Secret Legacy Read online

  HIGH PRAISE FOR ANNA DESTEFANO!

  “This new urban fantasy has an attention-grabbing plot and interesting characters that provide excitement and suspense. And the psychological tension provides a satisfying head trip. . . . The story line satisfies and leads to a cliff-hanger conclusion.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Dark Legacy

  “Dark Legacy combines Gothic overtones, secret government technology, a psychic heroine, a brilliant and charming hero and a lightning-fast plot to create a sure winner.”

  —New York Times Bestselling Author

  Lori Handeland

  “Anna DeStefano’s remarkable stories of the healing power of love touch the heart with hope. One of the genre’s rising stars . . .”

  —Gayle Wilson, Two-time RITA

  Award–winning Author

  “DeStefano’s chilling, mesmerizing tale draws readers through a horrifying mental nightmare and brings them safely, if not unscathed, to the other side. Fans of psychological suspense—especially the clinical kind—may find this especially fascinating.”

  —Library Journal on Dark Legacy

  “Dark Legacy is a spine-tingling blend of dark suspense and a paranormal romance that explores the deep powers of the human mind and heart. . . . Anna DeStefano keeps the reader poised on the very edge until the last page as danger upon danger arises, as image upon image builds to the final confrontation and shocking revelation . . .”

  —Merrimon Book Reviews

  MORE PRAISE FOR ANNA DESTEFANO!

  “Ms. DeStefano has crafted a complex and compelling tale that encompasses a lot of ‘What Ifs.’ You will be wondering till the end. . . . And you will enjoy pretty much every page of this wonderfully written tale.”

  —Night Owl Romance

  “. . . My top Genre Bending must read fiction book for this year . . . it’s edgy . . . real edgy.”

  —Rochester Writing Examiner on Dark Legacy

  “Ms. DeStefano provides readers with an entertaining reading experience. . . . Dark Legacy combines the dark draw of power with a danger-filled paranormal adventure of revenge and romance.”

  —Darque Reviews

  “If you like your thrillers with a dash of the paranormal and a bit on the Gothic side, this is the book for you.”

  —Fresh Fiction on Dark Legacy

  Secret

  Legacy

  ANNA

  DESTEFANO

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  May 2011

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co.,

  Inc. 200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2011 by Anna DeStefano

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4285-1111-8

  E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0962-7

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  To Leah and Michelle.

  Your vision thrives in the dreams you nurture.

  To Andrew and Jimmy.

  Fantasy and imagination are only possible

  because you remind me to play.

  To Anna Adams,

  for the memories that knowing you

  has gifted back to me.

  To Nina Bruhns and

  the Low Country Romance Writers.

  Secret Legacy was conceived in

  the footprints I’ve left on your unforgettable shore.

  To everyone who believes in

  just a little more than we should.

  Faith opens doors and worlds and futures,

  promising a tomorrow to heal each yesterday.

  Secret

  Legacy

  Twins will be born to the line. And with them, great good to commence. Or great evil, should darkness descend. Through them, another will come, to spread light far and wide. Or to cast the ultimate shadow on a lost mankind.

  —The Temple Legacy

  Specto. Tego. Asservo.

  —The Watcher’s Creed

  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 keep 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 red 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 was 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 irreversible 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 un-stoppable 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 de cades 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, too.” 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’s 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. 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 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 control center.” He headed for the elevator bank built into the 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.