Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  Maddie’s body went rigid. And then it happened. Jarred felt the nightmare fill her mind this time. The horror Maddie must have been facing for months now, but she’d been too terrified to admit the truth to anyone. Not to her mother. Not to Yates. Not to him. Only this time it was happening to Jarred, too.

  There was complete darkness, even though his eyes were wide-open. Rain and wind whipped around them. Their hands were locked in a death grip, while the world around them emptied of everything except the sound of their breathing. Flames flickered to life, along with the distant sound of screaming. The stench of hope burning to cinders. Then came a rustling that sounded like…wings. A menacing shadow descended, causing Jarred to look up to the branches of a leafless tree looming overhead.

  Into the unforgiving eyes of a sinister bird he somehow knew was a raven.

  The dream’s stark surroundings swirled into sharper focus and then into a kaleidoscope of disbelief. Was this really Maddie’s mind? Her imagination? Or was it…Sarah’s?

  This place.

  It was Sarah’s mind they’d fallen into.

  He tipped Maddie’s face with his finger, so he could see what her nightmare was telling him. That her sister had been…haunting her somehow. Pulling Maddie into a vortex of insanity that he’d led her back to tonight. The eyes that met Jarred’s were dark gray, not Maddie’s misty green. They filled with hate, as a woman who looked like Maddie but wasn’t backed away and raised a gun to his chest.

  “Sarah?” he asked, clinging to the knowledge that they were still in the nightmare.

  Die! Maddie’s twin screamed in his mind, clicking off the safety on the semiautomatic she held in the dream.

  A dream where Sarah was suddenly hell-bent on killing him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Alpha…” the Raven demanded. “Engage, Alpha. Now!”

  “Where…”

  Sarah was lost in gray. A nightmare, misting between two worlds. One, where she stood aiming a gun at a man she’d never met. The other, where she was running for her life. Escaping the center with her Raven.

  Where…

  “Where am I?”

  “You’ve memorized the center blueprints. Follow our escape sequence. Engage!”

  Sarah’s body shook in his grasp. His fingers bit into her arms as he lifted and carried her around the next corner. It was the Raven. In her dream. In her simulation. No. This wasn’t just a simulation…And he wasn’t just the Raven…He was the voice once again. The voice that had rescued her from the darkness…

  “Escape sequence. Engage!”

  The dream of the other world and the other man spun, then snapped away completely. But Sarah still held the gun. She was dropped to her feet. The Raven and his warm, familiar voice dragged her down another hallway. It all felt so real, this world. The floor was solid beneath her…

  “Wake up, Alpha.” The Raven pulled her along. “Come on, Sarah. You hate me after what happened to Kayla. Don’t think I don’t know it. Use that hate and get your butt moving. Your sister’s blown my plans to get you out of here under the radar. The center’s on alert. They’ll know you’ve escaped. There’s no time. You’ll never get your chance to make me pay for Kayla if you don’t engage. Damn it, get us out of here.”

  Her sister…

  Maddie was here. Nearby. Standing with a man Sarah had never met, her mind locked with Sarah’s through a dream link. In the dream, Maddie was holding the same gun as Sarah. Wearing the same killing smile Sarah wanted on her face as she confronted her Raven…

  “Die!” Sarah tried to scream, but her voice was too hoarse. Too weak. Barely a whisper.

  A real whisper…

  Because she was awake.

  She was really awake!

  “That’s it.” The Raven’s eyes were blacker than the hell he’d made of her mind. Piercing. Determined. He pulled her around another corner. Down another endless hallway. “That’s it, Sarah. Stay with me. There’s an assault rifle in your hand. The safety’s off. All exits are locked and guarded. You’re in decent physical shape. But you’re weak from the recovery meds. This is a clusterfuck, but we can still make it. Engage! Run the odds. What’s our best escape route?”

  Our?

  She followed the Raven. Clung to him when she wanted to despise him. She winced at the unrelenting glare of the overhead lights. The echo of their footsteps thundered through her head. And over that came the racket of others approaching, their thoughts and feelings flooding her mind.

  “We’re being tracked…” she mumbled.

  “Where? How many?”

  “From…the right…No! The left. Five men. Six. They’re…”

  “How many? Focus, Sarah.” The Raven barreled them through a heavy door that banged into her as it closed. Down a flight of stairs. Down a stairwell. “Feel the gun in your hand. Be ready to use it. Keep moving. How many are coming, Alpha?”

  “Six,” she reported, relinquishing control to her training. To her mentor, who she could remember had stitched up the shunt in her chest and the port for her feeding tube. He’d been gentle. Concerned. Taking care of her. Not an avenging Raven at all.

  “Behind us now,” she muttered through her confusion. “At the door.”

  The stairwell door burst open. Gunshots rained down, except bullets didn’t blast around them. Instead, several wicked-looking darts lodged in the wall mere inches away.

  “Under here!” He dragged her beneath the last flight of stairs while she opened fire.

  Through countless dream sequences, linked to the Raven’s mind, she’d learned battle tactics and weapons handling. Daily, grueling physical therapy had rebuilt her muscle tone and kept her body taut. She was primed to be a killing machine, but she made sure each bullet missed its target—just enough to preserve life instead of destroying it.

  “Focus, Alpha.” The Raven fired a gun she hadn’t noticed before. “Find us a way out!”

  Focus?

  A demented laugh escaped her control. Then her arms gave out. Her rifle clattered to the ground. She let the pain and the darkness and the death and the hate pour into her mind, wanting it to be over. The Raven’s feelings and the men trying to catch them and the others cowering in their offices in fear and…

  Your sister’s here…

  The sister Sarah had been forced to link her mind with whether she’d wanted to or not.

  “Maddie’s really here?”

  Sarah could feel her now. Closer than before. And Maddie was losing her mind.

  Sarah had always needed Maddie’s balance. Her peace. Maddie had been Sarah’s light before the darkness had taken over. Before Maddie began to despise her. Before she’d been glad to be rid of Sarah. Now Maddie’s mind was falling apart, as she dreamed of killing a man the way Sarah longed to kill the Raven. Served her right, the self-righteous bitch.

  “Reload.” The Raven shoved a fresh clip into Sarah’s hand.

  She went through the motions without thought, fed by training simulations and her fury at her twin’s betrayal. She opened fire, following the Raven’s orders—for now—while her mind dug for the link with her sister. The connection that was strengthening Sarah. Returning to her the control that could finally end the nightmares.

  “Fuck you, Madeline Grace Temple!” Sarah yelled.

  She would be free. Her sister could deal with the fallout. It was Maddie’s turn to be the center’s lab rat.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Richard reached into his go-bag for the last of the clips he’d packed.

  His hastily prepared escape plan had turned into a what-not-to-do scenario the Brotherhood would relish telling for years. Assuming he and Sarah actually made it out of the center alive. Sarah had advanced from mumbling incoherently while she stumbled along at his side, to cursing her sister at the top of her lungs. So far, they’d held off the security guards at the top of the stairwell. Thank God security was shooting tranquilizers instead of bullets. But Sarah was far from stable. It was like having a misfir
ing bomb sputtering to life next to him.

  Still, she hadn’t taken a single life. She’d held off their pursuers with precision and more stamina than should have been possible. But every soul bearing down on them was still intact. Impossible to believe. Inconvenient as hell, since their numbers were growing. But amazing all the same.

  “The exit route, Alpha. Find one that’s not being guarded. Get us out of—”

  “My name’s—” She grabbed him by the throat, finding lethal pressure points.

  Richard tried to swallow. Tried to speak. Tried to keep his vision from fading to nothing as blood flow was cut off at his carotid artery. Then Sarah’s grip loosened. Gasping for air, he stared as her ebony irises became ringed with a glittering green. Her twin’s eye color.

  “Sarah?” he wheezed out. “They’re going to trap us in this stairwell if you don’t snap out of it. Use your link to Maddie if you need it. Be pissed at her or at me or whatever it takes. But keep your focus here, just like in our simulations. My simulations. Listen to my voice. Escape sequence. Map us a way out.”

  Sarah jerked. Her hand tightened around his throat, then dropped. Her breathing calmed. Her eyes cooled to the pools of gray he knew he could control.

  That a girl.

  Then the ground-floor exit door crashed open. Sarah had the security team neutralized immediately, firing above their heads and forcing them to retreat. When the door slammed shut again, her gaze locked on Richard’s. She was waiting for his next command, but he could feel her mind flowing beyond his. Toward her twin. Merging all too easily with a consciousness he hadn’t programmed her to touch.

  “What do you sense?” he asked, shrugging off the implications. Now wasn’t the time to dig for Sarah’s shadowdream programming and who’d implanted it. “Where are the security teams moving?”

  “Two more groups are coming.” She didn’t react as Richard reloaded his weapon and shot an arc of cover fire toward their friends overhead. “There’s one unguarded route left, but there’s a low probability of success.”

  “Low is better than dead. Engage, Alpha. Get us the hell out of here.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Temple!” a warm voice shouted from inside Maddie’s nightmare.

  Another of Sarah’s nightmares. Storm and winds and a swaying forest with a Raven circling overhead. Only this time Maddie was holding an automatic weapon.

  “Wake up!” the voice insisted. “Put the gun down. This isn’t you. You’re a healer.”

  But her twin was a killer. And the Raven was at Sarah’s side somewhere nearby. Pushing her to shoot. To run. Demanding every shred of sanity she had left. And Sarah was dragging Maddie along with her.

  The Raven had to—

  “Die!” Maddie screamed, ramming the rifle’s muzzle into his chest.

  Into Jarred’s chest, where he stood in front of her in the dream.

  Jarred…

  Not the Raven…

  His eyes widened. His gaze darkened with anger that she instinctively knew wasn’t for her.

  “It’s this damn place.” He cupped her cheek, his hand warm against her ice-cold skin. “Whatever they’re doing to your sister here, it’s affecting you. You’re…feeling her. This isn’t you, Maddie. Stay with me.”

  “Pull the trigger!” the Raven hissed through her mind. “Execute!”

  But Jarred’s warm presence wouldn’t let her. As long as he was with her, there was no threat to eliminate.

  Except her.

  Maddie was the threat.

  “You…You have to run,” she said. “Get away from me…”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Jarred’s fingers found hers next to the gun’s trigger. “I won’t let this place get away with whatever they’re doing to Sarah. But you have to wake up for me, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart…

  Maddie’s finger twitched. He simply curled his hand around hers, trusting her with his life. It may have been only a dream, but his trust was real. Undeniable.

  The Raven shrieked, suddenly looming above them in Sarah’s nightmare. The bird dove, wings spread, talons bared.

  Bare tree limbs swayed.

  The gun in her hand fired.

  “No!” Maddie’s scream ripped through the night.

  But the gun wasn’t there anymore. And she was no longer cowering in a ghostly forest.

  “I’ve got you.” Jarred’s voice shook, but he was strong and solid beside her. He’d wrapped his body around hers, where she lay in a terrified heap on the floor. “God. Is that…That’s what you’re seeing every night when you sleep?”

  “Just a dream…” She tried to crawl away. The need to expel the emotion, the feelings that weren’t hers, rose. Surged. “Let me go! It was just a dream…”

  “I won’t let them get away with this.” Jarred cradled her head to his shoulder.

  She covered her ears against lingering waves of nightmare.

  Always another dream, Sarah’s voice chanted.

  Always alone…

  Maddie wrenched away.

  “It’s okay.” Jarred followed.

  Her stomach rejected what little she’d eaten that day. He cursed and pulled her hair back.

  “I can’t take it anymore.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Get away from me before I hurt you. I don’t want to, but she’ll make me. She’s going to—”

  “You’re back with me, Maddie. Sarah’s not here. I’ve got you. You didn’t hurt me. You’re not going to. Whatever that was, it’s over.”

  “That was Sarah. It was me. And it’s never over…Always the same.”

  “No, it’s not the same. This time, you weren’t alone. I was there.” Certainty rained down from his gaze. “Wherever your mind went, mine was there, too. Has that ever happened before?”

  He’d been there.

  He’d really been there.

  “That was Sarah’s nightmare?” he prodded. “The rain. That bird. It was a raven, right? Telling her to run. Forcing her to fight people she didn’t know. Those were the ramblings of a madwoman. It wasn’t you.”

  Maddie flinched at his brutal description of her sister.

  Jarred rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry. I know she’s your twin, and you still care about her no matter what’s happened. But Sarah’s dreaming all this up and forcing it on you.” He rocked, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “All these months, when you’ve been…losing yourself in her dreams, has any of it been anything but your sister’s deranged fantasies?”

  Maddie blinked. She let herself really hear what he was saying. Process what had just happened. See what was real.

  “It’s not just a fantasy,” she said. “Someone…someone’s designing Sarah’s nightmares…Only they’re real, somehow. It feels like someone’s forcing her to do what she’s doing. To kill. And tonight, she…” In the back of Maddie’s mind, she sensed her twin still running for real…Hating for real…Shooting a real weapon at real people…Drawing on Maddie’s control, the way Maddie had balanced Sarah’s gifts when they were kids. Which meant a part of Maddie was trying to hurt people, too.

  “Get away from me!” she begged, but she couldn’t let go of Jarred’s arm. “You have to…”

  Run! the Raven hissed through her mind.

  And Sarah was running. Fighting to be free. Running into the darkness and the rain. The thunder and gunshots…while her mind whispered that she had to kill the Raven.

  “Wake up, Temple! Stay with me.” Jarred’s voice brought Maddie back to his side. She was in his arms still, on the carpeted floor of the reception area. “You have to fight this, damn it. Whatever it is…have to…with me…”

  Maddie felt herself shaking. Her body, out of control. Her mind. Because Sarah was still there, deep inside. But she was leaving, too. Leaving Maddie to a world filled with fear and chaos, the way Maddie had abandoned her.

  “Maddie?” Jarred eased her flailing body to the floor. “Maddie, stay with…Da
mmit…with me…! God, you’re…”

  Seizing.

  She was having seizures.

  Like Sarah’s, when they were teenagers. When the emotions had raged. When there’d been nothing left of Sarah’s mind for the feelings to feed on, so they’d ravaged her body instead. No one had been able to help her. Now, no one could help Maddie.

  Sarah’s darkness was coming for her…

  The nightmare…

  The Raven…

  “…the hell away from her!” Jarred’s touch was yanked away. “Maddie!”

  Footsteps pounded around them, while Maddie fought for consciousness. There were uniforms. Guns. Anger. Fear. She was feeling it all. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t escape. Cold hands locked onto her trembling body. The relentless waves of emotion filling her became a blinding search for release. Because a part of her was outside the center now…

  …stumbling and running, with the Raven’s blood dripping from her fingers.

  She was looking back. She was Sarah, and she was free. Maddie was the one who was trapped. And that made Sarah smile and wave as she slowly shut her mind away and left Maddie to face the center alone.

  “No!” Maddie’s world spiraled back in focus. She was staring up from the reception floor, into the unforgiving eyes of a uniformed guard.

  “Get the hell away from her,” Jarred bellowed, still fighting to protect her. Two other men had him pinned to the wall. “Don’t you fucking touch her. I’m her doctor, and—”

  A gut punch doubled him over.

  “Leave him alone!” Maddie demanded in her twin’s nightmare voice.

  She couldn’t move, but she didn’t have to. In the nightmares, Sarah had controlled people with her mind. And somehow Maddie could now, too. The receptionist. Jarred that morning. Maddie’s patient. She’d been able to do things to all of them—through all of them—with her thoughts alone.

  Jarred’s guards dropped to their knees in agony the second Maddie thought of choking them. Then the man holding her began clawing at his throat. She rose to her feet. A bed of dry, crumbling leaves crackled beneath her. Like the ones beneath her sister’s feet as Sarah stopped running to look back.