Authors: Dean Murray
I shook my
head. She was quite possibly the nicest person I'd ever met, but I
didn't want to take advantage of her kindness.
"You don't
need to do that, Dom. I really was planning on getting to it
tomorrow—I wasn't trying to guilt you into helping or anything,
I just didn't want you to worry about the fact that the shelves are
starting to look a little bare."
Dominic's eyes
went wide. "Oh, I didn't think that, Adri. I just thought that
since I'll be here for the next six hours that it makes a lot of
sense for me to get started, but I don't want to deprive you of the
chance to do it—it was your idea after all."
Coming from
someone else, a statement like that would have been dripping in
sarcasm, but Dominic actually seemed to mean it.
"Is that
really your idea of fun, Dom?"
She blushed a
little as she looked away, but after a second she shrugged. "I
guess that fun isn't quite the right word. I
would
rather be
curled up on my bed with a good book, but taking inventory of a gas
station doesn't sound too bad. It's the kind of thing that I might
have done if I'd grown up here. I used to dream of doing this kind of
stuff, you know— having a part-time job, having friends I could
count on not to turn on me the first chance that they got. Stocking
the shelves and sitting behind a cash register is like realizing a
little piece of my dream. It's not all sunshine and roses, but it's
still better than a lot of things that I could be experiencing right
now."
I almost didn't
know how to respond, but I couldn't just leave without saying
something.
"I'm
sorry, it sounds like you had it pretty rough back home. You must get
tired of listening to people like me whine about how bad we have it."
Dominic reached
over and patted me on the shoulder. "I don't resent the fact
that you didn't have to go through some of the things that I had to
go through, Adri. By all indications you've had a pretty rough time
lately yourself, but I don't even resent the average American
teenager. Once upon a time I felt differently, but then I realized
that hating someone for being a product of their environment is a
waste of time. Only a very few people ever manage to become more than
what their environment dictates for them. It seems foolish to hate
people for being people.
"Individuals
like Gandhi or Mother Teresa are the wonderful exception rather than
the rule. I decided that I would just take people as they were and
stop expecting so much out of them. Really, the fact that so many
kids our age can grow up without any worries more serious than who
they are going to go to Prom with is a testament to just how
civilized some parts of the world are."
Maybe some
people would have been offended by Dominic's view on human capacity,
but I knew full well that if I'd been left to my own devices I
wouldn't have worried about things like world peace. In a lot of ways
I was still a product of my environment, it was just a very different
environment now than what most people dealt with.
"You
became more than your environment, Dom. Taggart says that he doesn't
know of any other cats who've come up north and peacefully integrated
themselves in with a pack."
She was
obviously in the grip of some kind of powerful emotion, but in the
end she just shrugged. "I wanted to leave home for a very long
time before I actually acted on the urge. Looking back now, I don't
feel proud of what I've done. I'm just glad that I managed to get out
before I turned into someone else. It was a very close thing."
"What
stopped you from coming up here when you first realized that it was a
chance at a better life?"
"There
were a lot of things. The wolves actively seek out my kind and kill
us wherever they find us. Traveling that far for a teenage girl all
by herself is dangerous, even for someone like me."
"You mean
like kidnappers?"
"Yeah,
sometimes. I'm faster and stronger than a normal human, but I'm not
invincible, so a group of big, burly guys could still hurt me unless
I was willing to transform and try to fight my way free of them."
"So just
decide from the start that you'll change forms and tear the face off
of anyone who gets between you and freedom. Problem solved."
Normally I
wasn't really what you would call violent, but something about Dom
brought out a protective instinct that I'd only felt a few times
before. She was just so good and kind that I couldn't bear the
thought of anything bad happening to her. Anyone who was willing to
hurt Dom deserved whatever happened to them, and that was the end of
the story as far as I was concerned.
"I wish it
was that easy, Adri. Here in the United States the Coun'hij enforces
the restriction against shifting forms somewhere that could result in
the humans finding out about us. Have you ever wondered how my people
have managed to keep our existence a secret without having some kind
of similar centralized authority?"
"Actually
I hadn't thought about it quite that way, but that is pretty
mind-boggling. How has your existence stayed a secret so long?"
"There are
legends among my people about a shadowy figure who comes for anyone
who risks our secret getting out. He appears from nowhere and then
kills us quietly and without warning. He's our own personal boogeyman
and he's the one thing that every single jaguar seems to agree on."
"Wait, you
believe this guy really exists?"
"Yes, I
believe because I've met him. He calls himself the Hunter, which is
what we call him too."
"You met
him? And survived? How did that happen?"
"I'm not
sure. For some reason he decided to let me live, but he warned me
that if I ever shifted shapes in broad daylight like that again, he'd
kill me without asking any questions. And then he threw a bag at my
feet and walked away."
"What was
in the bag?"
"It was…it
was terrible. Let's just say that he wanted me to know exactly how
many people he'd had to kill to silence the rumors that I'd started
by changing where the humans could see me."
It was obvious
that what she had seen still haunted her. I tried to come up with
something to pull her back from the memory of what she'd seen, but I
came up totally blank.
"I'm so
sorry, Dom."
"It's not
your fault, Adri. I guess now you know. I didn't go north because I
was scared. I was scared of the rape gangs, scared of the other
jaguars whose territory I would have to cross in order to get to the
border, and I was scared of my father."
"Your
father?"
"Yes, he
is a terrible man and he told me that if I ever left that he would
hunt me down and make me pay. I managed to get away after I became
more scared of what I was going to become than I was of dying, but I
still wonder how much longer I have before he'll find me again."
"I'm sure
that he's lost your trail by now."
"I hope
so, but I'm not sure that's possible. There were rumors that my
father was one of the rare cats who could track someone even without
a scent trail to follow."
"How is
that even possible?"
Dom smiled at
my astonishment. "You walk inside of other people's dreams and I
change shapes into a giant jaguar. How is any of this possible? I
don't know how it works, but some of my kind are able to sense the
direction they need to go in order to find someone that they've
formed the right kind of link with."
"But that
would mean that you would never be safe. It wouldn't matter where you
went or what you did, you'd always have to worry that someday your
father would show up and make good on his threats."
"Yes,
exactly that."
"So is he
able to track?"
Dominic looked
up at me with soft eyes that were so full of fear that I couldn't
meet her gaze without feeling my heart constrict inside of my chest.
"I don't
know, not for sure, but something tells me that he can, that it's
only a matter of time before he comes for me. I'm sorry, Adri. I'm
putting everyone here in danger, but I just can't bear to go back out
there by myself."
Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming
I did the best
I could to comfort Dom, but there wasn't a lot I could do to reassure
her. Logically she was as safe as she was ever going to be. She was
surrounded by wolves and hybrids, living in a giant, nearly
impregnable bunker, with both Isaac and Heath willing to do whatever
it took to protect her.
Maybe some
people would have just told her to suck it up and deal with the fear,
but I knew better than that. Fear can be a living, breathing entity.
When that happens it becomes a monster that eats at your will to
live, that stops you from being able to sleep, that paralyzes you and
results in bad decisions when you do finally manage to muster up
enough courage to act despite the terror.
I'd spent my
fair share of time terrified of the wax lady and the old man, but as
bad as that had been, it was nothing compared to what Dominic had
been dealing with. Simple words couldn't dispel that kind of fear.
I tried to
fight back the yawns, but I'd gotten up early in a failed attempt to
get some extra shooting practice in; by the time I'd spent the first
hour of Dom's shift with her, it was well past my bedtime and I was
beyond exhausted. After I yawned for the third time in less than ten
seconds, Dom gently steered me towards the backroom and the hidden
passageway down to the bunker.
I wanted to go
find Isaac or Taggart and talk to them about my worries, but after a
brief internal debate I decided that I should get Dom's permission
before I shared her secret. It was tricky because her secret could
get other people hurt if her father showed up and we weren't
prepared, but then again I wasn't sure that there was much else that
we could do to prepare. We already had people watching the area from
a nearby hill. We could double or even triple the watch, but that
still wouldn't be any kind of guarantee.
I stumbled to
the gigantic master suite that Taggart had insisted I claim as my
room, and collapsed onto the enormous bed as soon I'd pulled on the
tank top and shorts that I was using as pajamas. I'd passed Taggart's
room, the smaller quarters that served as a kind of guard post
between my room and the rest of the bunker, but his door was open and
the room was empty.
I sleepily
hoped that I would remember to talk to Dominic again before my shift
at the store, and then I drifted off. Early on I'd been
compartmentalizing my dreams from my waking mind. Back then every
time I'd fallen asleep I'd been assaulted by all of the memories of
the things that my conscious mind hadn't been ready to deal with.
That didn't
seem to be happening anymore. For the most part now I remembered my
dreams as well as I remembered the things that happened while I was
awake. There was, however, a certain vividness to the dreams that was
still only accessible when I was asleep.
The best
example of that was Alec. When I was awake I could generally shove
thoughts of him back into a tiny corner of my mind, but that wasn't
the case when I was asleep.
I'd learned not
to fight it. Instead I just created an exact replica of the iron
bench that had been part of the dream when we'd first met, and sat
down on it. Once I was safely seated, I closed my eyes and let my
mind run back through our first meeting.
Everything had
felt so perfect and right. The way that he'd smelled, the feel of his
rock-hard chest against me, and the tingle as our lips had touched
for the first and only time. It had all been heady and real with an
urgency that I'd never felt before in the waking world.
Since that
first and only dream that we'd shared together I'd spent countless
hours fantasizing about him. I'd imagined what our second meeting
would be like and wondered if it was even possible to feel the way
I'd felt if the meeting took place in the real world.
I'd had it all
built up so big in my mind that it probably would have been a
disappointment even if everything had gone perfectly, which it
hadn't. Instead I'd gone into that second meeting knowing that he'd
addicted some random girl to his touch. I could probably open any of
the popular teen magazines and find a graphic listing the offenses
that a boyfriend could commit and the odds of being able to salvage a
relationship afterwards, but none of those charts dealt with skin
addiction and he hadn't technically been my boyfriend at the time
that he'd addicted her.
He still wasn't
my boyfriend, actually, and after our last meeting I wasn't sure that
we'd ever be together in the ways that I'd fantasized. Everything had
just been so crazy. Brandon had been ready to kill him and then I'd
shot Brandon, only once Brandon was gone we'd realized that Agony was
dying.
Even after
everything else that had happened, I'd still felt like somehow we
would be able to work things out. We kind of had worked things out,
in fact, but our time together had been so short. Maybe if I'd stayed
there with Alec things would have been different, but I hadn't. There
had been a blur of activity as we all got our wounded ready to be
moved and then we'd all gone our separate ways.
Maybe I should
have been more assertive, but it just hadn't seemed like the time or
place. We'd all been in a hurry to make sure that we would be gone
before the Coun'hij showed back up and Alec had been dealing with a
steady stream of people who needed him to tell them what to do.
I'd almost
interrupted there at the end, but then that other girl showed up, the
one who was addicted to him. Once that happened it was even harder to
go talk to Alec. Seeing the two of them standing there holding hands
had been hard on me. I still believed Alec when he said that he never
meant for it to happen, but that didn't change the fact that it
had
happened. The two of them had a bond now, a bond that highlighted all
of the things that I
didn't
have with Alec.