Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (10 page)

“Well, you are already aware of the night your men, Trent and Kerry, tracked Williams’ chopper to a crash site in the Appalachian Mountains.   Inside was the body of Miro Resnikov.”

“Yes, yes…but where’s the girl?”

“She disappeared until just last night.”

Arkdone moved to the edge of his seat, his expensive cigar forgotten in his hand. 

“They slipped up.  Someone used Dr. Theodore Andrew’s credit card at a rest stop just outside Pulaski, Tennessee three nights ago.  Then it was used again in Memphis, Oklahoma City and finally in Flagstaff.  They drove straight there stopping only for gas and food.  The trail stopped in Flagstaff.  I cross-matched known associates with both Theodore and Margo and found a guy named Greg Burns.  They’re staying with him in Arizona right now.”

“Excellent!  Excellent work, Roth!”

“Thank you, sir.  I’ve dispatched Trent and Kerry to the location.  They’re already there awaiting your orders.”

“Have they made visual confirmation of the girl?”

“They have.  She’s there with them.”

“I’m not going to even try to figure out how they found her, but I’ll be damned if they’re going to keep her!”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need to get to her before Williams does.  Let’s flush them out.”

“Sir?”

“That family has been hiding from the world too long.  It’s time to introduce the world to the metahumans.  Instead of allowing them to slink away, I’m going to force their hand.”

It was Roth’s turn to sit on the edge of his seat.  He had always been the expert at political twists—a “spin doctor” by trade.  But working with the Senator for the past two years had proved he was nothing compared to a true master of manipulation. 

“Get Delacourt in here.  It’s time to go hunting.”

Chapter 19 Water

Meg was exhausted.  After the family sat around the homey third-floor hospital waiting room and talked for three hours, Meg felt dizzy with emotional overload.  Now that they were back at Greg Burns’ house, she was going to finally be able to get some much needed rest.

It’s really your fault,
she scolded herself. 
No one forced you to walk around to read everybody’s emotions.  You’re the one who wanted to fill in as many blanks as possible.  They warned you to slow down, but no.  You had to conduct seven readings, eight if you count the cop whose house they’d been hiding out in.

That was one thing she was glad to hear the family decide.  Now that everyone was back together in one piece, the whole family was going back to their home in Texas and going to hunker down there.

They just had to wait until Maze was well enough to travel.

Meg squeezed toothpaste onto her new brush and attacked her teeth with smooth, swift movements.  She was deep in thought about all she’d learned of herself and her “family” when a thought struck her: How did she know how to brush her teeth?  There was something there—something about muscle memories.  Maybe her mind was erased, but her body remembered how to accomplish the tasks she used to do all the time, like brush her teeth.  She grabbed a pencil and looked for a piece of paper on which to write.  The back of the tissue box was going to have to suffice.  She jotted down her thought, “muscle memories,” sighed deeply and set the box down.

Barely able to keep her eyes open for the few steps it would take for her to make it to the bed, she crawled onto it from the foot, and slipped up to lay her throbbing head on the cool pillow.  Her whole body shuddered with exhaustion when she forced herself to reach over and grab the cool sheet and toss it over her bare legs. 

A soft tapping came at her closed door.  Meg debated ignoring it and pretending to have already drifted off to sleep, but it came again a little more urgently this time.

“Who’s there?” she called just loud enough she hoped to be heard through the door.

“Meggie?” a little voice called back.

“Danny, are you okay?” She was up and out of the bed as fast as her legs could carry her.  She opened the door to see the big blue eyes of her baby brother. His curls were scattered bed-head style around the crown of his round head looking decidedly like a halo. 

“I can’t sleep,” he whispered, holding his
favorite little pillow up to his cheek and nuzzling it like the lovey it was.

“Oh, I’m sorry little man.  Are you thirsty?  Do you want me to get you a drink?”

She watched his curls rock adorably as he nodded yes.  She swept him up in her arms and perched him on her hip as she walked to the kitchen.  “Let’s see what Mom has in here.” She opened the fridge and the bluish light spilled over the face of her little brother making his skin glow porcelain perfect.  “We have apple juice, milk or orange juice.  What sounds good?”

“Water.”

“You want water?  Just water?  Okay sweetie.”  Meg reached to the drying rack where several of his sippy cups were left from the dishes Farrow and Sloan took care of earlier that evening.  She walked back to the fridge, opened a bottle of water, filled his cup and started walking back to his room as she screwed the cap on. 

Meg couldn’t stop herself from yawning deeply.  “Do you want me to lie down with you for a while?” she offered just as much for her own exhaustion as his.

The little boy was already gulping the water, but managed to take a moment to say, “Uh-huh.”

“Okay little man.  Maybe we’ll both get a better night sleep if we’re snuggled together for a while.”  She plopped the toddler onto his small bed and watched the cartoon characters on his pajamas wiggle as he squirmed up the bed to climb under the covers and snuggle into his
lovey.

He sighed as deeply as his little body could.  His eyelids drooped heavily over his blue eyes.  Meg smiled through her fatigue, took his sippy cup and set it on the side table before collapsing into bed beside the warm, sweet little body of the baby brother her heart seemed to remember even if her head didn’t.

An hour later, Meg woke with a gasp.  Panicked she felt the bed for Danny.  Finding him sound asleep, heavy and toasty right where she’d left him had her holding her chest, willing her heart to calm down. 

Just a bad dream,
she thought. 
He’s fine; Danny’s fine.
 

As much as she wanted to lie back down and hug the
toddler to her, she worried she may start thrashing in her sleep and didn’t want to disturb him.  Rubbing her eyes, she quietly slipped out from under Danny’s race car comforter and felt her way back through the house to her own bed.

She shivered as she tried to warm up the too cool blankets waiting for her there.

Her head swam with images until dreams began coming at her hard and fast—disconnected, disjointed flashes interrupted by shadows.

Her lungs burned with the acidic stench of sulfur.  Each step of her bare feet pounding into the graveled ground jarred her with pain, her tense jaw vibrating with the impact.  She felt herself yanked back by her long hair hard enough to lose chunks of hair with scalp still attached to them.  Her screams were trapped deep in her throat, but her eyes darted wildly, desperate for freedom from the vice holding her back. 

She reached behind her to dig her nails into the burning fist locked and tangled in her remaining hair.  A knife.  A knife was in her hand now and she held it to the back of her head slicing, yanking and sheering her locks off just to be free of her captor. 

Finally, the last locks were sliced, and she was free to run.  Blood slipped down her back from where she had been scalped by the vise grip and her own frantic attacks with the blade that just kept growing larger and larger in her hand. 

She looked down in her hand as she ran and saw her reflection glint in the dimming light.  Her face was dripping and bloody, but what had her running frantic to the nearest
room was happening in her mouth. She rushed into the first bathroom she could find and dropped the huge, bloody knife into the sink setting off a series of echoing clatters. 

With two trembling hands, she reached up and touched her teeth carefully.  Three of her top teeth tumbled effortlessly from her bloody mouth, making tiny tinkling sounds as they danced and spun into the sink, ricocheting off the bloodstained basin. 

Meg screamed in horror causing four more teeth to slip and slide out of her mouth as if greased by the blood and mucus.  They followed their counterparts into the wide-mouthed sink that looked to hungrily eat her piece by piece. 

Violent tremors caused her to snap her jaw shut, shattering the rest of her teeth and molars like a small, well-planned explosion had just taken place inside her head.  Her lips were closed around the damage, but morbid fixation forced her to open wide.  The last of her teeth clattered down into the hungry basin and wobbled back and forth until they came to a stop. 

Her eyes were wide with horror at the stranger staring back at her in the mirror.  Her scream was muffled by a strong, gloved hand over her mouth.  In her ear she heard a reptile-like hissing before words came hot and wet in her ear. 

“You are mine.  I made you in my own image.”

Chapter 20 Fractured

Meg flew from the bed and crashed into an empty corner of the room in which she was
supposed to be resting.

Her door burst open and there stood two huge figures
almost completely blocking the hallway light as it tried to find a way into the room.

Meg could only see the bloody-faced monster caressing her torn face with his black gloved hand.  And she knew what she had to do.  At least, her body did.

Meg leaped from her crouched position and attacked with every ounce of venom and violence she could.   She ran up Creed’s body and kicked him square in the face, breaking his nose instantly.  While he staggered, holding his face, Cole looked on in horror as Meg finished her backflip off the soldier, landed and spun into a round house.  The blade of her bare foot boxed him in the ear so hard all he could hear was a screaming ring.  Stars burst across his field of vision and he was down for the count. 

She didn’t hear them calling her name.  She didn’t recognize them as her extended family—people she should love.  All she knew was what her terrified body was telling her.

Fight!

“What in the hell is going on—” Evan’s sentence was cut off in his throat by Meg’s vise grip, stabbing him in the pressure points at the corners of his jaw.

“There’s nothing to see here,” her voice came out achingly sweet as she pushed her influence into Evan’s mind.  And though he was as sharp-minded as they come, the pain stabbing him in the nerves rendered him malleable.

“Close this door behind me and lock it.  You’re tired and you must sleep now,” she cooed right into his face, only vaguely aware that she could speak without teeth.

“Sleep,” Evan gagged, his eyes glassing over as the lack of oxygen was diminishing his life-force.

She dropped the boy to the ground and turned to the first two men who’d made the mistake of coming for her.  She blinked once and saw their faces
as bloody masses.  She stood; arms stretched wide to her sides and channeled all her amped, nightmare-induced powers at the two.  “Do not follow me.  The door is impenetrable and you are feeble,” she spat.  Both Creed and Cole stared glassy-eyed at her.  Her psychic vibrations burst from her in gusts that tossed the contents of the room around as if a tornado had dropped from the sky. 

The bed sheets and pillows flew like a ghost, flipping and dodging, performing
aerials.  The mirror above the dresser shattered of its own volition, sending shards of glass tumbling into the mix.

Meg looked
at what she’d done and felt a moment of doubt.  She wiped it away like a crumb from around the mouth of her nightmare come to life.

She stepped over the threshold of the room and closed the door behind her, still absolutely lost in her sleepwalking tirade until she saw the golden hair of the little boy standing in the middle of the hallway.

“Wake up, Meg,” he said softly.

Meg shook her head waiting for the boy’s face to melt off leaving a bloody skull like she’d seen happen moments before with the men, but his face stayed soft and pale as though glowing from the shadows. 

“Meg, you’re having a bad dream.  I want to help you—wake up!” 

Meg blinked and held her head.  She felt a stabbing migraine attack with the velocity of a bullet and found herself weaving on her feet.  She teetered, but had no memory of collapsing to the ground at the feet of the innocent boy who watched her with worry.

Danny had already taken off the lid of his sippy cup.  Now he carefully poured the water directly onto his unconscious sister’s head and watched the water droplets slip easily down her forehead, temple and hair.  Putting the empty cup aside, he sat cross-legged beside his sister, placed his warm hands on her head, began rocking back and forth and sang softly. 

The whole house was awakened by the night terror that followed the damaged girl into reality.  Danny was the only one who seemed calm in the ensuing moments when everyone ran into the living room.  They found the little boy sitting on the floor in his cartoon pajamas gently wiping away the tears from his sister’s pale, tormented face.