Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (4 page)

She prayed for strength and forced herself to dive deeper, knowing her family was pinning their hopes on her frail gift, but it was like diving into death looking for life.   She felt herself getting pulled further into the dark demon’s abyss, but she couldn’t stop.  So unfamiliar, so ill-equipped was she at what she’d attempted to do, she hadn’t thought to leave herself enough strength to climb back out.  It was too late now.

Williams’ sick thoughts spun frantically. 

She saw everything—unable to close her emotional eyes to the onslaught of his sick views.

***

A scrawny, black
-
haired
boy
giggled
excitedly as he broke open the eggs one at a time so he could cru
elly
dissect what would have been baby birds. 

The same boy, a teen now, stood over an orange little ball of fluff, a glint of evil in the same beady eyes
,
as he stepped on the kitten’s neck.  He felt a shiver of exhilaration at the sound of the tiny bones cracking.  In his hands were his mother’s good knives.   He didn’t even wait for the heartbeat to stop before he dug into his chest to see the warm organs.

Meg wanted to vomit.

She felt strapped down, eyes tapped wide open, forced to witness the atrocities of the demonic soul from the time he first acted on his vile impulses. 

The was no sanctity of life to him.

There was nothing precious or beautiful to be held sacred.

There was only his psychotic need to cause pain, thinly disguised to the outside world as his quest for scientific advancement. 

She was subjected to the start of his sadistic behavior; his psychopathic spiral escalated over time.  After the baby birds and the kitten, he just needed bigger and more interesting victims to abuse.  His sick mind moved on to the neighbor’s dog, which he buried alive and timed how long he heard it struggle.  Then countless more dogs and cats were laid to depraved waste through torture, amputation
and
dissection. 

Meg’s mind tried to hold Maze—crying tears of angry vengeance for all the precious creatures this born psycho
pa
t
h
ic monster didn’t just kill.  Then his emotional memories fast-forwarded, following some strange autobiographical timeline she was forced to experience, to when Williams was in medical school, working on human cadavers and feeling utterly unsatisfied in their already dead, frozen tissue. 

On the surface, he worked to take care of his appearance.  Though still slender, Kenneth Williams worked out, developing his physique. 
His intellect astound his professors at the Ivy League university and he was thought to be a high valuable asset to the scientific community, an up-and-comer the society’s wealthy introduced their daughters to in hopes of a good match.

All t
he while, Kenneth was hungry for death.  He would travel far from his home,
s
eek
ing
vulnerable human souls to deceive into trusting him.  Once it was a hitchhiker, another time he befriended a lonesome divorcee, then there was the homeless preteen.  He wasn’t picky about his victims, except that they now had to be human.  Any gender, age, condition would do.  The bastard got off on it.

Oh, my dear God.  Williams’ soul was so sick,
Meg thought, terrified she was infused by his demonic essence, but there was nothing she could do.  She was too far lost in his macabre mind.  It was a labyrinth of violence.  

So traumatized was she by what she was subjected to, she couldn’t even breathe.  The longer she was exposed to his sick world, the deeper she sank into him.  She didn’t know how long she was exposed, but it was beginning not to matter. 

Meg knew what was happening each moment she was trapped.

Every passing heartbeat, there was less of her and her own memories and thoughts.  As their heartbeats began to synchronize, she was losing herself
inside the monster
. 

She saw the duplicity in Kenneth’s eyes when he asked
Charlotte
to marry him.  She saw how he treasured her more as a political pawn in his game.  His version of love was sick, though he did love her.  The very few nights he allowed her into his bed miraculously created a child. 
At first he didn’t believe the child was his, so sure Charlotte had sought another’s comfort
as he was always so busy building his scientific career. 

Moments after she was born, Williams performed a paternity test on June
himself
and couldn’t decide whether
or not
he was pleased to find she really was his daughter. 

Becoming a father didn’t change Kenneth’s psychotic thirst, just redirected it.  He continued his double life, killing “nobodies” on the side and coming home to lightly kiss his
Charlotte
on the cheek even as she held the baby. 

Something in Kenneth knew to push himself further away from his wife and daughter.  Something inside him knew he was dangerous to them, so he buried himself in his work.  He kept his family in
Germany
now, to force
Charlotte
into seclusion so she wouldn’t compare him to normal men.  He couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving him.  He built the entire compound in
Furth
for her.

Williams himself lived much of the year in California at his Institute performing the research that eventually created the Infinite Serum. 

And then the doctors suspected something was wrong with his seed;
h
is June.

Half sure it was some form
of
punishment because of his secret life lusting death, Williams refused to believe he couldn’t cure his daughter.

The more out
of
control he felt in life, the more
he craved to bestow
cruelty.  He never denied himself
his need for the macabre
.  He reveled in
it
.  The more pain he saw in his victims’ eyes, the more gratifying it was to him.   

Meg started to curl into a ball—just a small speck that was her enveloped in the blackness that was him—and prayed for some miracle that would help her escape.

“Meg!” Margo was desperately shaking her daughter by the shoulders.  “Meg! Come back!”

“Oh, dear God!  What do we do?” Margo cried frantically.

The whole family was around her, terrified for her.

Acting on pure instinct, Creed protectively lifted Meg’s limp body and ran out of the lab.  Bolting down the hallway, he kicked the door open to her bedroom knowing her coyote would be there waiting.

Maze barked frantically as Creed laid the girl on her soft bedding.  Meg’s best friend knew something was horribly wrong.  His wet nose nuzzled her neck and his rough tongue licked her face relentlessly.  He crouched over her body and whined between bouts of deafening barks.  He howled loud enough for the cows back home to hear, and just when he started to panic—curling up beside his Meg, wedging his nose under her hand begging to be petted, Meg felt herself soaring back into her body. 

She touched the soft fur between her coyote’s ears and rubbed quietly before willing her eyes to open. 

“Meg?” Creed’s worried face was the first she saw before Maze smothered her with happy kisses.

She moaned, “Maze, my knight in furry armor.  I love you, too.”

“Oh, thank God, Meg!” Margo was at her be
d
side, face glistening wet with tears.  “Don’t you
ever
do that again!” she scolded gently. 

“You scared the hell out of us!”  It was Alik’s voice coming from the foot of her bed.

“What happened, Meg?” Evan was desperate to understand.

“I tried, Mom,” She said, apologetically to the room.  “I tried to find a way to pull the evil away from Williams, but it was too much.” She choked back a frustrated sob.  “Everything inside him is evil.  There isn’t a speck of light left in him; nothing but blackness.”

She sat up and let her sixty-pound coyote climb into her lap affectionately.  He let her talk, but would interrupt occasionally to lick the tears off her face or nuzzle his head under her hand needing a reassuring rub.

“He trapped me inside his blackness,”
s
he whispered.  “I was too weak to get out.” 

Meg couldn’t stop the tears now.  “I feel useless and stupid.  The poison that was Williams’ heart left vile echoes in me.  I feel violated and dirty with his hatred, and…” she shook with anguish, “I have this desperate need to stand under the hottest water I can find and scrub myself raw with bleach!” she blurted.

“No, Meg.” Creed reached around and held
her
, gently scooting Maze aside and forcing him to share.  “You’re the white light.  There is nothing ugly or tainted about you.”  He stroked the curls that hung wildly down her back.  “I felt you inside me.  I know what you are.  You are the same shimmering white blanket that wrapped around my anger and saved me from it.”

Meg let him hold her and rub her back while she buried her face into his large chest and clutched the fabric of his T-shirt with both fists. He kept offering softly whispered reassurances until she started to breathe more than sob.  Someone thoughtfully handed her a fluffy wad of tissues.  She hiccupped a few times before her breathing steadied.  She pulled away from her rock, her Creed, just enough to look into his eyes, and saw only love there.  She allowed herself to bask in its glow for a moment before turning to look at her mother.

“Okay, so what’s plan B?” Meg asked with a forced smile.  She knew something had changed in her because of her exposure to Williams, but she didn’t share it with her family.  There wasn’t time, and she wasn’t even sure how to put into words the shift she felt.  She would have to deal with it later, she was sure of it.  But now, that sadistic monster was hunting her family and she needed to put her own pain aside.

Margo
patted Meg’s hand, oblivious of the true extent of her daughter’s damaged psyche, and turned on her soldier voice.  “We need a weapons and ammunition count.  Think outside the box here guys
;
what do we have that we can use against them?”

“I know we have plenty of ammunition for the four handguns
and
there’s a half dozen hunting knives in the front closet,” Alik offered.

“We still have the smoke bombs we made a few nights back that we never got to use because of the rain,” Evan added.

“I have a hunting rifle,” Paulie said with a shrug.  “I never was very good at using it, but in one of your hands, it could be useful.”

“I have a couple large duffle bags full of weapons in the guesthouse,” Creed started counting them aloud.  “There’s a Beretta 92FS Inox handgun, an AKM
assault rifle, a Colt Model 723
, one SVD Dragunov sniper rifle, a Micro Uzi, loads of ammunition for all of them and, oh, yeah…a dozen or so M67 hand
grenades.”

Everyone stared at Creed wide-eyed.

“What?” Creed asked the room.

“What the heck are you doing with all that stuff?” Evan squeaked.

Creed blushed deeply, realizing the sudden change in the room was because of him.  “I couldn’t decide what to bring when I came from Germany, so I brought everything.  I was supposed to be an assassin, remember?”

“Dude, you have a freaking arsenal!  I’m
damn
glad you’re on our side now,” Alik breathed.

Creed continued blushing, so he did what came naturally to him and redirected the conversation to less embarrassing topics: battle tactics and guerrilla warfare.

“First objective is to disengage the enemy, to hit them hard so they retreat long enough for us to evacuate.  I still have the number to the pilots we used the other day: Jacobi and Trainer.  I’ll contact them and see if they can drop what they’re doing to fly our asses out of here.   We’ll need to get the cars ready for a fast getaway.  Bring only what you can carry in one small bag.   We need to go underground for a while to regroup.”  Creed stopped to look around the room for any signs of agreement.

“There are so many holes with that plan, but we don’t really have time to deliberate and draw schematics,” Alik spoke up.  “What I’m saying is
:
I’m in.”

“It could work,” Margo added thoughtfully.  “Get on the phone now to call those pilots.  They’re going to need time to ready an aircraft for us.  Tell them money is not an issue.”

Creed nodded and pulled his phone out of his back pocket, already searching through its address book for Jacobi. 

“Alik, can you run out to the guesthouse and get Creed’s duffel bags?  Evan, you gather the other weapons we have around here and everyone meet back here in three minutes,” Margo ordered.

“Meg, you keep tabs on Williams while packing a bag.  Be sure to throw in some extra clothing for Farrow
,
” Mom called to Meg’s back as she was already headed to
her
room.
Meg’s
shoulders shivered in physical rebellion at what her mom so casually threw into her lap.   She kept
her
mouth shut, though.  There was nothing she could do.  Her family needed her like this.