Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (13 page)

No.  Not that she
remembered.  The ache was strange.  It didn’t feel like cuts
—
more lik
e tender bruises.    Frowning, she
reached one arm over the opposite shoulder to touch the tender spot and felt something. 

A moment of panic had her
patting the entire area and feeling the juncture at which something was protruding from
her
skin
.

Was I stabbed?  Was I impaled?  How could I have been and not remembered?

Meg’s other hand flew up to her
opposite shoulder to feel if the other ache was being caused by another projectile.  It was. 

Oh my God.  What is this?

Having just awakened from a terrifying
dream, Meg
had only stumbl
ed into the bathroom to brush her
teeth, as she always did after a bad dream.  She needed to get the
foul
taste out of her mouth.  All she
was wearing was a thin strapped tank top and pan
ties.  The lights were off and Meg
was standing barefoot on the cold tile franti
cally feeling things dug into her
back.  They hurt so badly,
but felt strangely better when she
rubbed the base—the part
where it embedded itself into her
skin. 
What the hell?

Meg
slapped
on
the lights, and blinked hard against the glar
e
, desperately searc
hing for a handheld mirror.  Her
shaking hands scattered bottles of mou
s
se and mouthwash to the floor before
they found what they sought.  Meg
spun and held the small
hand held at an angle to see her
back in the built
in bathroom mirror.  

Her
jaw dropped. 

There, on either side of her
spine were what looked like the start of…no, it couldn’t be.

But it was
;
there were even small furry feathers.

Wings. 

She
was sprouting fledgling wings.

Shaking with fear, she dropped the hand held
and
hear
d
i
t shatter on the hard tile at her
feet. 

She
couldn’t breathe.  Her
mouth
was agape, but no air entered her lungs.  She
co
uld hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel the ache in her
back, now more acutely than even moments before. 

They were growing, changing
.

Even as Meg
stood with shards of broken glass
dancing
in
the light around her
feet
, the wings possessed her. 
She
felt herself quiver with fear and pain as she unintentionally stretched the growths.

Terrified, and dete
rmined to stop the mutation, she
ran from the bathroom
, not even stopping when a shard of glass dug into the arch of her foot.
With blood trailing, Meg
spr
inted to the tool box she knew was
kept in the garage. 
F
eeling the foreign appendages growing by the minute,
Meg
frantically
rifled through
the box’s
cont
ents and found the rusted tool she
was looking for.

Without stopping to think of the ramifications,
she
opened the large wire cu
tters and reached
to feel for the base of one of the wings, now sporting several real feathers.

Blindly
, Meg
felt to position the rusted cutters in place and used both hands to close the handles together,
screaming at the pain she
was inflicting on
herself
. 

Clip

Meg felt wetness slip down her
back but didn’t care.  What
she
did
care about was attacking the other wing before it grew
thicker
than the wire cutters could accommodate.

Repeating the blind, c
razed positioning of the tool, she
squeezed the handles tog
ether a second time and heard her own
anguished cries echo off the unfinished walls of the garage. 

Clip

More warm, wetness oozed down her
back from where the second wing used to be.

Standing i
n an ever-growing pool of red, Meg
stared down at the clipped bone-like appendages
where they landed on the dusty floor.  She
w
atched her red blood soak into
their
willowy white feathers. 

P
ain
radiated from her back
escalat
ed.  It became
piercing
, all-encompassing.  Meg swayed on her
feet from it
,
or maybe it was the blood loss.

Dropping the bloodied, rusted tool
, she
reached
back
to feel the
site where she
had severed
her
wings, and for the briefest
of moments, felt relief that she had
stopped the mutation from
achieving
fruition.

That’s when Meg
felt the ache return and the wet, bloody stu
mps start to grow again under her
fingers, sticky with blood.

She
screamed in anguish, and collapsed out of control to the dirty floor.
 

***

A warm hand was rubbing Meg’s back where she was sure the wings were growing.  The hand rubbed harder, and she whimpered in pain. 

A groan escaped her locked jaw as she shook with fear. 

“Meg?  Meg, wake up,” a raspy voice urged.

Her eyes were clenched shut with the fear of seeing the orange rust on the wire cutter clash with the dark-red blood dripping off their blades.

“Meg, open your eyes.  Wake up.  Please wake up,” the voice pleaded.

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed quietly, still caught in the nightmare.

The gentle rubbing on her back continued, and Meg waited for the person to gasp in horror at the growing deformity where they touched her, but they didn’t. 

It took her several moments before she pulled her hands away from her wet face and shook the echoes of the nightmare off. 

Meg looked around the floor first and seeing no blood, reached up behind her and felt for the wings she was sure were still growing there. 

Her hands only touched the flat expanse of her back.  Nothing was sticking out of her.  Hurriedly, Meg checked the other side, only to find the same unbelievable normality. 

Meg breathed deeply and ventured to look up at the person who had spoken to her so tenderly through a raspy voice.

Cole.

His green eyes looked worried as they searched Meg.  He was still lying on his gurney. 

“Cole?” 

“You were dreaming,” he said frowning.

“You…you’re awake.”  The adrenaline from her terrifying nightmare was still pumping, causing Meg’s teeth to chatter.

“Are you okay?”

“Me?” Meg shook
her
head dismissively, trying desperately to grasp the here and now.  “Never mind me.  How are you feeling?”

Cole looked around then connected with her eyes again.  “Where are we?”

“On a plane heading back to the states,” Meg offered not sure how much to unload on him during his first moments of consciousness.

“You were asleep on my chest,” he jumped subjects, offering a weak smile.

“Yeah, I guess I was,” she shrugged, running her fingers through her mussed curls.  Th
e
dream left her feeling foggy.  It seemed so real.  Meg fought the urge to touch her back again to be sure
she didn’t feel
wings sprouting.

“Why are we going back to the states?  What happened?” Cole frowned anew.

Meg sighed deeply.

Cole’s facial expression changed from confused to scared as his memory kicked in. His hand reached up and felt his shoulder where he was struck by Farrow’s sniper bullet.  He pulled up the short sleeve of his hospital gown to look at the wound with his own eyes.  Clean, white gauze hugged the site.  Tentatively, he touched the cloth.  He felt nothing.  No pain at all.  Curious, he started peeling back the white medical tape. 

Knowing he needed to see for himself what Evan determined an hour or so ago,
Meg
didn’t move to stop him. 

Beneath the gauze was fresh, pink skin.  Cole touched
it
carefully.  Feeling no pain, he rubbed it gently with his palm.  It felt a little tender, but fine.  He stared amazed at how quickly he was healing.

“It’s a normal advantage metahumans experience,” Meg offered carefully.

His green eyes flashed to
hers
.

“Oh, my God,” he said slowly, face paling.

“Yeah.”

Cole sat silently for a few moments, eyes darting as he pieced together his memories.  Meg just watched him.  Evan had warned her that he may experience erratic behavior when he first awoke.  They really didn’t know how Cole’s body was going to react to the serum. 

Physically, he was definitely going through metahuman changes.  His chest was widening with muscles.  His legs were thickening and biceps growing.  Even his sixteen-year-old face was changing.  As she watched him process the implications of what he’d done to himself, Meg noticed his jaw had begun to square off, the cleft in his chin was becoming more defined, his forehead even seemed thicker and he was looking to need a good shave.  Never had Meg known Cole to grow a dark scruffy beard, but there it was.  She looked at his right cheek where his charming dimple used to flash when he’d smile and wondered if it would still be there. 

Meg missed him. 
She
missed her friend.

“What happened while I was out?  Why did we have to leave the island?” Cole asked in a shaky voice. 

“A lot happened, Cole.  Are you sure you’re ready to hear it right now?”

“
Not
knowing is freaking me out.  Just tell me.” 
A
look of panic struck him and he tried to sit up, craning his neck to see around the passenger seats around us. 

“Oh, my God.  My dad! 
Where’s my dad?
” 

“He’s fine.  He’s up front with mom.” Instinctively, she needed to soothe him, so she reached out and held his hand.

“Do you want me to get him?” Meg offered.

Cole’s green eyes stared back
from
a changed, matured face.  “I don’t want you to leave.”

“Okay,” she nodded reassuringly.

“Tell me what happened,” he urged.

Chapter 16
 
Sunlight In My Eyes

The landing in
LAX
to refuel
was thankfully uneventful. 
They
had the option to leave the plane for the two hours it
was going to take
for the ground crew to
do their refueling and maintenance checks, but Meg didn’t want to.  She felt compelled to keep vigil over the aircraft as strangers worked on it
,
worried Williams’ influence
positioned
someone evil nearby.  Thoughts of bombs being planted or wires being cut kept her focusing her energies on the strangers who wandered around outside the plane. 

They
were all pretty anxious to get airborne again,
but Margo found Meg to let her know that she and Theo were heading into the airport for a walk.  Mom promised to be right back, but Meg knew she wanted a chance to talk with Theo alone, so she didn’t give her a hard time about leaving.  As she watched them leave, she wondered again if she should offer to use her gift to help Theo. 

Sometimes, it was hard to offer help only because the recipient would have to first admit they were struggling.  No one worried about Evan helping perform surgery, but there was something different about her evolved empath ability. 

People readily accepted the need to remove a bullet from the flesh through surgery, but not everyone was as comfortable admitting the need to remove the blackness of anger and sadness from their hearts.  Somehow it made people feel lesser which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to an emotion-based being like Meg.