Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (6 page)

“He’s stayed back in a van and is watching on monitors.  The rabid dogs have cameras attached to their helmets.  He’s excited that they are nearly able to see the house.” 

“Can you tune in to the soldiers?  From which angle are they coming?”  Evan asked.

Meg held still for a moment and shifted her energies to seek the static-filled anger of the rabid dogs.

“Oh, my goodness.  These souls are metas?  Their emotions are so…wait, they’re here!”  In the same instant Meg knew his rabid dogs found them and had trained their grenade launchers at their windows
.  M
eg opened her eyes and aimed into the darkness where she sensed the static-filled cluster of mutant metas. 

Pop, pop
!

Meg heard the fire, but she hadn’t pulled the trigger. 

“Creed, are you okay?” she whispered desperately. 

“Two down,” was all he said in response.

Meg concentrated on feeling out the static spots in her emotional field of vision and aligned them with the red warmth she felt indicating Creed’s emotional signature high in a koa tree.  “Two more at your three o’clock.  Three at your six o’clock and two at your nine o’clock.  You’re surrounded, Creed,” Meg said worriedly.

“Sitting ducks,” he whispered.

Pop, pop
!

“Two more down.” Meg couldn’t tell if he’d whispered the words, or if she just felt him think them, but she knew he had already killed four of the fourteen rabid dogs.

“What’s going on Meg?” her mother’s voice was edgy.  The whole room was staring at her expectantly.  Meg covered the mouthpiece and said, “Creed—he’s already killed four of them.”

Everyone sighed.

Meg heard him breathing slow, calm breaths; Creed was so calculating and assured. She took two breaths for every one of his, worried for him
—f
or all of them.

“They are looking for you, Creed.  The three at your six are closing and are scanning the trees.”

Pop, pop, pop, pop!

“
His
s!” 
Creed’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. 

“You’ve been hit,” Meg said anxiously waiting for a response from him.

More gunfire.

“Creed!” She called out to him.

Quickened breathing
.

Grunt.

Silence.

“Two more down,” he whispered, grunting, climbing another tree. 

“Get yourself to a secure location and stay quiet for a while, let us take care of some of these assholes,” Meg reassured him softly, even as she was sure he was working to stifle the pain of being shot, as was his gift.

“Get a reading, Meg.  Where are they?” Creed asked, ignoring her.

Biting her lip, so as not to waste time arguing with him as he surely hung in another koa tree, bleeding, Meg closed her eyes and focused. 

The remaining eight mutant
metasoldiers
were furiously returning to Williams in retreat.

“Oh, thank God,” Meg said into the mouthpiece and to the room full of her family.

“Creed, you’ve got them retreating.  Get back to the house now.” 

“On my way.  Get to the vehicles.  I’ll meet you there.” His voice sounded worried, but not in pain.  He had switched off his pain. 

“Let’s move,” Margo called to the house.  “Meg, keep your sensors trained on the soldiers, and let us know what they’re up to.”

Meg nodded at her mother, grabbed her clips and ran to help get Farrow and Cole loaded into Paulie’s van. 

Everyone was given assignments, and assuming they were given the time to complete them, they should be completely evacuated from the house inside five minutes.  The bags were already loaded in the cars, so the only thing they needed to do was grab the infirmed, their guns, ammo and themselves.

Farrow stirred as they lifted the corners of the bed sheets on her gurney to move her to a stretcher for transport. 
Meg watched the girl’s eyelids flutter and heard her moan.  If it weren’t so necessary for her to concentrate of Williams and his rabids, Meg would have taken advantage of Farrow’s partial consciousness to probe her emotions.  But as it was, Meg couldn’t risk taking her emotional eyes off
their
enemies. 

Cole looked as pale as the sheets on which he lay.  His lips were taking on a purplish hue, but he was also feverish.  It was the strangest combination of symptoms. 

“I’m going to have
my
hands full getting this guy well once we’re safe,” Evan mumbled to no one in particular as he situated equipment around his two patients in the back of Paulie’s van.  The boys had torn out the seats to make room for the stretchers.  Evan sat on his knees as he monitored
the two patients
. 

Meg was just helping Maze into a second vehicle when she sensed Creed.  She turned and saw him, dressed in full jungle camo—painted face and arms.  Everywhere was camouflaged except his dark-blue eyes, and the dark-red blood trying to pour from his thigh.  He had taken off his belt and used it as a tourniquet.  He could stop the pain by sheer will, but that didn’t stop the blood from flowing. 

“Creed, thank God.  Get in,” Meg motioned to the SUV.

He shook his head.

“Creed, we have to go.  Get in the truck!” Meg willed him to listen to reason and held out her hand for him to take it.

“Meg, you and your family are not in the clear yet,” he said solemnly.

By then, the rest of the family was clamoring into the vehicles.  Dr. Andrews was driving the SUV with
Margo
and Maze.  Paulie was driving the van with Alik, Evan, Farrow and Cole. 

“We can talk about this later, Creed,” Meg pleaded while walking closer to him.  A cold shiver of fear slipped up her spine as she felt what he was feeling.   

“I have to take this chance, Meg.  I have to stay and try to finish this.  You have to escape.  It’s our destiny.”

“Bullshit!”
Meg yelled.  “You are
not
going to sacrifice yourself, Creed Young.  You are too important.  We need you. 
I
need you!
”  By now, Meg was standing close enough to feel the heat radiating off his tense body.

A flicker of emotion slipped across his face.  Just a moment of doubt at hearing her words was all he afforded them.

“I’m going back out there to find the van. I can pick off the rest of his rabids but in the end, he’ll just make more.  I need to kill Williams.  Cut off the head of the snake.” His voice sounded disconnected.

“We
will
do that, but not today.  Today we have to get to safety.”

He reached around and held her tightly, briefly leaning his heavy head down to the h
o
llow of her neck, allowing himself the safety of her scent.  Without giving an emotional warning, he lifted her and gently tossed her into the SUV with Maze and slam
med the door closed.  He slapped the metal
twice as a signal to Dr. Andrews to leave.

“No!”
Meg screamed.

“Meg, we have to go.  This is his choice.  You have to respect him enough to allow him this,” Theo was craned around in his seat, eyes pleading for Meg to let go.

The car backed up fast, peeling back down paved driveway before swinging around to face forward.  The
other
van was right on their tail, but Meg paid attention to none of that.  All she saw was the face of her avenging angel staring back at her.  A bump in the road ripped him from her sight momentarily.  By the time the vehicle righted itself, Creed had vanished.

Chapter 7  No Going Back

Meg sobbed, salty, angry tears.

“Mom, we have to turn around!  We have to go back and get him!”

“We can’t, Meg,” Theo’s voice was dark, ominous.

“Why?” she begged.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Theo glanced at Margo, then back at Meg through the rear-view mirror.  His eyes were filled with sadness and something else.  Meg felt a surge of anger come from him.  So uncharacteristic was that emotion from the kindhearted doctor, she turned her full attention to him, even through the tears.

“Since it was his lab, Paulie had to agree.  There was just no going back.  So we rigged the lab.  The boys and I rigged the lab to blow up by remote access.  I don’t want that serum falling into any more hands.  It’s pure evil, and I hate what it has done to our lives.”  Meg felt a shudder of fury hit Theo as real as any she had felt from Williams. 

“We can’t go back because there will be nothing to go back to,” he added, tightening his jaw.

“Who has the remote?” Margo asked coolly.  She was just as livid as Meg was at being left in the dark.

Andrews gripped the steering wheel more tightly.  His knuckles whitened at her question.

“Creed,” Meg said, no affect to her voice.  “Creed has the remote.  You knew all along he was planning to sacrifice himself, to stay behind, and
you didn’t stop him!
”  She was so angry she couldn’t see straight. 

“I didn’t know he was planning a suicide mission.  He could have triggered the remote from this car. 
He
chose to stay.  That was never part of
my
plan.” Theo looked to Margo for understanding.

“Theo, how could you do this without talking with me?  Don’t you respect me more than that?”  Margo was equally angry and hurt, but she kept talking.  “Creed is Alik’s brother
—h
is
blood
brother.  He chose to lead a good life and was therefore just as much a son to me as Al
i
or Evan. 
Turn the car around
.”

“Margo, no.  I’m not letting you put yourself in harm’s way again! 
Damn it!
  We are getting out of here!”

M
eg
wrapped her aching mind around a
quote
she
read years ago: “Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.” 

Pop! Pop! Pop!

“Oh, God, no!”
Meg
cried
, spinning around in her seat to co
nfirm what
she
already suspected.

Paulie sped up in his van and motioned frantically behind him. 

“Oh, no!” Theo groaned, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

“What?” Margo was craning her neck around to see behind them.

That’s when
they
heard the first shot ricochet off the thick metal shell of the vehicle.

Meg
was already getting
her
gun out, slamming the safety off and rolling down a window, cursing
her
self for having dropped
her
focus on the rabid dogs. 

Three motorcycles roared behind
them
, and they were packing.

Meg
didn’t even have
any more
time to think about wha
t was happening to Creed.  She
just slipped into survival mode. 

“Be careful, Meg,”
Mom
called even as she hung out of her window, aiming the micro uzi.

Meg
slipped
her
hand out of the window, lined up
her
target, and exhaled as
she
pulled the trigger, aiming for
the
gas tank.  His bike exploded and his body flew. 
She
was so angry at the injustice of
everything;
she
didn’t even let
her
self feel for him. 

Pop, pop, pop, pop!

M
argo
’s aim was thrown off as
they
hit one of the airport’s many asphalt speed bumps. 

Meg
slowed
her breathing, aimed and blew out this one’s
back tire.  Body number two flew through the air.

Two down, one to go.

The last rabid dog was playing differently than the other two. 
Meg
focused
her
emotional energy and tried to figure
out what made this one different.
 
She
found the same black static, but this was
had a different dimension to him
.  This one was clever.  Unlike the other two who just used brute anger and brainless force to attack,
Meg
sensed this one was devising a plan. 

He swerved away and slipped down what looked like a cargo loading driveway. 

“Mom, this one’s different.  He’s going to try to sneak up on us,”
Meg
warned.