The First Prophet (23 page)

“Right.”

She nodded. “I can’t help wondering about them, though. The ones that might be hiding
out there. What if they’re so quiet because they know what’s going on?”

“That could be.”

She felt a little chill and unconsciously drew the lapels of the robe more closely
together. The throbbing behind her eyes intensified. “I just…I just have this unsettling
feeling that there are people moving all around us, and that
they
know what the hell’s going on. That if we only knew who to ask, it would all start
to make some kind of sense.”

Tucker smiled slightly, his gaze intent on her face. “I have a lot of faith in your
feelings. Maybe…” He hesitated, then said, “Sarah, maybe if you concentrate on those
feelings, if you…open yourself to them…you’ll be able to sense some information the
computer could never provide.”

Sarah set her cup down on the table and stared at it. Lovely pattern. Roses. Unusual,
since most hotels stuck with utilitarian white…

“Sarah?”

“I don’t know how to do that.” Her head throbbed.

“I think you do. Now, I think you do.”

Softly, starkly, she said, “I’m afraid to do that.”

“I know.”

Her gaze lifted to meet his, and she realized that he did know. But he didn’t understand,
not really. He still didn’t understand. She managed a faint smile. “Can’t help being
a coward, you know. It’s the way I’m made.”

“You aren’t a coward.”

“Sure I am. Do you think I’d be doing all this if you weren’t with me? I’m leaning
on your strength, Tucker. And your confidence. And your belief that, somehow, we can
change a future burned into my mind. Left alone, I’d still be back in Richmond. Waiting
to die.”

Tucker shook his head. “You are not a coward, Sarah. You were blindsided by all this
and it shook you off your balance, but there’s nothing fainthearted in you. A coward
would never have left Richmond, with me or anyone else. A coward wouldn’t have survived—with
astonishing calm, by the way—seeing men come to kill her on two separate occasions.”

She didn’t believe him but shrugged slightly. “If you say so. But I know what’s inside
me, and right now there’s little but fear.”

“Fear can help you. Every soldier knows that, Sarah. It can keep your instincts and
your senses sharp, keep you alert to danger. And it doesn’t make you a coward.”

“It does if it keeps you from acting. I’m
afraid
to open myself up, to deliberately try to look into dark places I’d rather not see.”
She got up abruptly and went over to the window. The curtains were partially drawn,
but through the narrow opening, she looked out on city lights. It looked very cold
out there, and she felt very alone.

Softly, she added, “I’m really afraid to do that.”

“Sarah…”

He was behind her, too close, but there was nowhere she could go. She was trapped.
Trapped.
The hot throbbing behind her eyes was like an alien heartbeat. In a voice that was
suddenly harsh and angry, she said, “You have no idea how it feels, none at all. I
told you once, at the lake, but you didn’t
listen
. There’s something inside me, Tucker, something alien. And it’s growing. It whispers
to me, telling me what I should do and how I should feel—and I don’t trust it.”

“Sarah—”

“You think it’s just another tool, like your laptop, something you can use to get
information. Push the right button and get what you want.” She did turn and look at
him then, through hot eyes, and her voice was low and strained. “But it’s not that
easy. It’s like claws inside me, do you understand
that
? Something alive and struggling—and hurting me. Every bit of information I manage
to tear free leaves bloody wounds behind it. How long do you think it’ll be before
I bleed to death?”

“Sarah.”

“Leave me alone.” She avoided his intent gaze and tried to move around him, but he
was too close.

“You’ve been alone too damned long.” He put his hands on her shoulders to keep her
still. “Sarah, you’re right, I can’t even imagine what it’s like—and I make my living
imagining things.” His voice was low, steady. “But I can understand fear. And the
only thing I know for sure about fear is that we have to face what frightens us. We
have to. Otherwise it can cripple us.”

“Then I’m crippled.”

“Not yet. You’re only crippled if you let yourself be.”

She looked up at him, feeling so nakedly vulnerable that it actually hurt. “Everything
I’ve seen has been…darkness. Violence. Death. I don’t want to see that anymore, Tucker.”

His hands tightened. “Then don’t look for death or violence. Try to control it, Sarah.
Ask yourself a specific mental question and concentrate on finding the answer to only
that. I don’t know if it’ll work—I’m not psychic, so I can’t
know that. But I know the mind is an incredible instrument, one that can be focused
and fine-tuned. One that can be controlled. I believe you can do that. If you try.”

Sarah didn’t know if she could try. What she did know was that she didn’t want to.
And she knew she was too weary to be standing here this close to Tucker. She knew
that tonight it would be all too easy to make a mistake. She wanted him to put his
arms around her and hold her. She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted him to
hold the darkness at bay.

She wanted him.

But Tucker had made it clear to her that he considered their brief kiss at the lake
a mistake. He had avoided even the most casual touch since then, and he had withdrawn
so completely from her that Sarah found it difficult to gauge even his mood, much
less his thoughts. Even now, with his hands on her, all she sensed from him was wariness
and reserve.

And even knowing that, even being painfully sure that he didn’t want her, she still
wanted him.

Before she started clinging to him like an idiot and made a total fool of herself,
she carefully drew back away from him until his hands released her. “I’m really tired,”
she said. “I think I’ll turn in.”

She was at the door of the sitting room before it occurred to her that he would have
to go through the bedroom in order to get to the bathroom. She paused and looked back
at him. “Don’t worry about disturbing me when you need to use the bathroom. I always…I
sleep like the dead.”

Still standing at the window, Tucker merely nodded. “Good night, Sarah.”

“Good night.”

Sarah tried not to think very much after that. She pushed the bedroom door to but
didn’t completely close it. She thoughtfully left a light on in the bathroom when
she was finished in there so that Tucker would be able to see his way. Then she shed
the robe, climbed into the huge bed, and turned off the lamp.

She wanted to sleep, to just close her eyes and let everything stop for a while. She
needed that. But when she closed her eyes, the worries and questions and thoughts
refused to stop.

Who are they?

Try to control the thing inside you. Try to see something to help us.

Why are psychics so important—or such a threat—to them?

There isn’t much time left. I feel that.

Why did this have to happen to me?

All I see is death.

Tucker needs to find Lydia.

Am I going to die?

Am I going mad?

Finally, even though she knew she was too tired and afraid to make the attempt, Sarah
concentrated on closing out everything except one single, vitally important question.
Who are they?
She fixed it in her mind until it was so clear she could see the letters of each
word.

Then, hesitantly and very afraid, she tried to open up her mind, her senses, and invite
the answer to come.

At first, all Sarah saw was the question, bright as neon. Gradually, though, the question
dimmed and all around it the blackness lightened. She saw a large, featureless building
very briefly, just the flash of the image, but it made her skin crawl, as if she stood
briefly at the mouth of a dark cave where something unspeakably brutish dwelled. Then
she heard the low murmur of many voices, what they were saying indistinguishable but
rousing in her another powerful primitive response as the hairs on the back of her
neck stirred a warning.

Wrong. It was all wrong, worse than bad…

Then she saw the shadows. They were many, all shapes and sizes, tall and thin, short
and squat, manlike and bestial. Nightmare shapes. They moved rapidly, flitting across
her inner field of vision with an energy and purpose that was chilling. Arms reaching
out. Hands grasping…something. She couldn’t see what they were doing. Couldn’t see
what it was they caught and held so avidly. She couldn’t see their faces.

She couldn’t see their faces.

Panicked, Sarah wrenched herself out of it without even realizing she was going to.
When her eyes opened, she found herself sitting up in bed, her heart pounding and
breathing rapid and shallow, as if she had awakened from a nightmare. Was that it?
Had her psychic abilities actually shown her something that was real, or had her fears
and worries simply been given frightening shape by her anxious mind?

She didn’t have the same sense that a vision left her with, that what she had seen
was real. There was no feeling
in her of inevitability. Instead, what she felt was a profound but wordless and nameless
uneasiness. A fear that was purely instinctive, like the primal response to snakes
and spiders and noises in the night.

Sarah wanted badly to get out of bed and go into the sitting room. To Tucker. She
wanted to tell him what she thought she had seen and how it made her feel. She wanted
to hear him tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of, and everything would
be all right.

But she didn’t, of course. Instead, she lay back on the pillow and tried to reassure
herself.
You’re a grown-up and hardly as weak as you’ve been acting. You’ve got to stop leaning
on him—even if you survive this, he won’t always be around. Think about it. Figure
it out.

It had, likely, only been the frightened musings of her mind. And even if it hadn’t
been, even if she had actually been able to tap into some kind of psychic awareness,
what had she seen? Nothing really. A building. Some shadows, distorted as shadows
always were, without a clear shape or texture and scaring her because…She didn’t know
why. Because shadows scared her. Because her world had been turned upside down, and
everything seemed to scare her these days.

Her head was throbbing, the pressure behind her eyes building.

That alien thing in her head was growing.

Tucker pushed the room service cart out into the hallway, then settled down at the
desk with coffee and his laptop.
But he didn’t turn his attention to the computer immediately. Instead, he brooded.

Here he was in a hotel suite with a woman he hadn’t known a week, on the run possibly
for his life and hers, grappling with a puzzle the enormity of which was the stuff
of paranoid fantasies…and he had hardly bothered to stop a moment and ask himself
why.

The simple answer, of course, was that he wanted her to tell him about Lydia. And
that was certainly the reason he had first sought her out. But from the moment he
had elected to spend the night on the couch outside her bedroom because a watcher
with unknown motives lurked in the dark night, he had turned a corner, and from that
point there had really been no going back.

None of his friends, he thought, would be surprised to find him involved in something
so bizarre. He had a reputation for getting hip-deep in things purely out of intellectual
curiosity and the love of challenge, which was undoubtedly one of his motivations
in this case. It was a puzzle to end all puzzles, that was for sure.

But it was more than that. Much more. During the past days, he had realized that he
was with Sarah because he wanted to protect her and knew that he could. He had been
certain of that.

What he hadn’t known was whether he could save her.

Now, especially, he was conscious of doubts he’d never felt before. This thing was
so big, so bizarre—and so clearly deadly. Sarah was already in more pain than he had
bargained for, pain that promised to get worse before it got better. If it got better.

And there was an added complication now. No matter how wary her abilities made him,
the undeniable fact was that Tucker was having a tough time keeping his distance.
He was so aware of her all the time, so conscious of her every movement, of the sound
of her voice and the fleeting expressions that crossed her face. He wanted to touch
her.

He wanted to wake up next to her.

But he couldn’t deny that he hadn’t come to terms with her abilities; after so many
years of charlatans, the real thing had definitely thrown him off balance. And he
also couldn’t deny that even if Sarah felt something for him—and he had no idea whether
she did—she was in no shape physically or emotionally to take a lover.