Legacy

by A D Starrling

  She turned and stared at the two strangers. ‘Who are you people?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dearest Olivia, if you are reading this, then one of two things has happened. It has either become necessary for me to finally tell you all that I know about who you are and how you ended up at the abbey all those years ago, or the unthinkable has taken place and I have passed from this world. I hope it’s the former, although I very much fear it is probably the latter.

  Although she had promised herself she would not cry, Olivia could not help the tears that dropped silently onto the pages of Mother Edwards’s diaries.

  Asgard and Ethan had given her the volumes they had rescued from the abbey before they left on their mission to infiltrate the facility in San Diego. She sat next to the south-facing glass wall in the sunken living room beyond the foyer, the journals spread out on the floor around her. Moonlight cast a pale glow over the dark canyon and the distant sea to her left. It was gone midnight.

  Mother Edwards wrote about how Olivia’s parents had appeared on the doorstep of the abbey one winter night in 1913, a sleeping baby girl in tow. Despite their disheveled appearance, it was evident from their words and their bearings that they were of noble birth. Natalia related how she had come to know of Margaret Edwards through another immortal she had met in Florence. In the precious few hours that they spent at the abbey, Natalia and Kristof told the nun their incredible history and the stormy paths their fates had taken. They spoke of Jonah Krondike and Kronos and asked the nun to write down all they had revealed so that their daughter could read their tales in the future.

  When Mother Edwards questioned why they trusted her, a complete stranger they had just met, so implicitly with their secrets, Natalia finally broke down and cried. With Kristof holding her in his arms, his own eyes shimmering with unshed tears, the Seer told the nun about the vision she had had of a grown-up Olivia at the abbey. It was at that point that she knew she and her husband would not live to raise their daughter.

  ‘You will give her as much love as I would have, this I am certain of,’ Natalia told the nun brokenly.

  Olivia’s mother had already seen her own death and that of her soulmate. She explained to Mother Edwards that although she had taken steps to influence the course of such events in the past, nature had mostly always taken its course. Before the couple left at dawn, Natalia warned Mother Edwards about the abilities that would manifest themselves when Olivia turned eighteen.

  ‘Tell her not to be afraid of her powers,’ Kristof whispered as he cradled the sleeping Olivia in his arms for the final time. He kissed her brow and smiled tremulously when she stirred under his touch. ‘Let her know how special she is.’

  Mother Edwards had quoted Natalia’s final words to her. “If an immortal with an unusual birthmark of a five-pointed star ever comes to the abbey, you must let Olivia leave with him. She is meant to be with that person.”

  Olivia’s breath hitched in her throat. She reread the sentence twice over, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. Had Natalia known about Ethan Storm even then?

  She stared blindly beyond the glass, her mind reeling. Asgard’s assertion about Ethan being her soulmate had been correct after all. As the implication of this truth resonated inside her, Olivia flushed. She had never experienced a kiss, let alone touched a man.

  She suddenly recalled the immortal’s tanned, wet skin that morning when he had come in from his swim. Her mouth went dry and the muscles in her belly clenched. She ignored the pounding of her heart and grabbed the next journal hastily. It took a few seconds for her to see the words swimming before her.

  The rest of Mother Edwards’s diaries formed a chronicle of her own pureblood immortal-human lineage, her life at the abbey, and notable events concerning her young ward. The nun described her own beginnings in a remote village in south Italy, where she had come to learn about her incredible origins shortly after she entered adulthood. She received the calling to join the Church on her first visit to Rome and took her vows in the years that followed. She stayed in Italy for almost a century, moved to France, and finally settled in North America in the late 1800s. She had been the abbess at the Bear River Mountain order for nearly two decades when Natalia and Kristof turned up on that fateful night.

  Olivia froze when she reached the end of the last journal. Taped inside the rear cover was a small envelope. She stared at the yellow, faded paper. Her first name was inscribed on the front in an elegant, flowing script.

  She knew without a doubt that she was looking at her mother’s handwriting.

  She flicked through the previous diaries and noted the faint marks at the back. Mother Edwards had placed the envelope inside every journal, as if fearing the one she was writing at the time would be the final one. Which meant she had wanted Olivia to see the envelope last.

  Her fingers trembled as she carefully detached the precious package from its anchor. She ran a finger under the seal without tearing the envelope and lifted the flap. A single folded page lay inside. She slipped it out.

  Something fell from within and landed in her lap. It was a silver locket attached to a fine chain. Olivia picked it up and studied the symbol engraved in the middle of the fine filigree on the front. It was identical to the birthmark on her hand. Blood thrummed in her ears when she opened the metal case. Two black and white pictures were pasted inside of the lids.

  They depicted the faces of a smiling man and woman.

  The photographs blurred. Olivia wiped away fresh tears and studied the pictures with hungry eyes.

  Kristof Kovach and Natalia Ashkarov looked happy. And Asgard had been right; Olivia was the image of her mother. She unfolded the sheet of paper and read the dedication written on it.

  With all of our love.

  Be strong, our precious child.

  You are not alone.

  A sob escaped Olivia’s lips then. She dropped her head against the glass and allowed the tears to fall freely.

  One last time. I will cry one last time. Then no more.

  It was several minutes before she took a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself.

  She placed the paper inside the envelope, unfastened the silver cross from around her neck, and slipped on the locket. It settled just above the valley between her breasts, the metal cool against her skin.

  Something stirred deep inside of her. The feeling was akin to the one she had experienced back at the abbey, when the assassin’s hands were squeezing the life out of her, and more recently still after her uncle’s revelations the night before. Olivia now grasped what Asgard Godard and Ethan Storm must have gone through in all the years that they had been trying to thwart Jonah Krondike.

  Her fingers curled into fists. Anger filled her core and spilled through her veins. With it came a single-minded resolve. She would do her utmost to help them defeat the immortal who had inflicted so much loss and misery upon their lives.

  A sound from the other side of the lounge drew her gaze. Howard came out of a corridor and paused at the rear of the foyer.

  ‘They’re back.’

  Alarm darted through Olivia at the expression on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She rose from the floor.

  ‘They brought someone with them,’ the Crovir immortal replied.

  They were halfway up the entrance hall when the front door of the mansion opened.

  Asgard walked in. ‘Are you certain you’ve put Armistad back just the way he was?’

  Her uncle examined his arming sword with an anxious expression.

  ‘Yes, for the tenth time, I’m sure!’ Ethan snapped behind him. ‘Jesus, you’d think that goddamned sword was your flesh and blood!’

  A tall, pretty brunette with pale, blue-gray eyes stepped into view. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. She paused near the doorway and looked around.

  ‘Nice pad,’ she said guardedly.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Howard.

  Her head snapped around. She watched
him stroll across the foyer.

  The Crovir immortal extended a hand. ‘Howard Titus.’

  The young woman hesitated before shaking it. ‘Madeleine Black.’

  Howard’s cool gaze shifted to Asgard and Ethan. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Diana Hollenbrooks was your mother?’

  Asgard stared at Madeleine Black, shock reverberating through him.

  It was two o’clock in the morning. They were in the lounge of the bunker. Howard had brewed a fresh pot of coffee and brought a tray with cups to the low table between the chairs.

  The woman they had surprised in Ian Serle’s office stiffened on the edge of her seat. ‘Did you know her?’

  Asgard glanced at Ethan. ‘Yes. She was one of the scientists who worked in Jonah Krondike’s research facility in New Mexico.’

  He thought he detected some of Diana Hollenbrooks’s features in her daughter’s face. He had known the scientist for almost a decade until her sudden disappearance a couple of years before he escaped the army base with Ethan. She had been the kindest person among all of Krondike’s subordinates, treating the prisoners with as much dignity as her masters allowed.

  Lines creased Madeleine’s brow. ‘Krondike?’

  Asgard studied her for a moment. He sensed her puzzlement was genuine. The fact that Serle had attempted to kill her was also proof that she was not on the enemy’s side.

  ‘What do you know of your mother’s work?’

  Madeleine shrugged. ‘She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Stanford University and got her post doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Cornell. She was involved in a classified project for the US government in the 1960s. I think she was murdered because of what she knew.’

  Silence fell across the room.

  ‘How did your mother die?’ said Olivia.

  Asgard scanned his niece’s face. He could tell something had changed in the way she held herself and spoke. Though still quiet, she was not the self-effacing young woman he had saved from the abbey nearly two days ago. Instead, she seemed…harder, somehow. As if an underlying current of steel now permeated her every movement and word.

  ‘Single gunshot to the head, right between the eyes,’ said Madeleine. Her tone was cold and clinical. ‘It was a contract kill. Her body was discovered in an underground parking lot in Denver. Cops never found the killer. This was in 1986. I was eighteen at the time and hadn’t seen my mother in almost ten years.’ She looked from her cup of steaming black coffee to the kitchen. ‘Got anything stronger?’

  Howard brought a bottle of Scotch across. Madeleine poured a generous amount in her drink, took a sip, grimaced, and set the cup down.

  ‘She left me in the care of the state when I was eight. I woke up one morning and she was gone.’ A trace of old bitterness underscored her words for a moment. ‘I didn’t have any next-of-kin that I knew of and she never told me who my father was. She set up a trust fund in my name, enough money to see me through college and beyond. At the time she abandoned me, I hated her with every fiber of my being.’ She swallowed. ‘It wasn’t until the package arrived that I realized why she did it.’

  ‘Package?’ said Howard.

  Madeleine nodded. ‘A month after I turned eighteen, a man came to see me at the foster home where I was living. I was all packed up and ready for college. The guy was from a law firm in New York. Turns out my mother entrusted them with a sealed envelope the year she disappeared, with instructions to deliver it to me upon her death. Inside it were copies of the work she had been involved in. There was also a note.’ Her expression turned bleak. ‘It seems she’d accidentally crossed paths with a former associate shortly before she vanished. She left because she didn’t want her ex-employer to know about my existence. It was the only way she could think to keep me safe from harm.’ She stared blindly at her hands. ‘I was going to be majoring in Mechanical Engineering. I changed to Biological Sciences and went on to do post doctorate degrees in Molecular Genetics and Genomics. By that point, I’d long realized that my mother’s work centered around some kind of genetic research for the US government. For years I looked desperately for a clue, a link, anything that could point me to something or someone from her past. I eventually found a connection between the papers she had left me and an old research article Ian Serle had published. It bore a striking similarity to some of my mother’s data.’ She faltered. ‘By then, I had also started to wonder why I still looked the same as I did when I was eighteen.’

  Asgard realized she was holding back on something. He wondered fleetingly why he could read this woman as if he’d known her for years rather than a handful of hours.

  ‘What is it that you’re not telling us?’

  Madeleine looked at him for a silent moment, her face haunted. ‘How did you know?’

  Asgard did not answer.

  She took a deep breath. ‘You’re right. My mother mentioned something else in the note. It was so absurd that I didn’t know what to make of it at the time and I still don’t.’

  Ethan leaned forward. ‘What was it?’

  ‘She said that she was the descendant of the offspring of a human and a race of—’ Madeleine pursed her lips for a moment, ‘of immortals who have walked the Earth since the dawn of mankind.’ She paused. A self-deprecating chuckle escaped her. ‘Crazy, right? When I realized that I did not age like, well, normal people, I started to wonder whether I was the result of the genetic experiments she had been involved in. I assumed the fanciful tale was just a cover. So I ran some tests.’

  ‘What kind of tests?’ said Asgard.

  ‘I analyzed my DNA.’

  Asgard exchanged an alarmed look with Ethan and Howard.

  ‘And?’ said Ethan.

  The woman closed her eyes briefly. ‘Turns out I have a bit too much of the good stuff.’

  Howard cocked an eyebrow. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I have extra sections of certain chromosomes, the most significant one being chromosome four, which is associated with longevity. The changes are subtle and I didn’t pick up on them the first time. It wasn’t until I carried out detailed molecular analysis on my samples that I had several sobering Eureka moments. In addition to having too much DNA, I also appear to be a mosaic, with a combination of different genetic material within my cells.’

  Madeleine rubbed the back of her neck. ‘I decided to follow up on Serle and got a job in AuGenD five years ago. It didn’t take long to figure out that there was something strange going on at the company. There were plenty of rumors flying about in the scientific community that they had received substantial private contracts from the DoD over the years. Dr. Larry Gotenberg, Serle’s assistant, mentioned that the professor had extra layers of security on his computer no one else in the company possessed. Larry was given access to it two months ago. Seems Serle decided to bring him into the fold.’

  She propped her elbows on her knees and dropped her chin on her interlocked hands. ‘Larry was very ambitious. He worshipped Serle. He’d always shown an interest in me but he got more aggressive about a month ago.’ She scowled. ‘Now that I think about it, I wonder whether the old bastard put him up to it. I don’t know how Serle found out I was Diana Hollenbrooks’s daughter. I changed my name to Black when I was eighteen.’

  ‘So you decided to break into Serle’s computer to find out what was on it?’ said Howard.

  Madeleine nodded. ‘I copied Larry’s ID two weeks ago. Of course, I knew I’d need more than that to access Serle’s private drives. Breaking inside AuGenD’s computer network is like getting into Fort Knox.’

  ‘More like the Pentagon,’ said Howard. He smiled at Madeleine’s expression. ‘Fort Knox was like stealing milk from a baby. Took me almost two days to crack the Pentagon’s codes.’

  Madeleine glanced at the glass wall on the right. The edge of one of the computer workstations was just about visible.

  ‘Right,’ she drawled. ‘Well, I got someone to write some programs to get into the company’s systems.’

  Howard
raised an eyebrow. ‘A guy from Milwaukee?’

  Madeleine stiffened. ‘Atlanta, actually.’

  ‘Ah,’ Howard muttered. ‘The Prince.’

  Madeleine’s eyes shrunk to slits. ‘How’d you know that?’

  ‘The Prince is part of my extended network of…experts.’ Howard grinned. ‘Just so you know, there’s nothing princely about The Prince. He’s a five-foot-four, three-hundred-pound, pasty-faced guy who lives in his mother’s basement.’ The immortal shrugged. ‘Smart and sweet as hell. Made enough money to buy himself ten luxury condos. Still, Mama’s home is where he wants to be.’

  Madeleine considered this for a moment before removing the flash drive from her jeans. ‘I think I managed to download almost everything on Serle’s computer and external drive.’ Her knuckles whitened on the stick. ‘The stuff on here might finally reveal what I am.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Asgard.

  The woman’s head snapped up. She glared at him. ‘What makes you say that?’

  Something shifted inside Asgard’s chest. He clenched his teeth and ignored his body’s reaction to Diana Hollenbrooks’s daughter, feeling somewhat betrayed by his own senses.

  ‘You’ve seen enough tonight to realize that we are not ordinary humans.’ He watched the color drain from Madeleine Black’s face. ‘Your mother told you the truth. She was the descendant of a pureblood immortal-human offspring, a half-breed who can age at a quarter the rate of an average immortal. And I believe I know who your father was. Among the immortals that Jonah Krondike captured for his experiments was a Bastian noble by the name of Edouard De Castel. Diana Hollenbrooks was in love with him.’

  Asgard paused. ‘You have his eyes.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jonah Krondike ended the call and put the phone back down on the mahogany table.

  Ian Serle sounded shaken by what he had seen.

  The professor had been working with Krondike since the mid 1980s, after Jonah identified him as someone who could be of significant benefit to his research program. Serle’s son had died while serving in the US Armed Forces. In the months that followed, the professor made it bitterly clear among the scientific community and in the acrimonious letters he sent to Congress that he thought much more could have been done to prepare American soldiers for battle. Jonah approached Serle a year after his son’s death and convinced him to join his team. After being told exactly what would happen to him if he ever betrayed their trust, the professor was brought into the fold.