Dark Legacy (6 page)

“I saved that man’s life.”

“Then you had a breakdown in front of everyone. Not exactly a confidence-instilling moment.”

Maddie swallowed the compulsion to scream one of her sister’s more creative curses. Jarred was right. Smug but right. She’d headed into the hospital that morning so sure she could keep herself together. That today was a fresh start. The same load of crap she’d told herself every other morning.

Then she’d freaked during her psych appointment. Shrieked at Britton, after pushing him around in front of
the staff. Fled while her patient coded. Thrown up all over her shrink—her ex, almost-boyfriend—while she felt more and more of her twin’s madness becoming her own.

She
was
a nutcase. Her entire family was a cautionary tale she’d never outrun. One Jarred already knew too much about. And there he was, signing up for more. Maddie shot him a look that suggested she wasn’t the only one who needed professional help. Then she lifted the phone to her ear.

“…something wrong?” Phyllis Temple was babbling. “Are you okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

Maddie’s visitor stepped past her. A wave of warmth and worry curled around her. She backed away, holding up a finger to ward the man off. He stood his ground, his gaze understanding of all things.

Her body and her mind clamored to get closer. To let him see more of the parts of her she’d kept hidden for so long. Maddie didn’t fall for men this way. She didn’t let herself lean on anyone, not the way she wanted to crawl into Jarred’s arms every time they breathed the same air. She couldn’t risk that kind of honesty. Staying safe—staying separate—was the only way she’d managed the success she had.

“Mom, I’m going to call you back,” she said into the phone.

“Who’s there with you?”

“Someone from work.”

“Someone asking about your sister? It’s been years since you’ve looked back, honey. You’ve got enough to worry about at the hospital. Your whole future’s ahead of you. Why—”

“I need answers, Mom.”

“Why now? What’s wrong?”

Wrong?

Maddie’s gaze tracked Jarred as he helped himself to a tour of her apartment—something she’d never allowed when they were dating. His long-legged, making-himself-at-home stroll came to an abrupt halt beside the couch piled high with blankets and pillows. Her oasis when she couldn’t sleep at night. Which had been every night since the nightmares had started.

“I’ll call you back,” she insisted. “Really, I have to go.”

“But your father—”

“Mom—”

“It was an accident, sweetie. Your sister—”

“Mom—”

“Sarah was already lost. It wasn’t her fault, but your father was so worried, and she was high again and—”

“Mom!” Maddie shouted, losing patience with her mother’s rambling, because Phyllis still hadn’t said anything more than she ever did. “If you won’t tell me the truth about Sarah, I can’t do this right now.” Jarred turned to watch her come unglued. Her fingers clenched in the hair she’d been tugging at her neck. “I’ll call you later.”

“Honey, please—”

Maddie punched the phone off.

Perfect Maddie…
the voice mocked.

“Get out,” she snarled at the voice and her unwanted guest.

“You’re a lot feistier now.” Jarred smiled, not seeming to mind. “Rude, even.”

Actually, Maddie wasn’t rude. Ever. She didn’t think of people as assholes, and she didn’t scream at her mother. Sarah was the unpredictable, disrespectful twin. She’d
never cared who saw the crazy inside her. Or maybe she’d just been too far gone to hide it by the time Maddie had been old enough to really notice. And Maddie had convinced herself that the same thing wouldn’t happen to her. That if she just tried hard enough, let herself buy her mother’s warped view of the world and shoved down all the questions and the confusion of the past, she could have this wonderful life that was dying before her eyes.

Maddie didn’t bother wiping at her tears. “Look, I know today was a disaster. I’ll e-mail the chief of staff my resignation in the morning. Consider yourself off the hook.”

She was at the door. The door Jarred had left open, as if he’d sensed she’d feel safer that way. She yanked it wider. Stared at the floor. Waited for him to catch a clue. Jarred walked closer, but stopped in front of her instead of leaving. She could feel him staring. Wondering. Leaning in.

She flinched away.

Whimpered.

Relax…

The word, in Jarred’s voice this time, echoed through her mind.

“So, it’s not just when you touch a patient?” he said out loud.

She left him and the door behind.

“Get out!” Her body was shaking. She couldn’t fall apart like this in front of him.

“If being around other people is this difficult, how do you handle the ER?”

His voice was so soothing, brushing across her frazzled nerves. Where had soothing come from? She wanted smug back. She
needed
smug back.

“You want to tell me what happened with that patient
today?” he pressed. “Don’t bother saying it was nothing, because I felt it, too. At least some of it. Like I felt your anger during our appointment when I tried to make you talk about your twin. Even if you don’t want to analyze what’s happening to you, I do. Whatever this is, I’m a part of it now. Accept that and—”

He paused when she stumbled farther out of reach. Away from the instinct to trust him. To let this dangerous, tempting man even further in. To scream her confusion and keep on screaming until something, anything made sense.

“Okay.” He slowly followed her across the room. “Let’s talk about tomorrow, then.”

The hallway bathroom was just behind her. The kitchen to her right, and beyond it the side door of her corner, ground-floor apartment. She’d left the dead bolt off. If she ran fast enough—

“Where will you go?” he asked, as if he knew what she was thinking.

Don’t run from me, Maddie,
his thoughts pleaded. Thoughts that she shouldn’t be able to feel so clearly—not without Sarah there to fuel the kind of emotional connection Maddie had never achieved on her own.

“Stop doing that,” she begged.

“Doing what?”

She sprinted for the back door. Hard hands yanked her to a halt from behind. Jarred’s breath brushed her cheek. Needs from long ago, from when she’d been sixteen and still let herself need, rushed back.

No more barriers.

No more safe.

No more careful.

“Talk to me, Temple,” Jarred insisted.

Trust me just this once,
was his unspoken plea.

“No!” Maddie lifted a fist to her pounding head. Pressed her other hand to her churning stomach. It was too much. All of it, too much. His thoughts. Her patient’s. Sarah’s…

None of them should be in her head.

“You’re making yourself sick.” He steered her toward the couch and let her slide down until she crumpled into her snowy-white blankets and pillows. “Just like at the hospital this morning when I thought you were going to beat Britton to a pulp, which I personally would have enjoyed watching. But then you almost passed out in the hallway.”

“
You’re
making me sick.”

Jarred and the thought of what it must have been like for her twin to go through this their entire childhood. Always open. No way out. The panic attacks and the constant fear. It had driven Sarah over the edge. Maddie panted. Swallowed. Pulled the blanket to her chin. She was so cold.

“You’re…” She had no idea what to say next.

“How am I making you sick?” Jarred planted his hands on his hips, just above the age-worn jeans he always wore beneath his lab coat. “I’m offering a friend the courtesy of my best professional advice. But you seem convinced there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

There was nothing anyone could do, Maddie finally accepted. The nightmares were going to win. The guilt and the pain. The confusion. Feeling and knowing things she shouldn’t. Other people’s things. The same darkness Sarah had fallen into—the sister no one at St. Chris but this man knew about. Because Maddie had had been so determined to believe that there was no legacy of gifts the women in her family couldn’t control. No spiraling need to—

Die!

“Don’t.” Jarred pried Maddie’s left hand away from her other wrist.

Her nails had been scratching. Scraping. The bloody slashes on her skin oozed sullenly. Maddie flinched, horrified by what she’d done, and by the terrifying calm that came with the pain. The craving inside for more.

Jarred let her go, taking his heat with him. When he knelt in front of the couch, his eyes were an infinite crystal blue. Confused. Worried. Kind. Saying,
Trust me, Maddie…

“I can feel it, too.” His voice was a whisper now. “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it, and it’s getting stronger. I don’t understand, but…” He studied her abused wrist. Pulled out a clean handkerchief and covered the scrapes, pressing gently. Maddie was too drained to resist. Too stunned by the peace seeping into her from Jarred’s touch.

I can feel it, too…
his voice whispered through her mind.

When she could only stare, he sighed.

“I want to know how you do it,” he said out loud. “How you do whatever you did for that man this morning. I saw it, I
felt
it. But a part of me still can’t believe it. Let me help you deal with whatever this is, Maddie. Screw your job at St. Chris and what the administration thinks. I’ll figure out some way to deal with them. To buy you more time. But you have to stop insisting that you can fix this…whatever this is…yourself. You’re the most instinctive healer I’ve ever met, and you’re on the edge of a complete breakdown that’s about to take away everything you’ve worked for. Is that what you want? Do you want to be locked up for the rest of your life, just like Sarah?”

“Die!”

The command echoed through the night. Not the Raven’s voice. The darkness had never been about the Raven. Sarah could feel him fighting to stop it. To stop her. But the dream’s control belonged to neither of them.

The command to kill was too powerful. Impossible to deny no matter how strong her mind had become. And it was all the Raven’s fault. He’d promised she’d never be here. She’d never become what they wanted her to be.

Sarah fought the drugs and the simulation protocol. The shadows. The dark impulse to kill. She wasn’t doing this. She wasn’t Death. It was just a dream that she should be able to stop, the same way she had last time. But this time she couldn’t halt the inevitable. She’d never be able to, without…

Maddie…

Sarah’s mind reached for her last resort. For her twin’s emotional balance. The opposite of the weak, uncontrollable destruction that Sarah was becoming. But even though Maddie’s mind was there, on the fringes of the dream, she was closed off now. Resisting Sarah’s call. Determined not to let her in ever again.

So, like a good little girl, Sarah triggered Kayla Lawrence’s death. Choking on useless tears, soundlessly screaming, she
painted her host’s dream world with a nightmare programmed by a psychotic master. Then she was trapped, no way out, watching the dream unfold. A lucid nightmare, because her host was awake now. Daydreaming.

Like a captive, horrified conductor, Sarah watched Kayla reach into the bedside table drawer. Remove the gun she’d thought she’d thrown away after waking from last night’s simulation. Check to ensure it was loaded. Smile in satisfaction. Peace. Relief. Seductive emotions that had been planted to give the host a false sense of safety, once everything was in place.

But Kayla was cringing now, aware that something was wrong…straining to regain control from the dream. Failing. Because Sarah’s mind was dutifully pushing the nightmare toward its predesigned end…

The Raven screamed in denial. His wings spread.

Bare tree limbs swayed.

The gun fired.

A scream ripped through the night
.

“No!”

Sarah bolted from her prone position. Upright. Blind. The tug of tubes and embedded wires bit into her arms. Her chest. Her face and scalp.

“Daddy!”

She’d killed him. Her father had been dead forever. But in her shadow dreams she killed him again. Over and over. And this time, she’d taken another life, too.

“Oh, God,” she sobbed. She’d killed him. She’d killed Kayla. She was Death now, just like they wanted.

“Damn it, take her down!” demanded the voice that had refused to let her go.

Sarah’s Raven.

The voice that had called into her darkness and pulled her mind back. Then he’d made her dream. Told her it
was the only way. Her only chance to live again. He’d promised to teach her. Train her. Give her the strength she’d never had before. Make sure she stayed free of the darkness forever.

“What the hell…” He was muttering. But she couldn’t focus on the words. “…doing awake!”

His voice wasn’t echoing through her mind, she realized. He was above her this time, beyond the nightmare. She recoiled. Panicked. Grasped for the clarity that came only with her simulations. But her host was gone. The gentle spirit the Raven had taught her to link with. Kayla was dead. There was nothing out there for Sarah to immerse herself in. Nothing to see, to feel, that wasn’t her own mind or the Raven’s. And she’d never trust him again.

No host. No Maddie. No dreams. Because…

God! I’m awake!

Sarah fought against the arms forcing her down.

“Secure her leads,” the Raven commanded. “Reset audio stimuli.”

Her ears were covered.

The sound of wind and storm and haunted rustling returned. Weakness stole through her veins as the drugs took hold. But their pull was weaker than before. Or was she growing stronger? Was that even possible? She’d been dreaming for so long. Forever. Believing it would free her. Believing the Raven. Performing on command. Meanwhile, she’d been trained to kill, too. To become Death.