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


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


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...


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


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


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


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


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


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


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?"


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


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.


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.


"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.


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."

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Secret Legacy by Anna DeStefano