Falling Awake(20)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

Ellis smiled to himself. “Yes, but she doesn’t seem to be worried about it. Got herself a day job to tide her over until her consulting business kicks in.”

“What kind of day job? Don’t tell me she’s gone back to answering phones at the Psychic Dreamer Hotline.”

“No. She’s training to be an instructor in her brother-in-law’s motivational seminar business.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“That’s crazy,” Lawson bellowed. “Why would she want to do something like that when she could be back here working at Frey-Salter?”

“Gee. I don’t know. It’s curious, isn’t it? Maybe it’s got something to do with not being cooped up in a tiny, windowless office and not having to take orders from a control freak who only tells you what he thinks you need to know.”

“I’m glad you’re finding this so damned amusing, Cutler. Because I’m not. Listen up. I hired you to bring her in. Stop messing around out there and do your job.”

“You want my advice?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re going to get it,” Ellis said. “Deal with her the way you did with Martin Belvedere. Pay her well. She’ll respect your demands for confidentiality.”

“I don’t want another independent. I want Isabel Wright working here at Frey-Salter where I can, uh—”

“Control her?” Ellis offered.

“Where I can keep an eye on her,” Lawson amended.

“Forget it. Not going to happen.”

“You sound a little too damn cheerful about all this,” Lawson muttered suspiciously. “What are you up to?”

Ellis opened the door of the Maserati and got behind the wheel.

“I’ve been thinking that I need to broaden my perspective and maybe take a more positive approach to life,” he said. “Maybe I’ll sign up for a course of motivational seminars.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“Isabel’s going to be teaching a class called ‘Tapping into the Creative Potential of Your Dreams.’ Who knows? Maybe I’ll pick up a few pointers.”

He ended the call before Lawson could finish sputtering.

7

vincent Scargill dreamed . . .

He stands on the high cliff, poised for the dive into the vast blue depths of the sea. He will plunge down beneath the cool, shimmering surface, counting each breath he takes underwater until he reaches the sparkling clear place where the currents carry the dream images.

But as he watches from the top of the cliff, a great wave rises out of the ocean. It is huge, a vast wall of water that dwarfs the cliff top where he stands. He knows it will crash over him, crushing him, drowning him, making it impossible for him to dive into the clear currents below.

As the tsunami bears down upon him he sees that the waters have turned blood red . . .

“Vincent, wake up.” The firm voice summoned him from the dreamscape. “Wake up, Vincent.”

He tried to resist, reluctant to abandon the attempt to dive into the dreamscape. It was his only hope of escaping this place that had become his prison.

But in the end, he had no choice. The voice had broken through the fragile barrier that separated a high-level lucid dream from wakefulness. Once pierced, there was no going back through the veil. He would have to reconstruct another dream and that was not easy to do these days.

He had made progress since the terrible morning when he nearly died in the explosion at the cabin, but not nearly enough. The head injury had healed within a few weeks but the damage that had been done to his dreaming capability was far more extensive than either he or his companion had realized. He could no longer access the gateway dream, the one that took him into the extreme dreaming state.

He opened his eyes. His companion was bending over him, watching him closely.

“Are you all right?”

“No.” He sat up on the edge of the sofa and glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. He had spent two hours trying to get into the dream state. “All I get is that damned red tsunami. Maybe if I took a higher dose I could get past it.”

“Perhaps, but we must be very, very careful. An overdose might destroy your Level Five capability altogether. Too much might kill you.”

Rage surged through him. He shoved himself to his feet and went to stand at the window. “This is all Cutler’s fault. He did this to me.”

“I know, Vincent. Trust me, we will find a way to enable you to dream again.”

He brooded on the strip of palm trees that lined the avenue below the condo window. He had spent a large portion of the past few months in this place and he hated it.

He had few memories of those first weeks following the explosion. His dreams had been blurred and fragmented. Eventually they began to clear, however, and he believed that he was regaining his Level Five ability. In an effort to speed up the process, his companion began giving him increasingly large injections from their small supply of CZ-149, the experimental dream-enhancing drug produced back at Frey-Salter. But the stuff was not helping much. If anything, the tsunami was growing larger and more violently crimson with each dose.

A few weeks ago, desperate, he had slipped out of the condo while his companion was gone and contacted Martin Belvedere personally. He knew he could trust the old man to keep quiet. All Belvedere cared about was his research, and Vincent knew he could offer him an interesting case study.

He met with Belvedere in a small café near the Center for Sleep Research. The location had been Belvedere’s choice. They sat together in a cheap vinyl booth drinking bad coffee while he gave the old man his recent dream reports and told him about the head trauma that had impacted his Level Five abilities.

Belvedere made copious notes and then he took the information back to his office to study. They met again two days later at the same café. But all the old man had been able to tell him was that the giant red wave was a “blocking” image that prevented him from accessing the gateway dream. Hell, he had already figured that much out for himself.

“I can’t take this any longer.” He gripped the windowsill so tightly all the blood was squeezed out of his knuckles. “That damned tsunami dream is making me crazy.”

His companion tapped the tip of the pen against the desktop. “There is one other approach we can try. I just learned about it this evening. That’s why I woke you.”

He turned swiftly. “What approach?”