“And while Sarah’s beating the center’s psychic ass at its own game,” Madeline said, “what exactly will your men be doing?”
“For starters,” Richard said, “Jeff will know not to allow the colors that have been guiding Sarah through her ocean imagery to repel her from Trinity’s door.”
Sarah shivered.
It wasn’t the first time during the meeting that the mention of the child’s name had spooked her.
“Are you afraid to find Trinity?” Jeff’s gaze lifted from the gooseflesh rippling over her arm.
Sarah stared at her hands. Richard could feel the last of the fragile confidence she’d brought into the meeting give way to the guilt that had sent her running last night. Then the truth was there, whispering through their link, smacking him between the eyes like a psychic sledgehammer.
“The red hues in the nightmare were reacting to your fear of what’s behind the door.” He grabbed Jeff’s laptop and scrolled through his database. “All this time, the colors haven’t been merely showing you other people. They’ve been reacting to your own emotions. In the nightmare, they led you to Trinity, then turned you away from her, changing and flowing based on what you were feeling . . . You didn’t fail her, Sarah. You just weren’t ready to push through the door.”
He brought up the records he’d entered after they emerged from Sarah’s vision in the gym, sorting the entries by color.
“When Madeline arrived,” he said, “she was trying to talk you into swimming away from the voice at the bottom of the ocean, and you saw a trail of—”
“Color behind her,” Sarah finished. “Amethyst leading toward the surface. Maddie’s always surrounded by healing colors in my dreams.”
“Healing colors?” Jeff asked.
“Bright whites and vivid hues.” Sarah smiled at her twin’s shock. “They felt wonderful whenever Maddie brought them to the shallow water we worked in. At first it was her colors I followed deeper into the dream. Amethyst, mostly. It was like having her with me, healing me.”
“But it was your colors you saw,” Jeff corrected, “when you followed them to the door. You were the only one in the nightmare then. It was your own consciousness you were feeling when you turned away, when you couldn’t open the latch.”
Sarah’s forehead wrinkled. Confusion rushed through her and Richard’s link. But there were more clouds there now, too, softening the impact of the dream memories. Helping Sarah understand the dream symbols’ meanings.
“I was going to save Trinity,” she said, finally remembering without fear. “I was so sure the reds and pinks and crimsons I was following would show me how to get to her. That I could finally do something good with my legacy, like Maddie has.”
“You’re here.” Madeline squeezed her twin’s hand. “After nearly losing everything, you’re here fighting, Sarah. That’s good. That’s amazing. You’re a healer, too. My God, you’re a Watcher now. There’s no end to what you’re going to do with our legacy.”
Sarah shook her head. “The colors left me when I let go of the door. All that was left were the horrible voices that wanted me to—”
“Or did you leave them?” Madeline asked. “Richard’s right. The dream colors have been yours all along, but you’ve never learned how to use them. Just like when you were a little girl, and you made yourself forget the things you painted on your wall. In the nightmare, when you didn’t think the colors wanted you to open the door, when you couldn’t get through without them, that was you letting go, Sarah. Forgetting. Then the ocean could take you wherever it wanted to, because you thought you didn’t deserve—”
“The light on the other side,” Sarah said. Richard felt the full realization of what he’d been trying to say in the woods hit home. “After everything I’ve done, I didn’t believe I could have what was waiting for me on the other side. But . . . the colors returned when Maddie forced her way into the dream.”
After Sarah had seen Richard’s raven soaring above her, and after her dream consciousness had called for his help. After she’d let herself believe just a little more.
Richard sent his consciousness deeper, straight to the part of Sarah that knew she could find Trinity. He replayed for her the courage she’d shown the council. The generous spirit that had understood his own shattered childhood and helped heal him. The warrior within Sarah willing to endure Jeff’s pressure tactics so she could keep fighting.
“The colors have been yours all along,” he promised her. “They’re yours to command now, and so is your nightmare. You’re ready to remember your past and use it to understand your legacy’s future.”
Sarah was looking at him, recalling the moment she’d accepted him into the nightmare’s ocean, even though she’d still been clinging to her hatred. She was clinging to their link now as strongly as she was holding on to her sister’s hand and Trinity’s cries. She was—
“—ready for more . . .” She sent a kaleidoscope of images to Richard and Madeline of everything she was remembering. “I need to know more, to get me through to Trinity . . .”
Madeline turned to Richard, sensing the change in his and Sarah’s connection.
“The colors and light in the dream are your mind telling you who it trusts,” she said to her twin. “They’re your instincts in the nightmare.”
“And when you doubt what they’re trying to show you . . . ,” Jeff began. He and the rest of the team were locked on to the twins and how Richard had moved between them, while Jarred curled an arm around Madeline. “That’s when the ocean’s voice takes over. The dream’s matrix led you to the bottom of the ocean. Not your colors—not your own consciousness.”
Richard felt his men’s excitement grow.
They finally had something to work with.
“The colors are your strength,” he said. “They’re how you’ll control where the dream takes you. Use them to search for Trinity and understand the other symbols you find in the matrix. Find her. Your Watchers will be with you, tracking every aspect of the nightmare. Once we have you all back, we’ll use what you’ve learned to find her in reality.”
Jeff shut down his laptop, his attention on the twins. “Trust your ability to control what you dream, and whoever’s driving the matrix for the center won’t be able to manipulate you.”
Sarah looked from Jeff to the rest of the Watchers. She held her sister’s hand, accepting Madeline and Jarred’s support. She leaned back into Richard’s strength, memories of their forest escape flashing through their minds. Then her thoughts were filling with light and colors that forced away the confusion and doubt, until the shields he’d helped build came down and everyone in the lab could hear for the first time Trinity’s never-ending pleas for help.
A current of awareness spread through the room. The Watchers leaned forward in their chairs, their minds feeding Sarah’s power and control as the twins became fully absorbed onto the team.
Sarah blinked.
She leaned forward.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me again how all of this is going to work.”
Sarah watched Richard help Maddie and Jarred settle onto their side-by-side exam tables. He hadn’t left her since planning broke off and they began mission count-down. Not even when he’d had one of the team members, Lieutenant Donovan, removed from the team with no explanation to either Sarah or Jeff.
Rick . . .
Her Watcher. Her warrior. Her gypsy, who’d always known her better than anyone, because he’d survived the same kind of lost childhood she had. Her future, because he’d never given up on her. He was wearing scrubs and his lab coat, but he’d never looked so strong. So in command. So everything that Sarah needed to help her believe. How did she go back into her ocean nightmare without him?
“You love him, don’t you?” Maddie asked with her mind, following the direction of Sarah’s stare.
“We . . .” Love? The word felt right. It felt like home. “We’re the same. I don’t know how else to explain it, but—”
“You don’t have to know. You just have to believe—in something besides the disaster our legacy made of your childhood. If that begins with you loving Metting, I’m in, as long as he keeps you safe through this insanity.”
Richard was following their conversation through his and Sarah’s link. Maddie’s unexpected support made him smile so slightly, no one else noticed. A look of trust passed between them, sealing the deal. He finished hooking her and Jarred up to the confusion of monitors that would track their progress in the dream. Jarred methodically rechecked each of their leads. He turned to Sarah next and eyeballed hers.
“Can’t be too careful with little sisters,” his mind whispered.
The familiar urge to run battled with Sarah’s unexpected impulse to fling herself into her soon-to-be brother-in-law’s arms. The two warring compulsions invited Sarah’s mania closer. She shifted away from her sister’s fiancé and bumped into the solid chest that had cradled her body so perfectly last night. She looked up at Richard.
“I can’t do this without you,” she said through their link. “I’ll never make it back. I can feel the nightmare’s darkness closing in.”
The dream would try to take her away from her family. And this time, she didn’t want to go. It had been simpler before, when she’d been running from what they wanted to mean to her. Now they were a reality she needed to come home to.
Richard’s palm pressed her head into the nook beneath his chin, staking a public claim. It was mere minutes before she was scheduled to dream. Plans were set. What did it matter now who knew how deeply their relationship had changed?
“Let yourself need the people who love you,” his mind said. “Let that bring you back.”
“I’ll destroy them.” It was the one fear she couldn’t shake. “I’ll destroy all of you.”
“Needing us isn’t how you’ll let the danger take over. Returning to the isolated place that nearly took you away from us—that’s how you’ll destroy the people who love you.”
“Love?”
His dark gaze sparked with the passion pouring between them, but she could feel him hesitating to say the words. She could feel his fear that she wasn’t ready to hear them.
“I . . .” Her mind skittered away, then back. “I do love you, Richard.”
“Rick,” he corrected, and they were both remembering the perfect, unguarded moment in the forest when he’d begged her to be completely his.
“I’m more afraid of losing you,” she said, “than I ever was of Ruebens’s wolf or my nightmare ocean. Whatever happens, I do love you.”
“Our link will be with you every step of the way.” His promise went soul deep. His hands brushed heat up her arms. “I love you, too, Sarah. I’m not going to leave you alone with your memories or your dreams.”
It was exactly what she’d needed to hear.
It was also impossible.
“But the council said—”
“That was before.”
“Before?”
“Before you became part of me. All of me. I couldn’t stay out of your projection any more than Jarred and Madeline can function beyond each other’s consciousness. We’re one now, Sarah. It’s done.”
“You’ll be betraying your oath if you interfere with the mission.”
“If that’s what it takes to stop the center from peddling psychic weapons technology from your legacy, then it’s my duty as a Watcher to do whatever I have to do. I’ve played this by the book from the start. It’s time to fight dirty. Good thing my parents trained me like hell for that, a long time before I became a Watcher.”
“I won’t let you destroy the life you’ve worked so hard for, just because I can’t stop my nightmares from taking over my mind.”
“If you don’t come back from this whole, there is no life for me. Inside the Brotherhood or out of it.”
“Your oath means everything to you.” She laid her palm over the Brotherhood insignia she knew was branded on his shoulder, just beneath his shirt. “You’d never survive—”
“A reality without you in it. Knowing you, feeling you inside me, has been the first real thing in my life. Sensing you trust me so completely that very first day, and then again last night, after all that’s happened. Don’t ask me to give that up.”
But he’d lose everything if she failed.
“You’re not going to fail,” he said out loud. “You’re a Watcher. You’re a dreamer. You were put on this earth to do exactly what you’re about to do. And your family has just expanded to include hundreds of obnoxious, protective warriors who’ll have your back and augment your power, not just the men in this room. You have everything you need to take full control of your legacy. You’ll come back to me. You’re ready.”
Her family . . . Maddie and Jarred, there in her heart. The amethyst and turquoise of their essences wrapped her in warmth. Richard . . . The irresistible feel of him was a deep river of purple, promising forever. And her Watcher team, accepting her broken places and pushing her to reach for the light. All but one of them.
“One of your—our—obnoxious men wants me dead,” she reminded Richard. “Someone here’s working with the center. Is that why you had Donovan removed from the team? Do you think he’s the mole?”
Richard’s mind infused hers with the bliss of forest sounds. “Don’t worry about the mole. Donovan’s too green to be on this mission. I need my top men with me, especially when I suspect one of them is our leak. But all you have to know is that I’ll be there to protect you, no matter what happens. No one’s going to hurt you tonight, Sarah.”
Wind rustled through their shared thoughts. Memories of midnight breezes and heated skin and making love and being reborn beneath the shelter of centuries-old trees. She could smell the tang of pine merging with the essence of earth and sky. She could feel the safety of Richard’s arms wrapped around her as they forged an unbreakable bond. It was a perfect dream that darkness couldn’t touch.
“Lean back.” Richard eased her to the table’s firm pillow. “Once everyone is settled with their minds centered on your projection, we’ll begin administering the dream protocol.” Drugs that would enhance Sarah’s psychic focus and augment her ability to link with the other minds journeying into the projection. Medication that would weaken the shred of control she’d used to hold the nightmare back this long.
Jeff stepped to Richard’s side, still balancing on the crutches he needed because he’d protected her during her last vision.
“I’ll be the last consciousness to immerse in the dream’s matrix,” he said, “and the last to leave it. Wait for me inside the ocean projection. My men will take flanking positions, ready to follow you deeper into the dream while they report their observations back to Colonel Metting. When everyone’s battle ready, I’ll link to the matrix with whatever dream symbol your mind assigns me.”
“Let’s hope it’s not a wolf.” Sarah was joking. Mostly.
Neither Richard nor Jeff cracked a smile.
“Each Watcher could arrive with his own unique dream symbol,” Jeff said. “Or your mind could assign a generic ‘Watcher’ image to the entire team. Remember the watchword—window. When you hear it, know you’re connecting with the Brotherhood. We’re your safe passage out of whatever situation you’re in. Say it for me.”
“Window,” Sarah repeated.
“And my personal contact key?”
“Home base.”
“I’m your last-resource link to the lab. Your home base in the dream. I’ll be your link back to this reality while you deal with whatever obstacles are thrown in your path. Keep your focus on Trinity. Let the rest go, so you can evolve in the matrix. Your brothers will pull you back if you need us.”
Sarah nodded, even though it was Richard more than any of the rest of them that she was trusting with her family’s safety.
“You’ll get us home.” Sarah turned her head to where her twin lay on the table beside her. They reached for each other’s hands.
Jeff’s g
rip closed around their hold. “You have my word as a Watcher.”
Sarah looked from Maddie’s nod to the promise swirling in Richard’s expression.
“And you have mine,” she said while the voices in her mind howled, kicking her heart rate into a tantrum on the cardiac monitor Richard had her hooked to. It was terrifying, wanting to believe this badly. Wanting to feel an entire room of powerful, valiant minds believing in her.
Jeff moved to a table just beyond where Sarah and Maddie and Jarred were grouped at the center of the team.
Richard’s hand was warm on her shoulder.
“Trust me,” his mind said to hers. “Come back to me.”
“I will,” she promised. “I’ll see you in my dreams.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The ocean felt almost too real this time.
And alarmingly empty.
The familiar pull of water washed over Sarah’s skin. Currents tugged. But that was it. There was nothing else to see.
“Maddie?” Sarah turned in the shallow water near the surface. She could feel her twin’s hand still holding hers in the lab, but there was no one beside her in the ocean. “Jarred?”
Her voice echoed through the sea’s hollow perfection. Shadows lurked nearby. She could sense them just out of sight. And there was a malevolence to the sea’s dimness, dangerous intent sliding across her body. The cold, wet feel of it wasn’t the charming, beguiling sensation normally waiting for her in the shallows.
Overlaying it all was an unnerving silence. Only when she stopped looking for Maddie did she hear a faint hint of Trinity’s call merging with a deeper sound, a roar—the ocean’s dawning awareness that she’d come back.
The first whiff of panic struck. Where were the colors she was supposed to control? The cries and voices she needed to follow? The water swelled with her anxiety.
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