Dream Eyes (Dark Legacy #2)(66)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Do you have any idea what you’re looking for in the dream?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Believe me, I’ve thought about it a million times.”

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, his fingers lightly linked. “Do you really think you can help me find whatever it is I’m searching for in that damn dream?”

“I can help you look for it,” she said. “But there’s no guarantee that there is anything to find. Your nightly search might be merely a manifestation of the stress of what happened to you that day. One way or another, I should be able to help you break the endless dreamscape loop, though. That should give you some closure to the dream.”

“Do it,” he said. “Now.”

Thirty-eight

She walked toward him through the seething fog of dreamlight.

“Don’t trip over the body,” he said.

“Where is it?” Gwen looked around.

“At your feet.”

She glanced down and then raised her fathomless eyes. “Yes, I see it now. That’s the trouble with entering someone else’s dream. I can usually grasp the big picture, but I have to depend on the dreamer for the little details.”

For some reason that amused him. “Little details like dead bodies?”

“Right. Okay, I’ve frozen the scene for us so that you can take your time examining events. Now, it would be very helpful if you gave me a tour.”

“Things don’t look quite the same as they do in the usual version of this dream,” he said. “I don’t feel the same, either.”

“That’s because this is a lucid version of the dream. You are aware that you’re dreaming. You can exert some control. Because of that perspective, the experience feels different than it would under normal dream conditions.”

“If you say so.”

“The tour, Judson,” she prompted quietly.

He looked around, getting his own bearings in the eerie dreamscape. The scene was frozen, just as Gwen said, but he knew exactly where he was. The timeline was clear. The explosion had not yet occurred. If it had not been for his para-vision, he would not have been able to see anything except the beams of light radiating from the two flashlights, his own and Spalding’s. The dead man’s flashlight had fallen from his hand. So had the crystal weapon.

The interior of the cavern was spacious. It stretched up into the darkness as far as twenty or thirty feet. But the entrance from the outside world was a tight, twisted passage barely large enough to allow a man to pass through.

With his senses heightened, he could see the pool that marked the entrance to the flooded portion of the cave. He was standing at the edge. The water was infused with a faint, acid-green radiance—the natural energy of the rocks made visible to his special sight. When he looked down, he could see the opening of the Monster’s throat below the surface.

“I’ve just used the ring to flatline Spalding’s aura,” he said. “The stone is still hot. The crystal gun went cold just before Spalding died. But it’s too late. The energy released by the gun and my ring has ignited the atmosphere. I can feel the growing heat and the instability. The aurora is forming.”

“Like the northern lights?”

“Yes. But this is composed of paranormal energy waves. I sense that an explosion will occur very soon. What I don’t know yet is if that explosion will be powerful enough to affect the normal wavelengths of the spectrum. But I do know that it might be strong enough to kill me or, at the very least, fry my para-senses. My intuition tells me that my only hope of riding out the blast is to go into the flooded portion of the cave. If I can get enough rock and water between me and the explosion, I might have a chance.”

“Where is the entrance to the flooded cave?” Gwen asked.

“I’d be standing on the rim of the pool.”

“Describe it to me,” Gwen said.

“They call it the Monster for a reason. The locals say it swallows divers whole. Some people say there is an exit to the sea, but no one has ever been able to explore it to the end. Only a handful of people have attempted to get through the cave system. Most were forced to turn back. Those that didn’t disappeared.”

“But at this point, you are not planning to swim out of here.”

“No. I just want to go deep enough to ride out the paranormal explosion I sense is coming. I’m already in my wetsuit because I was preparing to look for the dead analyst. I grab my gear and a flashlight and I go into the pool. I make it into the throat of the Monster. I can feel the explosion and hear it even though I’m underwater. There’s a shock wave from the blast, but the water and the rock protect me. When it’s over, I surface.”

“All right, we are now in that phase of your dream. You are surveying the dry portion of the cave. Tell me what you see.”

“Not a whole hell of a lot. Something about the aurora damaged my para-vision. I’m psi-blind.”

“Oh, my, I hadn’t realized you’d lost your other vision.”

“Took me damn near a month to recover. I wasn’t sure I would.”

“No wonder you retreated to that little town on the coast for a while,” she said. “And no wonder you’ve had a few bad dreams.”

“Speaking of which—”

“Right. Back to this dreamscape.”

“I’m psi-blind, but I’ve still got my normal vision and I’ve got the flashlight.”

“What does it show you?”

“Spalding’s body. His flashlight is nearby but it’s dead. The explosion destroyed it. I see the crystal weapon, too. It rolled over there by that pile of rocks. But I’m not paying a lot of attention to the body or the weapon because I’ve just realized that I’m going to have to swim out through the underwater cave system.”

He stopped because there did not seem to be much point describing the endless nightmare that was the long swim out of the cave.

“How do you know which direction to swim?” Gwen asked.

“In the water I can feel the current. It’s slight but steady. I follow it.”

“Not knowing if you’re going to come to a narrow place in the cave that you won’t be able to get through,” Gwen whispered.

Even through the dreamtime atmosphere, he could hear the shiver in her voice.

“I didn’t have any choice,” he reminded her. “Let’s finish this dream therapy thing.”