Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (4 page)

“Then I’ll be safe to be around Maze,” she finished nodding resolutely. 

“Precisely.”

“Am I very close to him?  The coydog?”

“From what I’ve heard, he is more than your best friend and he’s saved your life more than once.”

“That’s what I sensed, but it’s nice to hear confirmation of my instincts.”  Meg started pulling the torn black dress over her head, found a patch of wild grass and removed her bra bravely.

“Okay, the machine is as charged as it’s going to get.” S
loan positioned the cold paddles on Meg’s torso. 

Meg’s dark eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and determination.

“It’ll be okay; I’ve got you.”  Sloan smiled reassuringly before starting a countdown. 

From a dozen yards away, Creed used his metahuman night vision to see.  Sloan was on her knees, Meg on the ground.  He flinched sympathetically when
he saw Meg’s body jolt up and flop back to the ground, motionless.

He couldn’t help
it; his feet started pulling him toward her.  Instinctively, he broke into a run and seconds later, knelt at her side reverently. 

Sloan had quickly covered Meg’s chest with her dress and was beginning to pat her face, trying to help her come to faster. 

Seconds dripped by.

Sloan’s attempts at reviving
Meg were becoming more purposeful.

Creed found himself praying frantically.

“Why isn’t she waking up!” his voice cracked with emotion.  His eyes never left Meg’s quickly paling face.

“She’s been through a lot,”
Sloan’s voice remained calm, but her skillful hands moved to Meg’s chest where she ground her knuckles into the boney breastbone there.

A minute passed more painfully than a kidney stone to everyone who had now gathered around the girl there on the side of the highway.  Sloan was seconds away from starting CPR when Meg’s expressionless face became animated with a grimace. 

A collective sigh of relief spread through the small crowd. 

“Ow,” Meg muttered.  The girl, who had hovered so close to death’s door found enough moxie to frown as she blinked her eyes open.  She forcefully shooed Sloan’s knuckles away from her.  “You were right,” she said to the crowd, “that thing hurts like a bitch.”

Chapter 8  He Needs Me

Creed carried Meg to the back of the SUV.  She leaned over and peered into the window. 

“Oh!” Meg gasped.  Without hesitation, she
squirmed out of Creed’s arms and stood on wet noodle legs as she reached for the handle to open the trunk. 

There, lying on his side was a huge, silver-coated canine.  He looked up at her with a mix of pain and happiness in his intelligent yellow eyes. His large tail flopped pathetically as he tried to greet his beloved Meg despite the pain. 

She reached out to gently rub between his ears.  Maze groaned from pure contentedness, but lost the energy to keep his head up.  He crumpled back onto the carpeted floor and huffed though he kept trying to watch Meg.  He was fighting exhaustion to stay awake, but the pain won over his relief at seeing his girl again.

Tears welled up in Meg’s eyes as she scanned his bloodied, torn paws and raw nose. 

Without looking to anyone for permission, Meg started to climb into the trunk as carefully as her shake legs would allow.

“What are you doing?” Creed reached out to steady her.  All of them were far more worried about the broken girl who had been difficult to revive after being shocked than the damaged coydog. 

“He needs me,” Meg answered simply, “and I think I need him, too.”

With as much grace as her exhausted body could muster, she moved to stretch beside the creature and curled her arm under her head as a makeshift pillow.  Gently she draped her other arm over the barrel chest of the large, wounded canine—carefully hugging her frame to his. 

The coydog huffed contentedly. 

“Thank you for finding me.”  She locked eyes with Creed briefly before they started to close of their own volition.  “I’ll stay right here with him.  This just feels right
.”  She inhaled Maze’s musky scent and felt a flash of recognition in her heart. 

The others traded worried looks before climbing back into the SUV themselves.

All except Alik, who couldn’t stop smiling.  He whacked Creed on the back good-naturedly.  “Thank you, Creed.  This whole night could have been the start of something horrible for all of us if it weren’t for you leading us to her when you did.”

“It’s not me,” Creed shrugged.  “She’s the one with the gift, whether or not she realizes it.”

“Yeah, but you had to be willing to help her connect.  She’s probably going to need a lot of time to adjust to all of us—to her life.”

“She can have all the time she needs.  I’m not going anywhere.”  The boys exchanged looks of deference before climbing into the
SUV.  Alik sat in the front passenger seat, next to Farrow who was poised and ready to drive.

Creed moved his large frame to the very back row of seats so he could keep watch over Meg.  Evan sat beside him
, leaving Sloan and Cole the middle row. 

“Mom.  We need to call
Mom,” Alik turned around and looked at his little brother excitedly.  Evan had already grabbed Alik’s phone from the center console and was waking the touch screen to life.  “I’m way ahead of you big brother.”

Chapter 9  Fragile

Margo’s heart was broken.

“Where could he be taking her?” she mumbled as she patted her nose with her sleeve.  The tissues had run out a while ago, and she was too proud to ask Theo for more.

“Probably back to Germany, but he may assume we’d think that and have a different destination in mind,” Theo answered miserably.

“What is he doing to her?” she had asked this question no fewer than a dozen times since hearing from Alik two hours earlier. 

“He’s always wanted their blood so he could recreate the original serum,” his voice was small with exhaustion.

“What does Senator Arkdone want with my children?” She stared at her dead legs hopelessly.

“He’s a powerful man.  There’s talk in the news circuit that he’s the lead in the nomination for his party’s presidential hopeful.  Maybe he just wants more power.”

“By collecting our children?”

“I don’t know, honey.” Theo held his pounding head.  He’d been trying to console Margo for so long and he was dizzy with his own grief. 

They sat in dejected silence for a while, letting the fears and anguish over the fate of their children curl around them like smoke. 

The sound of a key in the lock of the front door didn’t stir them, though they heard Greg Burns enter the room.

“I got your message.”  Burns looked between his best friend and the woman in the wheelchair.

“I’m really sorry to hear about Meg, Dr. Winter,” he started.

No one said anything, too lost in their individual depressions.

Greg looked back and forth between the two people in the room and felt a surge of anger at their despondent body language.

“Shit, Theo!” the retired cop barked, having spent the entire sum of his gentility in the first thirty seconds in the room.  In the good cop/bad cop ruse, he was always the bad cop.  It was just his nature. 

“Don’t just sit there!  We need to come up with a plan!  Your kids are out there and feel as if they can’t come back.  That is no effing—excuse me Dr. Winter—way to live!”

The retired detective stood and paced the room, rough hands parked on his hips.  He left his post as a detective to join Homeland Security nine months ago.  They had been trying to recruit him for years, but Burns didn’t want to leave his duties until he had solved some nagging cases.   The missing children’s cases gnawed at him. 

But things came up that moved beyond his control.  He had to pass his cases to another cop and take the badge being offered to him.  He decided it was a matter of being proactive in his fight rather than rea
ctive.  He was going after the Big Dogs now.

“What do you want me to do, Greg?  We’re dealing with some pretty powerful people here.”

“Yeah, Theo.  They are just guys—like you and me.  Nothing they have can’t be taken away.  They’re conducting illegal businesses like human trafficking, trauma-based mind control and medical experimentation on humans!  Shit like that doesn’t go unnoticed forever.  I don’t care how powerful they think they are.”

“Who’s going to believe us?  It’s our word against a US Senator who’s in line to receive his party’s backing for president.   The other guy actually
has
our daughter and could retaliate by killing her if we force his hand.  And you know what?  Death may be better for that poor girl because Williams, the sick bastard, could do much, much worse to her than kill her!”

“What
?  Like erase her memory?  Trap her in a cell with no food or water for days and inject her with microscopic weapons that would kill the people she loves if she steps close enough to them?” Greg flung his hands up in frustration.  “Theo what have you got to lose?”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Burns?” Theo’s eyes shot daggers of warning at his best friend who met every one with his own.

“I’m saying you need to get the authorities involved before it’s too late for your family.”  Greg enunciated each word as though talking with someone hard of hearing.

“I can’t,” Margo’s weakened body in no way weakened her spirit.  She looked up defiantly at Greg Burns.   “What happens after the authorities rid the world of Williams and Arkdone?  Do you think the government is going to let my children walk away?
”

“There will be a hug
e price to pay if we go to them,” she continued.  “They will act like they’re just trying to learn about the children, then they will need to keep them for more ‘testing’ and eventually, they will do the same thing Williams and Arkdone have been trying to do: duplicate the formula and create more metahumans to use for what they will call ‘national security’ but really, they’ll be creating soldiers of war.” 

Margo took a steeling breath and continued,
“You want me to put my children in the hands of an even more powerful machine than the two monsters we’re fighting now.  I don’t care how altruistic the government’s reasons for stalking, collecting and testing my children—they will never let them live in peace.  No one will.”

“That’s right, Margo.  Everything you just said could come to pass, but here’s the kicker: If you don’t involve the authorities,
the children will be hunted to extinction
.  Period!  There
will
be an end to this, and it won’t be a happy one.”

Theo
had moved to stand between Burns and Margo.  Their faces were close enough to smell each other’s last meal.  Both men stood poised with clenched fists.  No one could push Theo’s buttons like his best friend, and while Greg didn’t usually press issues so intensely, he was not backing down on this.

Anger was still flashing bright when a muffled noise came from the hallway.  Little bare feet came scurrying into the living room.  Danny looked around the room at the three grownups before putting his three pudgy fingers up and touching his lips twice with his index finger—sign language for water. 

Theo looked from the little boy back to Greg.

“He won’t be spared either.  You know they’ll come for him, too.”  His voice was barely above a whisper but his words cut Margo deeply. 

“Come on Danny.  Let’s get you that water.”  Margo forced herself to smile through her tears at the little boy who’d fast become the light in everyone’s eyes. 

Margo rolled her chair away from the two men and turned toward the kitchen while Danny ran up to her and climbed in her lap for a ride.

She heard the men still talking in hushed tones, but tried to ignore them as she spoke with the little boy in her lap.  “I thought you were sound asleep, Danny Boy.” She said patting his back briefly before forcing her hands to keep propelling her wheelchair forward.  He turned around, his little knees digging painlessly into her thighs and wrapped his arms around her neck before leaning back to study her tearstained face.

“What is it, little man?” she asked, trying to read his facial expression.  The blue of his eyes glistened in the soft light of the kitchen and his
recently rounded cheeks were a beautiful sight on his handsome face.

Danny put one hand on each side of Margo’s face and leaned his head in to put his forehead against hers. 

“Don’t worry, love.  We’ll figure something out.  We just have to have faith.” Even to her own ears her words sounded hollow. 

Margo leaned back and smiled at the little boy.  She helped him scoot off her lap so she could reach the cups in the drawer next to the refrigerator.  Still deep in thought, she only sighed when she noticed all the cups were gone and she’d have to devise a different plan.  Though Greg had done his best to adjust his home to Margo’s disability, some things just hadn’t been addressed.  The kitchen was one of them.

Wheeling back she moved to open the fridge in hopes of finding a bottled water to give to Danny.  Usually, she would have called to Theo for help, but she knew he and his friend were exchanging terse words and didn’t want to interrupt for something she could manage herself.