Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (18 page)

The morning sun was already glowing pink and yellow across the ranch; dawn painting the world with wide brushstrokes.  The birds fluttered around the yard, squawking their happy spring mating calls to one another. Maze walked solemnly beside Meg, strong body moving fluidly on his native soil.

When she slipped into the house, it was already alive with the sounds of morning breakfast.  It felt so surreal to her.  She walked like a ghost through the back door, hoping she was a
s
invisible as she felt. 

“Meg?” Margo called from the kitchen.

Shoot.

“Yeah, mom.  I’m just heading to the shower.  Be out in a while.”  Meg called over her shoulder and hurried across the living room.  She turned right, down the hallway and ran into Farrow. 

“Good morning, Meg,” she said smiling.

Meg couldn’t understand anyone who smiled anymore.

She barely resisted the urge to punch her.

“Hey, Farrow,” she muttered before slipping into her room and closing the door behind her before she could say anything else cheerful. 

Meg’s bed still looked like she’d lost a wrestling match on it—sheets crumpled and twisted.  Ignoring it,
she
kicked her dusty shoes off into her closet and padded into her bathroom.  One of the great things about this house was that each of the six bedrooms has its own attached bath.  Everyone had plenty of personal space.  Important when it came to five teenage
d
metahumans and one set of lovely human adults who all lived under the same sprawling roof. 

All this house needed to make it completely homey for the family was a laboratory, so Alik, Evan, Cole and Theo went right to work designing and building one.  Even Margo and Farrow helped.   That kept everyone busy for a while, which was good.  It gave Meg time to be by herself, though they kept trying to get her to join in.  She couldn’t stand pretending she was okay for very long.  It was very exhausting.

Meg leaned against the sink to pull off her wet socks one at a time.  Gross. 

She turned the shower on before sliding out of her clothes.  Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror was startling. Alik wasn’t exaggerating.  She did look strung out. 

Her womanly curves looked to have disappeared in
her
neglect.  She did have a tight six-pack on her stomach and the wiry muscles throughout the rest of her body looked like that of a marathon runner’s.  Her dark
,
once beautiful hair looked so destroyed she was pretty sure a vulture wouldn’t want to use it for its nest.

Meg resisted the urge to punch the mirror.

Stepping into the hot spray she let the water pound the top layer of grime off her skin before grabbing the bar of soap and a washcloth.  Methodically, she scrubbed the soap on the cloth, gathering a lot of the cleansing substance and began scrubbing her face and neck before moving to her arms and chest.  She rinsed the dirt off the cloth before repeating the process to finish cleaning her lower half, focusing a little extra time on her legs as they sported an extra layer of caked on dirt from the run on a gravel road and the floor of the barn. 

Feeling moderately satisfied her body was clean, Meg grabbed the huge bottle of shampoo and squeezed a ping-pong sized dollop into
her
palm.  She smoothed some across the back of her head first, then gathered the long ends and pulled them up to the top of
her
head, before rubbing the rest of the shampoo into the wad she held there.  She scrubbed, adding shampoo when she felt there wasn’t enough to manage the muck that was her hair.  Conditioner was a must with her thick curls, so she repeated the process with a handful of cream.

Letting the conditioner sit, Meg grabbed
her
razor and shaving cream.  Her legs were long and lean with lots of sharp angles around and behind her knees.  Sure enough, though she was trying to be careful as she worked around the protruding bones and tendons, in her lost thoughts, she swiped just wrong, and felt the telltale sting.  Blood slipped down her leg from the on
e-inch slice of skin she’d just slashed.
  

She
gasped.

She watched.

The bright-red life fluid mingled with the rushing water and slipped down to the shower floor—the tapered floor with a single drain in the middle.

That’s when her mind crashed.

Meg felt swept away—swept down into the darkness of the small drain holes. 

Blackness crawled around her peripheral vision, closing in until she could see nothing.  The ringing in her ears was deafening.  She felt as if she was going to vomit, violently as
her
empty stomach clenched around itself. There was nothing she could do to stop
it
.  Like bloody water slipping down the black-holed drain, Meg collapsed.

When she awoke, the water was still pouring on her, though it was tepid now.  Tentatively, she sat up.  The world spun.  Her body wouldn’t stop shaking.  She reached up to touch her forehead where it ached sharply and looked at her bloody fingers as though they belonged to someone else.  She must have hit
her
head on the shower’s handle on the way down. 

Not trusting her legs to hold her, Meg knelt, reached up and turned
off
the water.  Still shaking, Meg pushed the door to the shower stall open and crawled over the threshold, naked and wet.  She didn’t stop.  She kept crawling slowly out of her bathroom and made it to the edge of her bed. 

Clawing the fitted sheet in her weak efforts, she finally managed to crawl on top of the bed and pulled her rumpled blanket over herself completely.  Her wet hair soaked into the unsuspecting pillow and she shivered uncontrollably, so she cocooned herself, head and all, in the blanket and passed out for the second time in an hour.

There was only blackness at first. 

Peaceful, delicious blackness.

Meg even remembered thinking maybe she escaped the nightmares this time.

Maybe that’s all it took—a solid whack to the head and passing out equaled restful sleep.

She wasn’t so lucky.

This time her nightmare started in an unfamiliar, sterile white hospital laboratory.

She looked down in
her
hand and saw the two metal orbs she loved to hold, dancing around each other, making a rhythmic scraping sound as they moved. 

Meg was wearing black gloves and noticed red blood streaking the cuff of her perfectly tailored white shirt.  Looking more closely, she saw her wrist was oozing from open wounds.  Absently, she wondered why she didn’t feel the pain she should have from such injuries.

Across the room was a man wearing a standard white lab coat.  Part of her frowned at the fleeting thought that she’d seen this man before.  Meg concentrated on the man’s mouth as he spoke, trying desperately to hear what he was saying. 

“…injuries.  The chemical induced coma you’ve ordered can’t last forever, sir.  We’ve taken all we need from him.   He’s ready.”  Dr. Chaunders had grown the smallest of spines over the last two months.  He had to. 

“What do the others on the team think?”  Dr. Williams asked, staring at the soldier through the one-way mirror. 

“It’s all in the report, sir.  We believe when the subject crushed the two glass vials of Infinite I serum in his hand, an undetermined amount made its way through the cuts into his bloodstream, essentially dosing him.  His injuries were so extensive it should have taken him weeks to recover, even with his metahuman rapid healing abilities, but it took less than half the time anticipated.”  Chaunders stopped and looked to the director.

“Continue.” Williams stood unmoving except the gloved hand rotating the metal orbs, causing a whispered scraping sound as they moved.

“As you’re aware, sir, the subject regained consciousness on the ninth day.   When he awoke, he claimed to have no memory of the events between his Retribution Match last October and now.  He woke thinking he was recovering from his battle against his brother, Gavil Young.”  Chaunders held the report he and his team meticulously created based on scrupulous notes over the last seven weeks.  He didn’t have to look at it during his briefing with Dr. Williams.  He memorized everything about this case.

“During the explosion at the
St. Paul
lab, the subject suffered an
injury
to his
prefrontal cortex
.  As you know, that location in the brain is widely believed to
house long-term memory.  Per your orders, we conducted a battery of tests to be sure the memories were wiped clean.  Every test came back as definitive as scientifically possible. 

“He truly has no memory of ever leaving the Facility.  He knows nothing of the Winters.  As far as he’s concerned, the worst thing he’s ever done is refused to kill his brother at the Match.”  Chaunders stopped talking and risked looking at Williams for insight into what he was thinking.  His face was a bloody, blank slate.

“As we’ve completed the last of the testing you requested the chemical induced coma is no longer necessary.”  Chaunders waited for his boss to say something.

Only the sound of the metallic spheres scraping against one another could be heard in the otherwise silent room.

After a few minutes, he could wait no longer.  “Your orders, sir?” Chaunders carefully prompted.

Dr. Williams walked up to the one-way window and studied the sleeping body of Creed Young.  He looked the picture of health.  As the doctor thought, his lips began pursing together and puckering—pursing and puckering, repeatedly.  He didn’t know this about himself, but he only performed the grotesque movements when deep in thought. 

Dr. Chaunders watched as fresh cracks formed around the flesh that should have been lips.  The juice oozing from those fissures in the raw skin looked too dark to be blood.  Williams paid no attention to the scrutiny from the other man in the room.  He was deep in thought.

Creed could be the perfect subject for his next level of testing.   Just for the sheer joy of it, a certain idea had been spinning wildly in his sadistic mind.  The thought occurred to him a couple of months back when nostalgia had him remembering the bird’s nest he found as child.  Cracking open the shells to study the wet, giant-eyed, unhatched embryonic birds inside brought his first thrill.  Maybe, after all this time, he just needed to get back to basics.  Maybe he just needed to recreate a similar situation where he could—investigate the inner workings of an embryo.  And what would be more interesting than a metahuman embryo?  Yes, the idea made the corners of his mouth curl is anticipation.

This young man, whether he remembered it or not, cherished family.  And though he had no memory of his treachery, he still needed to be justly punished. 

Yes, I think he would be the perfect specimen for his next line of testing,
Dr. Williams cooed to himself imagining the torment on the soldier’s face when he realized what was in store for him.

“I will allow the metasoldier to awaken after we perform one last procedure.  But, once he is awakened, keep him in seclusion.  I don’t want him in contact with any other metas.  Tell him he is being punished for his disobedience at the Match and is to follow a rigorous training regime to rebuild his body to peak performance.” The Director smiled his wide, toothless grin. 

“And tell the team I require a meeting with them all in exactly one hour in the conference room.  I’ll explain the required procedure then.” The last he said even as he strode out of the lab.  He had some plotting to do and was very excited at the idea. 

He slipped the two spheres into the front pocket of his three-piece suit and removed his handkerchief.  The scent was stronger than he had felt it in months.  There it was—his strawberries and lilies, coming to visit him. 

He patted the flesh that should have been his nose, blocking all outside smells for a moment and just breathed.  Yes.  It was definitely her.  His sweet daughter, in all her
innocence
, had come to pay him a call. 

How considerate of her!

Williams walked briskly from the hospital, across the courtyard and into his administration building.  He never noticed the wide girth everyone at the Facility gave him when he was out among his soldiers.  It didn’t even occur to him to notice the grimaces at his appearance.  None of that mattered to Williams.  He thought on such an ethereal level; the peons around him may as well have been gnats.

The whole way up the elevator to his third-floor office suite, he imagined his beautiful daughter he gifted so many years before.  Once seated at his obscenely large mahogany desk, the doctor leaned back and closed his eyes, concentrating on the connection he felt with the girl whose dark eyes absorbed the world around her.  He imagined her dark hair spilling around her face in untamed waves and curls as wild and thick as her emotions.  In his mind’s eye, he clung to the delicious innocence of the girl, savored her, feeding on her purity of spirit.  And in return, he gave her more gifts than he ever shared with anyone before: he showed her his favorite memories.  He held nothing back in his communal reverie.  His strawberries and lilies reacted with anguish to each new image he shared, causing the doctor to giggle with double the joy at both the memory, and her abhorrence of it.