Hunted (37 page)

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
able 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.