Page 63 of Wind Called

However, Marc’s obvious unease hadn’t prevented them from making love before they went to sleep — slow, gentle, different from some of the more intense sessions they’d shared over the past couple of days. That was all right, though, since Bellamy could tell he wanted to confirm the connection between the two of them, that she’d be there next to him, no matter what happened.

That was for sure. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Several times during the night, she awoke when he shifted position, but because he settled right back down, she had to believe it was all just the normal sorts of movements anyone might make when they were dead asleep. And each time she’d adjusted her own position as well and then fallen into slumber almost immediately.

After all, it had been a very long day, with some ups and downs she would have preferred to avoid.

But a little after four — she knew that because she instinctively looked over at the clock on the nightstand to check the time — he sat bolt upright in bed, staring out into the darkness.

“The cave,” he whispered, and she stared at him.

Was this a normal dream…or a vision?

And was it like sleepwalking, when you weren’t supposed to startle the other person or do anything that might make them wake up?

She’d also raised herself to a sitting position, but gently, so the bed wouldn’t squeak too much. Marc was still staring at nothing in particular…although she noticed how his gaze was fixed to the north and east of their current location.

His hands were curled in the sheets, tightly clenched, and his breathing came so fast, it sounded as if he’d just completed a heavy-duty rock climb rather than merely sitting there in bed.

“Have to….” The words trailed off, and his chest rose and fell as he continued to pant.

Bellamy hated to stay still and not respond, but she honestly didn’t know what to do. It sure seemed as if he was having a vision of some kind — or at least some sort of spectacularly bad dream — but if she disturbed him in any way, would he lose the thread of the vision and not be able to remember any of it when he awoke?

That would sort of defeat the purpose of this whole experiment.

Then his eyes opened even wider, and he let out a heavy gust of a breath. He sat there like that for a moment before something about his body appeared to sag. Whatever he’d been staring at didn’t seem to hold his attention any longer, because she could just barely see his brows pull together before he looked over at her.

“It worked,” he said.

“The outflow vortex?” she responded, and he nodded.

“I had a dream…but it wasn’t a real dream. It was a vision.”

Bellamy didn’t exactly sag with relief — she was too concerned about Marc, about what having that dream-vision might have done to him. “You said something about a cave.”

He released his grip on the sheets and instead rubbed his palms on the covers. “That’s what I saw. A cave somewhere deep in the red rock wilderness. Our thief is staying there.”

Well, that was one way to avoid notice. If the person had some kind of hidey-hole out in the middle of nowhere, then it wasn’t as if anyone could have used occupancy records from the various hotels in the area to track them down. Sure, that was Forest Service land and you weren’t supposed to camp there except in designated areas, but Bellamy sort of doubted their would-be magical thief cared too much about that kind of thing.

“Did you see them?” she asked, and Marc nodded again.

“Sort of. I didn’t see their face, but they were tall and had sort of dreadlocked hair pulled back in a ponytail.”

“They were Black?” she responded, now a little surprised. As far as she knew, you’d have to go far to the south and east to find any witch clans that were African-American. How would someone from one of those families have even ended up in Sedona?

For a second or two, Marc hesitated. Then he said, “I don’t think so. I think it’s a white person with that kind of hair.”

There were several regulars in Sedona and the surrounding areas who affected dreadlocks as part of their crunchy-granola personas. However, Bellamy knew they were all civilians, so there was no way they could be the Collector’s minion.

“Well, that’ll make them easier to identify,” she said, taking care to keep her tone light, “even if you weren’t able to catch a glimpse of their face.”

“Do you have any idea where a cave like that might be located?”

She didn’t even have to stop to think about it. “Probably out in the Secret Canyon wilderness somewhere. We were on the edges of it when we went on the Devil’s Bridge trail, but it goes much deeper than that. It’s all been mapped, of course, and we can use an app to guide us around. Still, it’s a good thing that you and I are both experienced hikers, because it can get pretty rough out there.”

Marc must have picked on the implications of that comment right away, because he said, “You think we should go out to the Secret Canyon wilderness and find this person?”

Although neither of them had turned on a light, and the only real illumination was from the clock on the nightstand a few feet away and maybe a little glow from the landscape lighting outside that had slipped past the blackout curtains, Bellamy thought she could still see enough of his expression to know he was frowning.

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