Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (35 page)

Inside the girl was screaming.

“To Kenneth, it was commonplace to see her eyes cut with annoyance at his sheer presence, but none of this ever stopped the inadequate boy from trying to please his mother.”

He paused momentarily adjusting the machine beside his victim as it began to beep a warning. 

“Well my dear girl.  You only have a few more moments so I’ll get right to the surprise ending of the story, shall I?”

“The boy grew up to become a powerful doctor himself and existed in the same fine social circles his mother held so dear.  Though time passed and dark-eyed women came and went through his life, the little boy never forgot the beautiful eyes in which he only ever saw resentment.  He tried to let it go.  He tried to move on, but the disappointment in those eyes haunted him both day and night.” 

He sat back, toying with the severed digits for a moment before continuing.

“He married a blue-eyed woman and together they had one daughter then later, he had another.  The first daughter was born with her mother’s blue eyes.  Lucky girl.”

“The second daughter,” the doctor stopped to rub his chin with the back of one of her hands.  “The second daughter had the distinct misfortune of looking exactly like the grandmother she would never meet.  This daughter looks at her father with hatred and resentment through the same beautiful dark eyes as her grandmother.”

“So you see Gemi, it’s just an unfortunate coincidence that you happen to resemble the dark-eyed daughter, because while the boy may have been able
to silence the dull hatred in his mother’s eyes with a scalpel, he has yet to do the same to his daughter.  And since he can’t take her eyes yet, he’ll just have to take yours.”

With those final words, he hovered over the paralyzed face of his victim with a surgical blade, leaned in and cut out her eyes, one at a time.  Dr. Williams made sure to keep her alive long enough to hear the wet, sucking sounds as they each left their sockets.

“It’s a good day to die, Gemi,” he laughed, rolling the freshly plucked and bloody eyeballs in his gloved hand and smiling. 

The last thing Gemi heard was the doctor saying, “Stanley?  I have worn myself out for the night.  Take her to the incinerator and clean up.  I’m going to bed.” 

Chapter 65  New Sheriff in Town

Meg covered her mouth to stifle the cry of horror at what the Punisher had done to himself.

His head was thrown back in a silent scream, the flesh around
his gaping mouth and obsidian eyes blotchy red as he held his breath through the pain.

Oblivious of the tear slipping down her cheek, she reached out to help him but stopped instantly when he leveled his gaze on her. 

“Will you stay away, bitch?” the alter challenged.  “Or do I keep going?”  He yanked the six-inch blade from his thigh.  The movement made a sickening, sucking sound as it exited his flesh.  Blood, red and thick spilled from the wound

Meg tipped her head to the side as though listening to a whisper from across the room.  After pausing for a full ten seconds, she knew what she had to do. 

She slipped into a fighting stance. 

“Drop the weapon, now!” she growled.  Meg forced herself into a deadly calm.  Her breathing was slow and steady.  Her eyes were narrowed and cutting.  Her posture was aggressive and commanding.

The Punisher raised his weapon above his head.  “Answer the question.”  The threat to himself was anything but veiled.

“You will do as I say.  Drop the weapon and do not hurt the body again,
EVER!
” Meg focused her phenomenal power directly at the black signature dominating the kaleidoscope.  She pushed her will right through the center of the blackness, reaching an emotional hand out to the yellow and red colors and as she did, they began to pulse more clearly.  “You’ll do as you’re told, Slave.  That’s an order.”

She braced herself for what she knew was coming.  The Punisher, a fractured shard of an alter, could resist her demands, to a degree.  She felt the blackness slip out from her empath’s grasp. 

She sensed this part of the soldier rarely, if ever, came out in front of others.  She was probably the first person to ever hear him speak.  He was the punisher, no matter what he called himself.  He was there to keep the other alters from feeling any closeness to anyone.

In her mind, she chased the blackness with her light.  “I’m not going anywhere, Punisher.  Nothing you say or do will make me back off.  And if you think you can come to me and try to scare me away with your theatrics,
think again!  Drop the weapon, NOW!” she barked the direct order, fueling it with her gift.

The bloody knife clattered to the ground, but the soldier didn’t look to be standing down.  Instead, he took on a fighting stance right back at Meg. 

“I’ll make you a deal, bitch.  If you kick my ass, you can visit the others as much as you want.  If I win, you not only stay away from us, but you have to pick up that knife and stab this body as punishment for losing.”

“Those are some sick terms, Punisher,” Meg moved slowly toward the middle of the room.  The obsidian-eyed alter followed her, step by step.  “If I weren’t sure your ass is grass, I m
ight have to decline, but since I have no doubt I’ll win, the terms don’t matter.”

The face that belonged to Gideon sneered, chuckled
, then full-on laughed.  “Those are some big brass balls you have, bit—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Meg grabbed the silver serving tray lef
t on the dresser and flung it Frisbee-style at her opponent’s throat.  Racing behind it, she watched him block it with his arm.  Even as he dropped it, Meg used both of her hands to brutally cup-slap both his ears, perforating his eardrums instantly. 

Dazed and reeling in pain, the Punisher stumbled.  Meg used that instant to grab the wingback chair by the door and swung it directly at his head.  His thick body smashed to the ground, eyes wild with fury. 

He grabbed a leg of the now broken chair and staggered momentarily before swinging the thick wood like a bat at Meg’s head.  She ducked onto her knees and bent backward until her long hair swept the floor behind her before springing back upright and punching him square in the kidney. 

He backed away holding his side and watched the girl leap to her feet. He tackled her from the side just as she was trying to regain her footing.  Spinning her, he moved to control her from behind. 

She shoved herself back and rammed his body into the wall.  The mirror there shattered behind his head, shards raining from the wall.  Meg braced her right arm and elbowed him six times before he unlocked his forearm from around her neck and folded over in pain.

That’s when the Punisher dove for the knife still waiting, blood drying
to match the red paint on the walls.  Meg kicked it from his hand, spun and back kicked him in the gut.  She grabbed the frame of the broken mirror from the wall and, with speed faster than the alter could follow, tangled his arm in it, yanked it back and brought him to his knees. 

Meg shoved him face down into the hand-scraped, hardwood floors and jabbed her sharp, powerful knee into his sciatic nerve.  He was trying not to gasp in pain.

“You see, Punisher,” Meg yanked his arm back even more impossibly.  “You may have been in charge of punishing the system before, but now, you’re one hell of a lame duck because there’s a new sheriff in charge.  You better go hide your cowardly ass back in the crevice you came from and send out Sirus or you’ll get to contend with the
real
bitch inside
me
!”

The body beneath her fell slack.  “Damn witch, get the hell off me!”

Meg didn’t move though she could recognize Sirus’ voice anywhere.

“And this is what you get, asshole, if you ever call me a ‘witch’ again.  Are we clear?” Meg yanked his arm twisted and ripped from the shards of mirror still clinging to the inside of the frame.

“Yeah!  Yes.  Sorry,” Sirus bellowed.

Meg sprang off Sirus and watched him slowly untangle himself from the frame, pick up his dignity and cower back inside the body.

She looked into Gideon’s surprised, hurt eyes by the time the man’s body was standing.

Meg cocked her head, reached to her bed to retrieve the black stockings folded neatly on the perfectly undisturbed comforter then down to the bloody knife still spinning in the corner of the room from when she’d kicked it.  One slice with the razor-sharp blade separated a perfect swath of the material.  Without a word, Meg walked up to the dazed and confused soldier and wrapped the handmade tourniquet around his upper thigh. 

Though he was hurting terribly and bleeding profusely, the pressure of her touch made goose bumps jump across his skin.  She yanked the stocking into a tight double knot then grabbed his hand and walked him toward the bathroom.  “You’re going to need stitches and I happen to be quite good at giving them.  Apparently, the woman who raised me as her daughter used to be quite the soldier herself.  I understand she taught me all about battlefield first aid.  I saw a sewing kit in one of the bathroom drawers.”

“Meg?  What happened?”  Gideon gladly held her hand and hobbled beside her toward the light spilling from the half-open bathroom door, but a guy had to know.

“Well, Sirus will never call me a ‘witch’ again, I guarantee that,” Meg growled.  “That and I had to put a seriously demented alter who called himself the system’s ‘Punisher’ in his place.  I’m hoping I scared him enough to stop him from hurting you anymore.”

“Sirus?  Punisher?  Yeah, things have started to get even more confusing.  It’s not just lost time
anymore, but now I’m starting to get a glimpse of others in here.  I can hear their thoughts and see through their eyes.  It’s like I’ve stepped back and I’m watching the events on a TV with really bad reception.” He looked away self-consciously, frowned and tapped his temple.  “That’s not normal, is it?”

Meg shook her head slowly. 
“I wish I knew how to help you.  You’d think that because I’m an empath, I’d have a clue.” 

“
I’m just impressed that you’re not afraid of me, Meg,” Gideon’s face reddened.  

Meg helped him maneuver past the sink and toilet so he was facing the spa-like bathtub. 

“I don’t scare easily,” she answered simply.

Changing the subject
, Gideon nodded toward the overturned bedroom.  “You’ve been busy.”  He felt in awe of the powder keg of a little girl who was already searching for the needle and thread to mend his leg. 

Meg shrugged, “Well, you have been too, whether or not you remember it.”
Having found what she needed, she turned her attentions back to Gideon’s injury.  In one swift motion, Meg yanked the soldier’s pant leg wide open exposing the wound. 

“
Some things are still so blurred.  Did you do this to me?”  Gideon asked with a look of curiosity in his eyes.

“You did this to yourself, soldier.”  Meg threaded the needle first, then drenched the site with rubbing alcohol.  She couldn’t ignore his hiss of pain from the sting, so she blew softly on the site for a few moments before grabbing the needle. 

“Take a deep breath,” she warned before diving into the gaping flesh wound with her two-inch needle and red thread. 

After the third stitch, she helped him move to the floor sensing that’s about where he was going to land in a few moments anyway.

He had passed out in a cold sweat from the pain and blood loss by the time Meg was ready to tie her last knot.

She slipped a folded towel under his head and washed her hands just in time to hear a knock at her door.

Chapter 66  Creed’s Lament

She moved with grace, her feet seemingly off the ground.  Creed watched her profile, mesmerized by the arc of her strong shoulders dipping gently toward the small of her back.  His watchful blue eyes followed the perfect curve at her shapely rear end and down her muscular dancer’s thighs, calves, into the turn of her beautiful ankles and ending at her dainty feet stretched on tiptoe as she moved to the waltz.  Each chord wrapped itself around her waist
, pulling her around the dance floor like an adamant suitor unwilling to release the girl from its claws.

Her arms were up, grasping the thick shoulder of an invisible partner.  Her right hand was raised to the side, fingers lightly curled around the invisible force that pulled her smoothly through the three-quarter, expressive ballad. 

She wore a crimson, flowing and delicate gown that seemed to linger in lament through the air behind her long, sweeping flight across the hardwood floor. 

In that instant, the shape of her partner became visible.  She was in the arms of Senator Arkdone.  His hand was pressed firmly into that beautiful, untouchable small of her back.  Arkdone watched her profile with obvious hunger as she hung in his arms.  A quick glance up at Creed’s pain filled expression had Arkdone laughing.  His red-lipped ridicule made his rows of razor-sharp shark teeth visible.

Creed tried to scream his warning to the innocent beauty so far from his reach, but no sound came.  He tried to catch her eyes and waved frantically for her attention, but, as the waltz demanded, she turned and swayed with the fluid movements, head tipped away from her partner. 

Arkdone, still laughing, spun a rag-doll, obedient Meg so she would be facing the tormented soldier.  That’s when Creed saw the painted smile on her face.  A harlequin smiling clown face stared back at him through etched diamond eyes.  But it wasn’t the painted smile that made Creed roar in a frenzied scream that broke through to his waking life—it was the distorted lines of face paint left in the wake of her
blood red, tortured tears.

Creed screamed as he flew from his bed.

His sharp night vision burst into view as he fought to escape the lasting caress of his nightmare. In his sleep, he’d ripped his sweat-soaked, navy bed sheet in two.  Instinctively he was standing in the attack position, ready to fight to the death to defend his Meg. 

Blinking several times and a good shake to the head helped clear his thoughts.

It was just a dream,
he told himself.  He stepped back to lean against the wall.

Or is it a truth I still can’t understand?

His heart was still thundering in his chest from the fight his body was desperate to have with that untouchable, scalding nightmare.

Chapter 67  No Moving On

He stood trying to calm his heart rate for a full five minutes before he decided he wasn’t going to sleep anyway.  He
moved to the small chair in the corner of the room that acted as his catch-all piece of furniture and shuffled through the pile to find a pair of black sweatpants.  In a swift motion, he pulled them on over his boxer briefs.  He grabbed a white tank top off the top of the pile.

He sighed deeply thinking back to the days when he had to keep his things military neat, and though he was still a very orderly guy, he’d been allowing himself to live a little more relaxed since they relocated to Cairo. 

Oh, who am I trying to convince?
He thought angrily. 
I just don’t seem to give a shit about anything without Meg.
 

He yanked his running shoes on over low-cut socks.

An image of her bloody tears smearing the black-and-white face paint from his dream flashed in his mind so clearly it was as though she were standing right in the room.  He shook his head trying to clear it, bent to the floor to retrieve the two strips of material that used to be his top sheet and tossed them back on the bed.  Scowling at the crumpled heap, he changed his mind and grabbed the bundle to walk to the trash outside.

He stopped in the hallway

“What are you doing up?” he asked the dark.

“I’m not really sure how you expect me to sleep when you’re in there screaming.”  Farrow whispered so as not to disturb the rest of the house.

“Go back to bed,” he said, walking away.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t go running off, okay?”

“What difference would it make?”

Creed made his way to the kitchen, Farrow following close at his heels.  She was still wearing her pajamas and looking pretty and rumpled having just awoken minutes before. 

Creed sized her up and thought how different she looked now that she was free from the torment of Bjorn and out from under Williams’ bloody thumb.  As Alik’s girl, she truly did seem like a completely different person from the personal assistant and trained sniper assassin she used to be.  But Creed didn’t underestimate the skills behind the peaceful beauty; he knew Farrow could hold her own against the best of the best.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Did I stutter?”

“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?”

“Just because the family is worried about setting foot back into the States, doesn’t mean I am.”

“So you’d go after Meg yourself?”

Creed just shrugged as he reached for a bottle of cold water from the fridge.

He popped the cap and tossed the fluid back.  Farrow stared at his throat as it worked to swallow.  She was scowling.

“You know we’ll come up with a plan.  Something’s gotta give.”  Farrow offered as she desperately tried looking for the silver lining.

“Something’s wrong, Farrow.  I can feel it.  It stings my eyes in my dreams, like it’s just out of my line of sight.” Creed shook his head and looked down at the half-empty bottle in his hands.  A shadow fell across his face.

“Um, yeah.  There’s a lot wrong, but you going off half-cocked isn’t going to fix things.”

“It just doesn’t add up,” he muttered, too focused on the thoughts spinning in his head to worry about what Farrow thought.

“What doesn’t add up?”

“Evan, Meg…none of it.”  He squinted off into space and lightly tapped the bottle to his lip.

“Is that what you were dreaming about?” She asked, reaching past him to get her drink.  She retrieved a soda and slowly pulled the tab, letting the air hiss slow and angry before popping it open.  She took a swig, keeping one eye on the struggling soldier.

“If it’s any consolation, Alik is beside himself with frustration at not having been able to follow his sister into the States.”

“If that asshole Arkdone didn’t have half the FBI and Homeland Security looking in every nook and cranny for us—” he started but stopped himself.  “I just need some time to think,” Creed placed the bottle of water on the counter and headed outside.

“Where are you going?”

“For a run.”

“Will you be back?”

“Where else would I go?”

“Don’t say it like we’re living in captivity,” Farrow scolded.

“Nothing could contain me, except her.  Whether she wants it or not, she holds my heart in her hands.  Knowing she doesn’t feel the same way is devastating.”

“You don’t have to build her up like that, Creed.  Don’t get me wrong, I know she means a lot to you, but she doesn’t have to be your everything.”

“You make it sound as if I have a choice.” Creed frowned at Farrow.

“You do!  You could still be a part of this family and move on.”

“Move on?”  Creed was shaking his head, an incredulous look clear on his face. “Let me put it this way, Farrow: Could you ‘move on’ if Alik told you he didn’t care about you anymore?”

Her face paled instantly—eyes wide with immediate, though imagined pain.

“No,” she breathed.  “No one could ever hold a candle to him.  I’d rather just be alone than watch idiots try to fill the gaping hole in my heart.”

“You would never love again?”

“He taught me how to love.  Without him, love is just a scam—a stupid, trite word that has no meaning to me.”

“You’re sure?  You couldn’t learn to live without him?”

Farrow shrugged softly, her eyes trying not to tear up even at this fictitious scenario.  “What would be the point?”

“You couldn’t make a life for yourself?  Make a home?”

“Alik is home to me,” she answered bluntly. 

Creed nodded slowly, not even trying to hide the tears as they stung his tired eyes and slipped down his cheeks to his scruffy beard.

“Now do you understand?”

Farrow swallowed her tears.  “Yeah, I guess I do.”  She found herself wanting to look anywhere but the heartbroken soldier…the pain was so clearly wrapped like a noose around his thick throat
, and there was nothing Farrow could do to ease its chokehold, however much she wished she could. 

The silence between the two metahumans was as comfortable as battle
-worn soldiers sitting side by side on the edge of a mountain contemplating the fragility of life.

“I’ll come with you, let me just get my shoes on,” she started back toward the room she shared with Sloan. 

“I’ll be fine, Farrow.  Go back to bed.  I’ll be here when you wake up.  Even if I don’t belong with these good people anymore, I’m staying while they let me.  At least I feel closer to Meg when I’m surrounded by her family.”

“We’ll figure this out, Creed,” Farrow nodded reassuringly.

Creed shrugged.  “Something’s gotta give,” he repeated her words to her. 

Turning, he walked out the door, locking it before he pulled it shut.  With reverence few would understand, Creed tucked the chain he always wore neatly inside his shirt.  Dangling at the end of the chain was a small platinum band engraved with the words: “My dream came true.”

My heart is hers,
he chanted in his mind like a mantra as his feet hit the graveled pavement rhythmically.  He opened his heart to her empath gift just as he did every night, hoping somehow, someway, she would find him across the miles and soothe his heartbreak.

Instead, the image of her painted harlequin clown face smiling through the tears danced across his mind’s eye.

Chapter 68   The Oasis

Margo moved to get up when she heard the back door close and Farrow return to her room.  Carefully, she transferred herself from the bed to her wheelchair, then looked back at the two sleeping souls still on the bed.   Theo had brought little Danny into their bed after he’d fallen asleep with Maze for the second night in a row.  Margo knew Maze loved Danny and she felt a little guilty for separating the two, but she so loved snuggling with her youngest in the middle of the night.

She had just unlatched the wheel locks when Danny sat up and rubbed his big blue eyes.  “Mommy?”

“Go back to sleep Danny,” Margo whispered over Theo’s soft snores.

“I had a dream,” he said climbing to the edge of the bed and sliding down on his belly to the floor.  He turned to lean into Margo’s open arms then climbed easily to sit in her lap.

“Did you?  Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I dreamed how to make it so your legs would work again.”

“Oh, sweet Danny.  Please don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not worried, Mommy
.” His innocent, sleepy eyes looked up into his mother’s.  “I just know how to fix you now.”

Margo was using both hands to push her wheelchair out of the room so they wouldn’t disturb Theo with their discussion.  Danny clung to Margo’s neck like a baby monkey—balancing so he wouldn’t fall off as she leaned forward moving the chair.

Thinking these were just the dreams of a little boy, she absently kept the conversation going.  “And how would you do that, little one?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before because it makes sense.”  Margo was still amazed to hear the little boy speak so fluently after his months of silence.  She smiled at the big words he wielded casually.

“Think of what before?”  Margo turned the corner past the hallway and reached up to turn on the kitchen light.  Both mother and son had to squint for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the brightness.

“Water.  Mommy, I need you to get in lots of water.  Then I can fix you.”