Dark Legacy (26 page)

“If the center gains control of Sarah’s mind, it won’t matter that I erased the records of my Dream Weaver work from their systems. This Wolf has already used my techniques with some degree of success. He’ll extrapolate the rest from Sarah, and the project will continue into full weapons testing. We can’t allow that to happen, no matter the cost.”

“We?” Maddie sputtered. “I don’t work for you, Dr.
Metting. And I refuse to work with this brotherhood of yours that doesn’t care about me or my family, except for how it can use us to get what it wants.”

“So you’re amenable to Sarah trying to free your mother on her own and getting herself killed or recaptured in the process? You really hate her that much?”

Maddie didn’t answer. Jarred could feel the tears of frustration she refused to let Metting see.

“She’s communicating with you about her plans,” Metting continued, “no matter how volatile your relationship with her has become. On an unconscious level, Sarah still trusts you. She knows she needs your help.”

“And she hates
you.
” Maddie stopped rubbing the side of her head. Her hand slapped the exam table. “Why would I deliver Sarah to you people, after everything you’ve already put her through?”

“Because if you don’t, you’re signing her death warrant.”

“And you don’t care what this will do to Maddie?” Jarred held on tighter to the woman who’d claimed his soul. She’d almost died saving him from Sarah. Her heart had stopped, after she tracked her twin and almost failed to disengage from their link. How much more could her mind and body take?

“I care as deeply as you do, Dr. Keith.” Metting sighed, and then Jarred could feel everything the man had been holding back. Guilt, shock, anger, grief, and…love for Sarah. The same way Jarred would love Maddie without end, no matter how impossibly they were separated. Then just as quickly, the door to Metting’s mind slammed shut. “But my feelings are irrelevant unless we can save these women from being absorbed into an evil that can’t be allowed to win.”

“What exactly do you want?” Maddie demanded.

“I have to know everything you haven’t told me about your dream,” Metting said. “The information Sarah’s not even aware that she sent you. Without that, your sister and my men won’t have a chance to defeat this Wolf or the government’s plans for Dream Weaver.”

“Or to save my mother?” Maddie insisted. “You save my mother, or I don’t tell you another damn thing. If Phyllis dies, there will be no hope for Sarah. She already blames herself for my father’s death. She thinks I blame her. She’s obsessed with trying to make what happened that night right. If this Wolf kills my mother because of Sarah, her mind will finish disintegrating.”

“We’ll do everything within our power to protect your family, Ms. Temple. That’s the only promise I can give you. You’re going to have to—”

“Trust you?” Jarred felt Maddie recoil at the words. “How can you expect her to trust you and an organization you’ve barely told us anything about?”

“I expect her to keep fighting for her and Sarah’s lives, the way she has since she barged into Trinity Center. If Maddie stops fighting now, her sister and her mother die.”

“What else do you need to know?” Maddie leaned deeper into Jarred’s embrace, needing his presence to balance her hopeless fear for her family.

“You initiated the dream connection on your own this time,” Metting said. “For the first time, you were in control of your and Sarah’s dreams. You were seeing things Sarah never wanted you to see. Things she’d never have shown you on her own. What did you discover?”

Maddie hesitated. Sarah would see this as a betrayal, telling her Raven the secrets of their minds.

“His methods are twisted,” Jarred reasoned with be
grudging acceptance. “But I believe Metting’s been fighting for Sarah all this time. And I believe he cares about her. I have some experience with what that can be like…” Jarred kissed the tip of Maddie’s nose. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to put myself between you and whatever’s trying to hurt you. If that’s what he’s been doing, then—”

“But he’s the Raven!” Maddie confronted Metting. “Sarah wants to kill you.”

“Does she?” His gaze pierced Maddie’s certainty. “I’ve centered her mind, from the coma to waking to her very first dream projection and beyond. The Wolf would have encouraged Sarah to build on that connection, rather than trying to start over again with his own presence. He wouldn’t have had time in the three months you say she’s been involved in your dreams, to anchor Sarah with his own identity. Not and keep me in the dark about the dream projections he was doing while Sarah and I continued to work together.”

“What are you saying?”

“The Wolf implanted a symbol of me into the dreams he had Sarah send you, as well as the ones he implanted into Kayla Lawrence. But Sarah took her connection to me further than he would have wanted.”

“Sarah wanted you in the Wolf’s homicidal dreams?”

“I think she wanted me to see what was happening.”

“So you’d be proud of the little freak you’d made?”

“So the raven image would stop the projections somehow. Except I didn’t. Now she’s trying to get you to see. To stop her. There are messages in her simulations. In the recurring links you’ve shared with her. My dream image would have been close to whatever Sarah wanted most for us to know.”

“You…” The Raven’s cries. His wings rustling as he
flew overhead. Watching. Waiting. Maddie could hear them all over again. “You were there…”

“Where, Madeline?” he said in a hypnotically soft voice. Had he said it out loud? In her mind? She wanted to look back to Jarred to be sure, but she couldn’t turn away from Metting’s dark gaze. “Who did Sarah want to kill in your dreams? She’s trying to tell us what the Wolf wants, so we can stop him before it’s too late. Help me save your twin and your mother…”

Maddie felt the intensity of Metting’s mind touch hers fully for the first time. His was a brutally honest consciousness. But there was a layer of concern. As if he knew how fragile her hold was on reality. He was being excruciatingly careful. Urgent, but careful. And honest. And he was doing nothing now to shield his own emotions—his commitment to protecting Maddie from as much of her memories of Sarah’s nightmare as he could. And at all costs, to protect Sarah from the miscalculations he’d made.

“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.”

“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…”