Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6)

by Karen Luellen

  Evan saw the blood on Cole’s face from the shrapnel cut was smeared; his green eyes were wild with fury. Evan moved to stand between Cole’s dangerous rage and the soldiers pushing—itching to attack.

  The attackers weren’t playing nice.

  Having witnessed Evan’s abilities, two soldiers decided brute force was necessary to contain the dangerous metahuman. Like a pair of linebackers, they barreled into Evan and shoved him face-first against the nearest wall before yanking his left arm back up and behind him. Evan let out an enraged scream.

  10 The End is Nigh

  “Haven’t you heard, little boy?” a soldier sneered loudly in Evan’s ear. “If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned!” He laughed at his own perceived cleverness, enjoying every moment of the unfair fight.

  The other guy’s laughter sounded crazed, but what worried Evan was the itchy trigger finger the crazy guy had as he pressed the rifle painfully to Evan’s temple. Clever soldier must have decided Evan wasn’t laughing politely at his joke and needed a swift reminder of manners.

  “Laugh, damn it!” he yelled as he yanked Evan’s head back by the hair and slammed him into the wall for the second time. Evan was pinned and dazed. He found himself dissociating by staring at his bloody smudge on the wall.

  “What’s this one’s name?”

  “Speak up, genius,” Clever guy screamed into Evan’s spinning vision. “What the hell’s your name?”

  Evan wasn’t sure, but the ringing in his ears may have been coming from somewhere in the room. He dipped away from consciousness and vaguely wondered if the others had gotten away. He hoped they had. They deserved to live.

  Maybe they could be there for Meg when the time came.

  “Your name!”

  “Evan,” he managed to murmur through his stinging face.

  On the other side of the room Creed was being held down on the ground by four soldiers, one of whom was injecting him with something right into a bulging vein in his neck. Creed raged like a wild animal caught in a bear trap, ready to gnaw off his paw in his zeal to escape. But seconds after the plunger was pushed into place, Creed’s wild eyes, blinked several slow room-spinning blinks.

  “Where is Margo Winter?” a fifth soldier screamed and kicked Creed in the ribs with his steel-toed boots, hard enough to break ribs.

  Creed grimaced. He couldn’t hold a thought in his drugged mind. He opened his eyes and saw Meg gliding across the surface of the ocean with smooth, powerful strokes. They were back in Hawaii and he was watching the girl of his dreams through a set of high-powered binoculars. Her golden-brown skin glistened in the sunlight as she swam gracefully through the waves, one after another. She stopped swimming to tread water as she looked around. He saw her reach one hand up and instantly he was right in front of her. She was smiling—such a beautiful face. That’s when her hand roared around gathering water and creating a big splash right into his eyes.

  The salt water stung.

  His face stung.

  One of the soldiers was backhanding him.

  “You shit-head! You gave him too much!”

  “I gave him exactly what Chaunders told me to,” the other was saying in defense.

  “He’s coming around,” a third voice barked.

  “Where is Dr. Margo Winter?” the first voice enunciated slowly.

  The answer was right there on the tip of Creed’s mind, and that was just it. Whatever they drugged him with was causing him to teeter at the precipice of consciousness.

  He opened his blue eyes but didn’t see the five heavily armed soldiers holding him down—he saw Meg sitting on his abdomen smiling down at him. The sunlight danced between her dark curls as they fell from the loose braid draped casually over her right shoulder.

  “Don’t answer them, Creed!” Alik yelled startling Creed into biting his tongue, fighting against the drug clearly designed to loosen it.

  Alik had been the last one still fighting off a half-dozen soldiers. Bodies littered the ground around him. No one had survived his calm frenzy as he stepped into each assailant delivering precise, close-quartered strikes.

  The soldiers had given up trying to rush him. His massive size and strength were just beyond anything the metasoldiers had ever trained against. They weren’t attacking him anymore. Alik was yanking soldiers back and attacking them instead.

  That is, until he was doused by soldiers with no fewer than three canisters of pepper spray designed to subdue wild animals. Alik was dripping in anguish now that he was on his stomach, arms pinned behind his back by multiple zip ties and more added even as he screamed to Creed.

  Evan’s ringing, pounding head fought to remain sharp, but it was achingly difficult combined with the extreme fatigue. Through the fog of pain roaring in his head, he dreamed he saw a pale-faced Kylie peek around what was left of the wall to his left. He frowned at the vision, immediately worried about her getting caught up in the maelstrom of violence. He blinked and the image of Kylie was gone and his hazy thoughts slipped back to self-reproach.

  He’d been so concerned about distancing himself from his family to keep from jeopardizing the vision of the future he was given all those months ago, he hadn’t learned to use his own gift. He realized the futility of his plan as he heard laughter in his ears.

  Soldiers were screaming for his mother’s whereabouts. He heard Alik’s slurred words spat through chemically burned lips, screaming for Creed to tell them nothing. Cole was scarily quiet in the far corner. Two soldiers hovered over him like vultures.

  Evan wiggled the numbing fingers of his left hand as they were crushed at a painful angle. Just then, he heard the crunching of debris under boots but couldn’t see from his position who had entered the living room.

  The soldier at his back gripped Evan’s light-brown hair again and smashed his head into the wall for the third time. His laughter sounded distorted, as though Evan were underwater.

  “Dude, check this out,” he called to someone else in the room. “Gives a new meaning to the term ‘face painting’,” he chortled at the bloody smears the Winter kid left on the formerly white wall.

  “Shit, can’t any of you fight? Look at this mess. The Director is going to be pissed.” A shuffling sound followed by a thump had Evan visualizing a new soldier kicking one of the bodies, but he couldn’t see for himself. His face was mashed into the wall.

  He blinked a few times and tried to concentrate.

  “I hate to break up your fun, but has anyone gotten Dr. Winter’s location out of them?” the new voice snarled.

  “Hollier, sir. We gave this one a dose of phenobarbital, only he’s not talking—at least not about Margo Winter. He keeps mumbling the name ‘Meg’.”

  Again, Evan heard boots crunching and thumping across the room as the ranking officer made his way to where Creed was lying on his back, eyes threatening to roll back, and stay back.

  “Which of them did all this?” the voice asked the room.

  “Sir, it was mostly that one, but this one downed seven or eight before we got him on his back.” Evan didn’t have to see to know which of his brothers was pointed out.

  “And ‘the fire starter’? Didn’t he do anything to save his family?” Hollier scoffed as footsteps approached until the officer stood within Evan’s line of sight. The hard lines of the soldiers face seemed standard issue to the hard life Williams’ metasoldiers endured. Though Evan didn’t recognize him specifically, he knew the type.

  The soldier’s thin lips pulled back in what was supposed to have been a smirk. Never taking his eyes off Evan’s shattered face, the officer pulled something out of his back pocket and held it out for Evan to see.

  “I believe you know Kylie Monroe. Cute little piece of ass, that one.” The soldier turned the picture back toward himself to ogle the smiling girl.

  Evan was trying not to panic, but dread had a vise grip on his heart.

  “Yeah, see, my girl here, she’s the one who verified your location. Told us all about y
ou being a fire starter and shit. Hell, she even shared play-by-plays of your private conversations.”

  The other soldiers in the room tore into gales of laughter and crude remarks.

  Evan’s chest clenched, hurting far more than his face.

  “As for you,” the soldier called Hollier turned and started back toward Creed. “You’d better start talking, Young!” The distinct click of a handgun being cocked hit what was left of the walls with ominous clarity.

  Creed felt the cold steel dig into his forehead—which just pissed him off.

  He pulled himself up in a stomach crunch pushing his forehead into the barrel the officer held with calculating calm.

  “I will not betray my family!” Creed yelled through the haze of the drug.

  No time. There’s no time, Evan chanted to himself, trying to hurry. His mind kept wanting to figure out how he’d missed Kylie’s deception. He had, after all, held her hand. Did I just refuse to allow myself to know? He shook his head in frustration trying to double his focus.

  Clever Guy was turned around looking at what his officer and teammates were doing to Creed. His knee was still ground into Evan’s back and his hands kept yanking Evan’s left arm at a completely unnatural angle. Crazed-Laughter Guy was distracted and moving across the room to join in the fun at Creed’s expense.

  Evan slowly reached with his right hand into his front pocket and almost yelped for joy at the feel of warmed plastic at his fingertips.

  11 Barbecue

  Kylie’s lighter.

  He yanked the lighter out, ran his thumb across the metal cogs, reached back over his head and held the flame against Clever Guy’s face.

  What happened next was a blur.

  With a yelp of shock and pain, the soldier released his hold enough for Evan to spin and elbow his burned face. As the soldier doubled over, blood gushing from his broken nose, Evan grabbed him by the back of his shirt and his biceps then yanked down hard, driving his face directly into Evan’s knee.

  From his peripheral vision, movement caught Evan’s eye.

  “Drop it!” Crazed-Laughter Guy was pointing his gun directly at Evan’s face from where he stood across the room.

  A lightly perfumed breeze billowed in the space between the soldier’s itchy trigger finger and Evan’s grim face. Time held its breath.

  Hollier, always anxious to draw blood, cocked his weapon and dug the barrel deeper into Creed’s forehead. “Drop the lighter, asshole. We only need one of you to talk, and I don’t give a shit which of you squeals,” he hissed.

  Sweat droplets trickled from Creed’s bloody face, splatting salty and wet on the hard tile.

  Evan wasn’t thinking about surrendering. He was thinking of his family, silently praying for their safety, even as he calculated odds of their survival.

  They only need one of us to talk.

  In his moment of clarity he knew the best option was to take himself out of the equation while taking as many of the bad guys down with him.

  Evan glanced over at Alik struggling to keep his eyes open through the swelling. He offered his brother a minuscule nod good-bye, then turned back to Creed and half winked just before he ripped his thumb across the metal cogs.

  Two things happened in the half second that followed. From nowhere, a body hurled itself at Evan and the soldier with the itchy trigger finger fired. The bullet hit the body in front of Evan with a sickening whap!

  Blond hair unfurled beautifully as the body spun through a graceful pirouette before crumpling in a tragic heap at Evan’s feet. Kylie’s bright-green eyes gazed up at Evan, her body starting to convulse in the throes of death from the bullet meant for him.

  “NO!” he screamed in shock and fury.

  He ripped the lighter on again, grabbed the flame and shot the red stream across the room like a flame thrower. He found his aim precise as he controlled the distance, velocity and intensity of the blaze. He didn’t flinch at the horrific sounds of those screaming. He couldn’t show any mercy. These soldiers were the enemy trying to hunt down his family—his mother—and no one was going to hurt his mother ever again. Ever!

  Evan used his hearing to determine when the room had enough. Now, the screams were fewer replaced by groans. He released the lighter’s tab and closed his hand. The fire immediately stopped pouring from him.

  Then, just as fast as it came, Evan held his hand out and absorbed all the flames still burning in the room.

  Sticky, thick blood still oozed down his chin from his shattered nose, but Evan didn’t care about himself. He fell to his knees at Kylie’s side and gasped at the sight of her. Her green eyes were closed now. The scene was surreal as he shook his head in shock at the look of serenity on her beautiful face as she lay in a field of violence, destruction and death. Her face looked luminously pale, serene. If it weren’t for the droplets of blood splattered across her neck, she looked as if she had finally found peace. With shaking fingers, he searched her neck for a pulse.

  He felt one flutter weakly. Her heart was barely beating.

  “Why did you do this?” he heard himself sob at her. The sound of his own voice brought him back to reality like a slap across the face.

  “Alik!” Evan yelled in the direction he last saw his brother.

  “Ev,” Alik coughed his brother’s name.

  Evan hesitated for a moment, instinctively wanting to stay with the girl who gave her life for him, but forced himself to stand and run through the smoke and destruction to his brother’s side. Alik shoved a soldier’s charred body off himself and reached out for Evan’s hand. The pepper spray had completely blinded him, but he was determined to find his brother and get everyone the hell out of there before another team of soldiers steamrolled them with a round three.

  Evan grasped his brother’s arm firmly and helped Alik to his feet.

  “Creed! Cole!” The boys called together.

  “What the hell just happened?” Creed groaned holding his side. The brothers followed the sound of his voice and helped pull him free from under a pile of burned soldiers.

  “Turn off your pain sensors, Creed,” Evan advised. “You’re gonna need it.”

  “Dang little brother, you don’t have to tell me twice.”

  Creed shook his head trying to clear it of the drug he’d been given then rolled his shoulders, popped his neck and dropped his arms to his side.

  Alik was weaving on his feet, having gone back to his normal size. He had injuries and chemical burns from the pepper spray all over his face. Evan wished to God Alik could turn off his pain, too.

  “Cole?” the boys called, desperation slipping into their voices. They needed to get the hell out of there now.

  “I last saw him over here.” Evan waded through the bodies and pulled a few aside before finding Cole still unconscious in the corner, right where Evan last saw him.

  Evan shook him hard. “Wake up man. We’ve got to bail, now!”

  Cole groaned, “Please tell me,” he moaned and tried to finish kicking a body off his outstretched legs, “why I smell barbecue.”

  Evan and Creed reached out and pulled Cole to his feet.

  “We have to get the hell out, now!” Creed had to concentrate on not gagging at the horrific scent.

  “I’m right behind you, but I’m not leaving without Kylie.” Evan ran back to her side. Flinching at all the blood, he reached inside the jacket she wore and sighed with relief as he retrieved the two vials—his research—unscathed. Quickly he reached into his back pocket for the black sunglasses case he’d brought and slipped the vials inside. He repocketed the case while scanning the space for what he needed.

  It didn’t take long to find. He leaned over Kylie to reach for a razor-sharp, six-inch blade from one of the dead soldier’s weapons belt. His left hand was already itching to catch a sliver of moonbeam in his palm. Once the flame burned blue and white, Evan quickly heated the knife’s metal.

  “I’m so confused,” Cole mumbled as he helped Alik across the room. “
Who’s Kylie?”

  Both boys stumbled and tripped over the bodies littering the floor of what used to be their peaceful home. Behind them, Creed quickly helped himself to abandoned weapons, picking them up and stacking them in his arms as though harvesting a crop.

  “The enemy.” Creed glanced back at Evan in time to see him yank her shirt wide open.

  “Why are we worried about her?” Cole frowned.

  “She took a bullet for him,” Creed explained. Looking back, he saw Evan start to cauterize her bullet wounds.

  The boys managed to stagger back to the garage. Creed popped the trunk and dumped the weapons inside. He kept two on him; one in his waistband and the other in his hand.

  Alik dug in his pocket and held out the car keys. “Someone else needs to drive. I’m a mess,” he groaned through swollen, chemically burned lips.

  By the time Creed shoved Cole and Alik into the back seat of Theo’s sedan, Evan showed up with the girl draped in his arms. Cole moved over, making room for the girl who looked closer to dead than alive. Evan’s face was grim as he positioned her body carefully. He moved to put her seat belt on and with Cole’s help had her secured in seconds.

  “You good to drive, Creed?” Evan asked. As the two remaining who could fight, it was up to them to get everybody out alive.

  “I’ll drive like a bat outta hell if it means we survive tonight,” Creed muttered.

  “Good, ’cause I’m pretty sure we’re gonna be followed, and I need to shoot.”

  Creed looked over at Evan—a question clearly written in his eyes.

  “Flames.”

  “Copy that.” Creed slipped behind the steering wheel and shoved the keys into the ignition. A quick glance proved Evan had retrieved Kylie’s lighter and was ready. His window was rolled down and the smell of exhaust fumes were starting to pour into the closed-in garage.

  Creed pushed the garage door opener and braced himself.

  12 Company Leader