Forsaken (10 page)

But she didn’t know Hunter’s schedule.

Picking at random, she flung the door open to one classroom, interrupting the teacher mid-sentence. Everybody stared at her. She quickly scanned the faces, and not seeing Hunter, she ran back out.

She burst into another class. Hunter wasn’t there either. The teacher yelled and followed her into the hallway as she backed out. Nora ran on, leaving the cries behind. Another classroom. Quickly, she opened the door and scanned the faces. Hunter wasn’t there.

Desperate, she ran to another class. Still, Hunter wasn’t there.
Dammit
,
but he was taking the same subjects as her
! All of the students in her grade were. Everybody was taught by the same teachers. He had to be in one of these classrooms!

She ran into another room. No Hunter. Another room. Still, no Hunter. The man’s presence in the office weighed heavily on her. She was getting more and more anxious. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her into a room at the far end of the hall. She was panting, and her hair was a disheveled mess. She had to catch her breath before looking up. When she did – she saw everybody gaping at her.

“Nora?”

It was Hunter’s voice. Hunter’s voice, from the back. She rushed over to him, not caring what anyone saw or said. He stood from his desk, and she jumped up to embrace him in a tight hug.

“Nora, what’s wrong?” He sounded concerned.

“I saw him,” she said quickly, the words rushing out.

He set her back so he could look into her eyes. “Saw who?”

“They called for me in the office. Two men. One…” She gulped. “…one was the man I saw in the dream.”

Chapter Twelve

~On the Run~

If it were possible, Nora would have said Hunter turned even paler than usual. Suddenly, the confident young man she knew looked very frightened.

“Are you sure?” he asked her.

“Yes!” she practically screamed. “Would I come here like this, in the middle of class, if I wasn’t?” Everybody was still looking. The teacher started making her way over. “Miss,” the teacher began, but Nora ignored it. She had eyes only for Hunter.

“You’re right.” He nodded. “We have to go.” Taking her hand, he led her into the hall.

“Hunter, wait.” She tugged on his hand once they were outside the classroom. “Where are we going?”

“We have to get away.” He pulled her with him as he continued down the hall. His hand gripping hers gave her strength. It made her feel stronger and eased some of her fear.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll tell you. Later. Right now, we need to get out of the school.” The hall forked into two, and he looked down both ways, seeming uncharacteristically unsure of himself. Finally, settling on a direction, he led her that way.

They reached an exit door. He opened it for her. Before she stepped through, though, he stopped. “Your bag,” he said, “where is it?”

“I left it in my other class.”

“There’s no time to get it, now,” he mumbled to himself. “Do you have anything important in there?”

“Notebooks, school notes, that type of thing.”

“What about your cell phone?”

“It’s in my pocket.”

Hunter nodded. “Good.” And he ran out of the school with her trailing. Outside, Nora realized where they were headed: to the parking lot, where he presumably had his car.

Sure enough, Nora picked it out, standing in that same far corner as before. Hunter was at a dead-run, now. Nora struggled to keep up. He got to the car way before her and was already in the driver’s seat with the engine running when Nora opened the door.

As soon as Nora clicked on her seatbelt, he gunned the engine and sped out of the lot. He checked his rearview mirror every few seconds. Obsessively. There was an obvious tension he was feeling, and the silence that stretched between them didn’t help.

“What do you keep looking for?” Nora asked suddenly.

“If they’re coming,” he replied distractedly.

“The men from the office?” Nora asked. Hunter nodded quickly in reply. “But how would they even know we left?”

“Trust me. They know.”

There was such conviction in his words that Nora started looking over her shoulder, too. Everything seemed fine at first – there weren’t many cars on the road this close to the school at this hour – and nobody appeared to be coming after them. Just as Nora started to relax, a black car appeared far behind them. Nora squinted her eyes. It appeared to be getting larger, getting closer to them, very quickly.

“Hunter, the black car,” Nora said.

“I see it.” His face was the picture of concentration. Nora looked back again and was shocked to see the black car almost right behind them. The windows were tinted, so she couldn’t see inside, but she could make out the model. They were being chased by a black Cadillac.

“Hold on,” Hunter muttered and hit the accelerator.

Hard.

Nora cried out at the sudden acceleration and flew back against her seat. Hunter was doing sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour on the small road. Parked cars flashed by the sides. Hunter swerved left and right to pass other vehicles on the road. Nora gripped the bottom of her seat so tightly she thought she’d never be able to pry her fingers loose.

Nora knew this stretch of road. It would narrow into one lane each way soon. And she saw a car not far in front of them. There was no way to pass it in this section. She looked back. The Cadillac was still on their tail.

Suddenly, Hunter switched into the oncoming lane. A yellow school bus hurtled toward them. It sounded its horn, loudly, urgently. Nora could see a small gap on her right, where the car that had been in front of them slowed down. The bus kept coming, the horn got louder as it came closer, and Nora screamed as they were about to hit it.

Hunter veered back into the right lane, just in front of the other car. The bus passed by, the reverberations from its passing shaking the Camaro. Nora’s breath caught. She stared at Hunter in amazement, but he didn’t look the least bit anxious. At least, not anxious about driving. He simply continued checking the mirror, monitoring the black car.

Nora saw an intersection ahead of them. With a stale green light. She gripped her seat tighter as Hunter sped up. He was going to try to run it. As they raced closer, Nora watched in horror as the light turned amber. They were too far to make it. But Hunter didn’t let up, didn’t slow down. If anything, he went even faster.

The light turned red. Time slowed for Nora.

She watched, paralyzed, as the cars lined up at the light started inching forward, ever so slowly, in the perpendicular direction. Hunter kept going. The other cars started accelerating, too, moving farther into the intersection. Hunter sped up. The gap between them and the intersection closed. Cars were coming from left and right. And Hunter wasn’t slowing down. He was going to go through.

Nora squeezed her eyes shut and prayed. The loud blare of angry horns sounded from all directions. She felt the vibrations of cars passing in front and behind them, heard the squeal of swerving tires, the screech of brakes. She was sure she was going to die.

Suddenly, all was quiet. The sound of horns came from behind them. She opened her eyes. They were driving on the other side of the crossing.

They’d made it!

An ear-shattering crash sounded from behind her. She spun around, looking out the back window. And, back in the distance of the intersection, she saw the black Cadillac smashed against the side of an orange truck.

She looked to Hunter, who let up on the accelerator. Slightly. He stared straight ahead, now. And he was tense. His jaw was tense, his posture was tense. Everything about him was tense.

“Hunter, we made it,” she said. “They got hit!”

“Not for long,” he answered. But then she saw him relax. Just a little.

“Hunter, you have to tell me what’s going on. Who were those people?”

“I didn’t want to bring you into this,” he answered.

“You have to tell me!”

“It wasn’t meant to be like this.”

“Hunter, you have to tell me!”

“I’m sorry, Maria.” He said that in the barest whisper, so quietly that Nora thought she misheard the words.

“What? Hunter, what is going on? Tell me!” Nora felt herself on the verge of tears. She was scared, emotionally drained. Terrified, really. And uncertain. “Who are you?”

He looked at her. His eyes were red, too. “I’m sorry, Nora. You deserve to know the truth. And you will. I’m going to tell you everything.”

Chapter Thirteen

~Revelations~

They sped down the freeway, away from the city where Nora had grown up. Where she’d met all her friends. Where she’d had her first crush. Where she’d gotten her first kiss. Where her family still was – her mother and father, her younger sister, her big loving dog. They sped away, and Nora looked sadly out the window.

“Where do you want me to start?” Hunter asked her.

“Start with who you are.” Nora turned to watch him and met his gaze. “Tell me who you are. I barely know a thing about you.”

He sighed and looked forward at the road. When he spoke, he didn’t look at her once. “I’m not like you, Nora,” he began. “Not entirely. I’m not…human.”

“What?” Her heart pounded wildly, threatening to burst from her chest. “What do you mean?”

“I’m something else,” he said sadly.

“Are there others like you?”

“Yes, there are.”

“Those men chasing us…are they like you?”

“Yes.”

She took a deep breath. Did she really want to hear this? But she resolved to know the truth and blew out a pent up breath. “Tell me.”

He sighed again. “If I do, you’ll want to run from me. You’ll want to run and hide forever. But you can’t, now. I wish I could let you go, Nora. I wish I’d let you go before. But if you go now, they’ll find you. No matter who you’re with, no matter where you go, they
will
find you. And I can’t let them do that.”

“Hunter.” She studied him. His distress was obviously sincere. She reached over to take his hand in hers. She held it tight. “You can tell me.”

He paused for a long moment and took a deep breath. “There’s folklore about me. About…things
like
me. Legends and stories that are told to scare children into behaving. Tales about things that go bump in the night.”

“Would I know them?”

“I’m sure you would.” He tried to pull his hand away, but she wouldn’t let him. His skin was ice cold silk.

“Tell me. I’m not afraid.”

“The dream world I showed you,” he started. “It’s restricted to those of my kind. We’re the only ones who have direct access to it, who can go there at will. Humans…they can only drift in and out without realizing it.” He shook his head before continuing. “But I discovered that I had the ability to draw humans in. To explore their dreams, together with them. Like I did with you.

“When I learned to do it, I thought I was unique. I thought I was one of a kind. But it turned out that every one of my kind could do it. Everyone could draw humans in like that. Except that…it’s prohibited. By ancient creed, we’re forbidden to do that.

“When I brought you in, I thought we were safe. I haven’t had contact with any of the others for a very long time. I had hoped most had thought me dead, or dying. Or had long forgotten about me. I still don’t know how we drew their attention.

“It shouldn’t have even worked that way. We entered
your
dream. They couldn’t have been watching. They know the rules, too. They abide by them better than I do. For them, the creed stands above all else. Above their own lives. They weren’t allowed to be there, either. But they were – or at least, one of them was – and he saw us.

“And for that, I’m sorry, Nora. I’m sorry for dragging you into all this. I’m sorry for my carelessness. I know I should never have done it. I should never have shown you what I did. Believe me, I fought the urge as much as I could.

“But there was something about you…something that tugged at me and begged me to show you that world. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe I wanted to believe that you needed to see it. Maybe I
needed
to believe it. But it was my own shortcoming, my own deficiency that put us in this situation. And for that, I’m truly sorry.”

She looked over at him and pulled her hand away. She had to have some space. He seemed hurt, but didn’t say anything. He simply drove on, looking straight ahead. “And what is ‘your kind,’ exactly, Hunter?”

“My kind.” He laughed softly. “Those who are like me, of course. Those who the stories are written about and legends are twisted from. We are a separate race, Nora, removed from humanity long ago. Each of us is given…abilities…that transcend what a regular human can do. But it goes both ways. We have weaknesses unique to us. Some of them, I’m sure, you can even laugh at.”

“I won’t laugh.” She could promise him that, since nothing about this scenario amused her. “Just tell me the truth.”

“That’s what I said I’d do, isn’t it?” He sighed again. She could see he was struggling to form the words. “I’ll start with the physical. We’re usually taller than your kind. By a head or more, at least. I’d actually be considered fairly short.” He laughed, but it was a forced laugh. “Our skin is also much lighter. ‘Elven skin,’ some call it, but that gives it unnecessary embellishment.”