Текст книги "Dream Eyes"

Автор книги: Jayne Krentz

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

His climax powered through both of them.

She could have sworn that for a timeless, joyful moment, the currents of their auras seemed to resonate together. The sensation was at once unnerving and breathtakingly intimate. It was as if for a split second they were looking into each other’s very souls.

I know you, Judson Coppersmith,she thought. I’ve been waiting for you.

Eighteen

The wind chimes clashed and clattered, sounding the alarm. But Louise Fuller knew that the music was not powerful enough to stop the demon from entering her house. It came and went as it pleased. It had been months since the last visit. Every time it went away, she dared to hope that it would not come back. But it was here now. She could sense its presence.

She stopped in the center of the darkened basement and swung the beam of her flashlight toward the top of the stairs. She could hear the demon coming down the hall.

The lights had gone out a few minutes earlier. She had come downstairs to check the electrical panel, but now she knew that the demon had tricked her. The only question was why had it gone to the trouble of luring her down here into the darkness tonight?

The demon had controlled her for years. She was its slave and they both knew it. The demon laughed at her puny attempts to protect herself. In the end she always did its bidding. She would do it again tonight.

Why drive her down here into the basement?

The footsteps in the hall were closer now. The chimes rattled and thrashed in a rising crescendo. The music was frantic, desperate, ominous. Hopeless.

The demon appeared at the top of the stairs, a dark shadow silhouetted against the weak glow of the emergency nightlight that illuminated the hallway.

“Hello, Louise,” the demon said. “I have to tell you that those chimes of yours have become really irritating. Good to know you won’t be making any more.”

The demon raised one hand. Louise felt a terrible chill, as though her heart was freezing in her chest.

Now she knew why the demon had forced her into the basement. In this place there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She was trapped.

She had always known that one day the demon would kill her. Tonight was the night. A part of her welcomed the promise of release. At last the torment would end.

But a strange, unfamiliar anger surfaced out of the depths.

She would be avenged. The other witch was in town, and she had brought a man of power with her. Sooner or later they would come around, wanting to ask questions about what had happened to Evelyn and the others.

Louise knew that she would be dead when the other witch arrived, but that was not a problem. Gwendolyn Frazier could talk to ghosts.

Nineteen

Judson contemplated the shadowed ceiling, one arm folded behind his head, the other wrapped around Gwen’s soft, sleek body. She was snuggled against him, her head nestled on his shoulder. Their bodies were still damp from the heat and energy that had gone into the lovemaking. The scent in the air was primal. He felt good, really good—satisfied in every conceivable way that a man could be satisfied.

“Okay, that was different,” Gwen said.

She sounded so bemused—so serious—that he laughed, startling both of them. She levered herself up on one elbow and glared down at him.

“You think there’s something amusing going on here?” she asked.

“No, absolutely not,” he said, sobering fast.

“Yes, you do. I can tell.”

He threaded his fingers through her tangled hair. The tendrils felt like strands of silk. In the darkened room, her witchy eyes smoldered.

“Well, maybe a little,” he conceded. “But I liked hearing you scream.”

“I didn’t scream.”

He smiled, savoring the memories.

“You screamed,” he said. “If I hadn’t muffled the noise, you would have awakened the whole damn inn.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you might have a problem with arrogance?” she asked.

“Just stating the facts, ma’am.”

“I wasn’t expecting what happened,” she admitted. She flushed. “I was taken by surprise. That’s all.”

“Not me. I knew we would be good together.”

“Hmm.”

A trickle of unease feathered his senses. He cleared his throat. “Are you going to tell me it wasn’t that good for you? Because I will be happy to try again.”

“No, no, that’s okay.”

“Okay?” He sat up. “It was just okay?”

“It was more like a first.”

“First what? First time with another strong talent?”

“That, too. But what I meant was that it was the first time I’ve ever had a climax that did not involve a small home appliance.”

Relief, delight and an exultant sense of euphoria surged through him. He laughed and flopped back down on the pillows. He dragged her down across his chest.

“You had me worried there for a while, Dream Eyes,” he said. “Glad I could be of service.”

“That is a terribly tacky thing to say.” She punched him lightly on the arm.

“Ouch. What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know, but that definitely wasn’t it.”

He framed her face with both hands. “How about ‘That was the best it’s ever been for me, and I will remember this night for the rest of my life’?”

She looked dubious. “Would it be the truth?”

“It would be the truth.”

Her soft mouth curved in a wry smile. “Okay, even if it’s not the truth, it’s a lot better than ‘Glad I could be of service.’”

“I’ll remember that. Tell me about the first guy you sent screaming into the night.”

She blinked, caught off guard. “Are you sure you want to hear about my boring past life experiences?”

“I want to know everything about you.”

“Well, it wasn’t at night, and there were two of them the first time.”

“What the hell? Two?”

“I was thirteen,” she said quietly. “I had just arrived at Summerlight. I was alone and vulnerable because I hadn’t connected with Nick and Abby yet. Two of the older boys cornered me outside a storage room and dragged me inside.”

“Bastards.” Rage ripped through him.

“I was terrified and I was furious and I was desperate. I fought with everything I had, and I discovered that I had more weapons than I knew I possessed.”

“You used your talent to defend yourself?”

“It was a shock to all three of us, believe me,” she said. “My talent was still developing, and I was still learning to cope with it. I honestly didn’t know what I could do until I realized that one of the creeps was screaming in panic and looking at me as if he was seeing a monster. I had unintentionally put him into a dream trance—a waking nightmare.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. It requires physical contact, of course. But I use my ability to put my therapy clients into a light trance all the time. It’s how I work. I can make the experience very . . . unpleasant if I want.”

“What happened that day when you were attacked at the school?” he asked.

“The first creep freaked. His reaction caused his friend to freak, too. They both let go of me as if they’d been scalded and turned to run. But when they opened the door, they ran straight into Nick, who had sensed something bad was going down and decided to investigate.”

“This is Nick Sawyer, the friend you’ve mentioned?”

“Right.” She smiled. “He claims that he was born to be a really good cat burglar. He can see in the dark better than most people can see in daylight. And I’m pretty sure he’s never found a lock he couldn’t get through. He claims that if it hadn’t been for Abby and me, he probably would have pursued a career as a jewel thief. We talked him into going into the hot books business—antiquarian books with a paranormal provenance—instead.”

“What did Sawyer do to the two sociopaths who tried to assault you?”

“Nick caught the first guy coming out of the storage room and slammed him into a wall with such force that the jerk’s nose was broken. Nick sent the second one down the gym stairs. The result was a broken wrist and some cracked ribs.”

“Did the bastards complain?”

“Sure, but the authorities didn’t take them seriously. They were known bullies, and Nick was smaller and lighter. He looks more like a professional dancer than a street fighter. At any rate, from that day on, I was a member of Nick and Abby’s crew. The three of us stuck together until we graduated. We’re still family.”

He knew it was dumb, but he couldn’t suppress the flicker of jealousy that crackled through him.

“Was Nick your high school sweetheart?” he asked.

Gwen shook her head. “Nick is gay. He became my brother, not my boyfriend. I didn’t go out on any real dates until I left Summerlight and went off to college.”

“No high school dances? No prom night? No trips to lovers’ lane?”

“Nope, nope and nope. You don’t do that kind of stuff when you’re attending a boarding school that has bars on the windows.”

“It sounds awful.”

Gwen made a face. “Summerlight was not a normal high school. The students were all there because we were considered abnormal. Some of us were more abnormal than others. And some of the kids were downright dangerous. The atmosphere was not conducive to dating, believe me. Besides, we wouldn’t have been able to go off the grounds.”

“Were all of the kids psychic?”

“No, a percentage were genuinely disturbed. But a surprisingly large number of students showed traits that Abby and Nick and I have come to associate with forms of psychic talent. That’s what brought Evelyn to the school. She somehow discovered that there was a high proportion of talents at Summerlight. Abby and Sam found out recently that the school deliberately searched for teens with strong para-psych profiles.”

“Sam mentioned that.”

“I can assure you that in the course of tossing out a wide net, the school administrators managed to gather a lot of serious wack-jobs, some of whom no doubt went on to become very scary people,” Gwen said.

“Like the two bastards who assaulted you. Do you know what happened to them?”

“No. They steered clear of the three of us after that. When Abby and Nick and I got out of Summerlight, the last thing we wanted to do was keep in touch with former classmates, believe me. I will give the academy credit for teaching us one very valuable lesson, though.”

“What was that?”

“How to pass for normal,” Gwen said.

“But it’s hard to pretend you’re normal when you get involved in a close relationship of any kind—friend or lover.”

“Obviously, you’ve had some experience,” Gwen said.

“Yes,” he said. “But unlike you, I grew up in a family that accepted the fact that Sam and Emma and I are different.” He smiled. “I should say Dad has accepted it. Mom still tries to pretend the three of us are normal, but deep down, she knows the truth.”

“I’m sure that mothers always do know the truth about their offspring, whether they admit it or not.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “All right, the assault in the linen closet explains how you came to find out that you were capable of sending a man screaming into the night. But that was a deliberate effort on your part and done in self-defense. That doesn’t explain why you would send a lover screaming from your bed.”

“Not intentionally,” she assured him. “Honest.”

“Unintentionally?”

She grimaced. “The problem is my aura. When I sleep, I dream more intensely than most people. My dreaming aura affects anyone who happens to come into physical contact with me. If that person happens to be asleep and dreaming, my currents overpower his. The result, I’m told, is a particularly unnerving kind of nightmare.”

“Well, that answers one question,” he said, satisfied.

She raised her brows. “About my love life?”

“No, about how Zander Taylor happened to go over the falls. You sent him into a nightmare, didn’t you? He went crazy and started running.”

She closed her eyes. “I knew you would figure it out sooner or later.”

“Nice work.”

She opened her eyes and watched him very intently. “It doesn’t bother you that I’ve got the ability to send someone into a nightmare landscape so intense that the victim actually leaps to his death to escape?”

He patted her bare shoulder. “We’ve all got baggage.”

“That’s very broad-minded of you, but in my case my baggage makes me a prime suspect in a few murders, past and present. And some would say that in Zander Taylor’s case, I’m guilty.”

“Not like he’s a great loss to the world,” Judson said.

“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”

“I’m taking you very, very seriously, Gwendolyn Frazier.”

He tightened his grip on her face and pulled her mouth down to his. He kissed her until she wrapped herself around him once more.

* * *

A LONG TIME LATER, he awoke to the feel of someone shaking him gently.

“Judson,” Gwen said.

“What?” He did not open his eyes.

“Judson, wake up.”

The urgency in her voice brought him fully awake. He sat up swiftly and used his other vision to quarter the room, searching for the threat. Nothing of a dangerous nature presented itself.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Gwen was on her knees amid the tumbled bedding. Excitement blazed in her eyes. “That’s just it, nothing’s wrong.”

He sank back against the pillows. “I think I’m missing the point here. If nothing’s wrong, why the hell are you acting like there is something wrong?”

“We both fell asleep.”

“Yeah. Felt good. I haven’t been sleeping too well lately and I needed the rest. Nothing like great sex to do the trick. Better than meds, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yes, you are missing the point. Judson, we both fell asleep. Side by side. I was dreaming and you didn’t even twitch.”

“I try not to twitch too often,” he said. “It makes people nervous.”

“This is no joke. You are the first person I have slept next to in my entire adult life who hasn’t had a really bad reaction to my dream aura.”

“Oh, that.” He stretched his arms overhead. “Between you and me, I wasn’t expecting to run screaming into the night.”

She ignored that. “I was planning to send you back to your own room before I drifted off, but I fell asleep instead. So did you.”

“Probably all that exercise,” he explained.

“You were sleeping quite soundly.”

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Can I go back to sleep now?”

“I have a theory,” she said. “It’s just a theory, mind you, but there is a certain logic to it.”

“I’m going to have to listen to this theory before I get to go back to sleep, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.” She was clearly having trouble containing her excitement. “I think that because you are a strong talent, yourself, you have a kind of immunity to me.”

He raised a finger to silence her. “Now there is where you are wrong, Dream Eyes.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I am anything but immune to you. Just the opposite.”

He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her until she stopped talking.

Twenty

Sometime later, he opened his eyes again when he felt Gwen slide out of bed. He knew she was trying to be discreet about it. Probably headed for the bathroom, he thought. But when he saw her put on the robe and lean down to pick up the map that had fallen to the floor, he realized something else was going on.

He levered himself up on his elbows. “Everything okay?”

“What?” Surprised, she glanced back at him. “Yes, sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. A few minutes ago, I woke up and decided to try the road trip dream again. I went back to the start, back here to Wilby, and I saw a pattern.” She moved to the table and spread the map out across the surface. “But it was all wrong.”

Her urgency got through to him. He shoved aside the covers, sat up and reached for his pants. Zipping his fly, he crossed the room to the desk.

“Tell me about the pattern and what’s wrong with it,” he said.

“I assumed going into the dream that this was a map of towns and places that Evelyn intended to visit for research purposes. But there are too many towns marked.”

“There are only a half-dozen circled.”

“Yes, but that’s about four, maybe five too many. You see, Wesley operates with a tight budget. He doesn’t like to pay for airfare and lodging for a scouting crew to check out the location unless it promises to be good. It’s highly unlikely she would have selected six towns for the next episode of Dead of Night. And if she was working on a big project involving multiple locations, I think she would have talked it over with me and probably Wesley as well.”

He flattened his hands on the table and examined the six towns. “You’re thinking that there’s a connection between these locations? Some paranormal significance?”

“No, well, not exactly, at least not in terms of legends about haunted houses or paranormal vortexes. In my dream, Evelyn told me to go back to the beginning. That was my intuition reminding me that this is the same kind of pattern that she and I uncovered after Zander Taylor went over the falls.”

Judson’s senses stirred. “The two of you were able to identify some of the locations of his previous kills. You concluded that he had targeted people who claimed to be psychic.” He flipped the map over and looked at the six names that had been written there. “I need fifteen minutes on my computer.”

* * *

TEN MINUTES LATER he shut down the obituary page of the newspaper he had been studying and checked off the last name on the list that Ballinger had made on the back of the map.

“That’s it,” he said. “Six towns, six deaths, all by natural causes, all within the past eighteen months or so. The names of the deceased match the names on the map. But if someone has started killing again with the camera, there’s one big difference this time.”

“What?” Gwen asked.

“None of the victims was a practicing psychic, real or fake. According to the obituaries, none of them was making his or her living by claiming paranormal talents.”

“I don’t know why the pattern is different, but someone is killing again, the same way Zander Taylor did—by paranormal means.” Gwen drummed her fingers on the table. “Evelyn somehow stumbled onto the truth.”

“The murderer realized she was tracking him so he killed her?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Judson thought about it. “He took her computer and cell phone, hoping to get rid of any traces of her research that might lead the cops to him.”

“He couldn’t have known about the map and where it was hidden,” Gwen said. “Either that or he was unable to get into the mirror engine to retrieve it. I told you, not everyone can handle the psi in that machine. But this doesn’t make sense. Why the change in pattern?”

“We know that Taylor is dead,” Judson reminded her. “Different killer, different pattern, different kind of prey. But there will be something that these six victims had in common, trust me. We just have to find the common thread.”

“Whoever he is, he must be one of the locals here in Wilby,” Gwen said. “Someone who knew about Zander and decided to emulate him. Maybe a copycat killer?”

“Maybe. In addition to the likelihood that the killer is a local, we know one other thing about him.”

Gwen looked up from the map, understanding heating her eyes.

“The killer has enough talent to work the camera,” she said. “We’re looking for another psychic.”

Twenty-one

Elias Coppersmith arrived in a massive, shiny black SUV with heavily tinted windows. Gwen stood with Judson inside the lobby and watched the big vehicle glide into a vacant slot in front of the inn.

“Your brother, Sam, drives a black SUV, doesn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes. Why?” Judson wasn’t paying much attention to the question. He was watching the SUV.

“Just curious,” she said. “Because you drive a black SUV, too. Same brand, I believe.”

“Company discount,” Judson said.

More likely something in the DNA of the Coppersmith men that inclined them toward large vehicles endowed with the souls of trucks, Gwen thought. Other rich guys drove flashy red Ferraris and Porsches.

From inside the inn, it was impossible to see the occupants of the vehicle, but she was mildly surprised when the passenger door opened. A big, lean, silver-haired man who could have been cast in the role of the town marshal in a classic western movie climbed out.

“That’s Dad,” Judson said. “He’s early. Must have left Seattle at zero-dawn-thirty. Wonder who’s behind the wheel? He probably picked up someone from Coppersmith Security before he left.”

“Your father is so paranoid about that geode that he brought an armed escort?”

“Trust me, knowing Dad and his opinion of Hank Barrett, it’s not just the escort who will be armed,” Judson said.

She thought about the pistol strapped to Judson’s ankle and wondered if going about armed was another Coppersmith family trait.

“I’d better go out and let him know he’s got the right place,” Judson said. “I’ll be right back.”

He crossed the lobby with a few long, easy strides, pushed open the glass door and went outside.

Gwen studied the family greeting scene through the lobby windows, firmly suppressing the faint, wistful sensation that fluttered through her. There was no big male hug exchanged between Judson and Elias, she noticed. But the bond between father and son was so strong that she could sense it even from where she stood. The power of a close-knit family, she thought. There was nothing else like it.

At that moment, the driver’s-side door of the SUV opened. A lithe, elegantly slender, good-looking man with platinum-blond hair cut in a crisp, military style alighted from the cab with a dancer’s grace. He was dressed head-to-toe in fashionable and very expensive black—black turtleneck, black trousers, black loafers. Gwen knew that all of the attire came with designer labels.

Delight spilled through her. She had family, too. The only difference was that her brother wasn’t related by blood.

She rushed through the lobby, burst out of the doorway and flew across the parking lot.

“Nick,”she called. “What are you doing here?”

Nick Sawyer grinned, showing a lot of very white teeth, and opened his arms. She threw herself into his embrace. He caught her with deft ease and swung her around in a circle. When he set her on her feet, she hugged him fiercely.

“I came to check up on you,” he said. “The last time one of my sisters got mixed up with a Coppersmith, she nearly got killed. Are you okay?”

She laughed. “I’m fine.”

Judson materialized at her side. He gave Nick an assessing look.

“You must be the cat burglar.”

“That’s antiquarian book dealer to you,” Nick said, his eyes going cold.

“Right.” Judson looked amused. “That would be the antiquarian book dealer who keeps the climbing gear stashed in the trunk of his car.”

“Everyone should have a hobby,” Nick said. “By the way, there’s a suitcase in the back of the car. Abby packed some clothes for you, Gwen. She knew you hadn’t planned to stay long here in Wilby. She figured that by now you’d be needing a few things.”

Gwen smiled, aware of the warmth welling up inside. “That’s my sister, always looking out for me, even while she’s preparing for her own wedding.”