Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  “He’s right, Maddie. You have to wake up…” Sarah was letting go. Casting a hate-filled stare over Maddie’s shoulder. “You haven’t won,” she said to Jarred. “I won’t let you win.”

  “Sarah?” Maddie was the one holding on now, terrified for her sister no matter how much damage Sarah’s hate had done.

  “She won’t be able to move,” Sarah warned Jarred. “But you have to get her out of there. Don’t screw this up, asshole, or I’ll finish the job the next time I try to kill you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jarred demanded.

  “They’re coming.” Sarah let go.

  Maddie swayed at the lost connection.

  Sarah slapped her across the face.

  “Wake up!” she screamed. “Quit now, and it’s all gone. Me. You. What we were born to be. Our mother. Even your precious doctor. We’ll all die. Because you’re too weak to accept reality.”

  “Maddie?” Jarred’s hold was still there—both in the dream and in reality. He was stronger. He was going to live. “You have to—”

  “Wake up!” Sarah screamed, her eyes full of loathing as she shoved Maddie into Jarred’s arms…

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Jarred held Maddie close. They were shivering against the room’s bitter cold. And from the lingering power of Maddie’s healing dream.

  Maddie had healed him.

  It was impossible for him to sort the reality of what had happened from fantasy. The love from the neardeath. The loss from rebirth, and then loss again. All of it swirling through his mind until Jarred was certain of only two things. He and Maddie had loved each other with their minds and bodies. And—he looked down at the scars and blood left by the vicious slashes her sister had cut into him—healing him had damn near killed her.

  Jarred clutched Maddie closer. He barely had the strength to move. He couldn’t force his eyes open. But his hands were roaming Maddie’s precious curves, reassuring him that she really was alive. His fingers clenched in the softness of her hair. His mind tentatively reached for hers, and he found overwhelming gratitude waiting for him. Maddie’s relief that he was alive. That she’d been able to save him. Which meant he was right, and she’d been good after all.

  Move! a voice screamed through the darkness.

  Not his voice.

  Not Maddie’s.

  Sarah?

  You’re in danger! Move your ass, and get my sister out of there.

  There was no reason to believe the psychotic bitch. Except that Maddie was still alive instead of lost to him forever. And Sarah had been the one to shove her at Jarred before ending their dream link. But if Sarah was gone, how could he still be hearing her voice?

  “Jarred?” Maddie shuddered and rolled off his body. She was pale as death. Covered in his blood. She stared down at his chest, at the roughly closed wounds that throbbed like a son of a bitch. “Sarah…she…she tried to kill you.”

  “But I’m alive.” He ignored the pain and the fatigue and the motel room spinning around them and sat up, too. Focused on Maddie. “You wouldn’t let me go, and I wouldn’t let Sarah have you, and…” He swallowed. “And here we are.”

  “I…” Maddie was shaking. Like she had after saving her patient, only worse. She grabbed for Jarred’s arm, every muscle in her body jittering out of control. “I…Sarah. She’s saying it’s not safe, and…I believe her.”

  “I do, too.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on Jarred—his instinct to trust a woman he’d never met whose dreams were trying to kill him. He pulled the bedspread up and around Maddie, even though physical warmth wouldn’t make a dent at this point. Her mind was shattering more with each touch of her insane twin’s thoughts.

  “Mmm-ove,” she gasped in Sarah’s voice, her muscles destabilizing into convulsions.

  “Maddie!”

  His hate grew for whatever evil was stalking her. For the choice he had to make next. He couldn’t protect her like this. Not on his own. He stroked Maddie’s shaking body and willed her to hang on. Then he grappled for his jeans, where they’d been tossed aside when he and Maddie had ripped off each other’s clothes.

  He fished inside one of the pockets until he found the damned cell phone. Metting’s trap had become Jarred’s last chance, just as the other man had predicted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You don’t have a choice,” Richard insisted to Jarred Keith over the phone, squelching the hint of desperation in his voice. An impatient gesture silenced the questions of the man standing beside him. “You have to come in now. It’s only a matter of time before the center finds you. They already have Phyllis Temp—”

  “Or you do,” Keith spat back. A moaning sound from his end of the call assured Richard that Madeline Temple was still alive, despite Keith’s rushed explanation that the twins had had a “homicidal” nightmare. “Maybe you took the mother to get to the daughters. I’m not letting Maddie anywhere near you or this…organization of yours, until you tell me what’s happening to Maddie and her sister. What just happened to me.”

  “I could have kept Maddie at the center, and you know it. All I had to do was give her to the center’s directors, and they would have welcomed me back with open arms. But I didn’t.”

  “Of course not. That wouldn’t have gotten you Sarah back, and you’ve made it clear that she’s who you really want.”

  “I could have had you both dragged in hours ago. A strike team is ready to bring you in at my command.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me trust you?”

  “We’re a brotherhood of Watchers, Dr. Keith. We’ve been protecting the Temple twins’ legacy for decades. I assure you, our objectives have never coincided with those of the Trinity Research Center.”

  “Except you worked with Sarah Temple there. And now you want Maddie after she leads you to her sister.”

  “Actually, all I want at the moment is for her not to completely lose her mind. That’s why you need to bring her in.”

  Extended silence crackled over the line.

  “The damage Sarah can do to her twin,” Richard continued, “is nothing compared to what the center has in store for Madeline if they can get their hands on her. Calling me is the first right thing you’ve done. Don’t backtrack now.”

  The data streaming across Richard’s computer link gave him little more than ten minutes before he’d have to order an extraction. But he needed Jarred Keith on board. He needed the other doctor’s cooperation and trust for Richard to have any chance of finding Sarah through Madeline.

  “Maddie’s getting worse,” Keith finally said. “If you really want me to trust you, tell me how to help her.”

  “Is she getting worse?” Richard pressed. “Or stronger?”

  “Well, she almost killed me during one of her sister’s dreams,” Keith snapped. “But then she saved my life once she finally accepted that she could control her abilities herself. Does that get you off, you freak? Knowing what you’ve done to these women. How about the seizure she just had? And how she keeps muttering—”

  “Saved…She healed you?” Madeline would have had to immerse herself into Keith’s subconscious body image to transform his physiology. Just like Richard had taught Sarah to release her consciousness into a host’s dream, so she could control the dreamer’s reality. “She’s always been a gifted diagnostician. But has she ever done that before?”

  No answer.

  “If her abilities have progressed, Dr. Keith, it’s important that I know how much and—”

  “So you can exploit her healing dreams, the way you did her twin’s nightmares?”

  The mumbling on Keith’s end of the call grew louder. “…coming…have to…before it’s too…” a feminine voice rambled.

  “What is she saying?” Richard told himself that it was Madeline he was listening to, not Sarah. But that voice…it was a dead-on match.

  “Tell me how to help her,” Keith insisted.

  “Come in, and I’ll help her any way I
can.” Richard covered the phone with his hand. “Get me a situation report from the strike team at the motel,” he ordered. “I want an ETA to perimeter breach.”

  His assistant walked to the other side of the trailer Richard was using to monitor the motel and his team, an open com link to his ear.

  “She’s…Maddie’s…” Keith’s hatred for Richard was a living thing coming across the phone line. “She’s a danger to herself, and I don’t know why. And you do, you bastard, and I swear to God if you don’t help her, I’ll—”

  “What is she saying, Doctor?” Metting strained to hear. Madeline’s voice was getting stronger. She was speaking faster. “It’s very important that you tell me—”

  “You tell me what you’ve done to her, first.” The other man dug in, steel in his voice. “Tell me how I can—”

  “You can’t help her.” Richard heard snatches of,…closer…alert five…abort… “You need to get Madeline out of there, and meet me—”

  “Not until you—”

  “Perimeter breached,” Richard’s lieutenant confirmed, turning back from his conversation with the strike team. “Three minutes, max.”

  Richard gave the hand signal to bring them in.

  “I’m afraid there is no until,” he said to the man still ranting in his ear. “I’d hoped this would end another way, but you have only minutes before the center has you surrounded. And I can’t let that happen.”

  “You can’t…” Keith sputtered. “Who the fuck do you think you are!”

  “I’m the man who’s about to save your ass.” Richard raised his own com link to his ear. His team’s chatter would be minimal as they closed in, but he needed to hear every word.

  “Abort!” Madeline shouted next. Richard had no doubt that it was Sarah warning Keith, not her twin. The fear in Sarah’s voice seared through Richard. “Run!”

  There was a crash, followed by Keith’s curse and a woman’s scream.

  The line went dead.

  “Contact made—” Richard’s team lead reported. “Secondary target also engaged.”

  Then that line, too, shut down. Standard protocol until the scene was contained.

  Richard cursed. The arrival of the team’s secondary targets—a center squad that had been closing in but was only to be engaged if they interfered with Richard’s plans—was a complication Richard’s operatives didn’t need while they neutralized Madeline Temple. It would be hard enough to safely bring her in without the center’s hired guns adding to the woman’s psychic confusion.

  Richard should have signaled for extraction sooner, regardless of his plan to let Keith make the first move. Earning the other doctor’s trust bought Richard nothing if they lost Madeline to the center. Especially now that her latent abilities were strengthening.

  He’d been doing his job, he reminded himself. His duty. For over a year. He couldn’t reach Sarah now without Madeline, and he couldn’t reach Madeline without Jarred Keith’s willing participation. So Richard had done his job and waited, the same as he’d waited at the center until the Brotherhood knew everything it could about the government’s Dream Weaver objectives. But tonight his duty may have destroyed their last chance to reach either Temple twin. To save their legacy from disintegrating into the kind of evil that only death could contain.

  And if that happened, the center might as well hunt Richard down and kill him, too. He’d never survive knowing he’d failed Sarah so completely.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Jarred stood naked, a blood-soaked knife in his hand, between the woman he loved and the men wearing black on black who’d burst through the motel-room door.

  “What the fuck do you want!” he snarled while Maddie babbled on in the altered state she’d slipped into.

  “Alert five…abort…” she muttered while what looked like a black-ops team held Jarred at gunpoint and watched her warily.

  In the next second, Maddie was fully conscious and springing off the bed, which shouldn’t have been possible in her weakened condition. She grabbed the knife, naked herself without the bedspread covering her—She was facing the window rather than the armed men who’d just broken down their door. “They’re here,” she said with a shaky voice that wasn’t her own. “Abort. Run!”

  “Secure the package.” The black shirt closest to Jarred reached for Maddie as the window shattered and a round cylinder flew inside.

  Maddie grabbed black shirt’s arm with her free hand, twisted it at an angle that wrenched the bone from the shoulder joint, then let him drop as the canister popped and began spewing thick smoke. She threw her body in front of Jarred, a warrior full-on, as two more men hurled into the tiny room, shattering the rest of the window and brandishing lethal automatic weapons. She picked up the smoke-spewing canister and threw it back outside before its fumes could fill the room.

  All Jarred could do was stare as the exhausted and mentally drained woman he’d been determined to protect kicked ass. The first team killed the newest intruders with four efficient shots, then swept the dead men to the periphery of the room. Someone grabbed Jarred from behind, restraining his arms.

  “Maddie?” he stuttered.

  She stared down at the bloody knife in her hand, then at the man she’d maimed. She was shaking again, coming back to herself from Sarah or whomever else she’d just connected to, and whatever that connection had done to her.

  “Secure the package,” the black shirt at her feet growled though the pain from his injury.

  The man made it to his feet as his cohorts surrounded Maddie. They took the knife away. A flinch was her only visible reaction.

  “Don’t touch her,” Jarred warned.

  The injured black shirt fingered a hands-free device wrapped around his ear. One of his team fished into his backpack, removing a rumpled pile of black clothing.

  “Get them dressed,” the injured one ordered. “Report,” he said to God knew who on the other end of his communication.

  Maddie whimpered.

  “You’re scaring her,” Jarred said as he struggled into his clothes, hating the callousness of the hands stuffing Maddie into hers.

  Then, suddenly, the shirts supporting a semiconscious Maddie raised their free hands to their throats. They began to choke.

  “Oh, God,” Jarred said.

  “Roger, we’ve cleared the primary site. Package is in tow. We’re underway for rendezvous in sixty.” The wounded man’s only response to his team’s distress was to step directly in front of Jarred.

  He was choking, too. Jarred could see the strain in his face as he calmly fought for air. But that didn’t stop the man from lifting the lethal blade of his own knife to Jarred’s throat. Meanwhile, Maddie’s nightmarish visions of choking to death every black shirt in the room flooded Jarred’s mind.

  Help me… her mind whispered, begging for the same control Jarred had been for her as she’d reversed Sarah’s damage to his body.

  “Stop her, Doctor,” black shirt bit out on a gasp. “Or I will by whatever means necessary. More center operatives are no doubt on their way. Ms. Temple is no longer safe without our protection. The Brotherhood’s orders are to bring her in alive. The rest is at my discretion. I will make my rendezvous as ordered, even if it means damaging the package. You have thirty seconds to make up your mind.”

  “The package?” Jarred spat back, somehow knowing the man wouldn’t slit his throat. Not if he needed Jarred to handle Maddie.

  “Twenty seconds.” The guy holstered the knife. He opened the chamber on the weapon slung across his good shoulder, revealing the same type of medicated dart Metting had used on them before.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Jarred insisted.

  “Understood. Fifteen seconds.”

  He snapped the chamber closed and aimed the weapon, one-handed, at Maddie. His face was turning blue, but he would fire. Jarred had no doubt.

  “All right.” As soon as Jarred said the word, the man stumbled out of his way. Jarred approached Maddi
e carefully. “Let her go.”

  The black shirts restraining her looked to their leader for confirmation. Then they sank to their knees, hands on their throats. Jarred caught Maddie to him, wrapping his arms around her shivering body.

  “You’re safe,” he whispered over the sound of storming winds and rustling branches in their minds. “Let them go, Maddie. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  She shook her head, tears filling her eyes.

  “Let them go,” Jarred said over the click of a weapon being primed to fire. “I love you. You have to trust me. I won’t let them hurt you anymore…”

  It was a lie. He could feel that she knew it, too. But then she was letting go, softening against him as the men choking on the ground collapsed to all fours and gulped in full breaths of air.

  Jarred closed his eyes, wanting to believe he’d made the right decision. He turned with her to face the blackshirt leader—whose gun was trained on Jarred now.

  “I did what you asked,” Jarred raged.

  “Is she unconscious?” the other man asked.

  “Yes.” Jarred positioned as much of his body as possible between Maddie and the gun.

  The black shirts on either side of them rose to their feet, one taking Maddie’s arm, the other taking Jarred’s.

  “Good,” their leader said, dispassionately firing a dart into Jarred’s neck. “That makes my job considerably easier.”

  We’re death, and it’s the Raven’s fault. Never forget that. It’s the Raven’s fault…

  Sarah’s hate was the first thing Maddie became aware of. Horrific images came next. Maddie choking security at Trinity Center, stabbing Jarred, attacking another man, facing down danger with combat skills she didn’t possess because Sarah had been trained in them somehow. And what Sarah knew, Maddie did now, too.

  Then came a new dream of using a bloody knife to attack the Raven. Except Maddie no longer had a knife, so she’d have to use her bare hands to get the job done.

  No!

  Maddie’s mind clawed its way back to her own consciousness, rejecting Sarah’s insanity. She forced her eyes to open and stay open, even though her body was still numb. She blinked into the dimness around her. The return of her hearing ushered in the sound of branches scratching and wind howling, just like in her dreams. In Sarah’s dreams.