Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  “It…” Maddie grappled for Jarred’s hand as she let Metting steer her back. Her stomach heaved at the sounds of a storm and of wind-torn trees…

  The approach of rustling wings rushed along with her, returning her to the nightmare she and Sarah had shared for months. To Sarah’s memory of the car accident—the memory Sarah had said was really Maddie’s. Because Maddie had seen and felt it all that night, too. Their father’s death. And Sarah’s compulsion to die with him because she couldn’t stop the horrifying scene from happening over and over. Maddie secretly blaming Sarah for surviving, when their father hadn’t.

  Then Maddie felt her sister’s need to stop the car from sliding, and to keep the truck from aiming for…

  The truck was aiming for…

  Maddie was in the truck…

  She was aiming for…

  Maddie’s eyes flew open. Her breath caught. The dream had frozen on the image of the eighteen-wheeler skidding toward her father’s car.

  “What?” Metting asked. He and Jarred were each holding one of her hands. “You’re seeing your father’s death. That’s the shared memory the Wolf used to link you and Sarah, right? What was Sarah’s trigger? What one thing did he program her to focus on, until she—”

  “It…It wasn’t Sarah,” Maddie stuttered, following the Raven’s voice. “It was me. I was the reason he died. It was all my fault…”

  Metting’s head shook side to side.

  “Guilt is a strong emotional tie,” he countered. “It’s also the place our psyches are most vulnerable. You and Sarah share the guilt you feel for your father dying. So that’s where the Wolf trained your sister to find you, no matter how damaging that place was to Sarah, too.”

  “I was the driver!” Maddie gasped. The dream fastforwarded, then rewound, only to play again. “The nightmare keeps getting worse, every time. More bizarre. I…I thought it was just Sarah wanting to die with our father…But she wanted to kill, too…She was obsessed with it. She needed to stop him, I think. But she never could, and because she couldn’t, the Wolf kept making her watch our father die…He kept making her responsible…Making her Death…so she’d keep trying to kill him…to save our father…”

  “Who did Sarah have to kill?” Metting asked in that you can trust me voice. “Remember, it’s just a dream. Whatever you’re seeing now, whatever Sarah planted there, it’s a carefully constructed simulation. Based in part on your memories. But precisely controlled with an explicit goal that the Wolf wanted Sarah to embed into your subconscious. You have to find that goal. The trigger the Wolf wanted you to react to. Who was Sarah killing in your dream? Who was your target supposed to be?”

  “Stop it!” Jarred growled, pulling her closer. “She can’t take any more right now.”

  “We can’t afford to—” Metting insisted.

  “We damn well can!” Jarred was wiping Maddie’s nose. The corner of her mouth. “Remembering is tearing her up inside!”

  “The…it…It was the driver of the truck…” Maddie grabbed her head, her hand brushing her ear.

  When she looked down after pulling her palm away, blood coated her fingers. Her hold on reality shattered completely at the sight. The darkness swooped closer. Jarred and Metting kept arguing while she fell back into the dream.

  “The man…driving the truck…Sarah was obsessed with him. And…It was me…Except it wasn’t. I…maybe I was Sarah, and I was the one who wanted the driver to die…Ah!” Maddie’s mind was exploding. Imploding. Ripping at the nightmare’s images and refusing to let her see anything clearly. Refusing to let her see at all. Or to feel.

  Except she could feel Jarred’s strength as he curled her in his arms. The soft brush of his lips against her hair. The touch and smell and feel of him washing away the darkness and bringing her safely back to him. To the love that she clung to, while her sister’s madness still raged inside.

  Her body quieted.

  Her mind stilled.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Jarred?” She was staring into the endless blue of his eyes.

  “You’re going to get some sleep.” His gaze turned icecold as he challenged Metting. “I’m putting her to bed for the night.”

  “And if we don’t have until tomorrow to stop the Wolf’s plans?” Metting asked. “How are you going to deal with your failure then, when your refusal to do what has to be done ends up destroying the woman you love?”

  Jarred gave no answer, but Maddie could feel his acceptance take hold. The Raven was right. She either pushed her mind and her body now—gave Metting what he was demanding—or they lost everything.

  “Just a few hours,” she heard herself say. “Just let me rest a few hours, and then I want to try again.”

  “This is killing you, sweetheart.” The pain of watching her suffer vibrated in Jarred’s voice. In every beat of his heart. “I don’t want you doing this anymore.”

  Sweetheart.

  “You’ve gotten me this far. Don’t ask me to quit now. I can’t give up on my sister. I can’t lose my mother to this, too. I just can’t.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “You’re going to rest, if I have to tie you to the bed.” Jarred pushed Maddie gently back to the covers she was trying to struggle out of. “I don’t care if you’re feeling better. You’re taking the full five hours Metting agreed to.”

  Meanwhile Jarred would be drinking in the sight of her. Watching her breathe. Counting every second he got to spend with her—before everything became about Sarah again and keeping the world safe from the Temples’ legacy.

  “I’m fine.” Maddie lay back on the pillows and shoved his hand away. She curled her forearm up to cover her eyes. “Stop hovering like I’m going to break or something. Metting’s meds are helping me recover faster from wherever my brain goes when I’m with Sarah. You’re helping me, just by being here. If he thinks I’m ready to try again—”

  “He and his brotherhood are after one thing at the moment,” Jarred argued. “Getting to your sister through you as quickly as they can.”

  The brain bleeds and seizures and disorientation Maddie endured with each episode were ending more quickly, thanks to Metting’s medication. Maddie had been able to pull away from her memories of Sarah’s nightmares this time instead of completely dissociating. But Jarred didn’t care. The situation was out of control.

  “Metting’s not the threat.” Maddie frowned. “I can’t believe I’m defending him, but—”

  “He loves your sister, I know. But he’s been manipulating her mind with his own agenda for over a year. Now he’s doing the same with you. Are you telling me that’s all right with you?”

  “No.” Maddie slapped her arm on the bed. “But do you see any other alternative than to work with the man? I need you both to keep me alive while I try to find a way to help Sarah. Metting said his men are on alert and ready to bring her in, all we need is a plan he can sell. He knows Sarah’s mind a hell of a lot better than I do, but I’m the one with her memories. I may hate his methods, but he knows how to figure out what the Wolf wants. How to stop him. I don’t.”

  Jarred picked up Maddie’s hand and kissed her fingers. He felt on the brink of losing her before they’d had a chance to really know each other. Their psychic and physical connections had grown at lightning speed. They’d been violently intimate. They’d walked the same dreamscape, as Metting called it. She’d brought Jarred’s heart back to life—both literally and figuratively. Now he had to help her put everything on the line for her sister. How did he do that?

  “I don’t begin to understand most of this,” he tried to explain. He framed her face with his hands. Kissed her sweetly, then with more force as passion rose between them like lightning quickening before a strike. “Not how I found you this last dream. Not how you were able to reach Sarah’s mind, after running from her all this time. Or how you’re going to remember details from her maniac fantasies—enough for Metting to strike back against the center, or the government, or
the Wolf or whoever these men of his end up going after…”

  His voice wavered to nothing as the reality of the situation closed in.

  “Jarred,” Maddie whispered. Her soft, healing touch slid up his arms, pulling him closer until his body covered hers and she was kissing him as if she’d never stop. Her mind stroked his, needing to be closer, to feel closer, to feel whole again the way she only felt, he only felt, when they were together.

  “All I know,” he whispered back, “is that I’d kill anyone who tried to do to you what these people have done to Sarah. Thinking about you going back into Metting’s lab and willingly subjecting yourself to what these shared dreams do to you makes me want to kill the man with my bare hands. Screw his noble intentions.”

  “You’re the one who told me to trust him.”

  “Because—”

  “Look at this place!” Maddie pushed herself up until she was sitting. “It’s like some supersecret fortress. If this is what it takes to stay under the Wolf’s radar, what kind of chance would I have to help Sarah and my mother on my own? I’ve accepted that. You accepted it before I did, when you called Metting and arranged for them to bring me here. And now you want me to stop? So I can what? Go it alone and hope for the best? Maybe…Maybe you should wait here when I go back to talk with Metting.”

  She was right. They couldn’t stop now. There were still too many holes. Too much they didn’t know. Except for one thing Jarred was certain of.

  “You won’t have to face anything on your own again,” he promised. “Whether I agree with what you want to do or not, I’ll be there. Always.”

  He cupped her shoulders and found her trembling. It was still so hard for her to believe that she could be who she was and have someone accept her, love her, unconditionally. Jarred pulled her head to his chest. He pulled her closer in his mind, too, until there was no her. No him. Only them.

  “I’m here,” he said. “I won’t ever leave you alone, no matter how bad this gets.”

  “I…” A silent sob shook Maddie. “I feel like this Wolf is stalking me, too, Jarred. Stalking us. He wants Sarah, and he wants me to bring her to him. He’s going to kill my mother if I don’t. I…I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you because of me. Just like what happened to my father…All over again…”

  Jarred stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You’re not responsible for your father’s death. That’s Sarah’s nightmare talking. Her emotions are still inside you.” He could feel them. See them when he closed his own eyes. “Her mind’s splintered into who knows how many realities. And through the dreams you’ve shared, she’s altering you to a dangerous degree. You have to fight her feelings. You can’t help Sarah until you do.”

  Maddie’s smile trembled. Her touch traced his bottom lip. “I have to find a way out of this that won’t get everyone I love killed. I can’t do that without you.”

  “You won’t ever have to.” He’d have to watch her mind and her body shatter each time she reached for her twin. He didn’t know how to let that happen without wanting to stop her. But he’d find a way. They’d find a way.

  “Sarah will keep fighting me,” Maddie said, “if I try to find her for Metting.”

  “Sarah’s sick, and she’s getting sicker without your mind to balance hers. She doesn’t trust anyone.”

  “Not even me.”

  “I think she’s shutting you out to protect you.” Jarred stroked Maddie’s cheek again. His mind stroked the abandoned feelings dragging her back to the nightmare. “That’s what she said in your last dream. Not to look for her, because it wasn’t safe.”

  “She’s running from her Raven,” Maddie agreed. “She hates him because she loves him and he’s left her alone for the darkness and the Wolf to take. I…I left her alone. For ten years. How will I ever make that up to her?”

  “Love can be an awful thing when it’s been betrayed. Sarah might never be able to trust Metting again. But she’s already listening to you in your dreams. She’s already letting you in. She protected you, even though it meant sending you back to me. She’ll trust you when the time’s right.”

  Just as Maddie finally trusted Jarred. His mind reached for the belonging she’d given him. A sense of safety with someone like he hadn’t felt since he was a child. And it was there. Maddie’s warmth and uncomplicated acceptance. And the passion they’d reveled in before Sarah destroyed it.

  “She wanted to kill you.” Maddie kissed him, following his memories back to that horrible moment when he’d realized it was no longer her in his arms.

  “Sarah knew how much you love me.” Jarred kissed Maddie back, feeling her physical response deepen, her body warming with his, to his, curling around him. “She thinks I’m going to take you away from her.”

  “And she keeps wanting to kill the Raven because…” Shadows from Sarah’s dreams flowed through them. Maddie turned them and controlled them, analyzing now instead of being consumed. Separating the guilt from the images Metting said were the clues to understanding what Sarah was really after, and where she was going next.

  “Because if she loves the Raven and trusts him again…” Jarred reasoned. “If she trusts him, and he turns out to be evil, like the Wolf, then—”

  “—then she’ll have no one left. Just like when my father was gone.” Regret flooded Maddie’s thoughts. “My mother would never be honest with us. She kept insisting that we hide what was happening. And then I did hide. I abandoned Sarah when my sister needed me most. She was totally alone, trapped in the dark, while I made a life without her. And then Metting came along and freed her and got her to trust him and promised her he’d be there to protect her. But he let the Wolf in, and more darkness, and—”

  “Show me the Wolf, Maddie.”

  She was hurting, and Jarred hated it. But Metting had said there were clues in the nightmares. Key details Maddie had to find.

  “In the clearing in the woods,” Jarred pressed. “Not the accident with your father. You said you heard the Wolf in the clearing. The Wolf is who Sarah really hates. He’s the darkness she’s lost in. Show me what Sarah showed you. Show me what you need to know to save your family.”

  “He’s…” Gray ringed Maddie’s eyes. Her consciousness pulled away. But she was still holding tightly to Jarred’s body. She was fighting to stay with him while she remembered.

  “He’s what, sweetheart?”

  “He’s…

  …there, and he knows she’s watching. He terrifies her…She hates him…”

  “Like she hates the Raven?”

  “No, the Raven’s…watching from overhead. Always circling overhead. No, from the trees this time, and she hates… needing him there…But she does. She’ll always need him there. The Raven is…He’s…”

  Maddie jerked, and her eyes cooled to their own sparkling green. “He’s you.”

  “What?” Jarred was shaking from the rush of seeing Sarah’s dream along with Maddie. From sensing the deadly purpose of the shadowy figures that represented the Wolf’s men.

  “The Raven—Metting,” Maddie whispered. “Sarah won’t survive without him, just like I wouldn’t have survived any of this without you. That’s why he’s always there, circling my father’s accident in the nightmare. Sarah needs him to stop the Wolf. She’s wanted him there from the start, to give her the control you give me. But what if I can’t get Metting there in time? What if Sarah tries to face the Wolf on her own, and I—”

  “We don’t know that’s what she’s really planning.” Jarred gently shook Maddie, keeping her with him. “You’re not seeing it clearly enough yet. And even if you were, you need Metting to help you figure out what the scene in the clearing really means. Don’t assume the worst. Don’t do that to yourself.”

  “He…” Maddie nodded. “Sarah’s Raven will bring her back…”

  “Yes.” Jarred agreed, praying he was right.

  “He…He’d do anything for her…”

  “Yes.”

  �
�Like…Like you’d do anything for me…”

  “Yes. Even letting that bastard pry into your mind again.”

  “You…You were willing to die for me—lie there and let Sarah take you, rather than hurt me trying to stop her.” Maddie kissed him. “Don’t ever do that again, Jarred. Promise me.”

  “It’s not going to happen again.” He kissed her back, the heat of it taking over. “You saved my life. You proved to yourself that you’re light. That you’re a healer, not the Death Sarah thinks she’s become.” Their minds filled with Maddie’s soothing whites and blues, and the sizzling sparks of her passion. “I’d do it a thousand times over, though, if that’s what you needed.”

  “You’ll stay safe.” Maddie rolled until she was sprawling on top of his body. “Promise me you’ll protect yourself and stay safe.”

  “I won’t challenge anything you have to do with Metting,” he promised. “And I’ll be as careful as I can. But I’m going to be there with you, Maddie, safe or not. This legacy of yours, whatever it turns out to mean, I’m a part of it. Metting said we were drawn together because of it. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect it and you. That, I promise.”

  She hesitated. The glimmer in her eyes told him she was considering slapping some sense into him. Instead, she straddled his hips. Dragged his shirt up and over his shoulders. He lifted his upper body to help her, then settled back to their pillows. Her hands roamed the wicked scars the knife had left on his chest. Her fingers spread as her consciousness wrapped around him. Her love for him, her acceptance of what they’d become, it felt as if it had always been there.

  “What if I’m not strong enough to stop Sarah this time?” she finally asked, panic beating at the warmth between him. “What if you—”

  “Shhh…” He gripped the hem of her midnight black shirt and slid it away.

  Her glossy brown hair fell to her bare shoulders. Delicate shoulders. Beautiful shoulders. Just like the rest of her.

  “No more what ifs until we talk to Metting again and tell him you know for sure that the Wolf was in the clearing with Sarah. Until then, no more danger and fear and death.” Jarred sat with her still in his lap. His lips trailed up her neck, making her shiver and tip her head back to give him more. “For now, there’s only this. Just you. Just me.”