Read Online Secret Legacy by Anna DeStefano - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anna DeStefano
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either go back with me now and help me sell the elders on your willing participation, or you won’t get another chance to find Trinity. Your questionable control and your growing psychic abilities have become too much of a wild card. We have to prove you’re an asset the council can’t afford to marginalize.”
“I . . .” She was leaning closer to Richard, hating herself for needing him. “Promise me that if I do this, you’ll get me back to my dream. Make me believe you’ll protect my legacy no matter what happens in Lenox.”
She was begging for a reason to trust a man who’d taken a blood oath to protect the world from freaks like her. A man who was holding her again, as if he couldn’t make himself stop. Richard’s fingers brushed at the fear leaving watery trails down her face.
He shook his head and turned to go.
“We’re wheels up in forty-five minutes,” he said. “Find a way to talk yourself into working with me and my team instead of fighting us.”
“I want my sister,” Sarah said over the sound of his raven’s wings rustling through her mind. Their minds.
He keyed the lab’s door open.
“Get some rest,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”
He left without looking back. The lab’s electronic locks clicked into place. The distant crying of a lost child Sarah shouldn’t be able to hear grew louder. Cries she hadn’t realized Richard had been shielding her from the entire time he’d been by her side.
C HAPTER E LEVEN
“You’ll have ten minutes from touchdown to takeoff,” Richard said to Sarah. He’d positioned himself between where she was huddling in the corner of the transport helicopter and the remainder of the six-man team he was leading. “The team will secure the perimeter while you lead me to the source of the consciousness calling to you. It’s vital that the council understand how whatever’s here is linked to your dream.”
At the moment, what was vital was that Sarah didn’t hurl in front of the Watchers as their covert helicopter descended swiftly and silently toward her past. The shadows of her abandoned childhood were only seconds away, while a little girl’s cries grew stronger in her mind.
She could feel Richard’s strength augmenting her barriers, shielding her from her dream’s echoes and the thoughts of the other Watchers. Not that any of them had spared so much as a glance her way since he buckled her into her seat. Jeff Coleridge seemed particularly determined to pretend she wasn’t sitting there, dressed in Watcher blackout fatigues and ignoring her right back.
“What if whatever your sensors detected here has nothing to do with me?” she asked.
The whisper-soft whoosh of the helicopter’s blades slowed as the pi lot touched them down in the clearing just beyond the house her father had purchased the month before Sarah and Maddie were born. Across the secluded lot where she’d played as a child, the two-story Colonial’s appearance shimmered in the moon’s pale gray reflection. Its shattered windows and peeling paint and drooping shutters accused her of neglect. Of running. Of forgetting everything so she could survive, only to end up feeling just as empty and broken and irreparable as the home she’d once loved.
“This is all about you.” Richard stood, bending enough to keep his head from smacking the transport’s low roof. He helped her to her feet. “My men are trained to track psychic threats. They’ll have your back while you lead us to whatever’s connected to you here. Something spiked when you were lost in your dream. We have to know what.”
“Do we?” Sarah let him lift her to the ground. Her fingers clenched in the smooth fabric of his shirt while he adjusted the Kevlar vest he’d strapped on her when they arrived at the bunker’s flight bay. “This place feels like a grave. Digging around here is only going to make things worse.”
She’d never been more certain of anything in her life.
“Sometimes
“I . . .” She was leaning closer to Richard, hating herself for needing him. “Promise me that if I do this, you’ll get me back to my dream. Make me believe you’ll protect my legacy no matter what happens in Lenox.”
She was begging for a reason to trust a man who’d taken a blood oath to protect the world from freaks like her. A man who was holding her again, as if he couldn’t make himself stop. Richard’s fingers brushed at the fear leaving watery trails down her face.
He shook his head and turned to go.
“We’re wheels up in forty-five minutes,” he said. “Find a way to talk yourself into working with me and my team instead of fighting us.”
“I want my sister,” Sarah said over the sound of his raven’s wings rustling through her mind. Their minds.
He keyed the lab’s door open.
“Get some rest,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”
He left without looking back. The lab’s electronic locks clicked into place. The distant crying of a lost child Sarah shouldn’t be able to hear grew louder. Cries she hadn’t realized Richard had been shielding her from the entire time he’d been by her side.
C HAPTER E LEVEN
“You’ll have ten minutes from touchdown to takeoff,” Richard said to Sarah. He’d positioned himself between where she was huddling in the corner of the transport helicopter and the remainder of the six-man team he was leading. “The team will secure the perimeter while you lead me to the source of the consciousness calling to you. It’s vital that the council understand how whatever’s here is linked to your dream.”
At the moment, what was vital was that Sarah didn’t hurl in front of the Watchers as their covert helicopter descended swiftly and silently toward her past. The shadows of her abandoned childhood were only seconds away, while a little girl’s cries grew stronger in her mind.
She could feel Richard’s strength augmenting her barriers, shielding her from her dream’s echoes and the thoughts of the other Watchers. Not that any of them had spared so much as a glance her way since he buckled her into her seat. Jeff Coleridge seemed particularly determined to pretend she wasn’t sitting there, dressed in Watcher blackout fatigues and ignoring her right back.
“What if whatever your sensors detected here has nothing to do with me?” she asked.
The whisper-soft whoosh of the helicopter’s blades slowed as the pi lot touched them down in the clearing just beyond the house her father had purchased the month before Sarah and Maddie were born. Across the secluded lot where she’d played as a child, the two-story Colonial’s appearance shimmered in the moon’s pale gray reflection. Its shattered windows and peeling paint and drooping shutters accused her of neglect. Of running. Of forgetting everything so she could survive, only to end up feeling just as empty and broken and irreparable as the home she’d once loved.
“This is all about you.” Richard stood, bending enough to keep his head from smacking the transport’s low roof. He helped her to her feet. “My men are trained to track psychic threats. They’ll have your back while you lead us to whatever’s connected to you here. Something spiked when you were lost in your dream. We have to know what.”
“Do we?” Sarah let him lift her to the ground. Her fingers clenched in the smooth fabric of his shirt while he adjusted the Kevlar vest he’d strapped on her when they arrived at the bunker’s flight bay. “This place feels like a grave. Digging around here is only going to make things worse.”
She’d never been more certain of anything in her life.
“Sometimes
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