Winter's Wrath: Sacrifice (Winter's Saga #3) (7 page)

“The plane’s right around the corner up here.  Paulie’s already pulling up to it
,
” Theo tried to reassure.

They
were a hundred yards away from Paulie as he opened his driver’s side door and began to hurry around to the back of
his
van.  The
rabid dog
flew out a crevice between service vehicles
,
pointed his gun at Paulie and shot him in the back—right through the heart.

The brilliant, gentle doctor who took
the Winters
in when
they
were the most desperate, slammed against the back of the van, his hand still wrapped around the back door’s lever.  He slumped to his knees, and collapsed
to the unforgiving cement.

All
Meg
could hear was a deafening scream.

She
covered
her
ears to block the sound, before realiz
ing the anguished shriek
was coming from
her own throat.

Margo
leaped from
the SUV even before Theo stopped it completely, positioning it as a shield to protect the back of the van from further gunfire.  She swung her weapon around and in the same motion, pulled the trigger.  The killer’s motorcycle exploded beneath him.  Tears were streaming down
Margo’s
face.

Evan had already thrown the doors to the back of the van open and was crouched next to Paulie
’s silent body, desperately searching for
a pulse. 

He looked up at Theo.  Through all his intellect, all his genius
—
he still looked out of the wide eyes of a scared thirteen-year-old boy, and shook his head.

Everyone was
stunned into silence for the briefest of moments before fear shook
them
by the shoulders.

“Get Farrow and Cole onto the plane.” M
argo
’s voice took on a hollow echo as she barked an order to Evan and
Meg
.

She set Theo and Alik to moving all
their
things from the cars to the plane.

Without a word of explanation,
Meg
knew
her mother
was standing guard over
them
with her uzi poised at the ready
, her sharp soldier’s eyes scanning the tarmac for any sign of threat
. 

Within three minutes,
they
were loaded and ready to go.  “What should we do with Paulie?” Alik asked
his
mom.

“We have two choices, leave him here or bring him with us.  This is his home
,
and he has friends here who will give him a proper burial.  He wouldn’t want us to waste time on his body.  He’d be yelling at us to get the heck out of
D
odge
.
”
S
he smiled softly at the sheet
-
covered body of her longtime mentor and friend.

Everyone
nodded solemnly and hurried up the steps into the plane.

Chapter 8  Emotional Signatures

Meg sat staring out the window of the commuter plane.

She hadn’t said a word to anyone for the first three hours of the flight.

There was nothing to say.

Nothing could bring Creed or Paulie back.

Margo sat beside her for the first hour, trying to get her to talk through the trauma of what happened, to express the anguish Meg felt more than anyone else on th
at
plane if only because of the freaking gift she was given.

Meg was so full of anger at the world.  She was afraid if she open
ed
her mouth she’d explode in a tirade so excruciating and unending, she’d wind up in a straightjacket with duct tape over her mouth.

So instead
,
Meg redirected all that energy over the last three hours as they flew thousands of feet above the Pacific Ocean, into searching for Creed’s emotional signature.  Paulie’s death was horrible; vivid in her emotional memory, but
it was
the unknown about Creed
that
was driving her crazy. 

Meg was so desperate to find him her whole body ached from the immense, sustained concentration she expended in her search.  She sent her energy out, flew through blackness, desperately looking for his warm-red signature engrained into her soul
from
the moment
she
wrapped herself around his anger and freed him earlier
that very
day.  It felt like years ago.

At first Meg had hope, but the longer she searched fruitlessly, the more his missing signature only pointed to one explanation.

Creed was dead.

A fresh batch of warm tears slid down her face.

Her mother’s strong, worn hands pressed a soft bundle of tissues to her eyes.

“Meggie, I’m so sorry,” she said simply.

Meg hiccupped, and continued to cry tears of sadness.

“That any of us was able to escape today is truly amazing.  You do realize if it weren’t for your gift, none of us would be alive, don’t you?  And Williams would be free to rein evil over an unsuspecting world?”  She was trying to help Meg see the bigger picture and appreciate the positive.  Meg just couldn’t.

Unable to stay
silent
any longer,
Meg groaned, “Mom, Creed didn’t have someone rescue him when he was a little boy in Williams’ lab.  He had to grow up alone, abused and abandoned surrounded by metasoldiers who only knew that way of life.  In his entire life, Creed never felt love—only bloodthirsty, competitive, violence
—
but he turned away from that.  Instead of embracing the hatred fed to him, he stepped out on faith and chose us.  No one ever sacrificed one tiny thing for him, but he sacrificed everything for us.”  Meg buried her face into her hands. 

Margo rubbed her daughter’s back and just let her cry for a while before saying, “You’re right, Meg.  Everything you said is true.  It’s just all the more reason we need to respect his last wishes. If someone so conditioned to hate and destroy, can find love and loyalty, then we must know God’s will is for us to go find others who need rescuing from Williams.  In the name of our Creed, we need to make his sacrifice mean something to everyone.” 

She squeezed Meg’s shoulder once, tenderly and left her to her thoughts.

Meg resumed staring out the
cabin
window.  The water below shimmered in the red-orange glow of the setting sun.    The line of clouds hovering in the distance took on a darkened, shadowy feel and stretched from one side of her view to the other.  It looked so peaceful, beautiful.  How could the world be full of such majestic beauty touched by the hands of God, and still have so much evil rising, blackened and contagious?   Maze whimpered in his sleep at her feet and laid his warm, heavy head on her toes, sighing softly. 

Meg sighed, too.

Okay, Meg
,
she thought
,
en
ough is enough.  You can’t change what
’s
happened.  Suck it up
,
and get on with living.
 
She
gave herself a mental slap.

She unbuckled her seat belt, slipped her foot out from under her furry best friend and stood in the aisle to stretch, forcing the tightness out of her achy muscles. 

Her family noticed her, but tried politely not to stare.  They were all worried about her; she could feel it.

Meg walked to the back of the plane where Dr. Andrews was hovering over his son.  Evan was changing Farrow’s I.V. bag.

“Any change?” Meg asked them.

Theo looked up startled, as though Meg were a stranger for a moment.  He had been lost in thoughts of his son as a little boy and of Jenna, Cole’s deceased mother.  Meg wanted to touch his hand to reassure him, but she hesitated, still unable to forget what happened with Creed on the Island. 
She
remained guarded.

Evan answered, “Farrow has been drifting in and out of consciousness.  I don’t think it’ll be too much longer before she awakens.  Now that her wound is cleaned, her metahuman rapid healing is doing its job.  Since we transfused Creed’s blood, her body is recovering beautifully.”  He coughed, uncomfortable at his own use of the word “beautifully.”

Meg was more worried about Creed’s blood floating in this woman’s body.  For some irrational reason, she felt a wave of jealousy at the thought.

“Let me know next time she’s semiconscious.  I’ll see if I can’t get a reading on her emotions.  It’ll help to know if we’ll need to tie her down for the duration of the flight.”  Meg tried to keep the bitter
ness
out of her voice, but she was pretty sure she failed by the surprised expression on her little brother’s face.

Changing the subject, Meg asked, “How’s Cole?” 

Evan glanced nervously at Dr. Andrews before speaking.  Meg could tell he was unsure how much detail to reveal for fear of its effects on the boy’s father.

He cleared his throat, “He has not regained consciousness.  His stats have remained unchanged over the last three hours, though they are unusual.  His blood pressure is very low, lips pale, but his temperature keeps spiking.  I’ve been wondering if the febrile seizures you experienced were part of your metahuman condition struggling with the foreign malarial parasites or if
they
were just a metahuman condition that happens anytime there are—high-risk circumstances.”  Evan looked at his sister pointedly, feeding his true level of concern for Cole through his emotions.  He was very worried Cole wouldn’t survive the night.

“His human body could be trying to adjust to the metahuman physiological changes,” Meg offered, more for Theo’s sake than Evan.

“Or his human body could be rejecting the changes,” Theo’s voice croaked with pain.

“Let’s not think that way just yet,” Evan said encouragingly.

Mmmmm

All three of them turned to look at Farrow, who had just moaned.

“Um, Meg.  You wanna do your thing now?” Evan asked.  He was staring at the girl’s stunning face and watching her brows furrow.

“Yeah, I do.” Meg pursed her lips and concentrated on the female meta.

Her emotions were foggy, disconnected.  She was more in a dream-state than consc
ious
, but Meg stayed and pressed deeper to see if she could feel something she could work with.  Instinctively,
she
placed her hand on Farrow’s shoulder to try to sharpen her emp
ath connection and gently shook
to rouse
the girl
into a bit more consciousness.

It worked.

Meg felt her. 

She was a troubled soul; worried, unsure and alone. 

Farrow felt a huge need for belonging and was trying to use her connection to Williams to fill that void in her heart.  She was using Williams to gain a sense of power and therefore a sense of belonging, but she was already figuring out the flaw in her plan.  Williams left her to die in a muddy hole in the middle of the Pacific.  He was supposed to rescue her, but he didn’t.  She was as expendable as any of them, and she hated the Director for his heartlessness.  She was crying silent tears at the feelings
of abandonment.

“Meg?” Evan was shaking her shoulder.  Meg opened her eyes to see she’d been moved away from Farrow and made to sit down.  Evan’s honey eyes were crisp with worry.

“I’m okay, Ev,” Meg breathed.

“You were hard to bring back.  It scared me.  Maze, too.  He was the one who shoved you away from Farrow.” 

Maze laid his head in her lap and looked up at Meg with love in his intelligent yellow eyes.

“Good boy, Maze,” she cooed, rubbing his ears just the way he liked.

“I need to learn how to control the depth of my readings.  Sometimes I slip too far, and it’s hard to climb back out.  It feels like walking on the edge of a steep ravine.”  Meg shook her head trying to clear it.  “Have mom and Alik come here so we can all talk.”

Once everyone was caught up on her most recent reading of
their
guest, they began throwing around ideas. 

“Well, she seems as if she might want to join us if she’s so desperate to belong,” Alik mused.  Meg glanced at him and tried not to read the interest on a more personal level that he was feeling for the girl. 

Good grief
!  Stupid men
!
Meg scowled inwardly.

“She also has that need for power,” Meg reminded the group, still suspicious of the girl.  Never mind if that suspicion wasn’t entirely warranted.