Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (25 page)

Alik shook his head.  “We don’t know enough yet.  I don’t want to worry her unless we have to.”

“Creed,” Alik turned to look into the eyes of a desperate man.  “You are going to have to try to maintain yourself while I’m working.  I can’t worry about you freaking the hell out or running off while I’ve got memories floating in front of my eyes.  Agreed?”

Creed nodded once and locked his jaw as though containing his terror by sheer will.

“Farrow, I’m putting you in charge of driving.”  He passed her the keys to the rental.  She nodded once and pocketed them.

“Here it goes,” he mumbled and stared at the curtains, concentrating.

Minutes pas
sed and Creed was barely able to contain his nerves.  Just when he was about to scream at Alik to hurry the hell up, Alik inhaled sharply, turned around and looked at the sheet covered bed.

“This was Chaunders
’ room.  Meg can barely walk.  Wait.  Let me back up.”

“Chaunders?” Creed and Farrow said at the same time.

Alik went bolting back out of the room and into the hallway watching his reenactment in a ghostlike version where there was no sound, only visuals.

“She started back here,” he said running back down the hallway and opening the door to another room.

The scent of Meg was even stronger in this room.  Tears rushed to Creed’s eyes at the first blast of her lilies and strawberries.  All he could think about was her large, dark eyes and the way they would crinkle up when she smiled at him.  He felt like his heart was ripped out of his chest with a rusted Army spoon.

“She woke from some kind of sedation and could barely move.  She yanked out all her tubes,” Alik cringed at the visuals he was seeing, “and made her way to the bottom of the bed right here.”  He pointed to the exact spot.  “She can barely stand.  What did they do to you Meggie?” the protective brother in him asked his sister’s echo. 

“She managed to get into the hallway and,” Alik hurried ahead of her echo to watch. “She comes into this room to find a knife.”  Creed and Sloan keep watching Alik’s facial expression through the glow of their flashlights.  Alik didn’t seem to need the light as his indigo eyes were showing him the energy prints left there.  “Atta girl Meggie,” he quietly cheered his sister on as he watched her arm herself and hug the wall as she shuffled painfully.

“Okay, this is how she ended up here,” Alik explains as he walks back into the room with the broken window.  “She’s
holding the knife to Chaunders’ throat.  They’re talking, but I…wait, two soldiers are in the room now.  They’re threatening Meg.  Meg can barely hold herself up, but she’s fighting to…oh, my God, one of the soldiers just shot the other soldier with his taser gun.  Meg is crawling away on the floor over there, she stands, struggles, but throws a chair out the window.  The soldier just tased Chaunders.  He’s talking to Meg.  She…” Alik grimaced, “passed out, cutting her arm on the glass before he caught her.”

“He touched her?” Creed growled.

“He caught her,” Alik calmly repeated.

“What’s happening now?” Farrow asked, riveted to Alik’s retelling.

“He’s carrying her out,” Alik hurried back out the door and gave chase to the echo of his sister hanging limp in the arms of the nameless blonde soldier holding her.

“He’s laying her down in the back seat of a car and covering her with a blanket.  Now he’s backing out of the driveway.  Let’s get to the car.  I can track them from here,” Alik turned and sprinted back to the spot across the street from the front of the chateau where they’d parked.

Creed ran ahead yanking the keys from Farrow’s hands, and gave her a look that could kill, challenging her to argue with him.

Farrow just kept running and took the back seat when they got to the car.  Alik didn’t even seem to notice who was driving as he cla
mbered into the passenger side.  Creed shoved the keys in the ignition, shifted into first gear and gave it too much gas.  The tires squealed in response before catching in the gravel and responding to his demands of speed.

“He’s driving pretty fast,” Alik watched the dark street before them like it was a movie he was translating to the blind.  “Keep going straight.”

“What did she look like?  Was she healthy?” Creed asked, his huge fists gripping the steering wheel making it look like a toy in his hands. 

“She looked, frail, way too skinny.  Her hair was wild and long.  She looked like she’d been drugged.” Alik added remembering her dark eyes blinking
slowly and heavy. 

“What did they do to her?”

“What was she wearing?” Farrow suspected something, but needed confirmation.  She knew Williams too well.

“A hospital gown.  She was wearing a flimsy, light-blue hospital gown that looked way too big on her,” Alik frowned before yelling.  “Right, turn right!”

Creed was concentrating on the road, chasing the echo of a girl that only existed these days in his dreams.  He yanked the wheel right.  The sedan fish-tailed just enough to make Farrow’s stomach lurch, but Creed’s strength was poured into his invisible lifeline to Meg.  He wasn’t going to let anything stop him from helping Alik track her.  He ripped the gear smoothly from second back to third as he pushed the vehicle harder. 

“I think she was kept sedated.  That would be just like Williams.” Even as
Farrow said the words, she knew in her heart they were true.

“He could move her around from place to place and not have to worry about her fighting him.” Creed’s voice was pained and on the verge of rage.

“I’ve been thinking about this for months now,” Alik kept his eyes on his retro-cognitive image as he spoke.  “Arkdone said the sub aural blast targeted her memory—wiped it clean.  It wouldn’t take away her core personality.  Meg is a natural born fighter.  She’s stubborn and passionate.  I don’t think she would take to being ordered around for very long.” Alik’s eyes glowed indigo against the velvet night sky blanketing the windows of their car.  He never stopped watching the echo signature left by the car holding his sister, but over the past three months, he’d gotten better about being able to control his retro-cognition while holding a conversation with people in the present.  The technique was a little disorienting at first, but the more he practiced, the more naturally living in two planes of time became.

“Can you see her?” Creed asked, desperate for more information.

“If you can speed up about seven miles per hour and stay in the left lane, I’ll try.” Alik squinted ahead in his effort.

Creed obeyed immediately, downshifting to help with the rapid acceleration he was looking for.

“I see her.  She’s lying down in the back covered with a blanket.  She looks like she’s sleeping peacefully, Creed.”

“She was when this happened.  How long ago was this, Alik?”

Alik frowned, still watching the echo of his sleeping sister through the back glass of the car that was no longer there.

“Two
, maybe three nights ago—it wasn’t longer than that.”

“How are we going to track them if we’re always forty-eight to seventy-two hours behind them?” Farrow asked.

“She’s got a point, Alik.”

“I’ll think of something.  They can’t drive forever.  At some point they’ll have to stop and that’s when I’ll try to fast-forward chunks of time and still keep track of them.”

“We should call your mom now.”  Farrow reached to pull her cell phone from her pocket in anticipation of Alik’s answer.

Chapter 48  Rock-a-Bye My Blank Slate

“Yes, sir.”  Sirus spoke in a clipped, respectful tone.  “I understand.  Thank you, sir.  We’ll see you soon.  Goodbye.”

“Well?” Meg asked, feeling very unsure and out of control.

“The Senator has sent his car to retrieve us.  Ermos will be waiting for us at the gate with a sign.”

“Who’s Ermos?”

“The Senator’s personal driver and bodyguard.”  Sirus was looking out the window across the aisle watching the scenery zoom past.  Meg leaned forward to try to watch his eyes.  She was fascinated with the shifts he would go through: one minute Sirus, the next Gideon.    He was so difficult to read emotionally, but now that she’d watched him switch a few times, she knew what signs to look for.

“Sirus?”

“Yeah?”

“I was just checking.  Thank you for your help, but I was wondering—could I talk with Gideon for a few minutes?”

Sirus’ eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “What about?”

“He rescued me from Williams’ drug induced coma, right?  I just want to ask him a few questions about that.”

“Okay.”  Sirus turned away and stared at the landscape passing more slowly through the white frame of a passenger window.  Meg watched his profile intently.  She saw his muscles relax in his jaw.  She even noticed a change in the color of his skin—as though the blood vessels there responded to what she’d already heard was a different heart rate.  When he turned around she saw the black eyes of Sirus had changed to the goldish eyes of Gideon.

“Hi.” Meg offered a tentative smile.

Gideon took a slow deep breath and smiled back.  “Hi, yourself.”

“We’re landing,” Meg offered, not sure what else to say to the man who’d sat beside her for the past several hours but would have no memory of her conversations with Sirus.

Gideon looked around as if waking from a nap, needing a moment to orient himself.

“So we are,” he responded simply.

“Can I ask you some questions about what happened back at the chateau?”

“Okay.”  Gideon leaned back and crossed his arms.  His body language was showing Meg she was walking on thin ice and Sirus may come back at any time.  Gideon seemed much more comfortable in the here and now.  Sirus was the memory keeper, for the most part.

Meg decided to try to risk touching him.  She needed to increase her connection.  Since he was sitting with his arms crossed, she had to resort to the most obvious way: She held out her hand, palm up.

Gideon frowned and tilted his head questioning her actions. 

“Please?  Humor me?” Meg looked from her open hand into his eyes and back again.

With a sigh, Gideon reached out his
right hand and took Meg’s left.  They sat holding hands on the taxing plane for a few moments before Meg spoke. 

“Back at the chateau, you were one of the guards responsible for keeping watch over me, right?”

“Yes.”

“Who were you guarding me against?”

“I was supposed to be protecting you from Senator Arkdone, but in reality, I was protecting you from Williams himself.”

“How long had you worked for Williams?”

“Years.  I’m a metamonarch.”

Meg frowned at the term.  “What is that?”

“It means I’m both a metahuman and I’ve gone through Monarch Programming.”  He watched the frown deepen in Meg’s face before turning his back to her and showing her his branding.

“See? 
Metamonarchs have the infinite symbol with an “M” etched into each loop.”

She reached up and traced the scar carefully with the tip of her finger.  Gideon’s body responded with a quiver.

He quickly turned around, trying to hide the blush that reddened his cheeks.

“I was told by my family that Arkdone wiped my memory in preparation of being turned into a
metamonarch, too.  So?”

“So?”

“So did he succeed in finishing the process before Williams took me away?  I mean—what am I?”  Meg asked innocently.

Gideon swallowed hard before saying, “Turn around, and I’ll see.”

“You don’t know already?”

“How would I know?”

“Well, you never looked, even when I was comatose?”

“Of course not.”  Gideon looked truly hurt at the implication that he would have done anything to her while she was unconscious.

Meg nodded once and whispered, “Thank you.”

“I made damn sure no one else touched you either.” 

Meg heard a growl rumble deep in his chest as he said those words.  She was caught off guard by his protectiveness.

“Did others try?” 
She was almost too afraid to ask.

“They wanted to, but they knew they had to go through me first.  No one but the nurses and Dr. Chaunders even crossed the threshold of your room and even when they did, I stayed just outside your door.”  Meg watched Gideon’s honey eyes glisten with rage at the memory he wasn’t willing to share.

Meg turned her back on Gideon and held her hair up and out of the way.  “Go ahead and check.  I need to know.”

With tentative fingers, Gideon carefully pulled down the back collar of her sweater and tee just enough to see her branding.

“You have the Mark of the Monarch, too.”  His warm breath tickled the sensitive hairs at the nape of her neck.  She had to resist the urge to shiver.

“I do?”

“Should I show you?”

“Yes, please.  I need to feel it for myself.”

Holding her hair aside with one hand, she reached the other behind her and let Gideon take her finger and trace the tattoo-like branding etched across her third vertebrae.  Meg felt slightly raised marks shaped like the Greek Sigma character: “Σ.” On the right side of her vertebrae, it was facing as it should.  On the left side, it was flipped to look like Sigma’s mirror-image.