Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (31 page)

As for herself, Meg didn’t know what to think about having Cole and Creed back in the same room.  To be honest, her stupid girly emotions just needed to shut the heck up so she could concentrate on saving their asses by offing Williams.   She had enough to worry about with everyone else’s emotions trying to tackle her to the ground.  She just needed to disconnect from her little crushes on these very different boys in her life, so she could focus.  Meg huffed angrily at herself.

“Meg?” Cole’s green eyes were watching her face. 

“Hum?”  The heat flooded up her neck to her cheeks when she noticed the whole room of metas had been watching her internal struggle play out through her facial expressions.

She stood abruptly, taking her half-eaten sandwich to the trash and tossing it. 

“What
is
the plan?”  Meg asked the room.

“What’s going on?” A groggy voice came from the doorway.  There stood Margo, looking adorable with bedhead and beside her, rubbing his eyes, was Theo.

“Mom!  You’re awake! 

“Creed?”  My mother looked wide-eyed at the boy she considered one of her sons and rushed to him, hugging him tightly.  “Oh, thank you God.  You came back!”  She pulled back from her motherly embrace.  Creed’s arms hung at his sides, not sure how to return the affection of a woman he didn’t remember.  Margo searched his face the way only a mom can and said, “I know you don’t remember me, but I remember you well enough for the both of us.”  She smiled widely at the large, silent, soldier—tears glistening in her warm brown eyes.

“It’s damn good to see you, Creed,” Theo offered a fatherly pat on the soldier’s solid back. “Margo, let the kid go.  You’re gonna scare him away,” he teased before turning to the room and nodding at the two soldiers he’d never seen knocking at
the
glass back door.  “I’ll get that,” he said casually shuffling toward the door mumbling to himself about this all having to be a dream.

“Come on in,” Dr. Andrews said to the two huge strangers at the door dressed exactly like Creed.  “I’m going to assume you’re friends of Creed’s.”

Gavil and Slider exchanged unsure looks before following the human into the house.  “Creed, I believe you’ll handle introductions?” Theo said waving to the soldiers.

Margo hadn’t moved far from Creed’s side.   Meg sensed her
mother’s
joy at seeing the boy—the son she couldn’t save as she had the other three children. 
Meg
blinked emotion out of her eyes, brushed her dark curls of
f
her face and forced herself to focus on Gavil and Slider.

“Yes, sir,” Creed said, walking toward the men.  “This is my brother Gavil Young, and this is our friend Slider Reznikov.”

“Gavil?” Margo breathed, eyes narrowing.

“Mom, it’s okay,” Meg interrupted the fight she saw flash in her mother’s eyes.  “He’s on our side now.  Isn’t that right, Gavil?”  She looked pointedly at the man who fought her with such venom a year ago.  She would never forget those icy blue eyes. 

She and Gavil watched
each
other for a moment
.  In
that span
,
she reached out to feel his intent.  He was hurting so deeply beneath that callous façade.  He’d lost someone dear to him because of Williams.  Meg nodded knowingly at him as she poured gentle understanding and acceptance directly from her heart into his.  He shuddered visibly and blinked before he met her gaze again.  The sadness in his heart was still very much there, but she
had
intentionally
left a seed of hope. 

He watched her warily trying to figure out what just happened between them.   “I’m not here to hurt any of you,” he said.  “I’ve seen a lot in the last year.  I know what Williams is now.  He has to be stopped.   He needs to die.”

The room had been holding its breath waiting for his response and now let out a collective sigh. 

Margo looked from Meg, to Gavil and back to her.  “If Meg trusts you, then you have my trust, too.”

Meg
reached out and held
her mother’s
hand reassuring her before turning to the other interloper.  “And you,” she said.  “What is your motive?”

“I just want my freedom.  Williams thinks of us as property.  I’m owned by no one.  I can’t get free until he’s dead,” Slider explained shrugging. 

While the man spoke,
Meg
reached out to him and tentatively searched his true intent. 
She
closed her eyes for a moment and reached further.  “You do feel as you say, but there’s something else. What aren’t you telling us?”

Slider looked decidedly nervous now, running his fingers through his cropped blonde hair, rubbing his scalp slowly as though pushed deep in though
t
.  His eyes were downcast, his anxious jaw working so muscles flexed in his hardened face.

“I could find it myself easily, but it would speak to your integrity if you confess it yourself.”  She watched him squirm and worried he’d choose the wrong path.

“If I tell you, you’ll kill me,” he mumbled, still unable to look her in the eye.

Farrow, who had been watching the exchange silently, stood and walked toward the newcomer.  “I thought they should have let me die for all the pain I caused them, but they didn’t.  These are good people, Slider.  You just have to be honest with them.”

Slider took a deep breath, seeming to take strength in Farrow’s confession.

“It was me.  I was given orders to take out anyone I could.  I saw the old guy—Dr. St. Paul.  I saw him at the airport on the island.  I shot him in the back.  I killed him.”  Slider’s voice was barely above a whisper.  “He was just an old guy.  A doctor.  He was unarmed.  Everything about the orders I was supposed to follow that day felt wrong—
messed
up and wrong—but I followed them anyway.”

Slider’s eyes stared at his feet.  He didn’t move, as though bracing himself for the punishment he knew would be swift and deadly.

The room was silent for a moment.

“Thank you for telling us.”  Meg’s face was wet with tears as she remembered the horror of the moment the meta was describing.  “We all miss our dear Paulie so much.”

Margo looked at her daughter
.  “This is what Kenneth Williams does.  He takes the innocence away from children by forcing them into trauma.” 

Margo turned back to Slider and spoke directly to him. “You were given orders and you followed them, soldier.  The evil doesn’t live in you.  It lives in him.  He feeds off the violence.  He’s a demon. 

“I’m so thankful you’ve chosen to turn away from him, Slider.  We miss Paulie dearly, but we don’t blame you for his death.”  She reached out to touch his shoulder and though he flinched at first, after a moment, he stilled and raised his eyes to look up at Dr. Margo Winter. 

Meg was the only one not surprised to see tears in the stoic soldier’s brownish-gold eyes.  She already knew what the boy was feeling because as Margo spoke, she was trying to pour peace into his heart.  He was so traumatized, so close to completely broken.

He couldn’t speak, overwhelmed with awe at the reaction he would have never expected from this human woman.  All he could do was sniff and nod before his eyes darted back to his feet and stayed there. 
Meg
continued to focus her energies on the jaded soldier so full of self-loathing and lost in a sea of darkness.

“You’re both welcome to stay with us,” Dr. Winter was saying.  “I know we all have a common goal right now, and we will be vigilant until we’re successful at putting an end to that man’s reign, but there
will
be life for us after Williams’ death.  If you want to stay with us, you have a home.”  Margo smiled with love even through her tears.

Gavil looked over at Creed.  Their eyes locked and between them flashed years of pain and trauma living under the assumption Williams force fed everyone at the Facility.  Violence was to be respected, weakness stomped out.  This woman spoke a completely different message of forgiveness and care for one another.   This gave Gavil a new understanding of why Creed did what he did for the Winter family.  He nodded once to his little brother and in that one moment the brothers began to heal.

“Well, now that we got settled,” Theo walked toward the coffee pot.  “Someone want to tell me why I was shot with a tranquilizer and put in bed next to my lovely lady?”

Maze still hadn’t awakened from his tranquilizer induced sleep.    Meg was trying not to get worried after six hours passed and he still couldn’t be roused, but Dr. Andrews and Dr. Winter both checked him frequently and they assured her he was doing fine—just sleeping off the effects.  They explained that his body mass was much smaller than the rest of them so he was bound to be more deeply affected.  She argued this point instead: 

“If that’s true why did I wake before the rest of you?”

Creed cleared his throat.  “Um, that would be my doing.”

Meg narrowed her eyes at him.

“During the shooting frenzy, I gave the soldiers direct orders to leave you to me.  I emptied about half of the tranq into the dirt before loading my weapon.”

Her hands shot to her hips angrily.  “
You
shot me?”

“I wanted to be sure you’d wake first so I had a chance to talk with you.”  He grimaced at the white bandage Evan had wrapped around his sliced hand.  “Maybe I should have doubled your dose instead.”

She narrowed her eyes at the man sitting nonchalantly at their kitchen table, fighting the urge to beat the tar out of him.

“Dude,
utshay upway,” Alik mumbled under his breath to Creed.

“What?”

Meg took a deep breath and walked four paces across the kitchen floor.  Everyone stepped out of her way.

“Let me get this straight.  You told the meat-head cretins at your command to stand down when it came to me so you could shoot me yourself?”

“Exactly.”

She locked her jaw trying to control her fury.

“Did it occur to you how terrifying it would be for me to wake and find the bodies of my entire family—everyone I have ever loved—strewn on the ground?”

Creed shrugged.  “I expected to be in the room when you woke.”

“But you weren’t, were you?  No.  Instead I ran from one body to another frantically feeling their throats for pulses terrified the next body I came to would be cold and lifeless!”

Creed looked around the room starting to understand why no one would meet his eyes. 

“Don’t look to anyone for help, Creed Young.  Figure this out yourself, genius,” Meg spat angrily.

Creed stared back at her, his facial expression as stoic as ever.

“What do you want me to say?” he stood gracefully to face her directly.  She refused to step back from his hulking frame, her hurt and fear was seething right at the surface. 

Once he reached his full height, he looked down into her face.  His eyes softened as he reached
out
as if he was about to touch her face but stopped himself, dropping his hand to his side.  “I’m sorry to have caused you any pain, Meg.”  His eyes filled with tenderness before he turned and walked out the back door where just a few hours before he had chased
her
to the barn.

She stared after him, shocked into a rare moment of speechlessness.

“Well, about the plan,” Alik said to no one in particular, trying to break the awkwardness left in the wake of his sister’s terse exchange with Creed.  “Gavil, you’ve already contacted Williams, telling him we were already boarded on the plane and en route so that buys us—what, about eight more hours before all hell’s gonna break loose.”

“Right,” Gavil was saying.  “We have three choices now, as far as I can see.  One, plan an immediate attack, two, go into hiding or three, a combination of the first two.”

“Let’s gather as much information as we can and lay it out so we know how much time we have.  Meg?  What do we know about Williams’ current research?”  Margo looked intently at Meg’s profile. 

She felt her
mother’s
eyes, but she wasn’t listening.  Instead, her legs carried her across the floor and out the door—this time it was her turn to chase Creed. 

They were smart not to stop her.   She wouldn’t be any use to their logic-minded plans right now anyway.  She had to go deal with the emotions exploding inside
b
efore she burst into flames. 

Creed was in the barn, just as she would’ve suspected.  He was laying on the bench press still set up with Alik’s 950lbs of weight and was pressing the barbell up and down with ease.  Apparently, too much ease because he looked frustrated when he replaced the bar and stood abruptly to head toward the Wing Chun wooden dummy. 

Alik and Cole made it themselves.  The piece was used in conditioning for a specialized Chinese martial arts—a version of Kung Fu the boys were studying these days.  It was known as a “warrior’s style.” Creed took to the dummy like he’d been training on it for years.  His form was perfect; she couldn’t help but watch with admiration.