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called Dream
Stealer, rested his forehead against the cool glass of the window and
I realized for the first time that his stooped back wasn't from age
as much as it was from what he'd been through.
    "It
seemed so much harder for me than for the others my age. It wasn't
until later, after I'd been exiled, that my ability manifested.
Sometimes I want to blame everything that happened on my ability, but
that is just another way of trying to shirk my guilt."
    "An
ability means that you have a stronger beast?"
    "Nobody
knows for sure. It's true that the weaker of my kind seem to struggle
much less with their beasts. Some of the weakest wolves claim to not
even believe that the rest of us have a distinct entity inside of us,
but there are aberrations even to that, wolves who struggle like I
did to control themselves. More importantly, there are powerful
hybrids, individuals with legendary gifts, who don't seem to have any
problem mastering their beasts."
    "So
since they can do it you feel like you should have been able to?"
    "It's
more than just a feeling, Adriana. I've spent nearly two centuries
trying to learn how to control my inner nature, trying to replace
savagery with something higher. I've made some progress, maybe—no,
certainly—less than I should have, but I've made progress. I'm
damned by my own success. My accomplishment since then has only
proven that I could have done better back then if I'd really wanted
to."
    I
opened my mouth wanting to say something comforting, but he cut me
off.
    "That's
not important other than making sure you know what you're getting
into. I'll do my very best not to harm you, but I can't make any
promises."
    I
knew I should be scared, but somehow hearing the story of how he got
like this, the reason he'd spent two hundred years alone and on the
run, reinforced something I'd known all along. He wasn't going to
hurt me. I needed to do my absolute best to make it easier for him,
but when push came to shove, I knew he didn't want to hurt me. I'd
seen him do incredible things inside of the dream, things that had
taken an almost inconceivable force of will, and I refused to believe
even his beast was stronger than the man I'd seen, the one who'd
saved me and two of the most important people in my life.
    "I
understand, but I want to continue training with you. I need to
master my power or I'll end up dead anyways."
    Taggart
sighed and then pulled out the two bags of fast food that we'd picked
up right before stopping at the motel.
    "Okay,
then you're going to need to eat up. We're still burning off the
calories as fast as you're taking them in."
    I
sighed as I accepted the two cheeseburgers he pulled out of the bag.
I'd always assumed anyone who'd been alive for more than two hundred
years would be rich, but apparently Taggart's resources weren't
unlimited. I guess all of that running had precluded staying in one
place long enough to earn any kind of substantial nest egg.
    He
was too principled to turn to theft, although he'd been quick to
liquidate everything he could get his hands on from the two vampires
he'd killed in Minnesota, so he was very careful about how he spent
his money. It took a lot of calories to stoke his shape shifter
metabolism and my dream walking ability likewise consumed all of the
energy I could feed it, so we tended towards greasy, fatty foods.
    I
knew I couldn't survive on fast food forever, but this was only
temporary. Besides, he was right, there was no way I could consume
enough calories eating salad—my ability simply used up too much
energy.
    Since
Taggart had put me on a steady diet of cheeseburgers and fries, my
weight had finally stabilized for the first time in months. I was
still as skinny as any of the girls on my cheerleading squad back
home, but at least I wasn't still losing weight.
    It
was still light outside, but I stifled three separate yawns by the
time I made it through the mountain of food in front of me. Dream
walking was hard work and I never felt