Hunter's Curse by Ginna Moran Page B

believe I’m standing here destroying Alyssa’s dream. I need to leave, and the only way out is to finish off the dreamer and consume the nightmare.
    I cup her face.
    Tears spill from her vibrant green eyes and her mouth falls open in a silent scream. Within seconds, she drops to her knees and falls over, pressing her face to the muddy ground. Shining light radiates from her and I inhale the rest of her nightmare as the dream world around me crumbles.
    My stomach heaves and my eyes snap open. I’m back in Alyssa’s room and she tosses and turns under her comforter. Before she wakes up, I’m already gone and opening the door to my room.
    I feel alive, full, and normal again. I stare at my hands. The color has returned and my skin is flushed. I sit on the edge of my bed and resist looking in the mirror on my vanity table because I don’t know how long I’ll look like myself. I don’t know when I’ll create another nightmare.
    Soon. I never want to starve myself again.
     
     
    HUNTER
     
    “You’re a terrible host,” I say. “The least you can do is take me somewhere fun or hold something more interesting than your diary in front of your face.”
    “Shut up,” Jacqueline thinks. She wouldn’t dare speak out loud. Not to me. It would make her look as crazy as she really is, and she wouldn’t stand for it.
    “Oh, wouldn’t you just love it if I shut up and went away? Well, Jackie, guess what? You’re stuck with me until you release me back into my body.”
    “Don’t call me Jackie. And, Hunter, you know what the deal was. I took you as collateral to make sure Dr. Sullivan holds up her end of the bargain. I want my freedom as much as you do. You’re lucky I let them keep your body.”
    My mom agreed to spare this monster her life if she would conspire against her own kind and obtain information about a legendary council made up of supernatural creatures the Human Preservation Agency’s board members want to destroy. To prove to Jacqueline that she wouldn’t harm her, my mother let her take my soul as collateral so that Jacqueline would trust her. Funny though. I’d never trust a woman who traded her own son for some stupid information that may not even be helpful to her.
    “Why did you, anyway?” I ask. I’m as good as dead without a body. Jacqueline could’ve just taken me whole as her prisoner. Instead, we’re forced to share space in her head.
    Jacqueline stares at her pink fingernails. “It’s complicated. I expected you to be different, more like your mother. I didn’t expect you to be so...pure.”
    If I had a body, I’d frown. “I’m insulted. What makes you think I’m pure?”
    “Enough with the questions.”
    I sigh. “I wouldn’t have so many if you’d tell me what you’re going to do with me.”
    Jacqueline throws her journal at the wall and it clatters to the floor. “Hunter Sullivan! If you don’t shut up right now, I will make you.” Jacqueline’s melodious voice echoes through the small room.
    She stands up and walks across the dirty carpet to a dusty mirror on the wall. She wipes it with the sleeve of her shirt and stares at herself. Her light purple eyes glow against the golden brown of her skin and the color of her irises shift for a split second and it’s like I can see myself in her eyes. They’re not the windows to her soul, but mine.
    “Please, don’t send me away,” I say.
    I regret aggravating her. When she doesn’t want me around, she shoves me into a dark void in her mind. It’s awful not knowing which way is up and being blind and deaf. I feel like I’m dying every time she does it and then it’s like I don’t exist at all.
    Someone knocks on the door and she turns toward it. “I’m sorry, Hunter. You know the rules.”
    “Please, I’ll be quiet.”
    “The answer is no.”
    “Jackie, don’t—”
    She closes her eyes and I’m blind to the world again. I’m alone, in pitch blackness, and I want to