Download - Secret Legacy by Anna DeStefano
Secret Legacy 1Anna DeStefano
Chapter One
There was a magnificence to the ocean's embrace, violet
blue perfection hinting at secrets below. Cool channels
wrapped Sarah Temple in velvet, promising her redemption.
Luring her deeper. Dream currents caressed as they charmed,
beguiled, seduced her into believing that tonight her search
would end.
She'd agreed not to come. She'd made them believe she
couldn't. Dreaming alone was reckless. But what she had to do
was too important, too dangerous, to let them follow. They
would have stopped this to kept her safe.
But there was no safe for Sarah. There was only the
truth, and setting it free. And freedom wouldn't come until
she faced the insanity of her nightmares.
As she rushed through the welcoming sea, deeper than
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they'd ever let her go, acceptance wrapped around her. She
drank it down, drowning the doubt that whispered through her
dream. She wasn't crazy. She was terrified of her mind's
darkness. But conquering the nightmare was the only way to
stop the pain. And to make them believe her. To find the proof
that would protect everyone. She wouldn't allow another
innocent to suffer because she was too weak to face the
truth.
Richard would be furious. He'd never fail her again, he'd
said. He was determined to guide her through this. As if Sarah
could trust him after what he'd done. As if there were another
path for her besides this one.
Streaks of color pulled from every direction. Ribbons of
reds and pink bleeding into crimson. It was a beautiful
display. Terrifying and tempting and drawing her closer to the
soul-deep cry that needed her here.
Then the colors became a voice.
And the voice was calling to her.
"Help me..." it whispered.
Loneliness ripped at Sarah, dragging, shoving, pushing
her toward the nightmare's hidden heart. It was a baby's cry,
she realized. It was a whimper. A little girl's pain. It was
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the shriek of a woman full grown, betrayed by every indecent
thing that had been done to her. Demanding that Sarah hear.
That she keep swimming.
She'd gone too deep to breathe or see clearly. The colors
had lost their vivid hues, abandoning her to a watery tomb.
"Help me..." she cried.
Then the water, too, was gone.
Sarah's head spun as she staggered down a twisting tunnel
that echoed with taunting pleas that no one believed were
real. There was nowhere to stop. No place to rest. The light
she needed to guide her wasn't there. Nothing was revealed by
the dream's next turn or the next, except her growing fear
that she would fail.
She looked back before she could stop herself. Her gaze
lifted to the surface where Richard's raven had always waited,
poised to protect her if she'd let him. There was no shadow
there tonight anticipating her call. No warrior in the world
beyond the dream, fighting to protect her. Sarah had made sure
of it...
Secret Legacy 4Anna DeStefano
Chapter Two
Colonel Richard Metting stood in the control center of
the Watchers' underground bunker, studying a wall of monitors
and hiding the fact that he could feel Sarah's sanity
splintering. The cries that she heard in her nightmares were
screaming through his mind now, too. Along with flashes of his
dream symbol—a raven—circling above an angry sea.
She was dreaming.
Alone.
If her recklessness were discovered, the council of
elders presiding over the Brotherhood would command that her
legacy be neutralized Richard's job would be to execute the
order. She’d be exiled to an unrecoverable coma.
"We've observed only routine activity due to shift
change," Mike Donovan reported from the surveillance team
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monitoring the Trinity Psychiatric Research Center. "Only
vetted staff entering and exiting the building. There are no
doctors or medical personnel on site except those assigned to
existing cases. Hourly sweeps detect no psychic activity, no
dream projections."
In other words, the Center continued to function as what
it had always portrayed itself to be: a state-of-the-art
asylum for those in need of long-term care. It had been
Sarah's home for ten years, while she'd languished in a coma.
It had become her prison when the covert government agency
funding the place decided her and her twin's gifts would
become the foundation for an unstoppable psychic weapon.
Richard's brotherhood of watchers had shut down the
Center's Dream Weaver program. But Sarah's mind was still in
crisis. Her dreams grew more out of control every day that she
resisted his help. Now watcher teams assigned to two other
family lines whose legacies were Brotherhood priorities had
detected psychic surveillance of their activities. Someone—
presumably the Center—had pinpointed their locations. The
security of key watcher activities had been compromised just a
month after bringing the Temples under Brotherhood protection.
Another shriek from Sarah’s nightmare seared through
Richard’s mind. He shielded the psychic energy from the others
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in the bunker. She shouldn’t have been capable of projecting a
dream. Sarah shouldn't have been able to independently connect
with his or anyone else's consciousness.
"Awaiting orders," Donovan relayed.
Richard pressed a button on the device wrapped around his
ear, accessing the transmission. "Continue surveillance."
He closed the link and unhooked the receiver. He tossed
it aside and braced his hands on the edge of his workstation,
forcing down Sarah's panic and pain so he could think.
He was the Temples' watcher, but he also held a top
command position within the Brotherhood. His job was to
analyze, strategize, then carry out whatever action was best
for all the gifted families the watchers protected, and for
the psychic realm at large. A single legacy was sometimes
required to pay an unfair price in order to protect the whole.
It was a brutal paradigm Richard had become intimately
familiar with as a young boy, when his own legacy had been in
play. A reality he'd had no difficulty guiding other lives
through during the two decades he'd risen up the Brotherhood's
chain of command. Then his mind had felt the first brush of
Sarah's complex, vulnerable energy.
There'd been something special, powerful, there that he
and the watchers hadn't been ready to silence, no matter how
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risky preserving the Temple Legacy continued to be. But
tonight's activities might force the council's hand, if the
work of a man who'd been dead for over a month was still a
threat through Sarah's mind.
"There's no evidence that Tad Ruebens has been replaced,"
Jeff Coleridge said, his thoughts in tune with Richard's.
Richard's second-in-command had killed the Center director
who'd led the push to control the Temples' powers. "Nothing to
suggest that Dream Weaver research is now focused on the child
Sarah says she's hearing. This voice is merely another symptom
of her psychosis. And now her mind may be bleeding key
Brotherhood information to our enemy."
"Or the Center could be continuing its dream work on her
behind psychic shielding we haven't penetrated. The way
they’ve been tracking other legacy families without our
detection."
"You're wasting time and resources exploring Sarah’s
fantasies. We need to shut down the Center’s access to us
through the twins' minds, or wherever else it’s coming from.”
The exposed watcher teams had regrouped, relocated, and
their psychic shielding had been reinforced, effectively
masking their activities. The status of both surveillance ops
had been escalated to observe and protect. The legacies
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involved were once more off the grid. But Jeff was right. It
was a short-term fix at best. The Brotherhood had to know how
the families had been targeted in the first place.
"Our intel shows no evidence of continued dream testing
at the Center," Richard reasoned out loud. "No reason to
believe they're still interested in the twins' ability to
control others through shared dreaming."
"Zero whispers on the government side, either." Jeff
scrolled through the latest report. "No elevated psychic
activity at any known testing sites since we brought the twins
within the bunker's shields. But Sarah's emotional stability
is degrading to dangerous levels, while our security has
become compromised."
"Ruebens' work damaged her mind far worse than her
sister's."
"Damage you haven't been able to reverse, even after we
ended the hold he and his wolf image had on her.”
Richard braced himself so Jeff wouldn’t sense the fear
and confusion flooding his mind from Sarah's. He reined in the
impulse to run to her quarters. To somehow stop the agony his
brotherhood was thrusting into her life.
His eyes narrowed.
He should have alerted his elders the moment he sensed
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her dreaming consciousness. Even without the threat of a an
intelligence leak, Sarah projecting a dream matrix beyond
their control was a disturbing development. If the Center was
making a new play for her legacy, every minute Richard delayed
notifying the council put everyone the Brotherhood protected
at risk. But he couldn't give her up yet. He refused to accept
that her mind was beyond his ability to save.
"Take the con." He headed for the elevator bank built
into the control center's back wall.
He'd failed to protect Sarah from Dream Weaver, but he'd
done everything he could for her since Ruebens's death,
including working with the twins in his dream lab while
maintaining the emotional distance Sarah had demanded.
Distance that was no longer an option.
"Orders?" Jeff slipped on Richard's earpiece and took
over reading the psychic activity reports streaming to them
from teams across the globe. He shot Richard a questioning
glance.
Like many of the watchers who'd sworn to prevent control
of powerful gifts like the Temples' from falling into the
wrong hands, Jeff saw the twins as ongoing threats. The
Brotherhood's near-disastrous resolution of Richard's mission
to derail Dream Weaver, then Richard's insistence that Sarah
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and Madeline be brought to the command bunker, had created an
unfriendly environment toward the women, even within their
council of elders.
No one could know about Sarah's rogue dream until Richard
brought her mind back under his control.
"Up the alert on Center activity and the search for
possible satellite testing locations," he said.
"And when there's still nothing to report?" Jeff asked.
Richard punched the button to take him deeper into the
bunker—to Sarah's sleeping quarters just off his dream lab.
"Then I'm sending you out on the next sweep. No one's more
motivated to prove me wrong about this legacy than you are,
right?"
Secret Legacy 11Anna DeStefano
Chapter Three
The dream shifted, sensing that Sarah was weakening.
Water rushed back, dragging her through the tunnel that had
become a maze of endless corridors. Each turn was the
beginning. Never the end. Never the way forward.
There was no air to breathe. Her fear fed the sea's hold.
There was no mind to steady hers in the darkening surge. There
were only screams, growing louder but never leading her to the
light. Until the cries were suddenly coming from Sarah
herself. Until they'd always been hers.
Sarah covered her ears. She surrendered to the next turn,
to the madness. She'd come for this, to let the dream take
over. She might be lost here forever, but she wasn't stopping.
Not until she reached the little girl calling to her with both
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beauty and exquisite pain.
"Trinity..." Sarah said into the sea. "Where are you?"
Her voice tumbled through murky water, joining with the
never-ending cries and building until the sound was pushing,
lifting, driving Sarah toward a door covered in the vibrant
colors from before. They were melting into one another now,
creating a mottled, grotesque stain the tint of dried blood.
The sea slammed her against the door's surface. Her nails
dug into its battered wood. Her heart thundered, straining for
oxygen. Her lungs burned, refusing to expand.
"Open it," a child insisted. "Help me... See what we've
become."
Sarah clawed at the latch's gnarled loops. There was
light waiting on the other side, like morning's new promise
sprinkling hope across a diamond-kissed shore. Trinity would
be there. A magical child no one else could hear. A fantasy
born from a promise of redemption. A dream that Sarah had come
to make reality.
Except her mind had been trained for death, not dreams.
Her fantasies bred deception, not promises fulfilled. Her
nightmares had destroyed too much for her to be anyone's
savior now.
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What if the darkest part of her lurked just beyond her
grasp—shadows waiting to use her for evil, instead of the
light she needed to set free?
Screams swallowed more of the dream.
"Trinity..." Sarah begged.
The water, the cries, the impassible door... Her dream
ocean had become a soulless, empty place waiting for her to
fail. She fought the latch. She yanked and twisted and pulled
until there was nothing left. Ribbons of blood swirled into
the sea's eager embrace.
"This is where you belong," the ocean chanted, soothing
her panic. "This is why you came alone. Let the light go. You
don't want to hurt anymore."
But there was suddenly another energy fighting to be
heard, infusing the frigid water with vitality and warmth. A
raven flew above the sea. His strength and logic filtered into
Sarah's mind, demanding that she resist the sea's embrace.
That she release the water and the latch and the door and her
failure to reach Trinity. He wanted her to come back—to him.
"Wake up," he projected from the other side of sleep.
His voice was every good thing that had once tempted
Sarah. Then trusting him had become her greatest failure.
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"Damn it, Temple," he said, "you're in v-tach. Break the
dream link before your heart gives out."
His psychic strength battered at the mental shields she'd
secretly strengthened. The hidden place inside her still
connected to him yanked her through the tunnel, away from the
truth she'd risked so much to reach, until she was struggling
with the calmer currents near the surface.
"Help me..." Trinity begged from below.
"Wake up..." the raven called.
But his concern wasn't real, Sarah reminded herself. His
job was to control her legacy. He didn't care about Trinity.
He'd never cared about Sarah. Not enough.
She dove deeper, looking for the door again. There was no
gentle seduction now. The ocean grabbed her with greedy claws.
She welcomed the brutality, as long as it took her back to
Trinity. The raven flew above the ocean's surface, tracking
her descent. When she found the girl, he would see. He'd
believe. He'd come back for the child even if Sarah couldn't
save her. He'd have no choice. Trinity would be too important
for the Brotherhood to leave behind.
"Release the dream." Hands gripped her shoulders in her
sleeping quarters.
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Fingers bit into her skin, shaking her. The powerful
consciousness she'd once given her heart to layered storm
sounds, wind and rain and lightning, over the roar of her sea-
swept currents. Their familiar vision of a misty summer forest
tempted Sarah. He knew exactly where she was weakest.
But she clung to her nightmare, free-falling with no end
in sight. There was no more tunnel for her to run through. No
maze leading to the truth.
"Trinity," Sarah called into the icy water.
"Come closer," the ocean chanted.
"Help me," a lonely child begged.
"Wake up," demanded the voice that had saved Sarah from
the darkness before, only to feed her to a monster that had
destroyed her mind. "Release the dream," he demanded. "Come
back to me before it's too late."