Dream Bound (11 page)

“Oh, shit.” He snorted, laughing out loud when instead of one of his fantasy scenes, the perfect image of Finn’s butt stuffed with a purple dildo filled his mind.

Definitely not the image he expected, but it probably served him right. He’d managed to piggyback on Kiera and Lizzie’s fantasies with Finn, just as he’d done earlier with Rodie and Morgan. As far as he could tell, no one suspected a thing. It hadn’t been easy to keep his features slack while watching the fantasy Lizzie and Kiera worked on the Irishman. Everything was so damned vivid, including the stretch of muscle and the more intimate details of Finn’s cock and balls, that he’d had trouble controlling himself.

He wondered how close the girls’ imaginations had come to the real thing. He wasn’t usually into guys, but he’d had to consciously fight his arousal or he’d have come all over himself right along with Finn. Then there’d be no hiding the fact that he’d figured out how to tap into everyone else’s minds, and that was a secret he wasn’t prepared to share, at least not yet.

He’d never been around so much intelligence in his life, never had the opportunity to actually peek into another person’s thoughts, but now ... he shook his head, laughing. Did Mac Dugan realize the kind of power he’d brought together? Did he even have a clue what the six of them might be capable of, should they ever combine their mental strength?

Cam hoped so. He hadn’t been kidding about getting carsick, so it had been easy to play possum most of the way up the mountain. In fact, he’d taken his Dramamine and had slept some of the way, but he’d also pretended to sleep while he slipped in and out of the five other minds in the car. The only one he’d avoided was Mac’s, but that was because he wasn’t yet certain of his own abilities.

Or, for that matter, Mac Dugan’s. The man was brilliant and Cam didn’t plan to make the mistake of underestimating him.

He stared out the window at the ghostly shapes of the huge satellite dishes marching across the plateau and felt a shiver crawl along his spine. He’d dreamed vividly last night and the night before—ever since he’d accepted the fact that Mac wasn’t kidding when he said they all had extrasensory abilities.

Cam had always dreamed of worlds beyond imagination, sensual dreams of scenes beyond anything that had ever existed. Or, as Mac so succinctly had asked, did they exist? Were they real, and not mere fabrications of Cam’s mind? He’d suspected for years that his dreams took him to places that, while beyond reality, were not totally impossible. Places that had to exist somewhere, somehow, in order for him to experience them.

Now he was here, in a place designed to connect his mind with other creatures, other worlds, other amazing scenes. Not as imagination but as reality. Not merely his own reality but one that truly existed.

His art was recognized worldwide and hung in some of the most prestigious art galleries and museums around the globe, but many critics still saw him as nothing more than a weird, quasi-talented geek with an offbeat, fantastical view of life.

Maybe that was about to change.

Chuckling, Cam took one last glance at the ghostly satellite dishes shimmering beneath the rising moon. Then he turned on the porch light, stepped out, and closed the door behind him.

The lodge glowed from gaslights positioned all around the big covered porch surrounding the entire log structure. Morgan and Rodie were standing outside, leaning against the porch railing. Looked like each of them had a drink of something. Kiera, Lizzie, and Mac stood off to one side, deep in discussion. Finn walked across the open ground toward the lodge.

Cam noticed he’d changed his pants.

“Pretty cool, eh?” Finn paused, waiting for Cam.

“It’s bitchin’.” Cam shook his head and glanced at Finn. “Is this what you expected?”

Finn shook his head. “No. Are you kidding? My imagination is good, but not this good.” He spread his hands wide, taking in the array of satellite dishes, the cabins, the big mountain looming a darker black against the deep blue-black of the evening sky, and let out a long, low whistle. “I’m not usually into the kinky ESP stuff, but I swear that if something weird’s going to happen, if we’re going to connect with alien life-forms, this is the place for it.”

Nodding in agreement, Cam followed Finn up the stairs to the porch. He suddenly felt well out of his comfort zone. Something would happen here, something big. He knew it.

He just wished he had some idea what to expect.

Mac stood at the head of the long trestle table while the kitchen staff cleared away the empty plates. Six sets of eyes focused on him, and he realized he already saw them as family.

Funny, when he thought about it. He didn’t feel that connection with anyone he worked with, nor with any of his friends. Only two others in his world fit the term: Dink and Zianne. Now these six had become part of that very select group whether they wanted membership or not.

He hoped none of them came to regret it. “Okay, guys. First, I hope you enjoyed your dinner. I was lucky enough to convince Meg and Ralph Bartlett to move up here and take over the cooking and maintenance. If you have any housekeeping questions, check with Meg, and if anything breaks, call Ralph. Their numbers are keyed into the phones in each cabin.”

He nodded toward Meg and Ralph and they accepted a round of applause from the kids. When they’d left the room, Mac planted his palms on the table and leaned forward. “Looks like we’re starting tonight. Rodie, you’re going to go first, in about half an hour, if you’re okay with that. We’ll stick with the schedule you guys developed, try it out for a week and see how it works.”

Kiera raised her hand. “Mac, will you be taking a shift? I mean, if you’ve already made contact, wouldn’t you be the one to connect again?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “No. The thing is, I can connect without the array. I’m already linked to one mind, though we’ve not connected now for twenty years—at least for me. For her it was today.” He took a deep breath, forced a sense of calm he didn’t feel. “But that’s because she’d traveled back in time to reach me.” Damn. When would he be able to talk about Zianne without this frickin’ lump in his throat?

He paused, cleared his throat, and took a breath. “When she left it was to return to her time, which, if my calculations are correct, is today. I’m hoping I can reach her on my own while the six of you will try to connect with the rest of her people. They’ll be expecting contact after tonight.”

Rodie stared at him. “Are you saying you scheduled this whole thing to begin on this exact date? Tonight? You set it up like this twenty years ago?”

He nodded. “I did. Twenty years and four months ago, I met an amazing woman named Zianne. She told me she was not only from another world but another time. Twenty years in my future, to be exact. She said she’d linked to my mind in Earth’s past because she knew the world didn’t have the technology needed to bring her people to Earth, and she was there to teach me how to build it.”

“Shit.” Morgan shook his head, the look of disbelief in his eyes warring with his obvious sense of wonder. “That’s a bit hard to swallow. Why was it so important that you bring her people to Earth?”

Mac sighed. He didn’t want to lie, but he hadn’t really planned to tell them everything so soon. He wasn’t sure how much of the truth they could handle right now, but when he gazed at the six expectant faces, he knew he had to be honest. They deserved the truth, the way he’d deserved the truth from Zianne.

She’d chosen when and where to explain it to him, and he’d believed, but that was because he already loved her. Would they believe him now? He sure as hell hoped so.

“What I tell you cannot leave this site.” He held up a finger for silence and walked back to the door leading to the kitchen. Ralph and Meg were finishing up the dishes.

“We have some classified work to go over,” he said. They’d been told that much of what happened on the site had to remain private, and Ralph’s classified status from his years in the military were sufficient for Mac to know the man wouldn’t talk—or listen where he’d been asked not to.

When they both nodded, Mac quietly shut the door and returned to the dining area. “Twenty years ago, a very close friend of mine and I got drunk.” He chuckled at the grins around the table. “Yeah, I know. I was twenty-six and doing my grad work, and no, getting toasted was not all that unusual. But what happened later that night was.”

Lord, but he remembered it all like it was yesterday. Picturing his fantasy girlfriend—describing her to Dink in such intimate detail—long dark hair, tall athletic build, violet eyes. Going home almost too drunk to walk and stepping into his apartment, smelling the sweet scent of honey and vanilla.

Having her appear in his shower, kneeling before him, taking him into her mouth. “She was exactly as I’d described her to Dink, but I might have written off the event in the shower as not enough sex and too much cheap beer if I hadn’t awakened a few hours later with her beside me in bed. She stayed with me for four months, leaving during the day to return to her prison.”

“Prison? Where?” Morgan glanced at the others and back at Mac. “I thought you said she was on a spaceship.”

Mac let out a deep breath. Saying it out loud ... hell, it sounded unbelievable to him, too. “Zianne told me that she and the remnants of a once proud race of people were held prisoner aboard a star cruiser commanded by a ruthless people she called the Gar. Zianne is a Nyrian—she claimed that her planet Nyria was sentient. Nyrians are creatures of pure energy—she was able to take corporeal form merely from the strength of my sexual fantasy. That graphic description of the perfect woman I’d laid out for Dink had given her a physical body, though she could convert to her energy form at will.”

“Have you seen her like that?”

“I have, Kiera. She looks like liquid lightning, if you can picture such a thing. It’s an utterly beautiful form, but it can be deadly as well.”

Cam frowned. “You said her planet was called Nyria. Past tense. Is it gone?”

Mac nodded. “It is. She was able to show me the destruction of her world through a mind link. It was my first real experience with telepathy. The Gar lured hundreds of Nyrians aboard their ship and then destroyed the planet and the millions of people on it. They’ve used the Nyrians ever since as their power source.”

“If Zianne could come to you, why haven’t all of them found a mind to link to and escaped?”

“They’re held hostage, Rodie. The only solid part of a Nyrian is their soulstone. Zianne described it as pure carbon, like a diamond that they keep at their core. The Gar have taken their soulstones and locked them up on the ship. The Nyrians who are working as the power source do so without the stone. They get it back while they rest and recharge, then turn it in again when they’re put back to work.”

“How do they recharge?” Finn asked. “Where do they get their energy?”

“From the planets they pass by, from suns, from the energy of people inhabiting other worlds. Right now they’re using our sun to recharge, but I don’t know how long they’re going to remain, or what the Gar plan for Earth before they go.”

“What do you mean?” Morgan glanced at the others before turning his attention to Mac. “Are they a threat to us?”

Nodding, Mac checked his watch. “They are. Zianne said their usual action is to find a planet rich with natural resources where they stay in orbit long enough to allow the Nyrians time to recharge. Then they attack the world. Their ship is designed to take what resources are available—atmosphere and water included. Once there’s nothing left, the worlds are left to die.”

“Shit, Mac.” Morgan was shaking his head as if he’d absorbed just one too many details. “Isn’t this something you should be telling the President?”

Mac sighed, remembering the frustration, the conversations ignored, the incredulous, disbelieving looks. “I have. I went directly to the Pentagon because of my business contacts with the military, figuring I had enough credibility to make them listen. No one believed me. If anything, my credibility is probably hanging by a thread. It’s up to us to rescue Zianne and her people, give them refuge here, and somehow destroy the Gar’s ship before they attack our world.”

Lizzie snorted. “And we’re going to do this how, oh fearless leader?”

Morgan laughed. “Haven’t you been paying attention, Liz? With our sexual fantasies, that’s how. Newest weapon against alien attack.”

Finn just shook his head. “My old man always said I’d probably screw myself to death.” He glanced at Kiera and Lizzie. “I just never thought he meant that quite so literally.”

There was a lot of laughter, just as many off-color jokes, but the one thing Mac had expected hadn’t materialized at all. There was no sense of disbelief, not one of them looking at him like he had a screw loose.

Maybe later, when they’d had time to think about what he’d told them. Maybe that’s when the disbelief would come. He hoped not. He glanced at his watch again. Almost eight. “I know you’ve got to have a million questions, but I need to get Rodie settled in first. We’ll see how this first night goes and take it from there. You may not make any contact right away, but if you do, I want to know immediately.”

Rodie glanced at the others. “Why do I feel like a lamb being led to slaughter?”

Finn leaned close. “Baaaaa.”

Lizzie bopped him on the head.

Morgan stood and pulled Rodie’s chair back. “Because you are?”

“Gee, thanks.” She stood. “I’m ready. I think.”

“Good.” Mac grabbed her hand. “C’mon, lamb.” He glanced over his shoulder. “The rest of you, too. Might as well come and see how this thing works. It’s time I introduce my dream team to the dream shack.”

6

“
A
re you okay?”

Mac stood beside Rodie, who was seriously wondering how she was going to manage to stay awake in the world’s most comfortable reclining chair. “Oh, yeah.” She scrunched her butt into the soft leather and stared at the high-tech-looking bank of instruments covering the panel in front of her.

The other five stood quietly just behind Mac, listening as he described the various buttons and gauges on the console. The dream shack building itself looked like a concrete bunker from the outside, but inside it was more like the interior of a spaceship. The name seemed totally apropos, too, when she thought of what she’d be expected to do in here, though Rodie really hoped she didn’t fall asleep. That could be totally embarrassing.