The First Prophet (35 page)

The years were there, many more years than Sarah had imagined, and they were filled
with conflict and secrets and commitment. People coming here briefly with desperate
faces and frightened eyes, and then passing on out of her hands. Other people coming
here and talking with quiet courage and utter dedication. Plans discussed, arrangements
made. Clandestine lines of communication formed and broken and altered.

And finally, deep, deep inside, there were the shadows, lurking like the worst nightmare
her mind could conjure. They loomed and flitted and filled all the dark corners. They
brought terror with them and left destruction as they passed, and they were many,
so many…

Slowly, Sarah opened her eyes. She felt utterly exhausted with the effort of looking
inside Leigh’s mind and with the trauma of what she had found there. “My God.”

“That’s all we see,” Leigh said. “Shadows. Even the strongest psychics we know have
been unable to learn anything about them, not who they are, or where they’re based,
or what’s behind their actions. We don’t know how they’re able to block us, but somehow
they can—possibly by using the psychics they’ve already taken. But we can sense that
shadowy part of them, and sometimes it helps us identify them; if you come into physical
contact with one, you’ll see or sense the shadows. But as you’ve already found out,
they also use tools, other psychics and ordinary people, and those are not so easy
to identify.

“And touching them is usually not a very good idea.” Leigh’s smile was twisted. “By
that point, it tends to be too late to escape them.”

Sarah drew a deep breath. She understood, now, where the darkness inside Leigh Munroe
came from. “You keep saying ‘we.’ Who are you talking about?”

“You aren’t alone, Sarah. We aren’t alone. There are people, psychics and nonpsychics,
who are trying very hard to find a way to fight and defeat the other side.” She shook
her head slightly, and her voice gentled. “We’ll talk about that. But right now, you
need to rest.”

“I can’t rest. Tucker—”

“Sarah, you can’t help Tucker if you’re exhausted. You need to sleep, for a few hours
at least, and then you need to eat. Then we’ll talk about what to do.”

Bitterly, Sarah said, “I obviously can’t do very much at all if two minutes of effort
costs me this much.” She was almost swaying with weariness.

“Those two minutes were rather remarkable, if you only knew.” Leigh came over to take
her arm and urge her gently to her feet. “Come on. I have a very comfortable bed upstairs.”

Sarah didn’t want to go to sleep. She needed to find Tucker. But just getting to her
feet, even with Leigh’s help, was almost more than she could manage, and the stairs
left her weak and shaking.

She was asleep even before Leigh could cover her with a blanket.

Leigh stood gazing down at her sleeping guest for a long moment, then went slowly
downstairs, frowning. She gathered the tray from the living room and took it to the
kitchen. A glance at the clock made her frown deepen, and she reached for the phone
on the breakfast bar. The number she punched in was a familiar one.

“Hello.”

“It’s Leigh. She’s here.”

“At last. Were we right?”

“She looked into my mind as if through an open door, all the way to the center. And
she has no idea what she did. She may well be the one we’ve been waiting for.”

“Good. I’ll send them immediately.”

“Tell them to hurry. She won’t sleep long.”

The first thing Tucker was aware of was a pounding headache. Next came the thought
that someone had filled his mouth and ears with cotton. He was awake yet couldn’t
seem to get his eyes open or hear anything at all, even his own breathing. He thought
he was lying on his side on something marginally softer than the floor, and he had
the sense of a lot of space around him.

And someone was watching him.

Playing possum seemed like a good idea, at least until his head stopped pounding and
he could think clearly. In any case, pretending he couldn’t move wasn’t a problem.
He couldn’t move. He didn’t think he was tied up, but his body felt cold and leaden.
Pretending he was still asleep was harder; the temptation to try to look around and
find out where he was was almost overpowering.

Gradually, as he concentrated on feigning sleep and waited for life to return to his
limbs, his ears began
working again. He heard his breathing, soft and even. He heard, faintly, a dripping
sound. He heard a peculiar low rustling sound, almost as if…as if many people somewhere
nearby spoke together in whispers.

“I hear voices, many voices all around me, all talking at once, but almost whispering,
so quiet that I can’t tell what they’re saying.”

Because he had to, Tucker allowed his eyes to open just a slit. At first, he thought
even those tiny muscles were refusing to obey him, but then he realized the truth.
His eyes were open. And he couldn’t see a goddamned thing.

Either it was very, very dark in this place—or he was blind.

And someone was still nearby, watching him.

It was cold and dark, and somebody was watching him.

Like a nightmare holding her in its grip, Sarah could feel Tucker’s waking realizations,
and they chilled her to the bone. She wanted desperately to be there with him, to
offer comfort, and reached out instinctively in the effort to touch him. She thought
she managed it, thought he was suddenly aware of her—and then there was a sharp jab
in his arm and his awareness faded rapidly, leaving her alone once more.

She swam up out of the depths of sleep, still tired enough that the emergence was
slow and gradual, her heart aching because for an instant Tucker had seemed close
enough to touch.

She couldn’t seem to get her eyes open, but her ears were working, and she heard,
dimly, voices speaking
downstairs. Without even deciding to, she listened with that other sense.

“Will she trust us?”

“I think so. What choice does she have?”

“What about Mackenzie?”

“She wants to go after him.”

“When they’re holding him as bait? That’s insane. In another week or two, maybe, but—”

“He’ll probably be dead in another week or two, Brodie. You know that. She came out
of the coma in early April; this is the last day of September.”

“I know, I know. Six months, max, and they miss their chance. If we can keep her alive
and out of their hands for just a couple more weeks, Duran will back off.”

“Maybe they won’t kill Mackenzie.”

“And maybe the sun won’t rise tomorrow morning. But I wouldn’t bet against the probability.”

“Dammit, Brodie, you’re so—”

“Look, Cait, I know what I know. I’m sorry as hell Duran and his bunch got their hands
on Mackenzie. I’m sorry I didn’t do my job and make contact with him and Gallagher
days ago. But there’s not a damn thing I can do about that now.”

“We can help her go after Mackenzie.”

“Help her? Help her face down Duran and God knows how many of his goons? I don’t like
the odds, Cait.”

“The odds may be better than you think. You heard what Leigh said. Sarah Gallagher
is special. She may be the one.”

“In a year or two she may be the one. Maybe even in six months. But right now, she’s
a very tired and confused lady
with new psychic abilities she doesn’t understand and can’t control worth a damn.”

“Maybe, but—”

“Cait, Brodie’s right. Sarah’s at a very vulnerable stage right now. She needs help
to make the transition, and time to make it at her own pace. If she pushes herself
too hard, we could lose her. It’s…happened once before. About a year ago, before you
joined. Brodie remembers.”

“Christ, yes, I remember. And I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it never
happens again.”

Sarah opened her eyes, and instantly the clear voices in her head became the distant
murmur coming from downstairs. She lay there for a moment or two, staring at the ceiling
while questions and thoughts went round and round in her head.

Finally, she threw back the blanket covering her and got out of bed. The clock on
the nightstand told her it was after four in the afternoon; she had slept for hours.
She washed her face in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom and finger-combed her hair,
mostly ignoring the reflection in the mirror that told her she was too pale and still
hollow-eyed with weariness.

Without pausing or hesitating, she went downstairs and into Leigh Munroe’s living
room.

Three people were sitting there, and as soon as Sarah walked in, the man rose to his
feet. He was a big man, physically powerful enough to give one pause, and very good
looking in a dark, brooding way. He made Sarah think of a soldier; something about
the way he stood,
about his sharp sentry eyes and spring-coiled stillness, spoke of danger and the readiness
for danger.

“I’m John Brodie,” he said to Sarah.

“I know.” She looked at the woman sitting beside Leigh on the couch, a younger woman
with dark gold hair and friendly gray eyes in yet another face she had encountered
along the way, and said, “You’re Cait.”

“Yes. Cait Desmond.” She looked pleased, but whether it was because Sarah recognized
her or just knew her name was hard to say.

Sarah nodded. “I…heard you all talking. When I woke up. So I listened.”

Brodie glanced at Leigh. “Did you—”

Leigh shook her head. “No. I had no idea she was even awake. Remarkable.”

“Who are you?” Sarah asked Brodie.

“If you were listening to us,” he replied, “you must know.”

“I know what I heard. I don’t know what it means.”

“We’re the good guys,” Cait said, in the tone of someone who’d wanted to say that
for a long time.

Brodie looked at her and then, dryly, said, “We left our white hats at home this morning.”

Sarah ignored that byplay, still a bit suspicious and too anxious about Tucker to
feel much humor. Looking at Brodie, she said, “You—the two of you—have been following
us.”

“Until Chicago,” he agreed. “When you traded cars, we lost you.”

“Sit down, Sarah,” Leigh invited, gesturing toward the chair beside Brodie’s.

She did, slowly, trying to think. To Brodie, she said, “The bug. The tracking device.
It was yours?”

He nodded, sitting down. In answer to her obvious confusion, he said, “The other side
doesn’t use electronic tracking devices, so far anyway. We don’t know why.”

Sarah thought it was interesting that he used the same phrase to describe their enemy
that she and Tucker used. It was a fleeting thought, however. “But they were able
to track us. They were there in Cleveland. And they got Tucker here in Portland when
we’d been here hardly more than twelve hours.”

Grimly, Brodie said, “They’re very, very good. And they seem to be all over the place,
certainly in every major city.”

Sarah was still trying to think clearly. “If they were with us all the way, why didn’t
they move? Why didn’t they try to get me?”