receded slightly and I found that I could talk.

"I'm
not sure. I was trying to slow her down so that I could help you, but
I think maybe I pushed too hard. It feels like someone ripped my head
open."

"You
didn't slow her down, you sped yourself up somehow. That shouldn't be
possible."

The
wax lady was impaled on his claws, but that didn't stop her from
thrashing about in an effort to get at him. Her claws had already
torn nasty gashes all up and down his arms, but she couldn't reach
his head and neck, so he was safe for the moment.

"It's
only a matter of time now before she gets away, at which point you'll
be in danger once again. Based on your accent I relocated to
Minnesota a couple of days ago. I only hope that I'm close enough to
make it to you before she shakes off the effects of the dream and
comes after you. Do you trust me enough to tell me where you live?"

The
old terror was back, but I managed a nod and then gave him my
address. I was placing my life in his hands, but I didn't know what
else to do. If the wax lady, if an honest-to-goodness vampire, was
about to break into my house then I'd be dead without some kind of
equally scary supernatural protector.

"How
far away is that from the St. Paul Hilton?"

"Ah…I
think only ten or fifteen minutes depending on traffic. At night
maybe as little as eight or nine minutes."

He
grimaced. I wouldn't have thought his wolf-man face was capable of
that kind of expression, but it apparently was.

"It
will be close. I've seen people take longer than that to regain their
feet, but I've also seen some take less time."

I
started to tell him that I'd find a hiding place inside my house, but
I stopped mid-sentence as I realized that the invisible wind he'd
used previously to keep her inside of the dream was practically gone.
I'd forgotten that he was capable of pinning her here like that and
simply taken him at his word. It was a clear sign of treachery and I
started backing away from him while I desperately tried to come up
with a way out of the mess I'd just created by giving him my address.

"What
are you doing, Adri?"

He'd
seen my slow backwards motion, but his question didn't seem menacing
so much as curious.

"You're
letting her go when you could keep her here. You were working with
her the whole time, weren't you? This was all a ploy to get my
address."

"What…oh,
I see what you mean. No, Adri, I'm not letting her go, I have no
choice in the matter. I can pin someone here against their will when
they are healthy, but at a certain point when they are injured their
mind rips them away from me despite my best efforts. It's a kind of
natural survival mechanism. Maybe if I could suck them into my dream
like you do rather than always having to face them inside of their
own dream things would be different, but only a very, very
weak-minded individual could possibly be killed inside of their own
dream. A child maybe, but not a vampire and especially not one old
enough to have manifested the kind of mentalist abilities this one
has shown so far."

It
was all just words without any proof and he knew it as well as I did.
I'd been positive that I could be killed inside of the dream.

After
a second the unseen wind picked back up.

"I
shouldn't be doing this, Adri. It's burning up energy I'm going to
need later, but for your sake, to keep your trust I'll actively try
to pin her here as long as I can. You can feel my efforts, correct?"

I
nodded. I still didn't know enough about how dream walking worked to
be absolutely sure that he couldn't let her go while still making me
think he was holding her there, but I didn't have any way of staying
away from him if he wanted to hurt me.

"Maybe
she was just bluffing about her powers. Maybe she's weaker than you
think, maybe you'll actually be able to kill her here in the dream
before she can get away."

He
shook his head. "Can't you see the tendrils of power linking the
two of you?"

I
started to tell him that I couldn't, but it was like his mentioning
them somehow made them easier to see. He was right, there were black
threads running back and forth between us. I tried to break one of
them, but I was just too tired and my head hurt too much to push very
hard at all. I'd been too scared earlier to really think about the
fact that she was inside of my mind, but I suddenly felt like
throwing up.

The
wax lady had mostly gone still, but now she thrashed around again in
an attempt to further shred Dream Stealer's arms. Apparently even his
massive wolf-man body had its limits because he shifted her around,
tearing new holes in her side and back as he got her repositioned to
where she couldn't continue to hurt him. The new wounds drew a gasp
of pain from her and I saw her flicker and start to go insubstantial.

The
wind doubled and then doubled again as Dream Stealer tried to keep
her from fleeing to safety. She'd gone pale from blood loss, but I
could tell that she was going to get away before she died. I'd always
thought of myself as being fairly pacifist, but I suddenly wanted her
dead and the desire was so strong that it pushed me to action despite
the continuing pain in my head.

I
didn't know exactly what Dream Stealer was doing to keep her here,
but I knew what had worked so far when it came to enforcing my will
onto a dream. She was trying to flee the dream, trying to disappear,
so I visualized the opposite. I imagined her here in the dream with
us more fully. It was hard to describe what I was after, but it was a
bit like the first time I'd increased the detail in the grass.

I
created a living, three-dimensional model of her, instilled it with
all of the revulsion and hatred I felt for her, and then pushed my
reality into existence.

The
pain was even more intense than before, but I couldn't tell if it was
just the result of what I'd done earlier or if I'd torn something
else inside of my mind. I was down on my knees again without any
recollection of having fallen. Tears pooled in my eyes, but there was
something wrong there, tears weren't supposed to make it this hard to
see.

I
absently wiped the tears out of my eyes, and nearly threw up again
when my hand came away red and bloody. I heard screaming and only
then realized that it was me, but before I could shut my mouth the
vampire dangling from Dream Stealer's claws flickered again and all
hell seemed to break loose.

She
flickered, but this time she didn't become less substantial, she
became
more
.

Another
crack opened up in the ground, pitching Dream Stealer forward as he
jumped for safer ground. The earthquake that had accompanied the new
rift knocked me down and I felt new slivers of glass digging into my
palms. It took me a split second to understand why that surprised me.
All of the loose glass had disappeared during the first part of the
fight as Dream Stealer had forced the wax lady to focus on him more
so than on maintaining our environment.

She
was practically bled out, nearing dream death if not real death. She
shouldn't have been able to strengthen the detail inside the dream,
but this was even worse than that. The razor-edged shards weren't
just back, they'd multiplied a dozen times over.

I
tried to warn Dream Stealer that we were in trouble, but a hurricane
whipped up between one heartbeat and the next. The winds would have
been bad enough all by themselves, but they were sufficiently violent
enough to pick up some of the black slivers and I whipped my arm up
over my eyes as my clothes started to shred off of my body.

It
had to be my efforts at holding her here that had given her such
power. I started to let go, started to relax the corner of my mind
that was screaming in pain, but a deep voice made it to me over the
howl of the wind.

"No,
Adri. Push harder!"

It
went against every instinct I'd been born with, but it was too late
to stop trusting Dream Stealer now. The world went white behind my
eyelids as I threw everything I had left into making my vision of
reality even more complete. I felt another micro-tear inside of my
mind and for an instant it almost seemed like something was trying to
claw its way inside of my skull with me.

A
second later, the wind died down as if it had never been. Dream
Stealer pulled himself back up to his feet and crossed the distance
between us in a halting limp. The vampire—the corpse—was
still dangling from his claws, but now my eyes refused to focus on
it. My mind was trying to protect me from seeing what he'd done by
refusing to make sense of the glimpse I'd seen before turning away.

"She's
dead."

I
swallowed a couple of times. "I know. I guess this means she'll
be coming for me."

"No,
Adri, she's truly dead. Look at the ground. It's disappearing."

I
carefully turned even further away from him and then opened my eyes.
He was right, although I wouldn't have described it quite that way.
The ground right where we were standing was losing its substantiality
and the plain had already started shrinking. A minute ago it had
stretched off farther than the eye could see; now it simply faded
away to nothing less than a hundred yards away from us.

"I
don't understand."

"It
shouldn't do this. When someone leaves the dream they are the first
thing to go. Usually I get kicked out of the dream so quickly that I
don't even see them leave, but sometimes their mind leaves the dream
up for a second or two without them in it. This is completely
backwards. Her mind can't sustain the dream anymore. It's thrown
everything into trying to keep her whole. She's dead, or at least
dying. Once she's completely gone we'll probably still get snapped
back to our bodies, but we won."

"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.

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."