Page 1 of Proven By The Highlander (Highlander Forever #15)

Leanne blinked blearily at the screen of her laptop.

Feeling a frown crinkle the skin between her eyebrows, it reminded her that she’d forgotten to take off the facial mask she’d applied again.

It was pretty early to feel this exhausted, wasn’t it? Usually she’d be on her laptop til well after midnight, especially once she got on a research jag like this one… but it was just after ten, and she could tell from the prickling of her eyes and the dull ache in her head that she was going to need to call bedtime pretty soon.

Weird, this headache.

She usually only got them when she hadn’t been drinking enough water, a problem that had been banished with the installation of a ridiculously large water bottle on her desk.

She’d weaponized her natural tendency to fidget against her other natural tendency to forget to take care of herself when she was reading, adding the action of taking a sip of water to her rotating regime of fidgets.

She’d been through two pints in the last hour alone, she absolutely shouldn’t be dehydrated.

Maybe it was the fine text she was squinting at, she thought as she padded into her bathroom to rinse off the drying mud mask she’d applied to her face earlier.

Eye strain was a notorious headache trigger — she ought to know, with her academic history.

Her degree was in paleontology, strictly speaking, but these days she was spending a lot more time in fields that her professors back at college would have rolled their eyes in dismay to hear about.

But what was a girl to do? When a subject sparked joy the way cryptozoology did for Leanne, you simply had to go where it led.

And where it was leading was pretty good, as far as she was concerned.

She was getting a steady trickle of article commissions that, along with the casual teaching work she still picked up at the local college, were paying the bills reasonably well.

Sure, the publications who were picking up her cryptozoology articles weren’t exactly the kind of thing that looked good on an academic resume, but these weren’t exactly the easiest of times in the academic world.

And besides, researching and writing about cryptids made her happy.

And what was the point of any of it if she wasn’t happy? If she’d just wanted a career that paid her an unseemly amount of money, she’d have gotten into finance or something like her father.

A twinge of grief filled her at the thought of him, even now.

Leanne smiled at her reflection in the mirror a little sadly.

For a while after her dad’s funeral, she’d avoided looking at herself even in photos… it was too much of a wrench to see his eyes looking back at her.

But these days, five years on from his sudden death, she was grateful for the reminder that in some way, she was carrying a part of him with her.

It would always hurt to think of how much time she’d thought she’d have with him — but she was grateful for having him in her life as long as she had.

And she liked to think his death had at least made her more appreciative of the world around her, of every banal little detail of the little life she’d built for herself.

Her father dying out of the blue of a massive stroke, really reminded her that there were no certainties in life… cliché or not, Leanne tried to live each day as if it was her last.

And right now, she decided, she was going to spend her last day going to bed and getting an early night.

The headache was getting worse, and she knew from experience that if she tried to push through it, she ran the risk of it turning into a multi-day affair… and that would make teaching tomorrow pretty unpleasant.

Yawning again, her face washed and moisturized, she headed out of the bathroom and back toward the bed against the far wall.

Her tiny studio apartment wasn’t much, objectively speaking… but she loved it.

Every decoration, every piece of furniture was hers, chosen by her, loved by her.

Leanne flipped the lights off and slid into bed, smiling faintly at the satin touch of her summer sheets.

Was there anything in the world better than sliding into a bed with fresh sheets on it? The dull thud of her headache receded a little in the darkness, and she took a few deep breaths as she settled into bed, consciously relaxing the muscles in her face and neck in the hopes that it would help chase away the headache before she woke.

And quicker than it usually did, especially this early in the evening, Leanne felt sleep rise up to claim her.

Maybe it was the early night, or maybe it was her excitement about the fresh collection of resources she’d been speed-reading before bed, but she found herself drifting in and out of stark, vivid dreams.

Some of them were the standard chaotic dreams that she tended to get after busy days — rushing through unfamiliar hallways, late for some important appointment, realizing she’d forgotten to put pants on that morning and that all her teeth were falling out — but some were stranger than that.

In one, she walked silently through a great dark meadow, wet grass brushing against her ankles, her pajamas clinging wetly to her skin.

Ahead of her, even darker shapes were cut out against the dark sky… impossibly tall shapes, taller than treetops.

Shapes that were moving.

Leanne found herself smiling fondly.

How long had it been since she’d dreamed about dinosaurs? She’d been five years old when she’d first seen Jurassic Park — her mother had protested, saying Leanne would have nightmares, but her father had insisted she was brave enough, and he’d been right.

She’d had dreams after they’d watched the movie, that was for sure… but they’d all been happy dreams.

Dreams of a career in paleontology that lay ahead of her… dreams like this one, in which she was walking toward the distant creatures.

They always looked different in these dreams, depending on how scientific her mind felt like being — sometimes they’d be the recognizable scaly creatures from the movies, at other times she’d fill in a more scientifically accurate feathered dinosaur.

The ones she was looking at now, though, seemed to belong more to the realms of high fantasy than anything.

The familiar, graceful shapes were getting easier to make out as she walked closer to them, but that seemed to be because they were lit from within, glowing in the darkness with a dull, rhythmic pulsing.

A little like bioluminescent algae, she thought, wonder and amusement mingling in her mind.

But something was shifting in the dream.

She couldn’t feel the wet grass against her ankles anymore, and when she looked down, the ground beneath her feet was gone.

So was the sky above.

She was standing in absolute nothingness… standing, or lying? There didn’t seem to be any sense of up or down, and she felt a lurching disorientation as she tried to figure out what was happening, what strange new shape this dream was taking.

That was odd, too.

Generally, when she realized she was dreaming, she woke straight up afterwards.

She’d been on a few dates with a guy once who’d told her all about lucid dreaming, but it wasn’t something that had ever happened for her.

So why was she so conscious of the dream around her right now? Why did everything feel so … well, real? The glowing shapes of the dinosaurs were still all around her, but when she blinked a few times she realized that they’d changed, too.

They didn’t look like the long, graceful necks of the quadrupedal dinosaurs that she’d been walking toward.

Right now, they looked more like… humanoid figures.

Leanne frowned, shifting her weight, suddenly feeling a sense that she was lying on her back.

A cold, tingling sensation reached her through her back, as though she was lying on a great slab of cold stone.

And the figures… they were standing around her, above her.

At least a dozen of them, their heads inclined downwards… she couldn’t seem to make out any facial features, just that strange, eerie glow.

What the hell kind of dream was this? She shifted again, feeling a growing sense of unease, and felt an odd, tingling brush against her arms, pressing her gently but firmly down as she tensed her muscles to sit up.

The instruction was unmistakable, and Leanne lay still, obedient as a child.

It was a deeply strange scenario, but there was something about the glowing figures around her that she trusted inherently.

What did that mean? What weird subconscious issue was her mind processing by making her experience this dream? Was this the first lucid dream of her life, perhaps? Was this how weird they usually got?

The figures were definitely humanish, not dinosaur — though their proportions were a little strange even for humans, she noticed.

At least from this angle, they looked far too long and tall, slender, and stretched.

She found herself squinting her eyes, trying to make out their faces while still obeying the clear instruction to stay still.

They seemed to be gathered mostly around her head, at the top of whatever strange slab of stone she was lying on… the height of it put her in mind of a hospital bed, which sent an odd chill down her spine.

Some kind of weird surgery dream? She’d never had a dream like this one.

Plenty about sitting by hospital beds, which was strange, given that her father had never actually made it to hospital when he’d died… but she’d never dreamed about being in one.

She could feel the light brush of a hand on her forehead, and she let her eyes slide closed, enjoying the sensation… she’d always liked the feeling of fingers running through her short hair.

That and the convenience were the major reasons she kept the pixie cut.

There was something so fascinating about that touch… somehow it was simultaneously warm and cool, sending a pleasant tingle through her whole body with every caress.

And then, the figures were drawing back from her bedside, their body language unmistakable.

Whatever they’d been doing, they were done.

But what was going to happen now?