IN HER DREAMS, page 1
IN HER DREAMS
(A Jenna Graves Suspense Thriller—Book Seven)
B L A K E P I E R C E
Blake Pierce
USA Today and #1 bestselling author Blake Pierce is the author of numerous series in the mystery and thriller genres, spanning 10 years of work, including the Jessie Hunt, Ella Dark, Rylie Page, Faith Bold and Rachel Gift series. Blake's most recent latest releases are the Jenna Graves, Alison Payne, Isla Rivers and Kari Blackhorse series.
Please visit blakepierceauthor.com to learn more, join the email list, receive free books, and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2025 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SERIES BY BLAKE PIERCE
KARI BLACKHORSE
ISLA RIVERS
ALISON PAYNE
JENNA GRAVES
THE GOVERNESS
RACHEL BLACKWOOD
SHEILA STONE
FINN WRIGHT
MORGAN CROSS
JULIETTE HART
FAITH BOLD
FIONA RED
DAISY FORTUNE
AMBER YOUNG
CAMI LARK
NICKY LYONS
CORA SHIELDS
MAY MOORE
PAIGE KING
VALERIE LAW
RACHEL GIFT
AVA GOLD
A YEAR IN EUROPE
ELLA DARK
LAURA FROST
EUROPEAN VOYAGE
ADELE SHARP
THE AU PAIR
ZOE PRIME
JESSIE HUNT
CHLOE FINE
KATE WISE
THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE
RILEY PAIGE
MACKENZIE WHITE
AVERY BLACK
KERI LOCKE
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
PROLOGUE
Richard Winters jolted awake with his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal. Sweat plastered his thinning hair to his scalp as he gasped for air, each breath shallow and insufficient. The familiar walls of his bedroom, barely visible in the predawn darkness, seemed to pulse with each frantic beat of his heart. The red numbers on his digital clock glowed accusingly: 3:17 AM. The sight sent an inexplicable shiver down his spine.
“Just another nightmare,” he whispered. But the lingering images refused to fade—narrow spaces closing in, air thinning to nothing, and beneath it all, that faint voice whispering words he couldn’t quite make out.
Richard pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the irregular flutter beneath his pajama top. The old familiar arrhythmia, the one his doctor had been monitoring for years. Not dangerous, she’d told him, just something to keep an eye on. He wasn’t so sure she’d say the same now, with his pulse skittering like this.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, letting his bare feet rest on the cool hardwood floor. The physical sensation helped anchor him to reality.
“Get it together, Rich,” he muttered, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night.
None of this made sense. The claustrophobia that had plagued him for years—and that had gotten so much worse two years ago after his wife Betty died—should be gone now. Hadn’t the Chantico Rite taken care of that? Two months ago, he’d finally found the courage to try it, desperate for relief from the panic attacks that had even begun to interfere with his work at Riverbend Trust.
The details of the ritual swam hazily in his memory—a darkened room, the scent of herbs and smoke, a chanting voice guiding him through confrontations with his deepest fears. He remembered little of the specifics, but he recalled with crystal clarity the sensation afterward: lightness, freedom, the crushing weight of his phobia lifted from his shoulders.
For eight blissful weeks, he’d moved through the world unencumbered. No more taking the stairs instead of the elevator at the bank. No more hyperventilating in the bathroom stall when the walls seemed too close. He’d even taken a long, relaxing, recreational drive in his car last weekend—something that would have been impossible before when he was afraid to be inside a vehicle. Why, then, was he back in the grip of terror tonight?
Richard pushed himself to stand, needing water and movement. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight as he took a tentative step forward. But something felt wrong with the space in his bedroom. The big dresser against the far wall, the one that had belonged to Betty’s grandmother, seemed closer than it should be. At least six feet from the bed, it had always been. Now, it seemed larger and barely three feet away.
He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. When he looked again, the dresser appeared even closer.
“It’s just the darkness playing tricks,” he told himself, but his voice sounded thin and unconvincing.
Another step, but then he froze in place again. The room was contracting around him like a closing fist. The distance between the bed and the door, normally an easy ten paces, now appeared impossibly short. The ceiling—had it always been so low? Richard felt pressure building in his chest, the familiar precursor to a panic attack.
“This isn’t real,” he gasped, but his body disagreed. His lungs seized, refusing to expand fully. His vision tunneled, the edges darkening. The walls of the bedroom, papered in Betty’s favorite pale blue pattern, seemed to ripple and advance.
Richard pressed his back against the nightstand, seeking an anchor point in the shifting geography of his bedroom. The lamp toppled over, its base hitting the floor with a dull thud that seemed to echo far longer than it should have.
“You beat this,” he reminded himself. “You’re cured. The Chantico Rite worked.”
The memory of the ritual drew his gaze automatically to the object on the opposite wall: the dreamcatcher that had been given to him afterward. In the faint light filtering in through the window, it looked like a large spider hanging against the wallpaper, its web of threads just visible, it's dangling feathers and beads taking on an odd formation he hadn’t noticed before, its small teeth-shaped stones seeming to gnash together.
Richard had never been one for mystical trinkets. Banking was his life—numbers, facts, the reassuring solidity of the financial world. But after the ritual, he’d felt oddly compelled to hang the dreamcatcher directly across from his bed. Betty would have teased him for it. Practical, no-nonsense Richard Winters, banking on superstition to keep bad dreams at bay.
But it had worked, hadn’t it? He’d been cured, at least for a while.
As he stared at the dreamcatcher now, something definitely changed in its appearance. The feathers—were they moving? No breeze stirred in the closed room, yet those shapes trembled against the wall as if caught in a gust of wind. The beads seemed to catch light that wasn’t there, gleaming with an inner luminescence.
An electric tingle raced up Richard’s spine, every instinct screaming danger. Yet simultaneously, an irresistible urge to touch the dreamcatcher seized him. He took a halting step toward it, then another.
Each movement was a struggle as if the air had thickened to molasses. The walls pressed in further. The ceiling descended inch by incremental inch. Sweat ran freely down Richard’s back now, soaking through his pajamas. His breath came in short, staccato gasps, insufficient to fill his constricting lungs.
“Heart attack,” he thought wildly. “I’m having a heart attack.” But the pressure in his chest felt different from the cardiac episodes he’d experienced before—not a physical pain but a crushing weight of dread.
Five steps from the bed to the dreamcatcher. It should have been an easy distance to cross. Now, it felt like miles, each inch gained through sheer force of will. Four steps. Three. The room continued to shrink around him, the very air solidifying, resistant to his passage.
Two steps away, Richard could see the dreamcatcher in unsettling detail. The pattern wasn’t the simple concentric design he remembered. It formed complex, asymmetrical spirals that seemed to move and rearrange themselves as he watched. The beads weren’t the plain wooden ones he recalled but gleamed like tiny eyes, pupil-less and aware.
One step. He raised a trembling hand; fingers outstretched toward the alien thing that had replaced his benign souvenir. The walls of the bedroom were now so close that he could touch them on either side without fully extending his arms. The ceiling brushed the top of his head. Still, the compulsion to touch the dreamcatcher overwhelmed his mounting terror.
Just as his fingertips were about to make contact with the web, a voice stopped him cold.
“Richard, don’t!”
The sound cut through the oppressive silence like a blade, startling a gasp from his constricted throat. He knew that voice. Had heard it daily for thirty-five years.
“Betty?” he whispered, voice cracking.
There was no reply, but as he stared at the dreamcatcher, he realized the voice hadn’t come from behind or beside him. It had emerged from the very center of the web, the words somehow forming in the spaces between the woven strands.
“Step back,” Betty’s voice commanded, ethereal yet unmistakable in its urgency. “It’s not what you think. It’s made of fear, Richard. And it’s hungry, Richard. It swallowed me, and now it wants you too. You’ve got to fight it. You’ve got to stay away from it.”
Richard tried to retreat, to heed the warning. His body refused to comply. He stood frozen, arm still outstretched, muscles locked in place as if he’d suddenly transformed into stone.
“I can’t move,” he thought in rising panic. “God help me, I can’t move.”
Before his horrified eyes, the dreamcatcher began to grow. It expanded rapidly, the pattern stretching and distorting until it covered the entire wall from floor to ceiling. The room had contracted to its final dimensions—a claustrophobic bubble with Richard at its center and the monstrous dreamcatcher filling his entire field of vision.
In the depths of the web, shapes began to form. Faces pressed against some invisible barrier, features contorted in expressions of agony and terror. Some Richard recognized—his father, dead for twenty years; his childhood friend Mark, who’d drowned one summer at Lake Waubesa; colleagues from the bank; neighbors; people whose names he couldn’t recall but whose faces triggered sparks of recognition.
And there, in the very center of the terrible web, was Betty. Her face, so beloved and familiar, was twisted in a silent scream. Her eyes, the warm brown that had always looked at him with love, now wide with horror and warning. She mouthed words he couldn’t hear, pressing despairingly against the barrier that held her captive.
Horror clawed at Richard’s insides as understanding dawned. The Chantico Rite hadn’t cured him at all. It had done something far worse. It had connected him to... something else. Something that had been feeding on his fears, on his memories, on everyone he’d ever loved or known.
For two months, it had been luring him in, letting him believe he was healed, all while it prepared for this moment. How many others had it taken? How many were trapped in that otherworldly net?
The dreamcatcher pulsated now, its hunger a palpable force in the air. Richard felt it reaching for him, probing the edges of his consciousness. He fought against his paralysis with everything he had, straining to lower his arm, to back away, to run.
His lips parted, a scream building in his throat. At last, his frozen vocal cords loosened.
“Bet—” was all he managed before the web lurched forward.
There was no time to finish his wife’s name. No time for a final prayer or thought. In one terrible moment, the snare engulfed him entirely. A sensation of falling, of being pulled through space that wasn’t space at all. Of being turned inside out, his consciousness fragmented and scattered like seeds in a storm.
Then darkness. Complete and absolute.
CHAPTER ONE
“You sure about this?” Jake asked Jenna as she guided the patrol car through the early morning stillness of Trentville’s deserted streets. Dawn had barely broken, painting the horizon in smudges of pale gold against a fading indigo canvas.
She nodded, her emerald eyes fixed on the road unwinding before them. “As sure as I can be about something that came to me in a dream.” Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she remembered the fragments in her mind—the dark chamber, the whispers, and that face illuminated by a single match flame. The words still echoed in her head: “They are collecting people.”
She felt Jake studying her profile and appreciated that he didn’t dismiss her intuition. About a month ago, after two years working together, she’d described how her lucid dreams brought her hints from the dead. A former city cop who’d come to Trentville for a quieter life, he’d had trouble accepting that at first. But soon, he’d had to acknowledge that many of those tips turned into solid leads.
“Tell me again,” he said, taking a careful sip from his coffee cup. “From the beginning.”
Jenna inhaled deeply, organizing her thoughts. The dreams were always difficult to articulate, slippery as fish in her mental grasp.
“A week ago, I found myself in this... chamber. Stone walls, damp air. So dim I could barely make out anything.” She paused at a stop sign, scanning the empty intersection before continuing forward. “There were voices all around me, whispering. I couldn’t make out what they were saying at first.”
The car bumped over a pothole, jostling them. Jake steadied his coffee and waited for her to continue.
“Then this man struck a match. Just one. The light barely illuminated his face, but I could see his eyes—wide, terrified.” Jenna swallowed, remembering the intensity of that gaze. “He said, ‘They are collecting people.’ And then I woke up.”
“And last night?” Jake prompted.
“Same man. Different setting—somewhere brighter, but I couldn’t make out details beyond him.” She turned onto the road that would take them to the outskirts of town. “He told me he’d been killed. Cut up and sold.”
Jake winced, his brow furrowing.
“That’s not all,” Jenna added. “He said, ‘The collected people are in the mine.’“ Jenna glanced at Jake. “That must mean the old Shannon Coal Company mine, Jake. The one that’s been abandoned for most of a century.”
The road beneath them changed, smooth asphalt giving way to cracked pavement spotted with weeds. The houses along the street showed signs of neglect—peeling paint, sagging porches, yards overtaken by nature.
“I’ve been sheriff for four years,” Jenna said, slowing the car as they approached a particularly deep crack in the road. “I’ve had these dreams since I was sixteen, since my sister disappeared. They’ve never led me wrong.”
Jake nodded, his expression serious. “I know. I’ve seen enough to believe you.” He gestured toward the neglected neighborhood around them. “Just seems like a strange place to hide people. Isn’t it a bit obvious? People still live around here.”
“The perfect cover,” Jenna countered. “No one pays attention to this part of town anymore. The mine was officially sealed off long ago. Who’d think to look there?”
The houses thinned out as they drove deeper into what locals called the Backside—the part of Trentville that had thrived during the coal boom and withered when the mine closed. Most of the remaining residents were those who couldn’t afford to move elsewhere.
“There it is,” Jenna said, pointing ahead to where the road curved around a steep, tree-covered hill.
The entrance to the Trentville Coal Mine was barely visible from the road—a gash in the hillside partially obscured by overgrown bushes and a chain-link fence that had long ago been trampled in several places. A faded sign, its paint peeling and letters barely legible, warned trespassers away.
Jenna pulled the patrol car off the road, positioning it so it wouldn’t be immediately visible from the main street but could be spotted by someone specifically looking for it.
“Shouldn’t we call for backup?” Jake asked as they exited the vehicle.
“Based on what? A dream?”
The morning air was crisp against Jenna’s face, carrying the scent of damp earth and early spring vegetation. She popped the trunk and retrieved two flashlights, handing one to Jake. “I need something concrete before I call in Colonel Spelling or even anyone on our own team.”
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