CHAPTER THIRTY
“Richard?”
Sarah’s call fluttered through the silence of their minds, across the distance separating their individual locations at the bunker. Their psychic senses fired to life along with their link. The medication dampening Sarah’s ability to project relinquished its hold, the way she’d been able to defeat the potency of Richard’s other chemical safeguards. Only now, his strength was augmenting her growing powers, helping her recover even faster.
“I’m here.” Richard’s thoughts caressed hers, filling her mind with magical sounds: wind, night creatures, a canopy of tree limbs rustling overhead, filtering the moon’s silvery glow.
“My sister?” Sarah asked. “Is she—”
“Madeline’s stabilized, but her consciousness was sedated like ours.”
“Your mind . . .” Sarah pushed deeper. “I can barely feel you.”
“Suppression drugs. I couldn’t project through them without your help. Now that you’re here, I can . . . For now, I’m managing to block the bunker’s sensors from picking up our psychic energy.”
Energy that flowed from him to Sarah, then back to him, the circuit never ending. Through their link came the sensation of Richard’s lips caressing her cheek, her temple, her mouth. Sarah kissed him back, absorbing his grief and anger over Jeff. His concern for the council’s hasty plans to attack the center complex.
“You came back to me.” His mind stroked hers. “When I couldn’t feel you after the dream matrix dissolved, I thought I’d lost you.”
“For a while.” The tears Sarah had been holding back flooded their link. “A part of me wanted to stay lost between the dream and here. To hide again.”
“I know, love,” he said. His understanding and hearing him say “love” healed her as nothing else could. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you from—”
“The truth?”
She needed him to tell her it had all been just a horrible nightmare. But she knew he couldn’t. And she couldn’t let him.
“My child’s been taught to kill, just like I was.” Sarah’s mind sank deeper into the fantasy of her head nestled in the crook of Richard’s shoulder.
“But you’re not a killer, Sarah.” The warmth of his voice, his breath on her cheek, made her long to be lying naked in his arms beneath forest moonlight.
“I was going to kill Jeff,” she said, “once he’d made the decision to shoot Trinity.”
“He put us all at risk. He lost his perspective on what our order was created to do. He—”
“He was your second-in-command. Your best friend is dead because of me. You killed him to save my daughter.”
“Stopping him and the threat he’d become to the psychic realm was my job.” Richard’s conviction that he’d done the right thing was as real and as heartbreaking as his acceptance of his parents’ deaths. “Your family is the Brotherhood’s future, you and other powerful legacies we need to join us. The council may not be able to control you, but they can’t stop the center without you. They’ll grow to trust you once they know the whole story.”
“They’ve neutralized my mind. At least they tried to. They don’t want my help.”
“They don’t have a choice. Give them time to realize that. Because of you, they know who Trinity is and how she’s being used against us.”
“Because I failed to control the dream while she attacked our team.”
“Watchers aren’t perfect. Missions fail. But you’re still fighting. You found me. You’re unpredictable and flawed and dangerously powerful, just like your daughter. But you’ve become everything a Watcher should be, Sarah. You’re everything I’ve dreamed of.”
His kiss and his confidence feathered through their connection. Desire burst to life. It felt as if the sun had risen just beyond their closed eyes, the light growing brighter by the second, banishing the last remnants of a winter’s nightmare. Sarah clung to their link. He was Rick again in their stolen moment, and he would never abandon her.
She was still terrified of losing the amazing feeling of him in her mind. She was still afraid to believe in this kind of perfection when the Brotherhood and the center and even Trinity were doing everything they could to destroy the world Sarah finally wanted to live in. But she’d been right to seek him out, to trust him when she still wasn’t sure she could trust anything the council said or what they’d do next. There was nowhere else she wanted to be, she realized, except fighting by Richard’s side.
Within their shared consciousness, she inched away, breathing deeply.
“What do we do now?” She sent her awareness deeper, joining his mind and hers with the Brotherhood. “I can feel the council preparing for battle. Do they know what happened in the dream? An attack on the center complex may be exactly what Trinity’s handlers want. Do they know what she’s capable of if I can’t reach her again and get her to stop?”
“They’ll have debriefed the mission team by now. They’ll know the basics of what happened.”
“Then why are you still sedated? Jeff was the mole. You—”
“I protected Trinity after she attacked two of my Watchers. To the council, my priorities are clearly too conflicted for me to be trusted.”
“If the Brotherhood attacks, the center will—”
“Use Trinity’s as a mind-control weapon to deflect the assault.”
“We can’t let that happen. There’s still innocence inside her. I felt it. We have to get her away from the center before it’s too late to reach the light I know is still there.”
“You will. I’ll help you link your consciousness with hers.”
“What? No. We need to talk with the council first. Convince them to hold off on—”
“They’re not going to stop.” Richard’s dream touch was a soothing caress down her cheek. “They have no reason to trust us. We have to beat them to your daughter.”
“But I can’t hear her cries now, and our bodies are still sedated. How—”
“Create a new dream reality based on the projections you’ve shared with Trinity—one you design this time. Your minds are still connected, even though Ruebens’s programming has run its course. It’s time for you to take control. Madeline and I will help you.”
“But . . .” Project into the mind of the little girl Ruebens had raised to attack her? “Trinity hates me, Richard. Enough to try to destroy the Brotherhood along with me. She’s been told I abandoned her. That I refused to accept what she was. How do I get her to believe me now?”
“You tell me.” Richard’s faith and pride filled their link. “I found you when you didn’t believe in anything or anyone. I found you again when you’d convinced yourself you hated me, because I knew how to reach the part of your mind that still needed me. Now it’s your turn to fight for the person you love. Your daughter needs you, Sarah. Show me where you’ve dreamed of finding Trinity.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sunlight warmed Sarah’s eyelids. The de cadent sensation became her new dream’s beginning. Warmth and beauty and promise waited patiently for her discovery. She tentatively opened her eyes, and there Richard was, his strong body lying beneath hers, cushioning her from the forest’s rough floor. Dawn’s pink light was just peeping over the horizon, showering their projection with incandescent beauty.
“Richard?”
His lifted his hand. He traced the contours of her face with his fingers.
“You’re really here,” she said. A dream’s illusion had never felt this real.
“And you’re magnificent.” His touch stroked down her body as if he wanted to memorize the feel of her.
He sat up, bringing Sarah with him. Bits of forest green fell from his hair and from the same fatigues and dark shirt he’d worn when they’d last been in the woods outside the bunker. Sarah was in outdoor clothes, too. Their scrubs and Richard’s lab coat were gone.
“Let’s see where your mind’s taken us.” He kissed her fingers and tugged her to her feet.
They gazed out over what should have been the ravine where his parents had lost their confrontation with their Watchers. In its place, an ocean vista spread. So beautiful. So perfect.
“This is from my nightmare.” Sarah stepped to the lip of the ravine. “It’s what I imagined would be waiting on the other side of Trinity’s door, at the bottom of the ocean.”
Light, like morning’s new promise, sprinkling hope across a diamond-kissed shore . . .
The sea stretched toward the horizon, cradled by silky sand that didn’t belong at the base of a Massachusetts forest. But it was a perfect vista. A perfect promise. Complete with the fluffy, welcoming clouds from the meditation routines Richard had helped Sarah fill with her favorite images.
“This is where you should have found your daughter.” Richard sounded equally mesmerized. “Your mind was looking for Trinity here, even in Ruebens’s matrix.”
“We’re beyond the nightmare’s hold.” The wind ran its fingers over the water, rippling the surface in a shiny display. “This is where we were meant to meet. But we lost this place when Ruebens hid Trinity from me.”
“You’ll bring her back.” Richard drew Sarah more securely against his chest. “There’s still time.”
Salt flavored the air. Surf roared against miles of sugar-fine sand. The richness of this new dream—with the trees behind them and the ocean beyond and the amethyst-tinged clouds merging the sea with the sky—was the destination Sarah hadn’t been able to draw, she realized. All those years ago, when a little girl had drowned her bedroom walls with color, this is what she’d been trying to see.
“There’s Madeline.” Richard pointed toward the shoreline. “What’s that beyond her? Is it—”
Sarah raced down into the ravine, her stride kicking up sand when she reached the beach at the bottom. She sprinted to her sister, only to stop a few feet away. The chest of Maddie’s surgical gown was covered in blood, the sight made even more grotesque by the enchanting scenery around them.
“Thank God you’re okay.” Maddie launched herself into Sarah’s arms. “Where are we? How did I get here?”
“I’m not sure, except . . .” Sarah hugged her twin, wincing at the nearly insubstantial feel of Maddie’s normally strong body. “Except I needed you here, or I couldn’t do this. I need my family, Maddie. Promise me you’re going to be okay. That you’ll be okay when I come back.”
“Come back from where?”
Maddie pulled away, leaving a crimson stain down the front of Sarah’s fatigues. She turned toward the shoreline as Richard approached and wrapped a strong arm around Sarah’s shoulder. The three of them gazed at the massive door sitting at the water’s edge, between Sarah and the sea.
It wasn’t the hostile portal that had barred her way within Ruebens’s dream projection. It wasn’t the scarred door of Sarah’s childhood bedroom. It was beautiful, shining in a new morning’s light, made entirely of crystal clear glass that she couldn’t see through. Not yet. But what lay beyond was calling to her.
“I have to go after her,” Sarah tried to explain. “I know she hurt you, but—”
“But she’s your daughter.” Maddie turned back. “No matter what Trinity did in Ruebens’s dream projection, no matter who’s controlling her at the center, she’s as innocent as you were when your dream wolf commanded you to manipulate peoples’ minds. And we’re running out of time before Dream Weaver owns her forever.”
Storm clouds popped over the horizon, rolling toward them, blocking out the morning sun. Shadows fell. One final truth remained to be told, if this enchanted place was to become reality. One final battle had to be waged. Too many years had passed. Too much hadn’t been seen.
“It’s beautiful.” Richard nodded Sarah’s attention back to the door. A pinwheel of purples and blues and greens were swirling across its surface.
“You’re not coming back without her,” Maddie asked, “are you?”
Richard took Sarah’s hand.
“I can’t leave my daughter there alone,” Sarah said. “I know what they’re doing to her. What they did to me. And she doesn’t expect anyone to come. She believes she’s alone. She tried to make sure of it, she hates herself so much.”
It was the same empty nightmare Sarah had lived for too long.
“But the council,” Maddie said. “They have to be planning a response to her attack. If they find your mind linked with Trinity—”
“They’ll target both of us.”
“They’ll likely detect your psychic projection as soon as your consciousness emerges wherever Trinity’s being held at the center complex,” Richard said. “I won’t be able to project with you. I’m not strong enough yet. There will be no cloak. Your energy will tip the council off.”
“They’ll know exactly where to find us.” Sarah waited for Maddie’s warning. Her sister’s demand that Sarah stay there, in her beautiful dream projection, where it was safe.
“You want the council to know you’re there, don’t you?” Maddie eased away. “Do you know enough, remember enough, to stop Trinity this time?”
“I . . .” Sarah wasn’t sure how to answer.
“You know she drew Jeff’s attention away from you in the nightmare,” Richard said, “when you were who he’d aimed his rifle at.”
“And you know she needs you, no matter what she said,” Maddie insisted, “or she wouldn’t have connected with you in your bedroom in Lenox. The center team was in place. They didn’t need her there to distract the Watcher team. And Trinity wouldn’t be so angry that you didn’t believe she existed if she didn’t need you. Remember how hurt you were when I found you at the center? You were out of control. You hated me for not protecting you. You know how that feels, and you know how to get through to Trinity. You have to make her understand that—”
“That I love her.” Sarah would remember forever the moment Maddie had finally broken through her Dream Weaver–induced mania. “I have to make her believe that I’ll never abandon her again.”
“Help her see past the lies in Ruebens’s programming. Help her want what you were meant to be together.” Richard gazed at the perfection around them.
“Make her want this place.” More blood seeped from Maddie’s chest wound. “Make her believe that she’s part of our—”
“Family.” Sarah followed her sister’s gaze to where the sand met the sea and the sky swooped low to join them. “Ruebens tried to take this from us. Trinity’s the final piece of our legacy. I have to make her see that this is where her gifts belong.”
“You will.” Madeline pressed her hand to her chest. “I know you will.”
Sarah hugged her twin one last time.
“I don’t want to leave you here,” she said.
“We’ll be fine.” Maddie stepped to Richard’s side. “We’ll be here waiting for you both.”
Richard didn’t want to let Sarah go. He never wanted to be anywhere again, where he couldn’t feel her mind connected with his, feeding his consciousness, making him stronger and better and more alive just because she was there.
But Sarah had to protect her child from the showdown brewing between Trinity and the Brotherhood. She’d become the Watcher he’d known she could be, which meant he had to let her go long enough to do her job.
“When Brotherhood sensors detect your psychic move toward Trinity,” he said, “the council should come to me. I’ll do everything I can to convince them to work with you inside the center. Leave your consciousness open to that. Give them a chance to trust you again. Give them a chance to accept Trinity.”
Sarah nodded.
She took a long look at the healing place she finally believed her legacy could become.
“Dream of me here.” She flowed into his arms and kissed him.
“Always,” he promised. Sarah would own his dreams forever.
The vibrant colors flowed outward from the door, expanding until they were just beyond their reach. Sarah turned toward them and their swirling center. Her fingers touche
d the pinwheel of hues, disappearing to the other side as she moved closer.
She looked back, her eyes shot through with the same mixture of amethyst and turquoise and vivid blues. She smiled at Richard. Then her entire body crossed through and vanished beyond the door, taking the colors of her dream world with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Sarah strained to hear, to see, to feel. But there was nothing in her projection. It was worse than the last ocean dream, when the mission had first begun and she’d been alone in the water. There was no programming to follow here. Nothing to build even a backdrop for the dream. There were no voices or cries. No energy to feel her way through.
There was only Sarah and her need to reach her daughter before the center stole Trinity from her for good. Would her daughter’s voice sound the same as in the nightmare? The vision in Lenox? Would she still be determined to punish Sarah? Or had all they’d shared before been warped by Ruebens’s programming, and the real Trinity’s consciousness was still waiting for Sarah to find her?
In the darkness of her sedated mind, beyond the circuit of energy that her sister and the man she loved had created to help her, beyond the dream reflection of the future she wanted for all of them, Sarah was finally fighting for the truth. All of it. She was searching for the missing piece of her legacy’s promise, and she knew exactly where to find it.
Memory sizzled through her, sparking a rush of color and transient light through her mind. She was back in her bedroom in her family’s first house. Though the vision was cloaked in shadows, she could see her Barbie pink chenille bedspread. Her favorite stuffed animals. What appeared to be her childhood self sitting on the bed, drowning in the vivid colors she couldn’t stop herself from painting on her walls.
Sarah moved further into the vision. She approached the bed, realizing the image of herself sitting cross-legged on the spread was wearing scrubs, not pajamas. Crimson paint coated her hands, paint the color of blood, and her eyes were a clear blue. Once again, her memories had led her to her daughter.
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