Secret Legacy (17 page)

“Accepted?” Maddie asked. “Is that code for deciding a legacy’s fate without consulting the
principals
involved?”

Sarah could feel her twin wondering how this confrontation would get them any closer to finding Trinity. She could feel everyone’s thoughts now whenever she didn’t consciously use the mental shields Richard was strengthening. Ever since their link deepened within the vision, her powers were expanding even faster. She could hear everyone’s questions. Sense their confusion. Their fear.

Jacob’s condescending gaze flicked to Sarah, then back to Maddie. “You and your twin still aren’t in control of the effect of your legacy on the world around you. If the center were to regain full command of your abilities, the damage done would be our responsibility. Our mission is to—”

“Do the right thing?” Sarah asked. “How about partnering with my family instead of treating us like we’re faceless pawns in some war? Because that sounds pretty right to me.”

Richard had begun the meeting by filling in the elders
on their discoveries from her debriefing vision, including his personal guarantee that Sarah was not the Brotherhood’s mole. The elders had been as unmoved by his assurances as they were by her challenge now.

“Your refusal to accept that my sister and I can be part of the solution to your problem,” she said, “not only endangers the people I care about, but your league of Watchers. My dream is a direct link to the people closing in on you. Isn’t that enough to make partnering with us a necessity, right or wrong?”

The room slowed around her. Sarah could feel shock in response to her rational, calm delivery. She could read every mind, every heartbeat, every consciousness—including the thoughts of the elders, who weren’t aware that she could sense them through the psychic shielding at their locations. She could feel Richard waiting, confident in her control, while he buffered the cries for help still reaching for her from her nightmare.

She could feel him wanting her, too. Needing her. Holding himself in check, so she’d have this chance and however many more chances she needed, without the distraction of dealing with the passion they’d lost themselves to and the question of what they were going to do about it.

“The Temple Legacy has already benefited the psychic realm,” Richard said to the old men, whose images were now wavering. “They’ve assisted us in defending countless other legacies by helping end Tad Ruebens’s Dream Weaver plans.”

“Have they?” Jacob asked.

“My sister and I are here,” Sarah said.

“Are you?” another elder asked—Sebastian, the one
whose hologram was projected closest to Sarah. “Are you fully here with us, or is your consciousness still in thrall to the center’s programming?”

His mind fixed on Sarah’s.

He frowned when she blocked his attempt to access her thoughts.

Sarah pictured the door barring her from the truth in her ocean dream, centering her thoughts on the light she needed to find on the other side of it. Then she concentrated on Sebastian’s consciousness. Welcomed his thoughts into her own. She felt Richard shielding her intent while his own gifts enhanced her range.

Sebastian blinked when he realized she’d locked on to his energy. His mind rejected hers with so much force, Sarah stumbled backward. Richard grabbed her arm, kept her on her feet, then returned her to his side. The rightness of his calm presence beside her, within her mind, could become addictive if she let it.

All seven elders were frowning now. There wasn’t a single condescending, tolerant smile amongst them.

“As you can see,” Richard said, “Sarah’s control has grown enough for the council to consider the next phase of her legacy’s union with the Brotherhood.”

“What union?” Maddie’s fingers tangled with Sarah’s. Her anxiety sizzled through them. “We were brought here to deprogram Sarah and to neutralize Tad Ruebens’s embedded dreamscapes. So you maniacs could move on to manipulating some other unsuspecting legacy and leave us the hell alone.”

“Meanwhile,” David, the darker-skinned elder, said, “your sister seems more inclined to merge your legacy with our mission by the day.”

“Since when?” Maddie asked.

“Since she and Colonel Metting brought you and your fiancé to this meeting,” Jacob said, “to suggest that none of us have a choice in the matter.”

Silence filled the conference room. Sarah could sense Maddie waiting for her to set the man straight.

“Trinity is real,” Sarah said to David instead. “Whoever she is, the center has her. Colonel Metting has made it clear I won’t conquer the next dream projection I follow her into without the support of your Watchers and my family to stabilize the matrix. You need to know how the center plans to use that nightmare, and me, to weaken your organization. We need each other.”

“And if the nightmare you’re so eager to dive back into gives you another command to kill?” David asked. “And next time you can’t stop yourself?”

“Then Colonel Metting will be there”—Sarah had already accepted what would have to happen if her darker impulses grew too strong for her to stop—“to neutralize the damage you’ve let the center create inside of me, for good.”

“No!” Maddie’s hand clenched around Sarah’s.

Sarah pulled away. Richard grabbed both their arms, his presence calming Maddie’s confusion and Sarah’s doubts that she could see this through. The desire that had coursed between them during the vision’s kiss reached for Sarah, too, the pull of the memory stronger now that they were touching.

“I’ll get Sarah through the door this time,” he promised. She could sense his awareness of the turn her thoughts had taken, but he kept his warrior’s focus on
the plan they’d discussed. “We’ll progress deeper into the ocean’s matrix and—”

“My sister is not going deeper into that damned dream.” Maddie confronted the holograms. “You’re panting for the chance to silence her mind for good. If things turn ugly, you’ll have your excuse. It would be a suicide mission.”

“Forcibly subduing your sister’s consciousness if necessary would be a condition I’m afraid we’d have to insist on,” Jacob said. “However, Colonel Metting wouldn’t be commanding the mission. The Watcher in charge would have to be someone we could trust to put our directives first.”

“Before my family’s well-being, you mean?” Sarah’s heart stumbled at the thought of dreaming without Richard protecting her.

The elder’s attention shifted to Richard. “Your supervision would be required in the lab, of course, to ensure the safety of the minds joined to the matrix. But another would be responsible for protecting the projection.”

“I understand.” Richard blocked what he was thinking from Sarah for the first time since her vision.

“Well, I don’t.” She needed her raven back.

No, not her raven. She needed Richard, her Watcher, still stripping away the rising screams from her ocean dream and her fear of what was happening, so she could continue standing there, confident and calm, while she gambled with her sanity. But he wasn’t there. He’d deserted her, just like before, as soon as duty required it.

“I’m not going into that nightmare,” she said, “being guided by a mind I don’t know, whose sole focus would
be to shut mine down if I don’t deliver the result you want. The dream’s already trying to do that to me and everyone else it touches. I may be insane, but I’m not an idiot.”

The holograms shifted, faded, fizzled in and out of focus, as if a wave of electrical interference were zap-ping the transmissions. Except Richard had said the elders were linked to the conference room through psychic projection, not electronic transfer. It was Sarah’s anger and anxiety, she realized, interfering with the energy field sustaining the council’s images. Her ability to project emotion across realities was having a temper tantrum.

The elders were right not to trust what she was becoming.

“They didn’t trust you,”
Richard’s mind said, his thoughts once again hers to read.
“Because your loyalty had never been tested. Now it has, and they have a front-row seat.”

“You shut your consciousness away to throw me off?”
She stared at him.

“To remind you and everyone else that you’re no longer powerless to harness your gifts.”

Richard turned back to his council.

Sarah wanted to slap him for scaring her so badly.

“The mission won’t succeed,” he said, “unless Sarah trusts that she has the full support of the Watcher team that accompanies her. For that to happen, she’ll need to be designated a Watcher herself.”

Jacob sat forward. “You want us to accept her into the order? She’s had no formal training. No vetting to determine her limits and stability.”

“You expect me to commit to being a Watcher?” Sarah asked. That hadn’t been part of their plan.

“You and Madeline have already accepted your calling,” he reasoned. “You’ve been watching out for each other since you were children, preserving and defending your own legacy. Making it official will mean you’ll have everyone in the Brotherhood supporting you in the dream, whether I’m there or not.”

“One for all, and all for one.” She glanced at the council’s wavering projections. “I’m supposed to entrust your order with my family and the well-being of a child you wouldn’t be searching for if I hadn’t forced us all into this confrontation?”

“Trust me,”
Richard’s mind said.

“Your recommendation is entirely out of the question,” Jacob countered. “Even your principal knows that.”

Sarah’s stomach churned. Her programming’s darker impulses reached for her, but Richard was there to help absorb the dangerous energy seething inside her. His confidence that she could accept this or anything else she had to do was as rock solid as when they’d sparred in the gym. He’d asked her to give up control then, too. To follow him into danger. And because she had, he was now risking even more to back her up again.

She squared her shoulders and faced the council, reining in her doubts and finally embracing the logic of the plan she and Richard had plotted in the lab.

“Then I suppose you see capitalizing on the opportunity to identify your mole as out of the question, too?” she challenged. “Since my connection to whoever’s
directing Ruebens’s programming is the only shot you have at putting eyes and ears inside the center.”

“What are you doing?”
Maddie’s mind asked.

“Whatever I have to,”
Sarah projected back.

“Exploring my ocean dream offers you unprecedented insight into the center’s strategic intentions,” she said to Jacob. “Assuming you have the balls to take advantage of what my legacy can do before the center takes another crack at it. Isn’t that what all this is supposed to be about? You people watching and guiding and protecting legacies for the benefit of the psychic realm as a whole?”

Sebastian sat straighter. “Why should we believe you’d be of any practical use to us after last night’s disasters?”

“Sarah
. . .
”
Maddie warned as the air around them began to sizzle.

But Sarah was already harnessing their link, needing their shared ability to connect with minds through the collective unconscious that all beings shared.

“This is the only way,”
she said to her twin.
“Richard’s right. We either become legitimate assets to these maniacs, or we’re already casualties. They either trust us now, or they never will.”

Sarah stared down the council, reaching for Richard’s mind, too. Trusting she’d find it at her disposal. And once again, he was right where she needed him. She wrapped herself in his restraint.

How could it feel as if she’d had him there, guiding her, her entire life? Just as the child’s cries she didn’t fully understand had always been there. As if every mistake, every failure, and every lesson Sarah had learned had led to this crossroads.

“Trusting my psychic abilities may still be a risk,” she said to the council. “But you have no idea who your leak is, or where the center is conducting its latest dream testing. Which makes my legacy your only shot at putting them out of business for good.”

Maddie watched her twin face down the council, sensing a fragile independence in Sarah that hadn’t been there before. She could feel her sister pulling away from her. Or maybe it was her twin’s determination to move toward something else that Maddie was sensing. Toward Metting and the new mission he was dragging them all into. Sarah was cornered and pissed and terrified of her own mind and fighting mad—but in a controlled way this time. She was handling the showdown with the council with an air of discipline, a confidence, that mirrored the restraint of the warrior now standing behind her.

Maddie sent her thoughts deeper into her sister’s. Sarah’s emotional and psychic shields were wide-open to the man she’d sworn never to trust again. Her connection with Richard was balancing the wilder impulses Maddie usually helped Sarah restrain. Richard’s presence in Sarah’s mind felt like an immovable core of strength.

Maddie saw colors, too. Metting’s purplish black, which Sarah was no longer cringing away from. Swirling hues that represented Sarah’s links to Maddie and Jarred were there, the amethyst and turquoise that Sarah
found calming. Maddie sensed Sarah needing each of them to help her control the fear that she couldn’t see the ultimatum she’d just given the council through to the end. She felt Sarah’s conviction that without the Watchers’ help, none of them would return from her nightmare this time.