Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

“I know there isn’t. I can feel it.”

  In her mind, Maddie turned to Jarred and curled her body into his as she let go of the hope of seeing her mother again alive.

  “You don’t have to do this.” He reached for her in reality. “I could—”

  “Yes, I do.” She inched away. “Whatever happened to Phyllis, I have to face it.”

  Whatever Sarah had done. Whatever evil Maddie had unleashed when she’d participated in her sister escaping from the center. It was time to stop hiding.

  Help me, her mind begged Jarred’s.

  All right. His reassurance was rock solid. Whatever you need.

  With Jarred’s strength behind her, Maddie pushed open the door to the dining room. The hinge creaked. She tripped over the portable phone lying on the floor. Jarred grabbed her, then picked up the unit, pressing several buttons and watching the display.

  “What?” she asked. Something in his expression was scaring her.

  “Don’t worry about it right now. Let’s see what else we can find.”

  Jarred glanced around the dining room, and only then did she have the courage to look more closely herself. At nothing, it turned out. There was nothing to see. No Phyllis. No sign of a struggle, except maybe the phone Jarred was still holding. But it could have simply fallen onto the floor.

  Maddie slapped her palms to the dining room table.

  Had she imagined the entire thing?

  “Phyllis was here when I called,” Jarred assured her. “I spoke with her first, remember? And she didn’t just disappear into thin air.”

  “Mom!” Maddie ran into the family room. Silence welcomed her. Emptiness.

  Sensing Jarred’s strong presence behind her, she stumbled up the stairs and ran down the hall.

  “Mom, it’s Maddie. I need to talk to you. I need to know more about the center…”

  She careened into her mother’s bedroom, desperate to find the woman she’d sworn just hours before to hate forever. But Phyllis wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere upstairs. Maddie turned on every light in every room and checked each closet. Each bathroom. By the time she dragged herself back downstairs, she was exhausted and pissed again and more terrified than ever.

  “I didn’t imagine it,” Maddie insisted. “I didn’t!”

  They made their way back to the dining room. Maddie wandered into the kitchen, feeling Jarred close behind her. She almost wished he hadn’t come now.

  Chickenshit! her twin’s insanity shrieked. If you don’t want the asshole there, make him leave.

  Maddie’s fingers grazed her mother’s gourmet knife set, displayed in its fancy chopping block. Her hand clenched on the knife with the wicked serrated edge that Phyllis preferred above the others. It wasn’t the largest in the bunch, but it could slice through anything, including Maddie’s fingers on several occasions.

  “You okay?” Jarred asked behind her.

  Feeling separated from her body, Maddie slid the lethal blade from its home.

  Die! the voice insisted.

  Jarred’s hands cupped her shoulders. His closeness surrounded her with a sense of peace. Of belonging. “You’re not alone. I’m here.”

  Maddie blinked the knife and her twin’s deadly intentions into focus. She spun toward Jarred and away from the counter. Took his hand and dragged him back to the dining room.

  She tried to piece together which parts of the phone conversation with Phyllis had been real.

  “You called my mother,” she insisted.

  “Yes,” Jarred confirmed.

  “And I talked to her after you did.”

  “Yes.”

  “And…” And what? she begged him with her eyes.

  “You said you heard a gunshot?”

  “I…” There was no evidence of a shooting anywhere. No blood or a stray hole in the wall or anything. “I…I don’t know. I thought I did…I know I heard Phyllis scream…”

  And Sarah had been laughing. But had Sarah been at the house, trying to kill their mother? Or had she been in Maddie’s mind, preying on Maddie’s and Phyllis’s drama. Dreaming of haunted trees and birds of prey and that damn gun.

  “She screamed,” Maddie scraped out. “I know I heard my mother yell at someone who was in the house…Someone who surprised her. She told them to get out. They had a gun. She told them to put it down. And then she screamed…”

  “But?” Jarred asked.

  “How do I know what happened next was real?” Her mother had been terrified, but—“How could the gunshot not have been real, if the rest of it was?”

  Jarred took another look around the room. He walked to the other side of the table where the folder that she’d found in her mother’s files had been left. A piece of paper lay on top of it. A handwritten note. Joining him, Maddie picked up the paper with a shaking hand. Her vision refused to unblur long enough to process it.

  Jarred didn’t have the same problem. His expression grew murderous as he read.

  “Whoever surprised your mother,” he snapped, “I’d say your sister’s off the hook.”

  Maddie sank into a dining room chair in relief. Jarred set the paper down before opening the folder. Maddie concentrated until the note shimmered into focus.

  Find Sarah. Bring her back to Trinity. Or Phyllis Temple dies.

  Maddie’s entire body began to shake.

  Find Sarah…

  …back to Trinity…

  “I…I can’t.” Debilitating fear took over, laughing at Jarred’s assurances that she was strong. Maddie was going to be the twin who killed Phyllis after all, because—“I can’t go back there. I can’t…I can’t find Sarah…I won’t. It’s…it’s that doctor. Metting? He did this. You said me bringing Sarah to him was exactly what he wanted. He wants us both back. Because he—”

  “It wasn’t Metting. If he was here, it’s because your mother asked him to come. Which means she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him. She wouldn’t have screamed at him to leave.”

  Jarred was staring into the folder labeled trinity. The one with Maddie’s blood smeared over the edge. He’d moved aside what looked like a standard hospital admission form—filled out and dated ten years ago. There was only one other thing in the folder, a single slip of paper with numbers scribbled on it in masculine, block handwriting. And in the same hand, the name Dr. Richard Raventhall Metting.

  “What?” she asked.

  Jarred looked closer, as if to be sure. He grabbed her mother’s phone from the table and checked the display. Then he pulled the cell they’d been using from his pocket and pressed several buttons.

  “What!” Maddie demanded.

  “This is the last call Phyllis made.” He showed Maddie the number he’d accessed on the portable. “And this is the number Metting put into his cell before giving it to me.”

  They matched.

  “How did my mother know Sarah’s doctor’s private number?”

  Jarred handed her the paper that had been inside the folder. It wasn’t yellowed with age like the admissions form. It was newer. Much newer. And the same phone number—beside Metting’s name—had been recorded on it.

  “When he started working with your sister, he must have given Phyllis his contact information,” Jarred said, “just in case.”

  “In case of what?” In case Phyllis’s other daughter started losing her marbles, too? In case Sarah ever got away from him? In case he needed Phyllis to betray both of her twins one day, instead of settling for sacrificing only one of their lives? “Why would she have called him?”

  “When Metting gave me the phone,” Jarred bit out, the world around them fading from light to gray as Maddie’s thoughts spiraled into confusion, “he said to call him when I was ready for help. When—” He gazed down at her, at the way she was scratching at her already-raw wrists. “—when I’d realized he was my only hope of saving you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Richard sat in the darkened car beside a darkened curb, beneath a gas lamp that would never agai
n illuminate its quaint, suburban street.

  Dr. Keith and his charge were being careful, euphemistically speaking. They’d used the backyard to enter the Temple home. But Richard had seen them approach, and he doubted he was the only one on their tail. He’d had a head start. He’d been tracking the GPS chip in the cell he’d given Keith from the moment Richard had reconnected with the Brotherhood. But every light in the house was on now. If the center didn’t have the pair in their sights yet, it was only a matter of time. And Keith and Temple were just sitting there, waiting to be picked off.

  They’d been inside for quite a while. Too long a while. Richard checked the digital display on his dash. One hour ago on the nose, Phyllis Temple had phoned him. Her call had clinched Richard’s go-ahead from his elders to stay on the Temples’ trails, with a sizable recon team supporting him. He had twenty-four hours to bring both twins under Brotherhood control, or the Temples’ psychic legacy would go the way of others over the centuries. Other exceptionally gifted families with powers that could have insured the safety of generations to come, if they’d been brought under the Watchers’ guidance. But they’d become too volatile. Perverted until they became a danger to the world around them. So they’d been forever silenced.

  Richard had arrived at the Temple home in time to watch Phyllis be carried away, unresponsive, by three masked men. Richard’s team had tracked the unmarked SUV she’d been tossed into as far as the interstate, before losing the vehicle after it caused a multicar pileup. Richard had stayed behind, sensing more visitors were en route. He’d hoped to isolate Sarah by staking out the empty house. Still, Madeline would do nicely. Assuming her psychiatrist watchdog was ready to accept the inevitable and invite Richard into his confidence.

  So far, no joy. And they were running out of time. By Richard’s estimate, given how long Sarah had been without the pharmaceutical cocktail that had masked the more homicidal aspects of her splintered personality, they had only hours before Sarah suffered a complete meltdown. Unmonitored and on her own, she’d self-destruct. And she’d take her twin and whoever else got in their way with her. Richard couldn’t let that happen. The Brotherhood wouldn’t let that happen.

  But he still had a chance. The dream symbol Sarah had chosen for him had been a raven. And that meant everything. Most people saw the menacing black bird as an omen of death or evil. But in dream symbolism, a raven was also a bearer of magic. A messenger of change. A trickster that exposed the truth behind secrets and returned the dreamer to a state of healing and harmony—the very things Richard had first worked with Sarah to bring about. That’s how she’d invited Richard into her nightmares.

  Some part of Sarah still believed in him, beneath the hate and pain he’d helped cause. Toxic emotions he’d have to cleanse from her mind once the Brotherhood had her back. Once he’d circumvented the survival and combat skills he’d taught her and found a way to save Sarah, her twin, and the future his shortsightedness had endangered.

  None of which would happen if Madeline Temple didn’t find a way to trust him first.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sarah was dying.

  Down deep, where she was still pissed and running and fighting to hold on, a part of her accepted that she was lost and alone and dying.

  She was Death.

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

  The gun in her hand fired.

  A scream ripped through the night.

  “No!”

  Sarah struggled to her feet, stumbled, and landed hard on the filthy floor of a rotting, vacant building she’d crawled through a broken window to get into. This was the tomb for that final sane part of her. This was where it would end.

  Dark and empty. Nothing…closing around her, until she could see…

  Until she could see her twin taking her place.

  The good sister drowning in filth instead of Sarah. The healer killing everything she cared about. Killing, because it was who she’d been taught to be.

  Why had Maddie been at the center? To laugh at Sarah, that’s why. To laugh at Death, because Maddie had always been better. But Sarah had shown her. She’d used her. Just like when they were little. Then, just for fun, she’d pointed Maddie at those guards surrounding her and her doctor. She’d shown her twin what she really was. What they both were. And Maddie had started fighting. Trying to kill. Angry and drowning in the hate and the fear and the loneliness, just like Sarah. The good twin had been choking the life out of men she didn’t know, while Sarah ran.

  And it had felt amazing.

  Better than anything in a long time.

  Until Sarah had stumbled into the woods. Then even farther away. And now their link was nearly gone, abandoning Sarah to her demented memories and fractured dreams and her need for her Raven…

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

  The gun in her hand fired.

  A scream—

  “No!”

  The Raven wasn’t there. Sarah had killed him. At least she’d tried. And when she couldn’t, she’d run and left him Maddie’s mind to pick apart. He was stalking Maddie now. Sarah could feel it. Just like she could feel the evil that had taken their mother. She’d felt them cart Phyllis away. She’d laughed while it happened, while Maddie had cried, until the darkness of it had choked off every thought. Every sound. Every sensation in Sarah’s world. Until she was completely alone.

  While Maddie had run through the night to help…then wandered through the house to help…then finally accepted that there was no help coming. Not for them. Not for the madness or the pain or the loneliness.

  Except Maddie hadn’t been alone. Sarah had sensed that, too, through their fading link. There’d been arms to hold the good twin. To guide her. A deep voice in the darkness, in her mind. A promise that Maddie would have help as she faced the truth. That she could survive it.

  The way a deep, piercing voice had once promised Sarah the same things. The voice coming to her before the dreams, while she was still in a coma, freeing her and binding her to him. Helping her live. Chaining her to a world he’d soon teach her how to destroy.

  Her Raven’s voice.

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

  The gun—

  “No!” Sarah screamed into the empty night.

  She hated the Raven.

  Or was it that she needed him to see the evil inside her—her drive to be Death—so he could fix it somehow? Is that why she hadn’t been able to kill him? Except, the Raven wasn’t there now. And neither was Maddie.

  Sarah would have no help.

  The sane part of her knew she’d never survive now.

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

  “No!” It wouldn’t go away. She had to make the dream go away. “Stop it!”

  She crawled as far as she could before collapsing onto the floor. Collapsing into the truth.

  The Raven had given her back her life. Now all she wanted was to die. Because he hadn’t stopped the other creature in the dreams. The Wolf that fed on hate and had poured it into Sarah. Then the bastard had linked Sarah’s mind with Maddie’s. The good sister who despised Sarah and had abandoned her. Sarah hadn’t wanted Maddie in her mind again, but the Wolf had insisted, or he’d take the Raven away.

  So Sarah had done what she was told. She’d found Maddie’s dreams. Then she’d learned to hate the Raven, even more than she hated her sister and the Wolf. Because it was the Raven she’d never survive without.

  So, it was all Maddie’s fault, really. Maddie and her happiness and her ability to love and her forgiveness for everyone, including their mother. Everyone but Sarah. Maddie who’d come to the center and given Sarah the strength she’d needed to break free of what she craved most.

  Sarah’s Raven.

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

  The gun in her hand fired.
r />   A scream ripped through the night.

  “No!”

  The darkness couldn’t have Sarah. Not yet. She had to find her sister’s mind. Sarah would use their link again. Let it strengthen her while it drained Maddie. Because Maddie had to pay.

  Maddie’s dreams.

  What Maddie wanted most.

  That’s what had to—

  Die!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Jarred had somehow gotten Maddie out of her mother’s house.

  He’d called another cab from Metting’s cell, giving another phony name just in case. No way could they have gone back to Victoria’s apartment or used Metting’s car again. Not with the center and God knew who else after them. He’d had the cabby drive around aimlessly to be sure no one was following. Then he’d paid for the taxi with the last of the cash in his wallet, in front of a no-tell motel somewhere in the rural badlands between the suburbs and the fringes of Boston’s industrial hub. He’d secured a ground-floor, street-adjacent room with the cash he’d lifted from his ex’s hiding place in the cupboard above her refrigerator.

  He walked to the bed and laid a near-catatonic Maddie on the cheap spread. Then he checked the room’s single window, making sure it would open if they needed an alternative exit. He secured the insubstantial locks on the window and the door. Then he rechecked them both. He was officially freaking out.

  Someone had kidnapped Maddie’s mother. Someone not associated with Richard Metting. And whoever it was wanted to use Phyllis as bait to lure Sarah and Maddie back to the center, where they would likely—

  Die!

  Jarred spun around, half expecting to find Maddie standing behind him, her eyes crazed the way they became every time her sister’s dementia returned. But she was curled in the fetal position on the bed, motionless except for her eyes darting back and forth behind their closed lids. Whatever was going on in that amazing mind of hers was a metaphysical puzzle that the scientist in Jarred had to solve. And whatever was going on in her heart…

  Her heart was home to him now. The bond between them grew stronger every time it whispered through his mind. They had to find the sister who was terrorizing Maddie to the point of incapacitation. But even if they did reach Sarah and somehow got her well enough to help them, there was no way in hell Jarred was turning either woman over to the center. Or to Metting. Though the man seemed less of a threat now, because Jarred and Maddie had other, bigger, threats to contend with.