Okay, so Gwen and Judson were sleeping together. No problem. At this point it probably didn’t amount to anything more than a one-night stand. Maybe two or three nights. Whatever. It didn’t mean he would lose her, too. What was happening between the pair was just the natural result of a lot of adrenaline, excitement, danger and mutual physical attraction mixed up together. He’d been there often enough to know how the chemistry worked.
But a chill went through him. Gwen didn’t do casual sex, and while the relationship between her and Judson had ignited quickly, it did not look like it would burn out fast. Even Wyatt Earp had noticed the heat between those two.
He did not want to think about what his nights would be like if the dream monsters returned. He did not want to think about what his world would be like if he lost both of his sisters to the Coppersmith family. So he got some coffee and found a private space in which to suck up the caffeine while he went through the bankbook that he had found in the wall safe. Numbers were always interesting, especially when they were linked to money.
After a while he took the small computer out of the backpack and went online. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. He was as good at finding interesting stuff hidden in cyberspace as he was opening concealed wall safes.
Really, he had been born for a life of crime.
Twenty-seven
She sensed the dark energy of Judson’s psi-charged dreamscape just as she was about to slip into a lucid dream of her own.
She was in her robe, nightgown and slippers, curled up in the chair in front of the fire with her feet tucked under her. She was orchestrating the delicate trance-like state, summoning images from the scene of Louise’s murder, when the currents whispered to her from the other room.
Her first thought was that the unfamiliar tendrils of dreamlight had been generated by her own self-induced hallucination. As often as she had gone into the waking dreamstate, she could never be sure of what she would experience. Trances were, by their very nature, unpredictable.
But when she heard Judson utter an urgent, half-choked shout, she was jolted out of the trance.
She stood quickly. Max was awake, too. He sat up on the bed and gazed fixedly toward the doorway into the other room.
Judson groaned.
Gwen hurried to the doorway. In the faint light from the fireplace behind her, she could see Judson sprawled on the bed. His ring was infused with sun-hot light.
Max jumped down from the bed and joined her in the doorway, meowing in a low, uneasy manner.
Gwen heightened her talent and slid into a waking trance to get a sense of what was going on in Judson’s dreamscape. She was not surprised by the explosion of amber lightning that crackled in the atmosphere, but she was stunned by the dark, seething energy of violence that pooled around the bed. With her dreamer’s intuition, she knew that Judson was living through whatever had caused the nightmare. His unnaturally deep sleep had intensified the effects.
“Good grief,” she whispered. “How long have you been dealing with this dream, Judson?”
She walked slowly toward the bed. She had never dealt with a sleeper so profoundly asleep. Normally she worked with clients who were awake. The therapeutic process involved putting clients into a light trance and then summoning their dreamscapes to a level just below that of conscious awareness. But her intuition warned her that it would not be a good idea to try to shake Judson awake. In his present condition, it would take him some time to distinguish between his dreamscape and the waking world. In effect, he would wake up in the midst of a vivid hallucination. It might take him a few seconds—as long as a minute, perhaps—to sort things out. In those circumstances, a strong psychic wearing a ring infused with unknown paranormal energy could do a lot of damage in even a short period of time.
Although she dared not bring him out of the dreamscape too abruptly, she had to make physical contact in order to help him. She was not sure how he would respond to even the lightest touch. He was trapped deep in the underworld. That was never a good thing.
“Really, Max, the first lesson everyone with psychic abilities should be taught is how to control their own dreams,” she said softly.
Max meowed again. It was an aren’t-you-going-to-do-something-about-this-situation sort of meow. He twitched his tail a few times, expressing his growing impatience, and came to sit very close to her feet, pressing his big body against her leg.
On the bed Judson uttered another low, guttural sound. The energy whipping around him grew darker and more dangerous. The sunlight stirring in his ring got hotter.
There was no option, Gwen thought. She could not let him slide deeper into the dreamscape.
She gathered herself and pulled hard on her talent. At her feet, Max pressed more firmly against her leg as if to offer support.
Cautiously, she reached out and touched two fingertips to the palm of one of Judson’s out-flung hands.
Although she thought she was braced for the physical connection, it was all she could do not to scream aloud when the electrifying shock zapped across her senses.
She walked straight into the heart of his nightmare.
Amber lightning arced and flashed in the darkness that enveloped her. She sensed the ghastly fog that was the hallmark of violence and death. A dreadful miasma infused with a terrible violet-hued light seethed around her feet. She thought she heard a cat meow.
“Judson,” she said quietly. “Where are you?”
“Welcome to my world,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
She turned, searching for him in the lightning-streaked darkness.
. . . And saw him watching her from the shadows, a churning pool of ultraviolet energy at his feet. His eyes burned with a heat that matched the molten fires that flared in his ring.
He did not look like a man trapped in hell—in this dark underworld, he reigned.
“You should not be here, either,” she said. “It’s just a bad dreamscape. Come with me.”
Conversations conducted in other people’s dreamscapes were no different than those she had with ghosts in her own trances. The dialogue came to her as feedback from her dreamer’s intuition based on what she sensed in the client’s aura.
“I can’t leave,” Judson said.
“Why not?”
“I lost something here. I have to find it.”
“What did you lose?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll recognize it when I find it.”
“I understand. This is a recurring dream for you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. I come here often.”
“You come here to search for whatever it is you lost, but tonight you’ve gone down too deep,” she said. “I was afraid of this. You’re here now because of what happened at Louise Fuller’s house today. You need to return to the surface with me. You must let your senses recover before you dream this dream again.”
That seemed to amuse him. “You don’t get it, do you? This is my world. It’s where I belong.”
“No, it’s your dreamscape, and you can change it. I can show you how.”
“It may be a dreamscape, but it’s also my past,” he said. “No changing that, is there, Miss Psychic Counselor?”
“You can’t change the past, but you can find a better way to deal with it.”
“Damn. You sound like a real therapist,” he said. “The expensive kind. But you’re not a real one, are you?”
“No, I’m just a psychic counselor, but I do know something about how to find things that are lost in dreamscapes. You’re going about it the wrong way.”
“Yeah?” He was starting to sound bored.
She was losing him.