Dark Legacy (30 page)

“The Wolf was strong enough to damage Sarah’s link with me, but he hasn’t located her now that she’s on the run?
Sarah’s
the mastermind behind this showdown? He’s not going to just hand over her mother and expect the woman he’s turned into a psychotic mess to passively follow him back to his lab.”

“But Maddie and Sarah’s safety are your only priority, not getting them both back into
your
lab?” Jarred pressed. “Is that what you want me to believe?”

“Yes,” Metting answered without hesitation.

And the man couldn’t succeed without Jarred playing along.

“The only way I’ll help is if the sole objective is stopping the Wolf’s manipulation of the Temples’ minds. Period. You get their mother out. You make sure this bastard never comes after Maddie and her sister again. Then you and your secret society will leave them the hell alone.”

“That I can’t promise.” Metting didn’t waste time feigning an apology. “If Madeline and Sarah’s gifts fall back under the center’s control, I won’t be able to stop the termination order. Our only chance of avoiding that is if you and Madeline do this together, live or die.”

“Live or die?”

“Madeline is convinced she and her sister will die fighting the darker side of their psychic gifts. She thinks that’s their legacy. If you’re not willing to fight to the death with them, you’ll never secure her trust at the rendezvous.”

This is going to end bloody, and you can’t stop it…If I can’t stop…You don’t want me, period.

It wasn’t Jarred Maddie didn’t trust still. It was the light within her, the healing power she’d finally embraced, that she was certain would fail her.

“I’m going to be there with her, Dr. Metting, whatever happens.” He knew Maddie’s light was stronger than Sarah’s insanity or this Wolf’s depraved plans. And he would fight beside Maddie until she could believe it, too. “Tell me how to help her. Or get out of my way, and I’ll figure it out myself.”

Metting stared for several seconds. Then he nodded
at one of his men to open the door. He led the way into the hall.

“Sarah’s joined with you once before,” he said without waiting to see if Jarred followed. “The two of you have already fought together to protect Madeline. You have a shot at being a bridge between the two of them again. But once they’re together at the rendezvous, no one can predict the effect it will have on their psyches. You will be their only tie to the world outside their legacy. You have to fight to keep their minds from slipping into the darker side of their gifts—the side of Sarah that the Wolf now controls.”

“But you’re Sarah’s Raven.” Jarred hustled to keep up. “You know what her mind is capable of. How her dream links work. Why can’t you—”

“Neither of the twins trust me. My mental presence would damage their ability to defeat the Wolf, not improve it. My men and I will cover them tactically. Shield them psychically as best we can until they’re in place. Your connection with Madeline will become key then. She’ll either accept you into whatever psychic connection they forge, and have a chance of defeating the Wolf, or she’ll very likely lose herself to the same darkness that’s taken her sister.”

Metting began to run toward wherever their transportation was waiting. Jarred raced beside him.

Maddie hadn’t been back to Lenox since she and her mother moved away. Leave it to her maniac sister to finally drag her home. Kennedy Park was only a few miles from their old house. Not that far from where their father had died.

Maddie looked up at the winter sky and shivered. Cold seeped through the insulated gear Metting’s people had provided. The bare oak trees looming above the familiar bike trail she was following were the trees from Sarah’s nightmares. It was dark, but a harvest moon laced everything with ghostly beams of light. Its illumination shifted with the howling wind blowing around Maddie. The sound of the storm overhead and of ever-moving branches, of her boots kicking dead leaves off the frozen ground, hinted of rustling feathers looming closer with every step she took.

And with every step, she could feel Sarah more, as if her twin was reaching for Maddie somehow, even though Sarah’s plan had been to do this alone. Their link had grown stronger, the closer Maddie got to the park. She’d first noticed it when the Watchers’ van crossed into Berkshire County. Now, with Metting and his men following her at an undetectable distance, all she could feel was the darkness of the night. Sarah’s fear, closing in. Her sister’s confusion and exhaustion and determination to end this.

Sarah was hiding. Watching. Trying to find Phyllis with her mind. To sense the Wolf before he could draw Sarah into the open.

Maddie stopped, panicked that she’d do something to expose her twin to danger. The confusion of Sarah’s chaotic emotions was spiraling higher. Taking over. Blurring everything but the impulse to be good, finally, or die trying. What was the plan—that Maddie should wait for Sarah to make her move? Or was she to wait for the Wolf to show himself? Or should she avoid a confrontation, grab her twin before Sarah could reveal herself, and restrain her until Metting’s men could recover their mother?

Maddie couldn’t remember.

She couldn’t think.

She had to hide.

She grabbed her pounding head and ducked behind a tree. She slid down its trunk until she was squatting on the forest floor, her mind exploding with streaks of red and black…Sounds of death circling ever closer. Flashes of her father’s accident. The explosion. The fire that she needed to get to, because this time she had to—

Die!

“No!” Maddie whispered. “It’s only a dream. The Wolf’s dream…”

She had to keep it together. She was the Raven’s decoy. She was Sarah’s sanity. Her light.

“Get your hands on Sarah,” Metting had said. “Hold her down if you have to. Control her emotions. The Watchers will take care of the Wolf.”

Maddie could do this. She could make this right for Sarah. For herself. They were getting Phyllis out. They were ending Dream Weaver. It was the only way Sarah could be free of the darkness. The only way Maddie could go back to Jarred, assuming he’d want her after the way she’d left him.

No more death.

No more insanity.

No more lies.

White. Healing white. Maddie was born to be a healer. Jarred had helped her see that. This time, she’d heal the other half of her soul. Her twin. It was the only chance either of them would have to start over.

After several cleansing breaths, Maddie opened her eyes to the darkness surrounding her. She opened her mind even more—letting Sarah’s turmoil flow through her. Letting it lead her. No more fear. No more hiding. She stepped back onto the narrow trail that wound through the dense forest of their childhood.

“Find your sister,” Metting had reminded her just before she’d left the Watchers’ van. A full day of strategy and travel, armed warriors that had her back for when things got ugly, but ultimately it was all up to her. “Don’t contact Sarah. Try not to alert her that you’re there, or that we’re behind you. Focus on her emotions. Let them lead you. Secure her. Don’t let Sarah engage. The Wolf will be waiting. He’ll be overconfident and careless. My men and I will take things from there. Just keep Sarah out of it. Remember…You’ve reached her twice now. Inside your dream link, you’re stronger than the Wolf. You can control Sarah regardless of his plans. You have to believe that, so Sarah can, too.”

Closing her eyes, Maddie pictured her twin, crouching and still, the way Sarah had looked hiding in that abandoned building. Only there were trees and underbrush around her now, and wind and fear and hate…

…hate for the loss and the death and the lies and the center and the Wolf—even for her Raven. But not for Maddie. Not anymore. Maddie would take care of their mother. She’d take Phyllis somewhere the center would never find them. And Sarah would finally get to be the good sister.

All she had to do was free Phyllis. Maddie would figure out the rest. Both of them would finally see that Sarah wasn’t Death—not in the end.

Sarah knew she could do this. She was feeling better. Focused, now that the moment was finally here. Ready to end this. It would be okay. Once Sarah took out—

The Wolf…

He was in the clearing.

Clutching Phyllis to his side.

“You can’t hide from me,” said the man who’d painted himself as a gray wolf in her dreams. The night was storming around him, blurring the scene into more dream than reality. “Stop hiding, Sarah. Your life for your mother’s, that’s our deal. You dragged me here. She’s fine, just like I promised. Live up to your end of the bargain, and I’ll let her go.”

In Sarah’s mind, a raven circled overhead. Drawing closer by the second. Fitting. He’d get to see her victory. But he’d be too late to stop her. Sarah would beat the Wolf while the Raven watched and finally knew she didn’t need him. He’d started this. She’d end it.

“Come out now,” the Wolf demanded. “I’m losing patience.”

But Sarah couldn’t leave her hiding place.

A buzzing was tickling her mind. An alarm. Something telling her not to move. Someone. Or was it just the wind and the trees and the shadows and the Raven and how much it all reminded her of what the Wolf wanted? What he’d wanted from the start…

No! Her mother. Sarah had to remember her mother, not the Wolf’s shadow dream. She had to stay focused. Save Phyllis. Beat the Wolf. Make her mother and the Raven watch.

“Let her go,” Sarah called from her perch beneath the grandfather oak—Maddie’s name for the ugly, looming tree
her sister had never guessed was Sarah’s secret hiding place.

It was the same tree the Wolf had painted into each of their shared dreams.

“If you want me,” Sarah called out, “let my mother go fi rst.”

Then Sarah would walk up to the Wolf, pretending to cooperate. She’d walk right to him and slit his throat. His men, hidden at the edge of the clearing, would try to open fire. But they’d be dead, too, before her mind was gone completely. Because they’d turn their guns on each other, not her. Sarah could see it in her mind—all of them, shooting one another. Killing. Dying because they were too weak to fight the daydreams she’d plant inside them while she hid.

She’d take care of them after the Wolf was down.

After Phyllis was free.

“Let her go!” Sarah projected whispers into the Wolf’s men’s imaginations. Distracting them, so they wouldn’t detect where she was hiding. “Let my mother walk across the clearing. I won’t come out until you do.”

“Oh, I think you’ll do exactly what I say.” The Wolf pushed her mother to the ground. “Come out, Sarah, or I’ll kill her.”

He raised his gun. The raven circled closer. So did the buzzing in Sarah’s mind.

“Leave my mother alone!” Sarah stumbled away from the tree’s cover. “Let her go.”

The Wolf’s smile lit up his gray face. Phyllis stared at her. The Wolf flicked the safety off his weapon.

The raven’s wings spread. Bare tree limbs swayed.

The gun in his hand fired.

A scream ripped through the night. Sarah’s scream, as she sprinted for her mother…

“No!” Maddie’s mind broke from their psychic link as
she bolted into the clearing, too. She was too late. Always too late. “Damn it, Sarah! Stop. Stay away from him!”

Sarah raced from the grandfather oak. Her head was splitting. Her heart was breaking. Flames of defeat consumed everything. She was too late. Always too late.

The Wolf’s thin laughter reached her. Engulfed her. Destroyed her absolution.

“God, please don’t let her be dead…” Sarah prayed for her mother. The way she prayed for her father in every dream the Wolf had forced her and Maddie to have.

“She’s not dead,” the Wolf chided. “Not yet.”

The flames cleared from Sarah’s vision, enough for her to see Phyllis sobbing uncontrollably but unharmed at the Wolf’s feet. For her to sense the very real nightmare approaching from behind. Running toward the Wolf, exactly the way he’d planned all those times he’d made Sarah reach for her sister’s mind. Torture it with memories of their father dying. Implanting the shadow-dream simulation that was about to unfold, no matter how hard Sarah had fought to keep Maddie out of this.

She spun around.

“You bitch!” she shrieked in her twin’s face. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you? You couldn’t stand it—letting me win. Letting me be good for once. Now look what you’ve done!”

“Sarah.” Maddie reached out her hand, the way she had in the playhouse. “Back away from the clearing with me. It’s going to be okay, I promise. But—”

“Okay?” Sarah felt the Raven drawing closer for real.

For a fleeting moment Sarah let herself hope she could stop this. But the Wolf’s men were closing in, too. She couldn’t stop once the Wolf’s simulation took over. No one could, not even the Raven.

“You have to take my hand,” her sister insisted.

“No!” Sarah shouted over the Wolf’s laugh. “Run away, Maddie. Now!”

“Not without you.” Maddie stepped to her side, her eyes already going vague with the shadow dream Sarah had no choice but to project. “We’re in this together, and—”

Maddie flinched.

So did Sarah.

Their gazes met.

Their minds.

Their dreams.

One dream…

The one Sarah had been forced to project into Maddie’s mind every night, while Sarah worked with the Raven’s host. Over and over again. All of it building to this awful moment.

It’s too late…
Sarah’s mind whispered across the buzzing link that the Wolf had somehow kept her from recognizing was Maddie.

Too late…
Maddie’s mind repeated back, as the raven’s wings spread overhead and bare tree limbs swayed.

The Wolf stepped closer.