Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (12 page)

“Power is all-consuming to the evil heart.  There is never enough.” Theo pulled up to a red light and waited, watching the pattern of traffic with an automatic eye.

“He makes metamonarchs.  They do his bidding.  He’s into politics.  Is anyone else getting worried about the pattern we’re seeing here?”  Cole looked around the SUV, brows raised.

“Which should we worry about more, Williams or Arkdone?” Alik rolled his head
, popping the tightness from his neck.

Meg was still watching Danny when she felt it. 

The light turned green. 

Theo started to accelerate. 

And all kinds of warning bells went off in Meg’s head.  

Oh God, no.
 
“Watch out!”
she screamed and leaned her body over the startled Danny to shield him.

CRASH!

The impact was so intense; the SUV was pushed sideways fifteen yards before it stopped.  The cab was filled with the sounds of thick rubber tires ripping and punctuated by the piercing screams of metal on metal.

Behind them they heard another crushing metal impact.  Without looking Meg knew Burns’ car was attacked, too.

The stench of melting, hot rubber was acid, but that wasn’t what worried Meg the most.  Everybody was uncurling from their instinctive defensive positions.  No one except Meg was looking out the right side of the vehicle to see the semitrailer that had barreled into them exploding with metahumans dressed in SWAT gear. 

“Oh shit!  Get out!  They’re coming for us!  MOVE!”
  She screamed to her stunned family.  Alik, Cole and Creed nearly leaped out of the left side of the vehicle.  Meg unbuckled a crying Danny and held him to her chest as she flew out into the summer’s hot air and ran. 

Where’s Evan?
She spun scanning the bizarre scene looking for her brother when she turned back to the SUV and saw him crumpled, pinned and passed out.  The semi had struck his side of the SUV, folding its huge metal grill into Evan’s door.

“God, no!” she begged.  Instincts shook her by the throat.  A stunned woman climbed out of what Meg could sense was an empty, full-sized van with a side-paneling that read, “Noah’s Ark Learning With Love Daycare.”  Sizing up her options quickly, Meg made an impulsive decision.  She needed to get Danny away from what was sure to be a battle. 

Meg ran to the woman who looked as if she wanted to help and flung her gift of influence directly at her.

“This is my brother, Danny,” Meg’s terror and fury projected her influence ten times more powerfully than when she was just stretching her will under normal circumstances.  “Take him to the vet’s office at 712 Quincy Dr
ive.  Tell them there’s been an emergency.  Stay with Danny until I come to get him.  Do you understand, Harriet?”  Meg’s powers were so acute, she could read the woman’s thoughts perfectly, but there was no time. 

Meg’s family was already fighting. 

Danny screamed and clutched Meg’s hair and clothing, refusing to let go.  “Be calm, Danny.  I will come for you.  I swear it.”  She sent a burst of soothing emotions wrapped in pure white love.  The little boy sobbed, but let go of his sister and clung to the motherly stranger.

“GO!” Meg screamed at the wide-eyed woman as three male soldiers came running toward her—crazed venom in their eyes.

The woman sprinted back toward her van, Danny flopping helplessly in her arms.  Meg watched for less than a second before she turned and ran directly toward her attackers.  Her dark hair flew loose and wild, matching her eyes.

In her peripherals she saw her family engaging other soldiers in hand-to-hand.  Creed just lifted a huge guy and threw him across the hood of a car as if he were a sack of rice.   Alik was hulking out, growing and punching with such force, the unlucky recipients were flying back and staying down. 

Meg had a different style.  She ran up to one of the soldiers and used her momentum to swing around his neck, kicking another soldier in the throat.  She then curled herself around the stunned soldier’s head, positioning her hands just right and yanked, snapping his neck. 

She leaped from his collapsing shoulders and grabbing the knife off the waistband of the third attacker. 

She ducked and rolled, and landed in a crouched, attack position.  Her facial expression was stoic, all business.  She’d just killed one and maimed another but focused on her objective and refused to get lost in the emotions of the moment.  The knife glinted against her wrist as she held it backward, ready to swipe it across her attacker’s throat, but first she wanted some answers. 

“Who do you work for?” She barked over the sirens that could be heard in the distance.

“Arkdone has a message for you, Meg Winter.”  The soldier moved with catlike fluidity, positioning himself defensively. 

“Arkdone commands you—”

BOOM! 

The gas tank in the SUV exploded, causing a huge burst of flames to fly into the afternoon sky.

“Evan,” she breathed, a new rush of adrenaline slipping ice-like up her spine.   

“EVAN!”
she screamed.  Inwardly, she begged someone would be near enough to help him, but the others were too busy in their own battles. 

Fire was already consuming the back seat of the SUV and Evan still wasn’t moving.

“You’re going to have to let me go to my brother,” she flung her will at the soldier whose eyes shown bright and green in the sunlight.  The soldier blinked once and shook his head no, resuming his fighting stance, though his message was long since forgotten.

Meg looked around at her family.  Theo was sprawled on the ground, unconscious.  So was Burns.  The others were fighting as more official-looking soldiers spilled from the back of the semitrailer. 

Sloan was the only person aware of Evan’s peril.  Meg saw her running to the driver’s side door of the SUV. 

“Stand down, soldier,” she ordered, flinging her powerful will at him fueled again with the strength of terror.

He took three large steps back just in time to avoid being shoved aside by Meg.  Nothing was stopping her from getting to her brother.

“He’s trapped,” Sloan screamed over the roar of the blaze hot enough to singe hair.  The girl looked young and terrified as she sobbed into her hands.  Meg was having none of it.

“Get Alik or Creed!  Move!”
she shouted at Sloan and threw herself into the front seat of the SUV blazing hot and deadly. 

“Evan! Wake up and help me,” she screamed into his face as she struggled to detach the seat belt.  The burning interior of the
SUV was producing an amazing amount of smoke, thick and black.  Meg was coughing already.  “Come on little brother, we have to get you out of here!  Work with me!”  Evan was out cold.   She yanked on his body with all her might, but she was only able to get him to slouch her way.  His right leg was pinned between the seat and the crushed door. 

“ALIK!”
she screamed.

“I’m here,” he yelled from behind her.  He was out of breath and sweating, cut and bruised, but huge. 

“His leg, it’s pinned against the door.  He’s burning!”  Meg grimaced at the fire as it began licking Evan’s left hand.

“Not for long,” Alik yanked his sister from the charring
SUV and threw himself inside.   Meg watched him brace himself against the steering wheel and driver’s headrest before kicking the door away from Evan repeatedly.  The impact was so intense, by the third kick the steering wheel ripped off in his hand and the headrest was yanked out of the seat.  Meg could have sworn she even saw the semi on the other side of the door shudder under his foot. 

“I think I got it,” Alik hollered through the smoke and flames.  He leaned down and carefully pulled his brother’s leg free, grabbed him under the arms and hauled him from the burning
SUV, flames licking his arms hungrily.

Meg ran with Alik as he carried their little brother away from the fire.  They ran toward the hospital’s campus and laid him down in the manicured green grass.  Sloan was right on their heels.

“You stay with him,” Alik ordered Sloan. “We’ve got to help finish this before the cops get in the way.”

Without a word exchanged, brother and sister ran back into the melee.  Creed, Cole and Farrow were surrounded by a dozen soldiers, all of whom were wearing SWAT team gear.  Looking around, Meg realized while she and Alik were busy getting Evan out of the
SUV, their attackers had set up a perimeter redirecting traffic and  pushing witnesses back just enough for the battle to proceed, but near enough so the three dozen smart phones held high could record every second of the confrontation.  

Chapter 24 And the World Looked On

“He
’s made this public, Alik,” Meg trembled with rage as she sprinted beside Alik.  She looked back over her shoulder cringing at what she sensed she would find.  Soldiers were surrounding Sloan and Evan. 
“NO!”
  She screamed torn between helping her brothers.  They were attacked from all corners. 

“You go back to Ev.  I got this,” Alik snarled, glowing, violet eyes locked on the targets ahead.  His whole body shuddered and pulsed as it grew even taller and wider.  His black shirt was tearing at the seams.  His baggie-fit jeans were filled out with muscle.  The veins in his arms, neck and forehead were swollen and stood out against his taut skin.

“Go kick some ass, brother,” she called over her shoulder as she spun back to sprint toward the four SWAT metasoldiers pointing tasers directly at Sloan. 

Evan was moaning in agony at his charred skin.  Meg could feel even the grass against his back felt like shards of glass ripping into his burns.  The breeze hurt.  Everything hurt and he was trying his damnedest not to scream from the pain.

Meg’s empath energies cringed in anguish for him.  Instinctively, she was sending powerful bursts of soothing emotions directly into her little brother as she ran.

Sloan was useless as a soldier, but she had a heart of gold.  She used her body as a shield protecting Evan as much as her one-hundred pound frame could from the attackers.  Her courage wasn’t lost on Meg. 

“Turn and fight!” she commanded from behind them.

The closest soldier turned first.  Meg jumped and slid toward him on her left hip, dodging the two metal probes darting from his taser gun and swiped his legs out from under him.  Still on her back she lifted her right leg and hammered down hard on his belly, knocking the wind out of him and rendering him useless for at least thirty seconds. 

Plenty of time
, she thought as two more aimed and fired and her. She leaped to her feet and did a standing backflip onto the hood of the car parked in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She knew what the soldiers were feeling before they even took action.  She knew they were fighting to put on a show for the cameras, but there was nothing she could do except protect her brother.  She had already drawn a crowd watching with captivated curiosity.  Their electronic devices were all held in front of them, some surely streaming directly to the internet and social media.  Meg had to push her flashes of fear of being found out aside and focus on the attackers.  

She wasn’t scared anymore.  She was pissed off now. 
How dare they try to hurt my family and expose us to the world!

“Stop
!”
she screamed, pushing her influence out of her mind so powerfully, the air around her vibrated like a mirage.

All four of the soldiers held absolutely still.  “Drop your weapons,” she growled her direct order.  The four immediately obeyed.   Her anger and fear for her little brother fueled the strength behind her influence.  She had never controlled so many at once without even touching them or locking eyes. 

Still standing atop the car, her hands were stretched to her sides as if she were surfing a wicked wave.  Meg pushed the vibrations roaring around her even harder.  “Now drop to your bellies and put your hands over your head.”  All four obeyed immediately.  A fifth soldier who had been jogging toward the group near the lawn stopped running and flung himself down to the ground.

“Do not move or make a sound,” Meg commanded.  Because each man obeyed perfectly, Meg hopped down off the car landing gracefully and ran to her little brother. 

“Evan!  It’s okay—no one’s going to hurt you.  You’re safe now,” Evan blinked once.  Meg couldn’t help but study the burned skin on his left cheek and down the whole left side of his body.  His bloodshot eyes blinked once then rolled back in his head.  He passed out from the immense pain.

“Gather the stun guns and stay with Evan,” Meg ordered.  Sloan was staring at her with saucer-eyes, but Meg wasn’t watching the girl.  Her eyes were on the battle taking place twenty yards away. 

Meg ran through the crowd and flung herself directly into the mix.  Creed was holding his own against two soldiers.  Cole was bleeding from the head, but was fighting valiantly against another soldier.  Alik had four bodies at his feet, and was fighting two more.  Farrow was being strangled, the soldier holding her by the throat from behind.  She was elbowing him, but her strikes were getting weaker and weaker. 

Meg ran up to the strangler and delivered a roundhouse from behind, boxing his right ear so hard blood spewed from his broken eardrum.  She and Farrow exchanged foreboding looks when Meg sensed a shot and swept Farrow’s legs out from under her.  Both girls collapsed to the ground, and looked up in time to see taser
probes fly like winged demons from the stun guns.

Meg sensed the soldiers’ fury at the missed shot.  Farrow was sprawled on her side when another taser probe struck her in the chest.  Her body jolted violently as she was pumped with fifty-thousand volts of electricity.

Meg jumped to her feet, eyes tracing the source of the taser and held her hand out and screamed over the roar of the emergency vehicles around them.  “Release!” she ordered.  Immediately the soldier released the trigger and dropped the gun, now impotent, to the ground.  Farrow stopped convulsing but lay still trying to recover.  Another soldier climbed atop her and yanked her hands behind her, slipping handcuffs onto her. 

In that instant, Meg saw her brother Alik get shot with three separate tasers, and though it should have been enough voltage to down a buffalo, her brother only stood there roaring in annoyed pain.  Creed was pinned to the side of a van, blood trickling down his face, shields blocking his blows while teargas exploded at his feet.   Cole was restrained by three soldiers with gas masks on.

Meg had never felt the surge of acid-laced rage as she felt in that instant.  She stood in the middle of the melee shaking violently and screamed
“NOOoo!”
 

The gift she was cursed/blessed with crashed out of her like a hundred lashes, raining torrents of commanding influence.  She’d never felt anything like this before. 

The world vibrated to an immediate stop. 

Stunned and dazed, the soldiers’ arms dropped to their sides, like useless chunks of flesh.  Their faces were slack-jawed and silent.  Meg breathed, feeling her small ribs expand to accommodate the energies it now housed.   Her mind’s eye was flashing with a kaleidoscope of colors as she felt her gift pulse, undulate and breathe with power. 

Meg closed her eyes with the waves of energies tingling throughout.  “Enemy soldiers, stand down.  Drop your weapons and get on your knees.  Your bodies are completely paralyzed.  You cannot move from the neck down.”  As she spoke each word, her commands were heard and obeyed.  Every soldier dressed in SWAT uniform was incapacitated and lying on the ground. 

And the world was silent to Meg’s ears.

She gritted her teeth, working to control the immense power she wielded over those crumpled at her feet.  A part of her wanted to stab these attackers with words that would stop their hearts, but she yanked herself back.  That part of her wanted to watch their eyes roll back into their heads like her little brother’s had just moments before. 

How dare they hurt my family!
She screamed inside, feeling a surge of energy well up like a convulsion of acidic hatred. 

Calm, Meg.  Be calm and stay in control.  These soldiers are just puppets.  Arkdone is doing this.
A small voice inside reminded.

Arkdone is a coward,
she bellowed in her mind, projecting her thoughts directly at Arkdone, wherever he was.

Chapter 25 Restraint

She watched in a daze as Creed ran up to her, stepping over bodies of the fallen
, grabbing her by the hand and forcing her to move.

“C’mon Meg.  Let’s get the hell out of here,” he nearly swept her off her feet as he rushed her back toward Evan.  Alik and Farrow were already running to him.  Cole was behind the wheel of the very car she’d battled from, frantically looking for keys and coming up empty.  The extended cab truck behind it was occupied by a dumb-struck local holding his cell phone up and out of his open window. 

Meg knew exactly what she wanted.  “Get out of the car,” she enunciated clearly, locking eyes with the stranger who continued recording.  “Now!” she roared. 

Her energies were fast depleting and as raw and powerful as her gifts were now—no one had a chance to tell her about her ability to siphon emotional energies from those she loved.  And even if they had, she’d felt like an outsider—someone who wasn’t quit
e family to people too polite to say so. 

Currently, she had no fewer than two dozen soldiers under her influence.  This one more person in the truck was pulling her under.  She felt a trickle of warm fluid tickle her upper lip, but ignored it.  “Get out of the car now and step away.”

Feeling the full effects of her attentions, waning as they may be, was more than enough for the driver to reach for the door and clamor out of the truck.

“Keys,” she commanded, blood still dripping from her dainty nose.  He reached out to hand her the keys when Cole grabbed them from him instead.  “Trust me, dude.  You don’t want to touch her right now…or ever.”

Alik and Farrow loaded Evan into the back row of seats and climbed into the bed themselves.  Sloan threw all the weapons she collected in to the bed before she climbed into the back row with Evan.  Meg climbed into the passenger seat next to Cole and ordered him to drive.

“What about my dad and Mr. Burns?” Cole asked suddenly worried.

“We’ll load them in the back,” Meg answered immediately.  “No one is left behind.”

Cole made the truck pe
el out and turned back to where he last saw his dad and Burns sprawled on the ground.  It took less than fifteen seconds for Alik and Creed to grab their still unconscious bodies.  Neither had roused after first being struck by tasers within seconds of the start of the attack.

The wind ripped against the passengers trying to hunker down in the bed of the truck.

“Where are we going?” Cole asked, swiping blood from his cheek absently.

“We have to go back to the vet.  That’s where I sent Danny.  We need to get everyone in one safe place and it sure as hell isn’t going to be anywhere public.  We were just out-ed by Arkdone to the world.  Every eye that saw us knows we’re different.”

“The cameras!  Shit, I hadn’t thought of that,” Cole blurted.

“Arkdone thought of it.  He thought of everything.  He just turned us into fugitives against authorities who never even knew we existed until twenty minutes ago.”

“Meg, what are we going to do?  What about your mom?”

“I don’t know, yet.  I need time to think!” Meg snapped.

“Hey, okay.  It’s okay.  We’ll figure something out.”  Cole kept checking the rearview mirror, expecting any moment to see sirens chasing them.  So far, there was nothing.

“You were amazing back there,” he offered softly, passing her a napkin he found lying in the center console to help
blot her bloody nose.  She accepted the napkin absently—still pumped up on the adrenaline and power of the battle.  Cole risked a sideways glance at the still winded wild girl beside him.  “Really, I don’t know how you did that mind-control stuff with every SWAT member all at once, but damn if you didn’t have them all obeying your every word.”

“I wanted to tell them they were paralyzed—”

“I thought you did.”

“—completely.  I wanted to force them to stop breathing.  I wanted to suffocate each of them for what they were doing to my family.”  Meg’s breathy, raspy voice was barely recognizable.

“But, you didn’t, Meg.  That’s not who you are.  You’re not a killer unless you’re forced.  None of us are.”  Cole kept glancing over at the girl he knew with every ounce of his being that he loved more than ever.  “You controlled yourself, Meg.  It’s only natural in the face of all that power that you’d struggle wielding it just right, but you did.  You saved us all!”  Cole tried to soothe.

“I just showed the world what kind of freak I really am.  Every camera caught what I just did and there’s no explanation except mass hypnosis—mind control.” She turned in her seat to check Evan by reading his faint emotional energies.  He was passed out cold.  She narrowed her eyes at Sloan to read her take on Evan’s condition.  She was terrified out of her mind and kept looking at Meg with saucer-wide eyes.  Meg ignored her and kept talking to Cole.

“What, with Alik’s glowing indigo eyes and hulking figure, Farrow’s skilled hand-to-hand combat and you manhandling those trained soldiers as if they were third graders.  None of this will go over well with the humans.  They’ll be hungry for more.  They’ll fear us.  They’ll see us as a threat and will hunt us.  And I guarantee they will not show the same restraint I just did when it’s
our
lives in the balance.  They will crush us if they can.  Or worse, use us.”

“Meg, just breathe.  Calm down and breathe.  We’ve been in bad scrapes before.  We’ll figure something out.”  Cole pulled sharply into the vet’s parking lot and looked back at those in the bed with an apologetic shrug. 

Her eyes scanned the parking lot looking for the woman’s van she knew would be there.  She found it parked under the shade of a tree at the edge of the lot.

Meg flung her door open and stalked right to the entrance. 

Meg was still pumped up with adrenaline.  Her dark eyes flashed like an animal’s in the night as she scanned the smallish waiting room.  The bloodstains on her face just made her look all the more terrifyingly beautiful.  There, in the corner, was the woman and sitting beside her was a pale-faced Danny.

“Meggie!” he yelled the moment he saw her.  He bolted across the room and jumped directly into her arms.  “You came for me!  You came back for me!” he heaved a sob.  Plump tears rolled down his cheeks briefly before he smushed his little face into her neck and cried tears of relief.

“Shh, Danny.  I promised I’d come for you.  I always will, little man.  You’re family, and I always take care of my family.”

The woman had made her way to Meg with wide, still somewhat dazed eyes.  She waited until Meg looked at her before speaking.  “I don’t know what happened, or why I felt so compelled to come here, but I’m glad you have come for your brother.  He was very worried about you.”  She reached out and offered her hand.  “I don’t believe we’ve properly met.  I’m Harriet.”

Meg looked down at the woman’s hand and took a deep breath.  She didn’t know if she could stand touching anyone right else then, but out of thankfulness and courtesy, she reached out and let the woman shake her hand.  “Meg Winter and this is Danny.” She said stiffly. 

“You have a little something on your face dear.  Here, I always keep some wet wipes in my bag for just such moments.” 

Just such moments?  Like bloody faces?
Meg thought. 
Shoot, I may have fried this woman’s brain.

The woman shuffled through her large purse and produced a small plastic container filled completely with soft, wet wipes.  She handed one to Meg and motioned to what was undoubtedly dried blood around her nose and mouth. 

Meg accepted the cloth but knew the bleeding was likely to happen again anyway.   Exhausted, Meg reached out and touched the woman’s arm, hoping to increase her ability to connect with her even in her weakened state.