Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  Bitch! Sarah screamed in Maddie’s mind…

  Sarah was still running…nowhere to go…no safe place to hide. But she wasn’t going to curl up and wait to be dragged back to those bastards she’d escaped from. She wasn’t—

  “—fucking killing anymore!” Maddie blurted into the phone.

  “What!” Panic shredded Phyllis’s question. “Honey, tell me you haven’t—”

  “Turned into Sarah?” Maddie’s world flickered in and out of focus. Jarred slipped a supportive arm around her shoulder.

  You ok? he mouthed, reaching for the phone.

  When she shook her head no but wouldn’t let him take the cell, he cuddled her closer. Comfort and concern and something deeper washed over her. Something she didn’t dare let herself trust.

  …because I love you…he’d said.

  “Maddie.” Her mom was begging now. “Please don’t do this to yourself, like—”

  “I’m already like Sarah.” Maddie closed her eyes, accepting what her insane dreams had been trying to tell her all along.

  “Honey—”

  “For months now I’ve been like her, but I was afraid to tell you. Afraid for you. What are you afraid of, Mom? Me losing my mind, or you finally having to face the truth.”

  “Maddie, I didn’t know—”

  “Of course you didn’t. You never have. You’ve always done whatever it took to hide from the one thing Sarah and I needed. For once, would you just be honest with me?”

  “Where are you, Maddie? What’s—?”

  “Tell me about the voices. The ones Sarah couldn’t stand. In her dreams. In her mind. The feelings, everywhere. All the time, whenever she was around other people. And then when she went to sleep, those same people were in her dreams. Now people are dying…because he wants them to…however he wants them to…”

  “Maddie!”

  “—because he told me to kill her and I didn’t have a choice…or maybe I didn’t really want a choice…” Somehow Maddie knew it was Sarah talking now, but she couldn’t stop herself. No matter what Jarred thought, Sarah was the one in control. “I don’t want to kill anyone. Sarah doesn’t, not really. But now she…we don’t have a choice—”

  “Stop this!” Phyllis snapped, sounding like a mother for the first time in ten years. “Stop it now. I don’t know what nonsense that Dr. Keith has been filling your head with. But if you need a therapist, we’ll find someone to help you who won’t—”

  “I need an exorcist. Sarah’s—”

  “Sarah’s in a coma. She’s not—”

  “She’s not in my dreams? She’s not in my head now, running from people she wants to kill? Is this what you had in mind when you turned that research center loose on my sister! Did you promise them two for the price of one?”

  Maddie could feel Jarred’s concern grow, and she couldn’t take it. Not while Phyllis was denying everything, exactly the way Maddie had known she would. Maddie shoved him away. Sarah’s hate pushed just a little closer.

  “I…I did no such thing!” Phyllis sputtered. “Your father’s insurance barely left us enough money to live off of, let alone deal with your sister’s chronic condition.”

  “So you abandoned her to those monsters!” Monsters Maddie could see through flashes of Sarah’s memories.

  Wheeling Sarah in and out of rooms. Forcing her through dream simulations. Exercising her body, but keeping her mind numb until they needed her to dream. Secret simulations that never ended. Drugs and tubes and wires and dreams…Everything Jarred had said…the government weapons testing…all of it was true.

  “I agreed to research trials that could possibly…” Phyllis’s voice caught. “…improve Sarah’s quality of life, when I couldn’t afford to—”

  “You let them experiment on her for money?”

  “No! They were studying her brain activity. Her responses to stimuli. Whatever they could do to try and reach her and control…To help her. Help you. To understand—”

  “Understand what, Mom! What does the government want with us?”

  “The government? You’re not making any sense, honey.”

  “Like Sarah wasn’t making sense before the accident?”

  “Maddie…” Her name came out as a sob, then Phyllis couldn’t seem to stop crying. “Don’t do this.”

  “You knew it was inevitable.” Maddie took her first cleansing breath in months, the truth becoming an awful kind of freedom. “So you made a deal with the devil and gave Sarah away.”

  “This isn’t supposed to be happening. The curse isn’t real…”

  “Tell me where the curse came from. What does it mean?”

  “It’s nothing…It’s a myth. No one’s taken it seriously for generations. That stupid paper, rambling about twins fulfilling our family destiny. I threw it away. I refuse to believe—”

  “You believed, or you wouldn’t have been so afraid our whole lives.”

  “It’s not real.”

  “Well Sarah’s nightmares are real, and I keep having them. Daddy’s accident. Sarah running, thinking she’s a killer and wanting to…to die…”

  “Maddie, you can’t let your sister—”

  “She’s sending them to me, Mom! I’m not letting her do anything!”

  Maddie checked to make sure Jarred was listening. To make sure he heard just how unhinged her family was. If he didn’t leave, she’d kill him eventually. She could feel it coming. Sarah’s mania was building. Soon there’d be no stopping her.

  “You need to calm down,” Phyllis said. “Calm down and let me help you—”

  “You want to help me? Tell me how she’s using me, Mom. Tell me what’s wrong with all of us, that my sister could use my mind and do all the things she’s doing. And then you tell me it’s not my fault, everything she’s done. Everyone she’s hurt.”

  “She’s not doing anything, honey.” Phyllis’s unflinching denial was the final straw. “She’s been asleep. And, besides. You’re nothing like her.”

  “I am her.” It was the healing part of Maddie that had always been the lie.

  “Stop this now! Stop—”

  “I…Sarah…we…” It was all flooding back, everything that had happened at the center. “We hurt people tonight. Together…”

  Maddie had been there exactly when Sarah had needed her. Their minds had…linked. Until Maddie had wanted to stop those bastards at the center, the same as Sarah. She’d wanted to—

  “Oh, my God!” She gripped the phone tighter. “I did it. I killed people tonight!”

  “No.” Jarred pulled the phone away. “You didn’t kill anyone. I have no idea what Sarah’s done, but you didn’t kill anyone tonight. You couldn’t, Maddie. That’s not who you are. You were—”

  A crash rattled over the phone.

  “…Stay away from me!” Her mother shrieked as Maddie yanked the phone back to her ear. “You can’t do this. You…Don’t point that gun at me!”

  “Mom?”

  There was a rattle. The phone banged against something.

  “Maddie!” Phyllis screamed. “Help me!”

  The silence that followed was final. Empty. Then came Sarah’s laughter. Menacing. Desperate. Hate, racing toward Maddie. Sarah’s hate for their mother.

  “Mom! Stay away from her. Can you hear me?”

  Sarah heard. Maddie could feel her sister’s smile. Hear her laughter. Because their mother was finally going to—

  “Die!”

  The command echoed. A raven’s wings spread. Bare tree limbs swayed.

  The gun in her hand fired.

  Phyllis’s scream ripped through the night.

  “No!”

  Jarred caught her as she crumpled to the floor. “Maddie?”

  “Sarah,” Maddie whispered. “My mother…”

  The world was darkening around her. Only this time she welcomed the terrifying numbness.

  “Sarah’s…She’s killed my mother…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Let us
off here,” Jarred said to the cabdriver.

  They were still several sleepy, residential streets away from Phyllis Temple’s house. Maddie roused herself enough to raise a questioning eyebrow. Jarred paid the driver, got them out of the cab and waited for the car to pull away before responding.

  “No point in announcing our arrival,” he explained, “when we don’t know what we’re walking into.”

  Maddie hadn’t even been able to tell Jarred if what she’d heard over the phone was real. Her mother’s screams and Maddie’s conviction that Phyllis was dead could have been another of Sarah’s demented dreams. But Maddie had gone ape-shit until he’d agreed to take her to the Temple house—regardless of Metting’s warnings to steer clear of people and places she knew. She’d barely responded to anything Jarred had said since.

  He pulled her into the shadows of a hedgerow fronting a federal-style, two-story home. Uncoordinated still but growing stronger, Maddie followed without comment.

  “It’s only a few more blocks,” he assured her.

  “I’m fine.” The crisp night air had cleared more of the vagueness from her voice.

  At the next corner he walked them between the two houses, then cut across an unfenced backyard.

  “We have to be careful.”

  “Because of Sarah?” Maddie asked.

  “I don’t think she’d really hurt you.”

  “Yes, you do. She wants to destroy me. She killed my mother.” It was unnerving, the complete lack of emotion in Maddie’s voice or on her face, after she’d been so irate at Victoria’s.

  “You don’t know that. You said yourself, the scream you heard sounded like your nightmares.”

  “Where Sarah kills someone—with a gun.”

  “But I didn’t hear gunfire, and I was standing right beside you. The call disconnected before I took the phone.”

  “Because Sarah killed her!”

  Maddie swayed. But she kept walking on her own, weaving toward her mother’s house.

  “This isn’t your fault.” Jarred followed close behind.

  “Stop coddling me,” she demanded.

  “Stop insisting on taking responsibility for everything your sister does. You didn’t know that Sarah—”

  “I knew. I’ve known for months, and I was too afraid of what was happening to admit it. Because of that, my mother’s—”

  Jarred held up a hand, waiting until a car passed before he led her out of their shadowy shortcut and closer to the road. “Even if something has happened to Phyllis, you—”

  Maddie stopped cold.

  “What if she’s still here?” she asked.

  “Who, Sarah?”

  “I can’t feel…” Maddie tried to keep going. Tripped over a raised tree root and hit the ground hard.

  Jarred crouched beside her, his body shielding hers from any cars that might pass by.

  “I can’t tell if Sarah’s there or not.” Maddie turned away. “I can only feel her when she wants me, too…when…”

  “Have you ever attempted to reach Sarah’s mind on your own? Have you ever tried to—”

  Maddie flinched. Then her head rolled toward him,.

  “Sarah…” she whispered, her pupils rapidly dilating.

  She lurched to her feet and darted toward her mother’s place.

  “Maddie!” He took off after her. “Don’t! We have to—”

  She kicked into a sprint. Brushed into a tree. Kept barreling forward, blind and separate from him and about to burst around the next corner and into her mother’s front yard.

  “Maddie!” He turned up his own speed and grabbed her from behind.

  They went down. His palm muffled her scream. Panic consumed them both as her emotional control shattered. They hit the ground and disappeared behind an cluster of azaleas. Branches scraped his cheek. He protected her body as best he could. Maddie’s nails dug deep. Her fury deeper still. She squealed against his fingers. Her mind battered his. Her eyes darkened completely—to the gray he expected to see one day in Sarah’s gaze. He pinned her to the ground.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, ignoring the feel of her body squirming beneath him. “Stay with me. Me, Maddie, not Sarah. Don’t let her take control. You can stop her.”

  She bit his fingers. He held firm.

  “You can do this,” he insisted. “You’re almost there. Focus on helping your mother. Helping yourself. Hell, focus on helping Sarah, if that’s what you need. But don’t let the darkness win. Trust me, you’re strong enough to stop it. We’re out in the open. It’s too dangerous for you to fall apart now. Stop it.”

  She continued to struggle, not hearing a word.

  Trust me Maddie, he repeated in his thoughts. Come back to me.

  Trust me…

  Slowly quieting, she blinked up at him. The green began to edge out the gray in her eyes.

  I…I do…her mind whispered back. I’m here…

  He thought back, realized what had happened, and let his fingers slide away from her mouth.

  “Okay,” he said. “That was my fault. The next time you try to reach your sister’s mind, we’ll—”

  “I didn’t.” Maddie shook her head. “I didn’t try…That’s impossible. I can’t—”

  “I think you did. And I never should have suggested it in the open like this. I’ll be more careful. But your mind did reach for Sarah’s, and not only that—you found her. She was here for a few seconds, because you wanted her to be.” Maddie was still shaking her head, and he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her. And then kissing her again. Whatever it took to get her believing in him. Believing in herself. “You’re strong, Maddie. Look at how you’re racing to your mother, no matter how afraid you are of what you’ll find. You’re scared, but whatever you have to face, you’re strong enough to handle it. And if that means confronting Sarah—”

  “No! I can’t. She’ll—”

  “You can.” Another kiss quieted her. A deeper kiss that felt like giving Maddie a piece of his soul, so she could see the amazing woman he did. “You can do anything, Madeline Temple. Now let’s deal with your mother and whatever we can find at her house that will tell us more about Dr. Metting and his Center of Doom.”

  Maddie stared at Jarred’s mouth, then into his gaze. He did everything he could to make sure all she found there was confidence—not the fear lurking behind his sarcasm. The fear that no matter what he did, he was going to get Maddie killed before all this was done.

  “I want to use the back door.” He kept things conversational as he got her to her feet. “Once we’re sure it’s safe, we’ll go in through the kitchen and find your mom.”

  Maddie nodded slowly. He guided her around the back of the house, neither of them seeing or sensing anything out of the ordinary. It was another quiet night in the suburbs. No sirens or police lights flashing because the neighbors had heard a commotion or, worse, a gunshot.

  Maddie leaned into him.

  I’m here…her thoughts said. She hadn’t responded when he’d said he loved her. But she was starting to believe in him. To let herself need him.

  He stopped beneath an overbright moon, shining through an enormous oak that took up half the backyard. He gazed down at her.

  “I’m here,” she repeated out loud. “Me. Not Sarah.”

  She kissed him…sweetness and fragile courage and need reaching for him. And he kissed her back, praying he would be worthy of the trust she was placing in him.

  “Of course it’s you.” For him, it would always be her. “Whatever we find in there, you weren’t a part of it. Tell me you believe that. Thinking it’s your fault will only make it easier for Sarah to come back. It’s like she’s waiting to take advantage when you’re weakest. Don’t let her.”

  Maddie was shaking in his arms, but her mind was calmer. She nodded her head, her lips clinging to his once more. She rested her head on his shoulder. The simple acceptance of it humbled him.

  “You’re not alone,” he promised. “I’ll be here, n
o matter what.”

  Madness. Insanity. Danger. Sinister government experiments. Nothing could tear Jarred away.

  They watched Phyllis’s house. When several minutes passed and Maddie had stopped shaking and there’d been no sound or movement from inside, he said, “Let’s go.”

  Maddie clung to him as far as the patio door, which was slightly ajar. An eat-in kitchen was visible just inside.

  “Stay here,” she said to him.

  Like hell.

  Jarred threaded his fingers through hers. Then he stepped over the threshold first, placing his body between his fragile healer and whatever waited inside.

  Maddie focused on Jarred’s strong back as he led the way.

  Horrible sounds still scrambled for control of her mind. Her mother’s screams…The Raven’s screams…Sarah’s screams…Other people’s screams…Then Jarred’s voice saying he loved her, over and over again. Until she could hear him above all the rest.

  Stay with me, Maddie…

  And she had. Her mind was with him now, not with Sarah. And wherever Jarred was, was where Maddie wanted to stay.

  The house was still around them. There was nothing to feel there. No one. She bumped into Jarred, only then realizing he’d stopped.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Maddie’s nod mustn’t have been very convincing. He glanced at the death grip she had on his hand.

  “Wait here.” He pulled out a kitchen chair.

  She headed for the dining room instead. Jarred had said she was stronger than she thought. Strong enough to see this through.

  “Mom?” she called in a voice she barely recognized.

  Jarred stayed only a step behind her.

  Careful…

  His warning wrapped around her. Warming her where she’d been cold since…since losing the connection she’d had with her twin as a teenager. A decade of cold. Whatever she and Sarah had been as children was now a twisted darkness that everything would sink into, until—

  “Maddie?” Jarred asked.

  Stay with me, sweetheart…

  She realized she’d stopped with her hand on the halfopen door to the dining room.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” he said.