Winter's Storm: Retribution (Winter's Saga #2) (34 page)

“
I don’t think people will understand,” Theo’s voice sounded far away.

He continued, “What I mean is, we know you four. We love you and accept you just as you are. But if anyone out there knew of your abilities—or your potential abilities—they could be very skeptical of your motives. Powerful people could try to manipulate you for their own purposes.”

“
They’ve already tried,” Evan said with an edge of anger in his voice.

“
Exactly. You could be ostracized or worse, hounded. We have never really discussed the social ramifications of these beyond-human characteristics you all possess. We’ve been so wrapped up in just staying away from Williams and his hunters.” Theo stopped talking, and the room was silent.

Then I heard my mom say: “We do not need to worry about that, Theo. All we need to do is keep our eyes and hearts to heaven and let God take care of what is out of our control.”

“
Well said, mom.” Alik sounded pensive.

“
She’s out,” Creed nodded toward my sleeping body. “I’ll carry her to her room, if you all don’t mind,” Creed asked hesitantly and looked to Margo for approval.

“
Sure, Creed. She needs her sleep. It’s been a very busy few hours since she came back to us.”

Creed walked over to my sleeping body and effortlessly lifted me up and off the couch, carefully tucking my head in the crook of his shoulder. He smiled contently at my closed lids, so familiar to him after a week of watching me “sleep,” and walked out of the living room back down the hallway to my room.

“
Can you really trust that guy with her?” Cole said in a not-so-quiet voice moments after Creed was out of view.

“
Cole! I’m surprised at you!” Margo gently chided. “If Creed were a threat, don’t you believe Meg would have ‘read’ that of him?”

“
I still don’t like the idea of him being alone with her,” he mumbled to himself.

Margo looked outside the window into the darkening sky. “I wonder why we haven’t heard anything from that female meta in a while.”

“
I heard enough from her, thanks,” Cole grimaced slightly at his shoulder as he tried to stand. “I’m just gonna go check on Meg.”

“
I don’t know, mom. We haven’t heard from her since we ran over her land mine in the driveway. So it’s been, what, twenty-four hours?” Evan walked over to refold Meg’s wet towel and place it back on the chair.

“
I want to go look for her,” Margo said as calmly as if she had said she wanted to go look for a missing sock.

“
Look for her? You’re kidding, right?” Theo was studying Margo’s face trying to read her. “You’re not kidding,” he answered himself.

61 We All Make Choices

“
Dang it, Margo! I hate it when you put yourself in harm’s way for no good reason! Why on earth would you go out there and look for the person who was sent to kill you?” Theo was exhausted and frustrated.

With a deep sigh, Margo stood. She was tired, too, but she was also decided. “Because she might be hurt and need help.”

“
Good! Good, I hope she’s hurt! Then maybe she’ll leave us alone!”

“
You don’t mean that, Theo.” Margo walked to the closet and retrieved a flashlight she knew to be kept there.

“
Why not? She shot my son, Margo!”

“
And she shot my daughter with a deadly malaria parasite. And she shot at all the children and hit Creed twice and heck—she even hurt Maze. But Theo, we can’t just leave her out there to die. That’s what Williams would do. That is wrong, and we are better than that.” Margo remained standing, shoulders back and resolved.

Evan and Alik quietly stood during the exchange and were now on either side of their mother, protectively.

“
Don’t worry, Dr. Andrews. We’ll bring her back safely.” Alik’s voice was steady. Evan nodded in agreement.

In that moment, the two human men, Paulie—who had stayed out of the most recent conversation—and Theo, were both struck by the magnificence that was Evan and Alik. They were both so much stronger than their mother. Alik looked like he could squash the life out of anything that stood in his way—so tall and built like a bodybuilder’s trainer. Evan had been growing like a radish seed. He stood nearly as tall as his brother now, and had a naturally athletic, runner’s body. He was lean, but muscular with chiseled facial features that were beginning to need a good shave.

Paulie and Theo said nothing more, so struck were they by the gravity of the moment.

Margo looked up at both of her boys who followed her without question and smiled. “Let’s go find her, boys.”

The three walked out of the house and closed the door securely behind them.

“
I don’t know about you, but I have a wicked headache coming on.” Paulie stood slowly and stretched, looking suddenly, all of his sixty-six years of age. “Gotta go get some medicine or it’ll turn into a migraine.” The old doctor shuffled out of the room leaving Theo alone.

He held his head in his hands and tried to breathe deeply. How could he get her to understand he only wanted to protect her? Sighing deeply, he stood and walked to the window, hoping to watch for her to return soon because he wasn’t going to be able to think about anything until she did.

Outside, the sunlight was fading fast. Not sure how to proceed, Margo lead the boys to where the gunfire originated the night they brought Meg home. You didn’t have to be a tracker to see the bullets stuck in tree trunks and remnants of a makeshift nest where the shooter had stayed. Nor was it difficult to conclude she had been shot. There was a bloodstained, army-green cloth tossed carelessly to the ground nearby.

“
She’s hurt. I must have hit her that when I shot blindly into these bushes. Oh my goodness, I hope she’s not—” Margo’s voice caught in her throat.

“
She’s a meta, mom. Wherever she was shot, she has a much better chance of survival just because she’s stronger and probably a faster healer than a human,” Evan said encouragingly.

“
We’ll find her,” Alik said confidently. “She’s a soldier, trained to survive. She probably had a campsite with supplies hidden not too far from here. Didn’t you say the sniper’s shots came from up there?” Alik pointed to the hill north of Paulie’s house.

“
Yes, I think so from the angle Cole was shot,” Margo nodded.

“
Okay, let’s try that way.” Alik began walking toward the hill.

Not wanting to draw attention to themselves, they decided not to call out to the injured girl. If she were okay, then she surely wouldn’t answer their calls anyway. If she were seriously hurt, she was probably unable to answer their calls. Either way, yelling “Farrow, where are you?” across the hills of the Big Island smacked of a bad idea. So instead, the three kept watching for signs of the girl.

They didn’t have to go very far.

Twenty yards from the first nest they found was a second—except, this one was more like a ditch between a large boulder and a tree root. There was the girl, still dressed in camo fatigues, curled up in fetal position.

“
Oh, dear God,” Margo said softly.

Evan and Alik exchanged worried looks.

“
Farrow? Honey, are you okay?”

Leave it to mom to act as though she found a lost camper instead of a deadly assassin,
Alik thought but said nothing.

Farrow didn’t move.

Margo climbed down closer to the girl and tried to rouse her again.

“
Farrow? Farrow, wake up. We’re here to help you.”

Again, there was no response.

Evan and Alik climbed down in to the crevice to help. Evan, ever the doctor, reached down with his two fingers and tried to find a pulse in the girl’s neck.

“
Her pulse is weak, but it’s there,” Evan said.

“
Look at her stomach,” Alik cringed sympathetically as he could see from his angle a blood soaked area on the front of her fatigues. Her hands were holding her stomach, as though she did her best to stop her own bleeding.

“
Oh, goodness. She’s a mess!” Margo breathed worriedly. “Alik, can you carry her?”

“
Sure, but let’s make sure she’s unarmed first. I’d hate to get stabbed with a hunting knife on the trail.”

Carefully, Alik lifted the girl out of the mud that occupied the floor of her nest and held her while Evan and Margo checked her for weapons. They found several and removed them from the meta’s person.

Not wanting to think too much about how beautiful the girl was underneath all that face paint and blood, Alik focused instead on the trail ahead of him. They made quick time back to the house. When they reached the front porch, Dr. Andrews opened the door to let them in.

“
You found her?”

“
She’s hurt, Theo. I think I shot her in the stomach and she’s been like this for twenty-four hours.” Margo was trying hard to stifle tears of guilt.

“
We have to get her to the lab, now!”

“
I’ll scrub in,” Theo heard himself say. “She’s going to need surgery.”

62 What Were You Thinking?

The nagging ache in his left arm made him sour.

The painkillers were wearing off, and all he could think about was trying to stop the throbbing.

Just standing up from the living room couch pushed tears into his eyes. Though he planned to go check on Meg and Creed like he said to the others, he couldn’t stand being thought of as weak by Creed. Especially when the meat head was sporting two bullet wounds he received acting as a metashield for Meg, and acted as though they bothered him less than a mosquito bite.

Damn it!

Cole reached the scrub room of the lab and tried to follow the rules by washing his hands before entering the clean room. Trying to tear open the scrub package using his teeth and good hand just brought more tears to his eyes. Angrily, he threw the brush into the trash and walked, with dripping hands, into the lab.

He knew his way around well enough to know where the meds were stored. As he walked to the back of the room toward the cabinet, it occurred to him it may be locked. He was in so much pain he hadn’t even stopped to ask his dad for help.

That’s not true,
he admitted to himself.

He hadn’t stopped to talk to anyone because he was sick of needing to ask for help all the time. Watching Creed sweep Meg off her feet, literally, while Cole couldn’t even open a bottle of ibuprofen made him feel more than emasculated; he felt helpless, stupid, useless and unworthy.

These thoughts were swirling around in his head when he reached out to try the cabinet door.

It popped open.

He remembered his dad pulling out an orange bottle with large, oval, green and pink pills. The name of the med escaped his memory, but it started with the letter “M.” Inside the cabinet were dozens of bottles and vials. Cole assumed the one he was looking for would be near the front, considering it was just used a few hours before.

Shuffling through the items, pushing some aside and pulling some to read, Cole began to feel an itch of panic that he couldn’t find the painkiller.

Come on!
He spoke to the cabinet as though it had intentionally hidden the pills from him.

And that’s when he saw it.

At first, he thought it was just another vial of some unknown liquid and was already shoving it aside to look behind it before he realized what it was.

The meta serum.

There it was.

Right in his hands.

The vial was labeled “Infinite Serum” and someone, probably Evan, had bothered to draw that symbol they all had etched into the back of their necks:
∞

Evan, in his haste to help Meg, had asked Alik to put the serum he was still holding from the plane trip, into the refrigerated medicine cabinet. In his defense, neither Evan nor Alik had thought anyone in the house a threat to take the serum.

And yet, here was Cole, holding the vial as though he had just found his Holy Grail.

Two thoughts rushed into his still aching mind. One, this was his answer to everything. He would be stronger, smarter, heal more quickly and worthy of running with Meg and the other metas. Finally, he would be an asset and not a liability. He could be a contender.

And two, no one was around to stop him.

He grabbed the vial and closed the cabinet door. His mind was racing. He was trying to remember anything he had overheard when the others spoke of the serum, like how much was a dose and how it was given.

He opened the first two drawers he saw looking for a syringe. He was pretty sure he remembered that much. This was to be given by needle, not swallowed.

What he didn’t remember was how much of the serum he was supposed to take. He looked at the bottle carefully. There was only a small amount of fluid inside to begin with; it looked to be about one teaspoonful.

Sharp pangs pierced his arm forcing him to steady himself against the countertop. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was stars bursting. He blinked deliberately trying to get his vision back.

Once the stars dissipated, he continued his search for a syringe. In the fifth drawer, he struck gold. Again, using his teeth and good hand, he tried to rip open the foil packaging that housed the clean needle. Having watched his father work over the last sixteen years, he had a pretty good idea what to do next.