Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (13 page)

“You have been very helpful, Harriet
,” Meg coaxed, Danny still in her arms.  “But I have one last favor to ask you.  I need you to trade vehicles with us.”

The woman blinked twice then just stared.  “You want the van.  Of course, here are the keys.”  Meg tossed them to Cole standing six feet behind her and held out her hand for the keys to the truck.  She didn’t even have to look to catch them perfectly in her one available hand.  “Here are the keys to the red truck outside.  Get home safe
ly, Harriet and know you made a difference here today.”

“Thank you,” she murmured and smiled as she walked toward the exit and directly out to the truck.  Meg turned to Cole.  “Tell the others to trade vehicles.  Get Evan in the back.”

Cole was already heading out the doors, on the heels of the “influenced” woman when he called out, “I’m on it.”

“Danny, you ready to get Maze?”

Danny nodded tears still slipping freely from his eyes.

Meg marched up to the front desk.  “We’re here to take our coydog home.”

“I’m sorry miss, but doctor has strict orders on him.  He must stay for two nights.  His injuries were just too severe and he’s under heavy sedation to keep him from damaging himself further.  You can go see him, but there is no way the doctor would allow him to leave the veterinary hospital so soon.  The doctor’s in with another patient now, but if you’ll wait, I’m sure he’ll speak with you about what is in the best interest for your pet.”

Meg let the woman talk for just a moment, more so she could catch her breath than to hear what the tech had to say. 

“We’ll go back to get him now,” she enunciated clearly.  The same dazed expression curled around the technician’s eyes as they did around everyone who stood bare under Meg’s powerful influence. 

Meg rounded the desk and walked past the girl.  “Danny, can you be a big boy and walk?  I have to carry Maze.  Okay?”  Danny nodded his head earnestly, still trying to wipe the tears off his face with his pudgy hands.  Meg gently set his feet on the ground, stood and pushed open the door to find her Maze.

Chapter 26  Home Is Where Mom Is

Margo had just finished packing.  She was going home today and couldn’t be happier about it.  The cell phone in her purse started vibrating loud enough for her to wonder how they could make a phone do that without it breaking itself. 

“Doesn’t that shake things loose inside?” She thought aloud as she rolled carefully to the neatly made-up hospital bed where her bag was waiting next to her suitcase.  She picked up the phone thinking she’d have to ask Evan about the whole phone-on-vibrate thing.

Glancing at the caller ID she saw it was Theo.

“Hi honey! Where are you?  I thought you’d be here an hour ago?”

“Mom, it’s me, Meg.”

“Meggie?  What’s wrong dear?”

“Mom, we don’t have much time.  You need to get out of the hospital yourself and meet us back home.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”  Margo’s voice took on the protective-mother’s edge, however wheelchair bound she still was.

“We were attacked by Arkdone’s soldiers on our way to come get you.  It’s all over the media.  He forced us out into the public eye and…you need to meet us back home.”

“Home?  You don’t mean with Greg Burns, do you?”

“No Mom.  We’re driving, but you need to fly.  Get there as quick as you can and hunker down.  They’re going to be coming for us.”

“They?”

“Everyone…the authorities, media, curiosity seekers…everyone knows we’re different.”

Margo took a trembling, deep breath. 

“I’m so sorry.  It’s all my fault.”

“Stop, Meg.  This is not your fault.  None of it is; none of it ever has been your fault.  I’ll meet you back home.”

“Yes ma’am,” Meg mumbled, miserable.

“Meg, do you have everyone with you—is everyone okay?”

“Yes, ma’am, everyone is with me, but Evan’s hurt badly.  Sloan is working on him now.”

“What happened to hi
m?”

“He’s suffered second degree burns on the left side of his body.  He was trapped in the SUV when the gas tank exploded.”

“Oh, dear Lord!  Please watch over my family,” she prayed aloud.

“We’re already on our way.
  Can you get out of there and go directly to the airport?”

“Yes, I have my credit cards.  I’ll call you when I land.  Can I talk with Theo?”

“Um, not really.  He was knocked out cold in the battle.  He’ll be fine, but he’s just—”

“As long as he’s alive.”  Margo pinched her eyes closed trying to stay calm.

“Sloan says he has a steady heartbeat and is breathing normally.”

“Wow…okay.”  Margo was thinking how surreal this conversation was and would be to any other mother.  Her life with her children had quickly turned in to one disaster after another.

“I wish I remembered you, Margo.” Meg’s voice was small, childlike.

“
I remember enough for the both of us, Megglet.  Try not to worry; we’ll figure this out together, okay?” she forced herself to say.

“Together,” Meg repeated holding on to the power of that one word, though inwardly she sensed
the woman’s fear and doubt.
 

Chapter 27 Consciousness is Severely Overrated

Creed had taken over driving
the full-sized van.   His blue gaze swept the road before them defensively as he took very seriously the responsibility of getting the family safely to their destination.  There were nine of them in the van, including himself.  Evan was the most injured.  Greg was still knocked out from the incredible jolt of the taser.  Theo was slowly coming around.  The rest of the family was doing what they could to process what had just happened to them. 

Meg crawled to the floor where Evan lay across the bench seat, knees bent so his six-feet, two-inch body could fit.   The badly burned thirteen-year-old dipped in and out of consciousness like
a plastic bag caught in an alleyway’s draft.  He was trying not to, but he couldn’t help moaning in pain. 

Meg cringed—feeling his agony vicariously.  She did everything she could to send him soothing emotions, but she knew her gift was pretty useless in the face of physical pain.  

She looked into Alik’s face with tear-filled, dark eyes.

“Meg, you did everything you could.  Just rest now, sister.”

Alik turned his attentions to Danny who was moaning in his sleep as though suffering through a bad dream.  Alik carefully wiped his baby brother’s damp brow with his stretched-out T-shirt.

Farrow’s heart swelled as she watched Alik with Danny.  Before Alik, she had never known a man to be gentle and caring to anything except his gun when he was cleaning it.  She was crucially aware of how different Alik treated people compared to what she thought she knew of typical male metahuman behavior. 

Farrow blushed when Alik looked over at her, catching her loving gaze with his intelligent sky-blue eyes.  Her fears over what they were facing temporarily eclipsed when he offered her a half-smirk and a wink.  All she could do was smile and turn back around so as not to seem like the drooling girlfriend she knew she was. 

Farrow
looked down at her chewed up fingernails as she thought, not for the first time, about fighting beside Alik.  She was in awe of his heightened gift, but it was his heart that Farrow fell in love with; his forgiving, gentle, compassionate heart was absolutely breathtaking to the former assassin.  She risked a quick glance back at him.  Her blush deepened beautifully when she caught him watching her.

Meg, completely engrossed in her connection with Evan, felt compelled to climb back to be with him.  She sat curled up on the floor, but had to scoot over to make room for Sloan, determined to study Evan herself.

“Alik, would you pass me the grocery sack with the washcloths, plastic bowl and thermometer?  I think it’s near your feet.”

“Sure thing,” he said, peeling his eyes from Farrow.  He yanked the packaging off the cloths before passing them back to his sister.  Meg was ready with a bottle of water.  “He’s definitely running a fever,” Sloan announced after barely touching the part of his face that wasn’t charred. 

“What’s happening to him?” Meg sat on the floor of the back seat trying desperately to lower her brother’s core temperature with cool cloths. 

“His fever just keeps climbing,” Sloan grimaced at the thermometer in her hands. 

The family had stopped at a superstore off the highway to get essential medical supplies for Evan, bottled water and snacks for everyone else.  They had to find another pillow for Danny as he had left his back at Greg’s house and couldn’t sleep without it.  Even now, he was curled against it on the side of the booster seat they’d conveniently found already strapped into the van. 

“I wish I had him in a lab where I could get his blood under a microscope.”  Sloan frowned deeply at the handsome young man struggling to stay alive.  She was adding cool cloths to Evan’s burned and raw face.

“Could it just be his evolution happening?  I mean, I think it’s a little early, but maybe, like with you and the malarial virus Meg, Evan’s was brought on by the fire.” Alik was turned around in the second to last row of seats, watching his brother with worry.

“What if he were already starting his evolution before the fire?  He looked different this morning at breakfast, but I’d just assumed it was from me strangling him last night,” Meg’s brow furrowed.  “Sloan, what could happen if he were in the process of evolving when he was exposed to the fire?”

Sloan shook her head slowly, her blond ponytail swaying at the back of her head.  “I don’t know.  I mean, I don’t know very much about what happened to you three when you went through your evolution.  Evan and I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk about the patterns he noted, if any, between yours and Alik’s change.”  She wrung the water from a cloth in the shared popcorn-sized bowl they were using and traded it for the cloth that was already too warm on Evan’s neck.

“However
, in nature,” she continued, “when a creature, say a caterpillar, is going through its chrysalis phase, it is very fragile.  If exposed to extreme heat or cold—well, the creature certainly dies.  The metamorphosis is an exact series of events, cellular development, growth…if something interrupts that, the results are undoubtedly disastrous.”

“That’s not helping, Sloan,” Cole mumbled.

“They asked my medical opinion, and I gave it,” Sloan said defensively. 

“But
you have rapid healing abilities.  His second-degree burns should heal.  Shouldn’t that count for something?” Theo asked, still groggy after coming to.  He had been listening to the conversation with interest, but instinctively knew the metahumans were going to know more about taking care of their own—especially when it came to their metamorphosis.  They always had.  The only difference was that it was usually Evan making the medical calls.

“They’re not all second-degree burns.  His left hand is very badly burned, but I can’t open his fingers to see how badly.  Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you.”  Sloan’s worried eyes appealed to Meg asking her to understand her helplessness.

“Meg, your change was brought on by being infected by the malarial virus,” Farrow offered, a deep blush beginning in her cheeks.  She hated bringing up the past when she was so controlled by Williams.  “Maybe the burns will just prompt Evan’s evolution, as it did with you?” she suggested hopefully.

“What is his temperature now?”

“A few moments ago it was 106.7.”

“What about brain damage?”

“If he were a human being, yes, I’d say we should worry about brain damage at 107.7, but he’s not human.  I’ve recorded some very high temperatures in my time as a doctor at the Facility, mostly due to excessive heat exposure during training.”

Theo was deep in thought when he was startled by his cell phone ringing.  The van got silent, listening this time to Theo.

“Margo?  Where are you?”

He paused before repeating, “You’re somewhere over New Mexico,” for the rest of the van
, as everyone was listening in.

“He has second degree burns over approximately twenty percent of his body—mostly on his left side, but I’m not as worried about his burns as I am for his fever.”  He paused before saying, “It’s high, Margo.  It’s 106.7.”

He held the phone away from his ear for a moment and everyone heard Margo’s screech. 

“We’ve tried that.  Yes, Margo, we tried that, too. No, we haven’t tried that because we’ve been driving all day trying to get home.”

Theo sat in silence for a good thirty seconds while he listened with a frown, but nodded nonetheless. 

Finally he spoke, and when he did, he sounded as though all the wind had been punched out of him.  “Yes.  I was thinking that, too.  We’ll stop at the first place we can find.  Call me back in an hour or so and I’ll tell you how we’re doing.” He paused, then finished with a tired, “I love you, too.”

“Are we stopping?” Greg Burns muttered in a groggy voice.  He was just coming to, having taken longer to recover from the assault than Theo.