distinguish between his dreamscape and the waking world. In effect, he would wake up in the midst of a vivid hallucination. It might take him a few seconds—as long as a minute, perhaps—to sort things out. In those circumstances, a strong psychic wearing a ring infused with unknown paranormal energy could do a lot of damage in even a short period of time.
Although she dared not bring him out of the dreamscape too abruptly, she had to make physical contact in order to help him. She was not sure how he would respond to even the lightest touch. He was trapped deep in the underworld. That was never a good thing.
“Really, Max, the first lesson everyone with psychic abilities should be taught is how to control their own dreams,” she said softly.
Max meowed again. It was an aren’t-you-going-to-do-something-about-this-situation sort of meow. He twitched his tail a few times, expressing his growing impatience, and came to sit very close to her feet, pressing his big body against her leg.
On the bed Judson uttered another low, guttural sound. The energy whipping around him grew darker and more dangerous. The sunlight stirring in his ring got hotter.
There was no option, Gwen thought. She could not let him slide deeper into the dreamscape.
She gathered herself and pulled hard on her talent. At her feet, Max pressed more firmly against her leg as if to offer support.
Cautiously, she reached out and touched two fingertips to the palm of one of Judson’s out-flung hands.
Although she thought she was braced for the physical connection, it was all she could do not to scream aloud when the electrifying shock zapped across her senses.
She walked straight into the heart of his nightmare.
Amber lightning arced and flashed in the darkness that enveloped her. She sensed the ghastly fog that was the hallmark of violence and death. A dreadful miasma infused with a terrible violet-hued light seethed around her feet. She thought she heard a cat meow.
“Judson,” she said quietly. “Where are you?”
“Welcome to my world,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
She turned, searching for him in the lightning-streaked darkness.
. . . And saw him watching her from the shadows, a churning pool of ultraviolet energy at his feet. His eyes burned with a heat that matched the molten fires that flared in his ring.
He did not look like a man trapped in hell—in this dark underworld, he reigned.
“You should not be here, either,” she said. “It’s just a bad dreamscape. Come with me.”
Conversations conducted in other people’s dreamscapes were no different than those she had with ghosts in her own trances. The dialogue came to her as feedback from her dreamer’s intuition based on what she sensed in the client’s aura.
“I can’t leave,” Judson said.
“Why not?”
“I lost something here. I have to find it.”
“What did you lose?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll recognize it when I find it.”
“I understand. This is a recurring dream for you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. I come here often.”
“You come here to search for whatever it is you lost, but tonight you’ve gone down too deep,” she said. “I was afraid of this. You’re here now because of what happened at Louise Fuller’s house today. You need to return to the surface with me. You must let your senses recover before you dream this dream again.”
That seemed to amuse him. “You don’t get it, do you? This is my world. It’s where I belong.”
“No, it’s your dreamscape, and you can change it. I can show you how.”
“It may be a dreamscape, but it’s also my past,” he said. “No changing that, is there, Miss Psychic Counselor?”
“You can’t change the past, but you can find a better way to deal with it.”
“Damn. You sound like a real therapist,” he said. “The expensive kind. But you’re not a real one, are you?”
“No, I’m just a psychic counselor, but I do know something about how to find things that are lost in dreamscapes. You’re going about it the wrong way.”
“Yeah?” He was starting to sound bored.
She was losing him.
“Come back to the surface with me,” she said. “Later, when you’re fully rested, I’ll help you search this dreamscape.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve come down too far this time. Never been this deep before. But I can see things here that I’ve never seen before. Maybe tonight I’ll find what I’m looking for.”
“It won’t do you any good if you can’t get back to the surface. I was afraid of this. Listen up, Coppersmith. You went too deep into your dreamscape tonight because of that psi-burn at Louise’s house today.”
“You were there, too. Why didn’t you crash and burn the way I did? Have you got some special psychic superpower?”
“No, I’m okay tonight because you protected me from the worst effects of the storm in Louise’s house,” she said. “But you were also shielding Nicole and Max and yourself, as well. Heaven only knows how much energy you had to focus through your ring to save us all. But you temporarily exhausted your senses in the process. You need to be sleeping soundly now, not visiting this dreamscape.”
“You should leave before you get trapped here with me.”
“I’m not leaving without you,” she said. “Come back with me, Judson.”
“I don’t think that’s possible. Too late.”
There was no emotion in the words—neither regret nor despair. Judson sounded as if he was making an observation about the weather, detached.
“No, it is not too late,” she said. “We can get out of here, but we have to do this together. You’re not the only one who went too deep tonight. I had to come this far down to find you. I am trapped with you.”
“I told you that you should not have come here.”
This time she thought she heard a flicker of emotional intensity in Judson’s dreamscape voice. He sounded angry. She told herself that was a good sign.
“Well, I did come here and now I’m stuck,” she said. “If you don’t come with me, I won’t be able to leave this place.”
“You’re the psychic dreamer. Get out of this hell while you still can.”
“Not without you. Stop arguing with me. This isn’t just an ordinary dream. This could become a coma. We have to leave. Now.”
It was weird, but she was starting to lose her temper, too. That wasn’t supposed to happen to her in a dreamscape. She had trained herself to be the clinical observer and guide. It was her job to gently lead the client out of the closed loop of a recurring nightmare. Any strong emotion on her part caused distortions and confusion in the world of dreams—a world that was constructed of distorted and confusing images.
“You don’t give up easily, do you?” Judson asked. He sounded intrigued by her stubbornness.
“No,” she said. “Not when it comes to my clients.”
“Is that what I am? A client?”
“That’s what you are tonight. Take my hand, Judson.” She made it a command.
For a harrowing eternity in dreamtime, she thought that he would not respond. Then, to her overwhelming relief, he reached for her hand. She knew the action was just her mind’s way of interpreting what was happening. In a very real sense she was dreaming, too. Judson was resurfacing. He wasn’t really reaching for her hand. She knew that. The hand-holding was a dream metaphor.
