“Where are you?” Evan’s voice was instantly angry and scared. Meg could sympathize.
“The elevators are taking us to the basement, only we didn’t push any buttons. Stay back, Ev. I’ll keep the comms open, but unless I say your name, don’t speak up. Got it?”
The siblings had played this game before, when it really was just a game. Along with all their martial arts, explosives training and general survival tactics, the three had practiced using communication devices back on their childhood ranch.
Evan sighed and said, “Copy, that.” Meg could feel her brother’s fears and desperation to help, but pushed them aside to focus on the next ten seconds.
“Alik, keep low, remember your training, I’ll take the ones on the left, you take right. Stay back to back with me; don’t let them separate us. Breathe slowly and deeply.” Meg kept her voice low, slipping into her own soldier-mode. Alik nodded, lightning bursting across his light-blue eyes. The vein in his forehead was bulging angrily.
They moved into defensive positions against either side of the doors so when the elevator jerked to a halt they were ready for the doors to open.
A soft chime announced their arrival and the doors slid back with a soft whoosh.
Alik and Meg waited for a moment but nothing happened.
Meg motioned for Alik to stay back and she risked a quick peek only to see an empty hallway that looked very much like those on the floors above. Frowning she motioned all-clear and they slipped out the elevator doors and hugged the walls as they moved cautiously but surely down the sterile smelling passageway.
Alik stopped and motioned for her to scan the area. Meg closed her eyes briefly, while Alik stood guard and sent out her empath feelers again. It was clear to her.
She pointed to a solid wall.
Alik looked between her and the wall, a question clear on his face.
Meg shook her head emphatically and held her hand against the cold wall. The pull was definitely coming from there. Surely there was another entrance to the room on the other side. She walked further up one side, then tried a door only to see it was a supply closet. She was about to close the door when something stopped her. She turned back to the small room and placed her hand on the wall that would have to be adjacent to the one holding the children.
A flash came to her.
She received a crisp image of the last person who had touched the wall there. They were wearing a white lab coat and had just eaten dinner. They knew to sweep their hand behind the cabinet to press a hidden lever. Meg was about to follow the psychic directions when she turned to Alik and motioned for him to get ready.
He nodded and held his gun up in a ready to fire position.
Meg’s nimble fingers flipped the lever and the entire wall slid back and to the left revealing a huge room. No fewer than twelve beds were neatly stacked against the walls separated by curtains. In the beds laid children, ranging in ages from infant to eight-years-old. Standing beside each bed was a metasoldier holding a gun to each of the children’s heads.
Meg wanted to scream. The children were strapped to the beds, eyes wide with old terror. A voice spoke from the room.
“Drop your weapons,” it said ordered.
For a split second, Meg wondered if she and Alik would be able to take the twelve soldiers before they killed the children. She looked over at her brother who looked just as torn and furious as she felt.
Just then a deafening boom echoed off the stark walls.
The soldier who had spoken smiled menacingly at them. “Oops. I have some real itchy fingers. This piece of shit is lucky I only shot a hole through his pillow.” He jerked his head to the terrified child, no more than five-years-old, crying silent tears.
Meg slowly crouched; hands held up in the universal sign of surrender and knew Alik would follow her lead. Once their guns were on the ground, the soldier scoffed. “You know how this works assholes, kick them over here.”
The Winter children obeyed.
Soldiers swarmed the unarmed metas. Their wrists were yanked behind their backs where multiple zip ties were secured too tightly. Their ankles were tied with just as much venom. Dirty clothes were shoved into their mouths and secured with duct tape. The soldiers taunted and jeered as they worked happily.
Meg didn’t know how long they were made to stay lumped on the concrete floor with guns held over their heads as if posing for a sick portrait. Sure enough, Meg saw what were undoubtedly security cameras in the ceiling, pointing right at them. While held there, both Meg and Alik had plenty of time to think about what may be happening to the others.
Was Evan captured, too? Were the others able to kill Williams? What would happen to mom?
Meg looked around the room and tried to see the condition of the children strapped to their beds. They looked frail and traumatized. Not one of them made a sound. How did they get here? What was Williams doing to them? Were these the next generation of metahumans?
Just as Meg was trying to wrap her head around what was really happening to them, the lead soldier nodded into a cell phone and smiled wickedly at her. All she sensed from him was evil.
Apparently, the show for the camera was over—and now for the after party.
The soldiers walked deliberately toward them—splitting in half—obviously ordered to take care of each of them.
The rage Alik felt at watching his sister hurt at the hands of those vile soldiers made him nearly burst into flames. He watched them yank her up by her hair to stand, pressing their bodies against her lewdly.
The soldier who had done the talking and shot into the child’s bed was taking sick pleasure at pushing Meg up against the wall with his body. A scream of abject rage for his sister ripped past the gag in Alik’s throat when he saw the soldier grind his hips into her small frame and lick her face like an animal.
As punishment, Alik felt a blunt object hammer repeatedly into the back of his head. Through the angry stars of slipping consciousness, Alik’s last image of his sister was of her head-butting the guy’s face and his nose bursting into a bloody mass.
These assholes messed with the wrong girl, Alik thought with pride just before he blacked out.
Meg’s fury could not be contained. She saw the soldiers beat her brother with the butt of a rifle until he blacked out. Her eyes were transfixed on his limp body as four metasoldiers dragged him away, scoffing as they carelessly allowed his body to thwack hard against the cement corner as they rounded it.
Vibrations of fury caused the air around the girl being held against the wall to crackle and distort.
Until that moment, Meg hadn’t realized she had been living with a tourniquet stifling the flow of her empath gift. All her attempts at wielding her abilities were stifled by her own fears of failure. She’d clipped her own wings—cut off the flow of her full strength because of her own insecurities.
As the room moved in slow motion, Meg blinked the cloud of atrophy from her heart.
She realized something in that moment.
She realized she was more terrified of what was happening to the precious innocence around her than she was of spreading her empath’s wings and leaping into the sky.
An eruption of raw fury burst the tethers holding Meg’s emotional feet to the ground. The strength in the moment was so profound; she even felt her heart lift as if on angel’s wings.
Her body shuddered with a powerful vibration that could be felt by everyone in the room. All heads turned to stare, mouths agape at the small girl still being pressed against the cement wall by brute force. And though no one would admit to it aloud, they all saw the lines of the room distort and shimmy like they were watching the sun on the horizon.
Chapter 45 The Youngest Winter
Crouched behind a bush at the northwest corner of the building he had just rigged, Evan heard everything that happened to his brother and sister through his comm. device. Terror gripped him when he heard his siblings ordered to drop their weapons, but bile threatened to surge up his throat when he
heard the gunshot explode—deafening. He yanked the earpiece out, instinctively rubbing his ringing ear even as his body shook with panic.
Oh, God, no! he screamed silently.
Then he tried to still his breath and worked the comm. into his other ear, desperate to hear what was happening to his family. Cowering in the darkness, back pressed tightly against the cold, harsh cement of the building where his family was being beaten, the thirteen-year-old littlest brother tried to control his panic. The harder he pressed his head back against the unforgiving wall to his back, the more anger began to replace terror.
Damn it! This was his family and he was sick of the constant terror; sick of feeling like the only good he served everyone was in the operating room.
The sound of screaming and skin-against-skin smacks electrified Evan.
He stood and bolted across the courtyard, strategically staying inside shadows until he made his way to the administration building. He switched his comm. to channel eight listening intently.
All he heard was silence. He waited as long as his nonexistent patience would stomach before speaking into the device.
“Creed, are you there?” His voice was desperate even to his own ears.
All he heard in return was silence.
“Creed!” Evan’s breathing was erratic as abject terror shook him by shoulders and flung him against the nearest shadow.
He heard a muffled sound, some shuffling then a noise he couldn’t distinguish. Evan pressed the earpiece tighter into place, trying to discern the sound. He didn’t need to. Within seconds, the raspy, choppy sound morphed into laughter. Then it wasn’t just laughter, but hysterics. Evan yanked the earbud out of place and stared at the small device like it contained a piece of the devil itself.
What’s happened? That had to have been Williams. Where was Creed? And the others? Evan shook his head and locked his jaw angrily. Stop, Evan. Your first concern is Meg and Alik. Always. Move!
He took a deep breath and raced back to the building where his brother and sister were. Even as he ran, he switched his comm. device back to channel four to listen. There was only silence. He didn’t know what worried him more, the sounds of a fight or silence. He risked talking into the piece.
“Meg? Alik?” he whispered softly.
Silence
Desperate for someone to respond, he heard his voice catch as he whispered again. “Meg? Alik? Are you there? Please be there.”
Silence
The youngest of the Winter children took a slow deep breath, trying to clear his head and think logically.
He switched his comm. device to channel thirteen—the emergency channel.
“Mom, can you hear me?”
“Evan?” Margo’s response was immediate. She had been waiting to hear from one of the children.
“Mom, something’s gone very wrong.”
Margo’s voice was shaky. “I’ve been switching channels listening. Slider was a mole. He turned on the others.”
“What?” Evan could scarcely believe his ears. He was desperately trying to maintain his sense of logic.
“Slider. He was working for Williams the whole time!” Margo’s voice quivered with terror.
Evan closed his eyes and pressed the back of his head against the cold cement begging the stability of the structure to give him some sense of reality. It wasn’t working.
“Meg trusted him!” he rasped.
“I know, Ev. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself. Williams planted him among us. He was…I don’t know,” her voice broke. “Williams called him ‘Miro.’ He turned against the others. Where are Alik and Meg?”
Hearing his mother’s voice both empowered and weakened the young metahuman.
“They’ve been captured, mom.”
“Oh, God. No.”
“What should I do?”
“I’m just outside the compound. Can you make it back to the gates?”
Evan looked around at the dark compound. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
“I don’t know.”
Chapter 46 Death of a Soldier
Creed felt his body hit by a bullet.
He dropped and rolled behind the nearest piece of furniture. Fortunately, Williams had spared no expense when it came to the thickest, richest pieces. His soldier’s eye calculated those in the room. With a deep breath, he pushed the pain of the bullet wound aside, not having the time to deal with what his body was screaming. He saw Farrow crouched defensively behind the couch to his left. The look in her eyes was just as angry and stoic as he felt.
Where was Gavil?
He heard a shuffling and risked a peek around the thick corner of the armchair that was his shield. He saw Miro shoving Dr. Williams through a previously hidden door in the panel of the wall to the right. It slid closed behind them, and the room was silent.
“Damn it!” he mouthed to Farrow who followed his eyes. She locked her jaw angrily.
Creed stood abruptly and looked around the room for his brother.
There in the corner, crumpled into a silent pile, was his big brother’s body. He wasn’t moving.
Creed leaped to his side and knelt next to the only blood family he’d ever known.
“Gavil?” he choked. His large hands uncurled the body of his brother to assess damages.
Blood was spilling from Gavil’s carotid artery.
Creed pressed his hand against his brother’s neck and cradled him in his lap.
“Gavil, oh God, no!” he groaned.
Gavil’s nearly colorless blue eyes opened long enough to lock onto his little brother.
“Don’t…” he choked.
“Don’t talk, Gavil. Let me get you help,” Creed coughed through his emotion.
Gavil shook his head and closed his eyes slowly before breathing a gurgled breath. His eyes flew open from sheer determination as he locked eyes with his brother once again.
“Don’t let him …live.” Gavil’s stare was full of words his voice could no longer express.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“I’m sorry…” Gavil’s voice trailed and the light in his eyes glistened one last moment before he gasped his last breath, eyes still holding earnestly onto his brother.
Then there was silence.
Creed couldn’t stand it. He screamed in anguish as the blood pulsing through his fingertips slowed to a trickle. Gavil’s body shuddered once before his heart stopped beating.
Farrow’s strong hands wrapped around Creed’s heaving shoulders and gently pulled.
“We have to go,” she breathed trying to hurry the soldier into action.
Creed didn’t move. Instead, his yells of anguish echoed off the perfectly polished hardwood panels on the walls around them.
“He killed my brother!” he screamed.
“Yes, he did, and he will kill Meg, Alik and Evan if we don’t move now!” she yelled back.
At the sound of Meg’s name, Creed’s back straighted, his breath catching in his throat.
With one last look of anguish, Creed laid his brother’s head gently to the floor closing his dead-blue eyes with his a calloused hand and stood. His muscles twitched and vibrated with a fury previously unknown to man or meta.
Without a word he ran from the room, crashed through the double doors and bolted down the corridor toward the stairs leading to the bottom floor. Farrow was right at his heels, gun drawn and ready for battle.
Chapter 47 Welcome to Meg’s World
The soldiers were dragging Meg down a corridor into a room. She fought all five of them with every breath of her being.
They’d never dealt with a meta as powerful as her and they were struggling.
Even though her hands and ankles were bound, she seemed to exude power. The air around her vibrated with raw fury.
Beads of sweat were slipping down the temples of the soldier who dared shoot the bed of the baby minutes before.
“Damn it!” that soldier screamed, “she’s just a girl. Secur
e her!”
One of the five who was holding her by the waist yelled, “She’s already laid out two men. Hell if I know how she did it, but…Laz, she’s one strong bitch!”
Meg’s mind raced. Laz, part of her brain processes. Laz, as in Lazerus? The man brought back from the dead?
She didn’t allow herself a moment’s reprieve. She focused every ounce of her energies, both physical and emotional into knocking out the men surrounding her.
Her extreme heightened emotions were on the attack and though she didn’t know exactly how she was able to do it, she found if a soldier’s hands touched her bare skin, she could stare into their souls and send them waves of emotion, latched around them one at a time, and fed them the most desperate, heart-wrenching feelings.
Whatever she was doing, it was working.
They were reeling from her like she’d struck them with a steel crow bar in the gut.
She’d never done this before, but the more fury she felt, the more powerful her emotions crashed around those who dared touch her.
Laz had yet to try to lay a hand on her again since she sent him the first burst of fury coupled with her head-butt, resulting in his broken nose. He was having his soldiers manhandle her as he walked beside the groaning, grunting mass of soldiers.
Instinctively, she stopped struggling and locked eyes with Laz. She poured her emotional strength into the connection. It only took a moment.
“Stop,” he called to his underlings fighting to maintain hold on the female.
They were breathing hard, and though she knew she could keep picking them off, one-by-one, she had a better idea.
Laz stared at her deep, dark-eyes. The sheen of sweat forming on her brow was beautiful beneath the wild dark curls of her hair that had escaped her previously tight pony-tail. The silver duct tape gripped the soft skin around her mouth, but all he could see was her black pools staring into his soul.
Meg stood rock still, as though not bound by anything. Her chest was heaving causing the pulse in her sweat-sheened throat to thrum hypnotically. Her small frame commanded the attention of everyone—especially Laz.
Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) Page 28