Winter's Storm: Retribution (Winter's Saga #2)

by Karen Luellen

  61 We All Make Choices

  “Dang it, Margo! I hate it when you put yourself in harm’s way for no good reason! Why on earth would you go out there and look for the person who was sent to kill you?” Theo was exhausted and frustrated.

  With a deep sigh, Margo stood. She was tired, too, but she was also decided. “Because she might be hurt and need help.”

  “Good! Good, I hope she’s hurt! Then maybe she’ll leave us alone!”

  “You don’t mean that, Theo.” Margo walked to the closet and retrieved a flashlight she knew to be kept there.

  “Why not? She shot my son, Margo!”

  “And she shot my daughter with a deadly malaria parasite. And she shot at all the children and hit Creed twice and heck—she even hurt Maze. But Theo, we can’t just leave her out there to die. That’s what Williams would do. That is wrong, and we are better than that.” Margo remained standing, shoulders back and resolved.

  Evan and Alik quietly stood during the exchange and were now on either side of their mother, protectively.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Andrews. We’ll bring her back safely.” Alik’s voice was steady. Evan nodded in agreement.

  In that moment, the two human men, Paulie—who had stayed out of the most recent conversation—and Theo, were both struck by the magnificence that was Evan and Alik. They were both so much stronger than their mother. Alik looked like he could squash the life out of anything that stood in his way—so tall and built like a bodybuilder’s trainer. Evan had been growing like a radish seed. He stood nearly as tall as his brother now, and had a naturally athletic, runner’s body. He was lean, but muscular with chiseled facial features that were beginning to need a good shave.

  Paulie and Theo said nothing more, so struck were they by the gravity of the moment.

  Margo looked up at both of her boys who followed her without question and smiled. “Let’s go find her, boys.”

  The three walked out of the house and closed the door securely behind them.

  “I don’t know about you, but I have a wicked headache coming on.” Paulie stood slowly and stretched, looking suddenly, all of his sixty-six years of age. “Gotta go get some medicine or it’ll turn into a migraine.” The old doctor shuffled out of the room leaving Theo alone.

  He held his head in his hands and tried to breathe deeply. How could he get her to understand he only wanted to protect her? Sighing deeply, he stood and walked to the window, hoping to watch for her to return soon because he wasn’t going to be able to think about anything until she did.

  Outside, the sunlight was fading fast. Not sure how to proceed, Margo lead the boys to where the gunfire originated the night they brought Meg home. You didn’t have to be a tracker to see the bullets stuck in tree trunks and remnants of a makeshift nest where the shooter had stayed. Nor was it difficult to conclude she had been shot. There was a bloodstained, army-green cloth tossed carelessly to the ground nearby.

  “She’s hurt. I must have hit her that when I shot blindly into these bushes. Oh my goodness, I hope she’s not—” Margo’s voice caught in her throat.

  “She’s a meta, mom. Wherever she was shot, she has a much better chance of survival just because she’s stronger and probably a faster healer than a human,” Evan said encouragingly.

  “We’ll find her,” Alik said confidently. “She’s a soldier, trained to survive. She probably had a campsite with supplies hidden not too far from here. Didn’t you say the sniper’s shots came from up there?” Alik pointed to the hill north of Paulie’s house.

  “Yes, I think so from the angle Cole was shot,” Margo nodded.

  “Okay, let’s try that way.” Alik began walking toward the hill.

  Not wanting to draw attention to themselves, they decided not to call out to the injured girl. If she were okay, then she surely wouldn’t answer their calls anyway. If she were seriously hurt, she was probably unable to answer their calls. Either way, yelling “Farrow, where are you?” across the hills of the Big Island smacked of a bad idea. So instead, the three kept watching for signs of the girl.

  They didn’t have to go very far.

  Twenty yards from the first nest they found was a second—except, this one was more like a ditch between a large boulder and a tree root. There was the girl, still dressed in camo fatigues, curled up in fetal position.

  “Oh, dear God,” Margo said softly.

  Evan and Alik exchanged worried looks.

  “Farrow? Honey, are you okay?”

  Leave it to mom to act as though she found a lost camper instead of a deadly assassin, Alik thought but said nothing.

  Farrow didn’t move.

  Margo climbed down closer to the girl and tried to rouse her again.

  “Farrow? Farrow, wake up. We’re here to help you.”

  Again, there was no response.

  Evan and Alik climbed down in to the crevice to help. Evan, ever the doctor, reached down with his two fingers and tried to find a pulse in the girl’s neck.

  “Her pulse is weak, but it’s there,” Evan said.

  “Look at her stomach,” Alik cringed sympathetically as he could see from his angle a blood soaked area on the front of her fatigues. Her hands were holding her stomach, as though she did her best to stop her own bleeding.

  “Oh, goodness. She’s a mess!” Margo breathed worriedly. “Alik, can you carry her?”

  “Sure, but let’s make sure she’s unarmed first. I’d hate to get stabbed with a hunting knife on the trail.”

  Carefully, Alik lifted the girl out of the mud that occupied the floor of her nest and held her while Evan and Margo checked her for weapons. They found several and removed them from the meta’s person.

  Not wanting to think too much about how beautiful the girl was underneath all that face paint and blood, Alik focused instead on the trail ahead of him. They made quick time back to the house. When they reached the front porch, Dr. Andrews opened the door to let them in.

  “You found her?”

  “She’s hurt, Theo. I think I shot her in the stomach and she’s been like this for twenty-four hours.” Margo was trying hard to stifle tears of guilt.

  “We have to get her to the lab, now!”

  “I’ll scrub in,” Theo heard himself say. “She’s going to need surgery.”

  62 What Were You Thinking?

  The nagging ache in his left arm made him sour.

  The painkillers were wearing off, and all he could think about was trying to stop the throbbing.

  Just standing up from the living room couch pushed tears into his eyes. Though he planned to go check on Meg and Creed like he said to the others, he couldn’t stand being thought of as weak by Creed. Especially when the meat head was sporting two bullet wounds he received acting as a metashield for Meg, and acted as though they bothered him less than a mosquito bite.

  Damn it!

  Cole reached the scrub room of the lab and tried to follow the rules by washing his hands before entering the clean room. Trying to tear open the scrub package using his teeth and good hand just brought more tears to his eyes. Angrily, he threw the brush into the trash and walked, with dripping hands, into the lab.

  He knew his way around well enough to know where the meds were stored. As he walked to the back of the room toward the cabinet, it occurred to him it may be locked. He was in so much pain he hadn’t even stopped to ask his dad for help.

  That’s not true, he admitted to himself.

  He hadn’t stopped to talk to anyone because he was sick of needing to ask for help all the time. Watching Creed sweep Meg off her feet, literally, while Cole couldn’t even open a bottle of ibuprofen made him feel more than emasculated; he felt helpless, stupid, useless and unworthy.

  These thoughts were swirling around in his head when he reached out to try the cabinet door.

  It popped open.

  He remembered his dad pulling out an orange bottle with large, oval, green and pink pills. The name of the med escaped his memory, but it starte
d with the letter “M.” Inside the cabinet were dozens of bottles and vials. Cole assumed the one he was looking for would be near the front, considering it was just used a few hours before.

  Shuffling through the items, pushing some aside and pulling some to read, Cole began to feel an itch of panic that he couldn’t find the painkiller.

  Come on! He spoke to the cabinet as though it had intentionally hidden the pills from him.

  And that’s when he saw it.

  At first, he thought it was just another vial of some unknown liquid and was already shoving it aside to look behind it before he realized what it was.

  The meta serum.

  There it was.

  Right in his hands.

  The vial was labeled “Infinite Serum” and someone, probably Evan, had bothered to draw that symbol they all had etched into the back of their necks: ∞

  Evan, in his haste to help Meg, had asked Alik to put the serum he was still holding from the plane trip, into the refrigerated medicine cabinet. In his defense, neither Evan nor Alik had thought anyone in the house a threat to take the serum.

  And yet, here was Cole, holding the vial as though he had just found his Holy Grail.

  Two thoughts rushed into his still aching mind. One, this was his answer to everything. He would be stronger, smarter, heal more quickly and worthy of running with Meg and the other metas. Finally, he would be an asset and not a liability. He could be a contender.

  And two, no one was around to stop him.

  He grabbed the vial and closed the cabinet door. His mind was racing. He was trying to remember anything he had overheard when the others spoke of the serum, like how much was a dose and how it was given.

  He opened the first two drawers he saw looking for a syringe. He was pretty sure he remembered that much. This was to be given by needle, not swallowed.

  What he didn’t remember was how much of the serum he was supposed to take. He looked at the bottle carefully. There was only a small amount of fluid inside to begin with; it looked to be about one teaspoonful.

  Sharp pangs pierced his arm forcing him to steady himself against the countertop. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was stars bursting. He blinked deliberately trying to get his vision back.

  Once the stars dissipated, he continued his search for a syringe. In the fifth drawer, he struck gold. Again, using his teeth and good hand, he tried to rip open the foil packaging that housed the clean needle. Having watched his father work over the last sixteen years, he had a pretty good idea what to do next.

  He punctured the top of the vial with the needle, tipped the whole thing upside down and pulled the syringe’s plunger down, extracting the fluid from inside the vial, filling the syringe. He only stopped when he saw the syringe was beginning to pull in air instead of fluid. He separated the syringe from the vial, held it up to the light and tapped it against the corner of a cabinet, forcing the bubbles to the top. Cole then squeezed the plunger back in slowly forcing the air out of the needle tip. There was exactly .5ml of the serum in the syringe. That sounded like a good amount to Creed, who was just trying to hold himself together long enough to get this serum into his bloodstream.

  Cole yanked his short-sleeved shirt up higher, exposing the flesh at the top of his left shoulder. His whole left arm hurt so badly. Cole’s last human thought was: The faster I do this, the sooner I will stop feeling so much pain.

  He quickly jabbed himself and pushed the plunger down, emptying the contents of the syringe into his muscle. He yanked the needle out, felt an uncontrollable wave of nausea, began shaking violently and saw blackness close around his line of sight until there was nothing.

  Some forty minutes later, when Theo, Margo, Evan and Alik came running into the lab with Farrow barely hanging on to life, they nearly tripped over the body of Cole Andrews. It didn’t take but a cursory glance at the scene to realize what Cole had done to himself.

  THE END

  If you enjoyed the first two books of Winter’s Saga, I hope you’ll recommend them to your friends and take a moment to help maximize their exposure on Amazon.com by writing a quick review. Thank you for traveling on this roller coaster ride with me. It has been, and continues to be, an honor.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I have several spots throughout the house where I go to curl up with my laptop to write, but no matter where I am, as long as I’m surrounded by my husband and kids, I’m at peace enough to go create turmoil in the world of my Winter Clan.

  Usually I have a glass of sweet tea within reach to remind myself to drink something once in a while. I get so caught up in my stories; the world around me easily melts away as my fingers tap frantically trying to keep up with my imagination.

  Strategically chosen music is loud (probably too loud *blush*) and pulsing through my earbuds. I have a giant iTunes library at my finger tips sorted by the emotions the songs bring out in me. What can I say? I’m deeply affected by music, so I use it as a catalyst to help me create.

  I’m thankful to my family for being so supportive of me as I do tend to forget the world when I’m “in the zone.” (That’s what my husband and kids call it when I’m deep in thought, writing.)

  Thank you for reading my books, by the way. Your supportive reviews, comments and emails mean the world to me! Keep ‘em coming, please!

  Hugs,

  Karen

  Visit Karen Luellen’s page at www.goodreads.com/karenluellen

  Email at karen.luellen@gmail.com

  Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/winters.saga

  Twitter @LuellenBooks

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Part 1

  1 Creed

  2 Consequences

  3 Justified

  Part 2

  4 The Sentries

  5 Fifteen-Year-Old with a Driver’s Permit

  6 Cafeteria Food

  7 Changing of the Guards

  8 Sleeping Beauty

  9 Reunited

  10 Yelling at the Drive-Through

  11 Battle at Hospital Hill

  12 Moment of Reckoning

  13 The Third Degree

  14 The Scent of Death

  15 He Was Just Here

  16 Eyes Wide Open

  Part 3

  17 Casting Light

  18 The Life of the Hunted

  19 The Family Meeting

  20 My Resolution

  21 It’s Not Just Nostalgia

  22 Alik’s “Time Sense”

  23 Consequences

  24 Uncertainty

  25 Choosing Sides

  26 Creed’s Confessions

  27 Brainstorming Session

  28 Margo’s Plan

  29 The Spider and the Fly

  30 June in the Month of March

  31 Professional Courtesy

  32 Faith

  33 Final Countdown

  34 Conversations at the Edge of a Bed

  35 The Travelers

  36 What’s a Guy Gotta Do to Get a Pretzel on this Flight?

  37 Farrow’s Fury

  38 In-Flight Conversations

  39 Love Story

  40 A Well-Oiled Machine

  41 The Brothers Grim

  42 Farrow’s Pursuit

  43 Oldham’s Plot

  44 The “Gift” That Keeps Giving

  45 A Significant Chunk of Sanity Just Crashed to the Floor

  46 U-Turns in the Sky

  47 From Illness to Antigen

  48 K.I.S.S.

  49 Target Practice

  50 Patients Without Patience

  51 Infinite Possibilities

  52 Coming in for a Landing

  53 Orographic Effects

  54 Welcome Home

  55 The Plasmodium Parasite

  56 Meg’s Medicine

  57 Changes

  58 I Have Evolved

  59 Perficio Res

  60 We’re Better Than That

  61 We All Make Choices

 
62 What Were You Thinking?