Javier (Alpha Heroes #12)

Chapter Thirty-four

Missy

“Tell me more about your dreams.” Instead of calling the men in white coats, Thena propped her cheek on her hand, and studied my face. “What do you mean when you say you dreamed of Javier before you met him?”

“Two or three weeks before he showed up, I began to have these crazy dreams.” I tracked Thena’s reaction, but she didn’t seem alarmed yet. “I don’t know what to make of them. I dream stuff, and then sometimes it happens.” I paused, expecting her to laugh at me, or at the very least to tell me she was worried about me, which was the Thena thing to do.

“Give me an example,” she said instead.

“I dreamed of the snakes slithering on flat stone and water before it happened today. My dreams don’t always come true. At times, the details don’t pan out. But this was close. In my snake dream, there were six snakes, not five.”

“And you’ve had other dreams—or nightmares—that have come true as well?”

“Yes.” I clasped my hands on my lap. “In fact, when I saw Javier in my dreams, I saw us, you know, together, as in really together.”

“That’s amazing.” Thena considered what I’d said for a moment then flashed me her knowing smile. “You’re amazing.”

“I don’t know about that, but… I dreamed of Nix,” I blurted out. “I saw him and Javier in a foxhole on the day Nix died.”

“Did you?” She drew back. “So, you know that Javier and Nix were friends?”

“Yes, and more than that.” I might as well tell her everything. “I felt Nix’s presence in my dream.”

“Our dear Nix.” Thena’s gaze turned liquid. “His spirit is still with us.”

“I feel like he’s present, watching over us.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all.” Thena blinked tears off her eyes and, for a moment, we sat in companionable silence, remembering the brother we’d lost.

“You realize this is fascinating,” Thena said after she’d composed herself.

“ Fascinating ?” I squeaked. “This is freaking insane. Wait.” I eyed my sister closely. “You’re not surprised or shocked by something that’s been really freaking me out.”

“That’s because I’m not.” She lifted the pot. “More tea?”

“Thena?” My sister was holding something back. “Tell me why you’re not surprised.”

“Okay.” She blew out a breath and set the pot down. “Mom was a storyteller. Her stories were about odd and interesting characters. She once told me about the ‘dreamers’ in her family. She said her great-grandmother was a dreamer. Or did she call her a ‘dream walker?’ I can’t remember—”

I stared at my sister in disbelief. “You never told me about this.”

“To be honest, I remembered that story just now. Mom laughed about it, made it sound more like family lore, but maybe there’s more than a story. Something is going on with us.”

“With us ?” I frowned at my sister.

She straightened on her seat. “Do you remember when I said that Mom used to read the stars before making big decisions?”

“I do,” I said. “Everyone at the ranch knew she was a little eccentric.”

“Well, guess what?”

“Thena!” I threw my hands in the air. “The suspense is killing me!”

“I recently had an experience reading the stars myself.”

I made a great effort to close my mouth. “You?”

“Me.”

“This is getting even crazier.” I jumped up from the couch and paced to the window and back. “Are you saying that you, and maybe me— we— have somehow inherited these abilities?”

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. “Can you think of a different explanation?”

“You mean other than hereditary madness?” I shot back with a straight face.

Thena broke out into laughter, a warm cascade of ringing bells that delighted my ears and made me feel almost manic with happiness, knowing that, even though weird stuff was happening to both of us, we could tackle it together.

“Oh, Missy, you always had a knack for making me laugh so hard.” She giggled a little more, her gray eyes shimmering. “I’m so glad you’re back.” She sobered up and sat forward on the couch. “Here’s what I think. Sure, Mom was a little unconventional. She said she came from a long life of gifted women, but I swear, she wasn’t crazy. She was the wisest person I knew. So, I think we can eliminate madness.”

“Are you telling me you’re gifted, whatever the heck that means?”

“Maybe, and perhaps you are, too, if your dreams come true or provide insights.”

“Holy Mother.” I stopped pacing and steadied myself by leaning against the window. “Maybe we should both get brain scans.”

“Here’s something else I find curious.” Thena paused but only for a few seconds. “You said your dreams started two or three weeks before Javier showed up. Am I right?”

“You are.”

Thena mulled on that. “I first read the stars more or less in the same time frame.”

“What did you read in the stars?”

“It’s hard to explain.” She tucked a stray curl behind her ear and pinched her mouth as she often did when she was thinking. “It was all about connection. I saw Dash and me in star form, linked by a beam of bright light inside Orion’s Belt.”

“ Star form ?” I gawked. “ Orion’s Belt ?”

“What can I say?” She shrugged. “It’s what I saw.”

“Maybe you just knew this,” I suggested. “Everyone knew—heck, even I knew—that you and Dash were destined to be together, as corny as that might sound.”

“I suppose there’s a chance this could all be happening in my head,” she admitted ruefully. “But I watched another link form. It was a beam of light as well, but it was different, not as defined, a little tenuous at times. The link stretched between a twinkling star that I knew to be you, and another star that presented as Javier.”

My jaw dropped. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Nope,” Thena said. “What I read in the stars is the reason I chose Javier to find you.”

The Thena I knew and loved would never prank me like this.

“You chose him ? ” I opened my mouth and then… closed it. “Are you saying that he and I are somehow… What? Foretold? Fated?”

“I can’t explain what I saw or why.” She sighed. “I don’t know what it means, either, or how it works. I took a risk when I asked Javier to take on this mission, but I trusted my instincts and the stars, like Mom used to do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“These star visions began to happen to me recently, after I got back together with Dash and almost lost him,” Thena explained. “I know what I saw, and in my heart, I understood that Javier was the only one who could find you. And then… he did. More than that, you and he are together.”

“I guess,” I mumbled and pushed off the window. “At least for now.”

“You two are proof that the stars guided me well.”

I plopped down on the sofa and stared at Thena. “This is surreal.”

“I agree.”

“Wait a minute.” I straightened. “Is this how you know that Cece and Affie are alive? You read them in the stars?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Oh. My. Word.” I stared at my sister. “You can read the stars and I’m having dreams that come true. Unlike your stars, my dreams are not always reliable, but—”

“We have to go,” Micah burst through the door, carrying his weapon. “Right now.”

“What’s going on?” Thena asked, but she was already up and rushing to the door, dragging me along. “Our armed escort won’t be here until tonight.”

“There’s been an incident.” Micah’s eyes fell briefly on me before he wrenched open the door of a passenger van parked by our door with Finn at the wheel. “Get in the vehicle.” He pointed to a pair of tactical vests. “Put those on. Yank them tight.”

“What kind of incident?” I asked, as I scrambled into the van and donned a vest.

Micah’s stony face didn’t give away anything, but my heart instantly knew the answer and my stomach plunged.

“A sixth snake,” he announced in his low bass. “We must hurry.”