Legacy

by A D Starrling

  Her eyes flicked to her blue-eyed rescuer in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Ethan Storm,’ the younger man muttered.

  Their names meant nothing to Olivia. She raised a hand to the crucifix at the base of her throat, her fingers closing around the reassuring weight of the metal once more.

  ‘Who were those men? What did they—?’ She swallowed past the lump in her throat. ‘What did they want with us?’

  The two men exchanged guarded glances.

  ‘Not “us,”’ said Asgard Godard finally. ‘They were after you.’

  Chapter Six

  A freight train rumbled past in the distance, the noise faint through the heavy curtains covering the windows. Sunlight filtered through the bottom of the drapes and added to the soft glow of the table lamps on the nightstands.

  The motel room was clean and cheerful. The walls were a pale pastel, with a flowery border meeting the ceiling. Twin beds took up the middle of the floor and a rollaway cot lay tucked up against one wall. An internal door led to a serviceable bathroom. There was a small fridge and a table holding a microwave and a coffeepot next to the TV.

  All of it seemed shockingly mundane to Olivia in the face of what Asgard Godard was telling her. His words buzzed around in her skull, their meaning so extraordinary and far-fetched they beggared belief.

  He spoke of two races that had existed alongside mankind for thousands of years, influencing the course of human history through the ages. Of battle-hardened beings with superior fighting skills, accelerated healing, delayed aging, and the capacity to survive up to sixteenth deaths. Of crows and ash. And of the fourteenth-century plague that dramatically reduced their numbers and led to the end of a savage war that had raged for millennia. When he started to talk, hesitantly at first but then with increasing fervor, about a secret branch of the US Army hunting immortals, a different kind of fear gripped Olivia.

  Have I been saved by men more dangerous than the assassins who attacked the abbey?

  She was aware of a heavy stare from across the room. Ethan Storm leaned against the wall next to the window overlooking the motel parking lot, long legs crossed at the heels and sinewy arms folded across his chest. His left hand was tucked under his armpit, the pentagram birthmark hidden from view. He watched her silently, his gaze so intense it almost bore under her skin.

  She stared at the third eye symbol on her right palm. She wished she had her gloves to cover the unsightly birthmark staining her own flesh. It seemed to mock her, its lines stark against her pale skin, its existence a mute condemnation, if the man claiming to be her uncle spoke the truth. Which he couldn’t be. No one in their right mind could even begin to swallow the impossible reality his words evoked. She curled her fingers until the mark disappeared from view and raised her head. Asgard’s features blurred as angry tears welled up and threatened to spill down her cheeks. She wiped them away briskly.

  Despite her best efforts, Olivia could not mask the tremor in her voice. ‘Do you really expect me to believe what you’ve just told me?’

  Asgard sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Look, I know how crazy this all sounds—’

  A bark of laughter escaped her. It seemed to surprise the two men as much as her.

  Olivia knew then she could never return to the innocent existence she had led in the safety and isolation of the abbey walls. The events of the last six hours had irrevocably changed her, to a point where she barely recognized herself. As she registered this harsh truth, the loss of her peaceful life and the brutal deaths of the nuns who had been her family made her want to weep once more.

  The face of the abbess rose in her mind. It cut through the wave of grief and self-pity threatening to drown her. She had to be strong, if not for herself then for the woman who had raised her.

  ‘What Asgard told you is the truth,’ said Ethan in the awkward silence. ‘You are an immortal, like us.’

  His gaze moved briefly to her hand. Olivia stared challengingly at the two men, her nails digging into her palms.

  ‘You were abandoned at the abbey when you were just an infant,’ said Asgard. ‘Your parents must have thought they were in great danger at the time. They chose to leave you in the care of someone they trusted, in a place where your chances of being discovered were almost non-existent.’

  Olivia went still. Although she wanted to discount everything these men were saying, she could not help the sliver of hope that burst into existence inside her. Her past was a mystery that had occupied her waking moments for as long as she could remember.

  ‘How can you possibly know this?’

  Asgard shared a guarded look with Ethan. ‘We found records back at the abbey that corroborate our information.’

  Ethan pulled something from his jacket. Olivia gasped. It was a collection of thin diaries, tied with a gauze ribbon. She recognized them instantly. They were Mother Margaret Edwards’s journals.

  She shot off the bed and stormed across the floor, barely conscious of her movements. ‘Where did you get those?’

  She reached for the diaries.

  Ethan raised them above his head. ‘Uh-uh. Not until you listen to what we’ve got to say. And there’s more where this came from.’

  Olivia scowled and rose on her tip-toes.

  Asgard sighed. ‘Olivia—’

  A frustrated sound passed through her gritted teeth. Despite the extra height afforded by the sneakers the men had purchased for her in a store in town, she still couldn’t reach the precious items that were all she had left of the woman who had raised her. She stretched up farther, lost her balance, and stumbled against Ethan.

  ‘Whoa!’

  He reached down, his arm wrapping firmly around her waist.

  Olivia froze in his embrace. His face was inches from hers. Up close, his eyes were even more startling, steel specks dotting his irises like the constellations that graced the skies above the place she had once called her home. She could feel his fingers through the thin cotton dress. They scorched her skin.

  Heat flooded her face. She struggled out of his hold and backed away, feeling strangely short of breath. ‘How did you know about the diaries?’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘I didn’t. I checked the cottage before we left and found these in a safe behind a wall panel.’

  ‘You mean, you broke into Mother Margaret’s private quarters?’ squealed Olivia.

  She realized how ridiculous her accusation sounded the moment the words left her lips. The abbess was dead, murdered mere hours ago. Robbery was low on the magnitude of the crimes that had been committed that night.

  Ethan grimaced. ‘If you recall, the bad guys did that first. I came in after the fact. So, technically, I was just scouting the place.’

  Olivia looked at the diaries. For as long as she could recall, Mother Margaret Edwards had kept a journal. She had always wondered what it was the older woman wrote about, often late into the night, by the flickering light of a candle. She had suspected some of the chapters might have been about her.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a safe,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Yeah, well, safes are kinda my specialty,’ Ethan muttered.

  She was wondering at the trace of embarrassment in his voice when Asgard spoke again.

  ‘Part of the journals are a chronicle of life at the abbey and the personal reflections of the woman who wrote them. The other, more significant portion concerns you.’

  Olivia whipped around. Had he read her mind?

  ‘I flicked through them while you were sleeping,’ Asgard explained at her reproachful glare. A sad light dawned in his eyes. ‘I believe she wrote those journals for you. I think she intended to give them to you when the time was right. When you needed to know the truth the most.’ He paused. ‘She started the first one in 1913. It was the year she met you.’

  Alarm flared through Olivia. She took a step back. What did these men know of her history?

  ‘Mother Edwards was an anomaly in the human world, as are you,’ said
Asgard. ‘She was the descendant of the offspring of a pureblood immortal and a human, a half-breed blessed with none of the abilities of true immortals except for a degree of delayed aging. At the time of her death, she was nearly three hundred years old.’ His gaze drilled into her, bright, beautiful, and as hard as diamonds. ‘You are one hundred years old, Olivia.’

  Olivia backed away until her thighs struck the bed. She sat down heavily on the mattress, heart pounding a wild beat while she struggled to articulate a coherent response to his statement. She wanted to deny his words, to shout that he was wrong. Except that she couldn’t, for it was the truth.

  She wanted to yell that although the abbess and she were the same, both aberrations of the natural order of this world, it was not their fault. That they could not help the way God had made them.

  ‘Mother Mar—Mother Margaret and I were ill,’ she stammered, flushing under the usual wave of guilt and self-disgust that assaulted her whenever she gave this subject any thought. ‘We were both afflicted with a rare condition.’ She looked beseechingly at the silent men. ‘The doctor told me there was no name for the disease. Both he and Mother Margaret said it was—that it was quite likely at the opposite spectrum of Progeria.’

  They looked at her blankly.

  ‘Progeria is a syndrome that causes children to age rapidly in infancy,’ she explained haltingly. ‘It’s a disorder resulting from a genetic mutation. The doctor said our condition was likely caused by a different mutation in the same group of genes.’ Her hands fisted in her lap. ‘There is no cure for it. And no one knows how it will…progress,’ she added, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  ‘Was this doctor’s name John Kincaid?’ said Asgard after a short silence.

  Olivia started. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ever see him at the hospital?’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘No. He came to the abbey on several occasions, at Mother Margaret’s request. He examined me and took a blood sample.’

  She could not help the defensive note that crept in her voice. The two men were studying her with a trace of pity, yet she saw no accusation or distaste in their faces, reactions she felt she justly deserved for being a monster.

  ‘John Kincaid was not a real doctor,’ said Asgard. ‘He was an impostor, another pureblood immortal-human half-breed hired by Mother Edwards to lie to you.’

  Olivia stared open-mouthed. A hot wave of resentment poured through her in the next moment. Who are these men to question the abbess’s integrity?

  Asgard’s expression softened. ‘I did not mean to insult the woman who raised you, child. She did what she had to do to protect you. For that, I will be eternally grateful to her.’

  Olivia swallowed the angry words bubbling up her throat.

  ‘Her journals do not lie,’ Asgard continued. ‘You will see for yourself when you read them. The truth she speaks in those pages is for your eyes and yours only. They are both an explanation and an apology for the century-old deception she subjected you to.’

  Olivia’s pulse thrummed rapidly as his words sank in. Though she remained skeptical about the information they had relayed to her thus far, something inside her was urging her to believe these two men. It was the same feeling she had experienced when she had come around in the Jeep the second time. Despite their extraordinary revelations in this more than ordinary motel room and despite the storm of emotions she had lived through since she awoke from her nightmare what felt like a lifetime ago, she felt safe in their presence.

  ‘What proof do you have that Dr. Kincaid is an impostor?’

  ‘We have our sources.’ Ethan’s eyes glinted dangerously. ‘It is also thanks to this particular source that we found out Jonah had discovered your whereabouts and was hot on your trail.’

  ‘Jonah?’ Olivia repeated.

  ‘Yes. Jonah Krondike,’ said Asgard with a stiff nod. ‘The Crovir noble most likely behind your parents’ disappearance and your abandonment. The immortal ultimately responsible for what happened at the abbey tonight.’

  Olivia’s gaze shifted from Asgard’s grim expression to the third eye birthmark on her palm once more. ‘If what you say is true, what does this Jonah person want with me?’ She raised her head and gazed unflinchingly at the two men. ‘What am I to him?’

  Something flitted across Asgard’s face. For a moment, she thought she had imagined the tortured look in his eyes.

  ‘You’re not just any immortal, Olivia, but very likely the last of the Ashkarovs, a family of pureblood Bastian nobles.’ He hesitated. ‘Your mother was Natalia Ashkarov. She was the twin sister of my wife and soulmate, Sara Ashkarov.’ His hands fisted by his sides. ‘She was also the last true Seer of your bloodline. As such, she would have been a priceless target for Jonah’s experiments. As are you.’

  Olivia froze.

  ‘My name— but my name is Olivia Ash!’

  ‘It may be the name you were given by the abbess, but you are an Ashkarov. I knew it the moment I saw you.’ Asgard’s gaze moved briefly to her right hand. ‘And your birthmark tells me that you’ve inherited your mother’s abilities.’

  She noted Asgard’s white knuckles almost absent-mindedly as his words scorched a blazing trail through her mind. Her gut reaction was to deny the veracity of his statement. Her curse told her otherwise.

  The first time she experienced a vision was shortly after her eighteenth birthday. When she came around after the incident, she found herself lying in the abbess’s bed, the elderly nun reading calmly by candlelight at her side. Even then, Mother Margaret Edwards had seemed strangely prepared for what had happened.

  She never asked Olivia what it was that she “saw” that day. At the time, Olivia had not even been aware that she had had a vision. When they heard of the earthquake that destroyed the city of Napier in New Zealand, two months had already passed since the dreadful tragedy. By then, Olivia had experienced a further three visions. News of the Nicaraguan earthquake did not reach them for another six weeks. It was much later that year that her third vision became a reality, when the largest natural disaster ever to hit China came about, with floods that claimed the lives of thousands, if not millions, of souls. While the Chinese death toll was still rising, the hurricane struck Honduras.

  Over the decades that followed, Olivia watched as almost every single one of her visions came true, from natural calamities to man-made disasters, from the deaths of presidents to the massacres of millions in wars that ripped through entire continents. She devoured the news with near-morbid fascination, first through the papers, then a small radio someone had gifted to the abbey, and finally with the aid of the computers that made their way into the communal area of the main house. On the few occasions she contacted the authorities, her warnings were ignored as the ramblings of a mad person.

  In addition to the distressing visions that plagued her, the nightmares also began. At one time, she was confined to the abbess’s cottage, so loud were her screams when she woke from her dreams, her body slick with sweat and her limbs shaking. Throughout it all, Mother Edwards was there, her peaceful presence and calming words the only things that stopped Olivia from losing her mind.

  It was a while before she realized that her nightmares were visions of the past, of bygone eras and people who were no longer of this world, of events disconnected from her present existence. Thanks to the abbess’s rigorous training over the years that followed, Olivia achieved a degree of control over the aftereffects of her curse. She even reduced the number of visions and nightmares she experienced, both of which she came to realize were often triggered by stressful situations.

  The third element of her affliction was so shocking that she had never spoken about it to anyone, including Mother Edwards. It developed well after her eighteenth birthday and occurred so rarely now she sometimes forgot its existence.

  Over the years, Olivia realized that she could hear others’ thoughts. Not only hear them, but also influence them, somehow.

  The first incident was with
a young novice who joined the abbey after the end of the Second World War. It was a cool, autumn day and they were working the vegetable plot outside the farm in companionable silence. An hour or so after they started planting seeds in the freshly-turned soil, Olivia heard a whisper just beyond her hearing. The novice knelt a few feet from her, her eyes focused on her task, dirt-covered fingers busy. There was no one else around.

  As Olivia resumed her chore, the murmur came again. Then, like echoes in the chapel, the words reached her, distinct and inflected with a rainbow of emotions. She knew instinctively that she was witnessing the private reflections of the novice who squatted a short distance from her. When she registered the meaning behind the younger woman’s contemplation, Olivia flushed.

  ‘Harry,’ she breathed before she could stop herself.

  The novice startled, head snapping up.

  ‘What?’ she said, the color draining from her face.

  Olivia could only look at her mutely, chagrined. The novice had been thinking of her dead lover, a soldier who had perished in the war. More specifically, she had been reliving their last night together before he left to join his company.

  ‘Nothing,’ Olivia mumbled, her ears hot.

  The novice stared for several moments before getting back to her task. This time, Olivia sensed anxiety and discord from the other woman. Flustered and fearful of provoking one of her visions, she unconsciously drew on the meditative techniques she had learned to calm herself. Within seconds, she felt the novice’s agitation settle, the cadence of her emotions smoothed like the waters of a pond on a windless day. When Olivia looked at the young woman, she was working calmly, her expression unflustered and showing no evidence of her recent shock at hearing her dead lover’s name.

  Over the following months, Olivia experienced similar incidents with nuns she had known her entire life. Strangely enough, she never heard Mother Edwards’s thoughts.

  At first, she physically removed herself from such situations. Fear that she would stumble upon private matters was her primary concern. Remorse and mortification at being responsible for influencing her companions’ behavior were her others. Eventually, she learned to shield her mind with the same techniques she used to cope with the visions and nightmares.