Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) (19 page)

Williams winced, visibly shaking in his fresh skin.  The flight attendant briefly looked up from her task and instinctively wanted to hide from the man whose black eyes darted frantically as though looking for something or someone to kill.

“He was the last of my
super soldiers.  My perficio rez. The strongest, the survivor—” From Williams’ lip, a stringy line of spittle flapped as he spoke, making his face look far more salivating-pit-bull than human. 

“Find them and kill Gideon and retrieve my daughter.  If they escape, I will see that you’re conscious through the hours of torture I will exact upon your abhorrent body.  Do I make myself clear?”

“Ye-yes, sir.” Warmth spread beneath his backside as he felt himself wet the bed.

Williams slipped his finger across the touchscreen on his phone and stood as still as a rock.  Stanley watched his Director, awaiting orders.  When they came, Stanley wasn’t surprised, nor did he ask any questions.  He simply obeyed.

“Bring the flight attendant to me.  I need to let off some of my—vexation.”

Jaimie was finishing h
er preparation of the coffee tray and waiting for the coffee beans to finish grinding in the machine when a massive figure of a man yanked back the velvet red curtain separating the galley kitchen from the passenger cabin.  She spun to face the figure, confusion dancing in those perfect eyes as she looked up at Stanley.  She didn’t even have time to scream before his giant hands were wrapped around her nose and mouth.  The sounds of her insignificant struggle were drowned by the coffee grinder. 

Stanley released her face when he felt her starting to hang as dead weight in his am
ple arms.  Thinking how proud he was of himself, he carefully shut off the coffee grinder and dragged the body down the aisle as an offering to his Director.  He sat her body in an empty leather seat beside the doctor. 

As for Williams himself, he was methodically laying out the content of the surgical bag he carried with him for just such occasions. 

“Now, my dear, allow me to examine you,” he said as he lifted a syringe to her eye and pulled her lid open.

Jaimie watched a droplet of the liquid at the needle’s tip hang mesmerizingly still and knew in her heart she would never see white sandy beaches.  Not without eyes.

Chapter 39 Down

Creed was on his seventeenth mile according to the pedometer he ignored on his wristwatch.  He’d been running at full speed for the past hour, trying to pound away the image of Meg’s beautiful dark eyes grazing over him with indifference.  That’s what killed.  He went from holding her in his arms, whispering devotions and hearing her purr against his chest, the promise ring catching moonlight in its gold…to cold indifference.  Then she was gone. 

His body ached from the punishment he had been putting himself through.  He could handle that pain.  He could just switch it off like Meg had showed him he could do all those months ago.

Back when she loved me. 

His gift. 

He groaned at the thought.

The pain ripping his heart in jagged shards was killing him. 

He wasn’t able to let her go. 

Ever. 

She was the love of his life and the girl he wanted to grow old with. 

Earlier, Creed had just found his stride, legs pumping rhythmically, when an elderly couple caught his eye.  They were shuffling through the park, taking in an evening stroll together.  He nearly burst into tears at the sight.  The gentleman wore a brown fedora and a scarf was tied around his wrinkled neck.  The woman’s silver hair hung down her back in a single braid.  She wore a hand-knitted cap pulled over her ears; her matching scarf billowed behind her with the breeze.  They were holding gloved hands as they probably had for the last fifty years.  They looked at one another and smiled, wrinkles creasing each of their faces.  But the look in their eyes was absolute devotion with a glint of humor.  Creed swallowed hard when they shared a mischievous grin at something he said.  They must have had countless private jokes after all their shared memories. 

Gone.

She just walked out the door and never came back.

If it weren’t for Evan’s claim that she’d been captured by Arkdone’s people, Creed would have sworn her reasons for disappearing had everything to do with not wanting to be a part of them anymore. 

However much logic he tried to throw at what happened, he just couldn’t make sense of it. 

That night he had to make the toughest decision of his life.  Leave with the Winter family or stay and look for Meg.  In that split second he did what he knew to be the right thing.  He flew from the room and ran down the path in the direction he saw her leave just twenty minutes before.  He wasn’t two-hundred yards away from the motel room when his sharp night vision caught a glimmer of metal in the leaves on the ground.  He knew what it was before he even touched it.  Reaching down, he grabbed the metal and held it in front of him.  There, dangling in his hand by one of the wires was Meg’s MP3 and headphones.  Holding them up to his nose, Creed could smell her scent—lilies and strawberries—all over them. 

He didn’t have time to dwell on it at the time.  Not when his sharp hearing caught the squealing of tires up the road.  The rev of an engine confirmed it.  He was already running back to the SUV loading up with the Winter family. 

“I hear them coming, MOVE!” He pushed Andrews out of the driver’s seat and yanked the truck in reverse.  They sped away from the motel just in time to see, from across the water, the silent caravan of police vehicles hurrying to the rooms they’d just left.

Without a word, Creed tossed the MP3 back to a very sick Evan.  It hit him in the chest before falling into his lap.  With his good hand, Evan touched the cold metal. 

“I found that on the trail,” Creed growled to the silent car.

“If you knew they were going to come for her, why did you let her go?”  Creed’s blue eyes kept darting into the rearview mirror trying to read Evan’s facial expression.  “Answer me!” he screamed.

Evan had let his burned head lean back against the seat.  His eyes were staring straight up at the night sky through the sunroof.  He just slowly rolled his head back and forth and stayed silent for days afterward.  Against all the accusations and anger, Evan had nothing to say.  He did not defend himself nor did he apologize.  He didn’t make a move to help when the family was deciding who would go looking for her.  As far as Creed was concerned, Evan betrayed his sister to save his own burned skin.  And as much as Creed had grown to love the Winter Clan, he loathed Evan.  Only his respect for Dr. Winter and Alik stopped Creed from beating Evan to death with his bare hands. 

Creed coughed the emotion choking him between constricted breaths and kept running, as though the answer to his anger and heartache were at some far-off finish-line constructed by darkening hope.

After all these months, he was struggling to stay in the present.  He would dream of his dark-eyed angel every night. In his dreams, they walked side by side as though neither had a care in the world as long as they had one another.

Why would you let me find her God, only to take her away from me?  Why? 

Creed pumped his burning legs harder.  He’d refused himself the relief of cutting off the pain.  Physical pain he could control.  Pain was the
only
thing in his life he had control over now. 

He was approaching the modest motel where Alik, Farrow and he had rented adjoining rooms during their hunt for Meg.  Just as he was passing their door, it opened and Alik came sprinting out.

“Hey brother, wanna toss the pig skin around for a while before we gear up?”  Alik had to race to catch up with the anguished soldier. 

Alik knew Creed was hurting.  Unless his eyeballs had developed the ability to sweat, Creed had definitely been crying. 

Without waiting for an answer, he threw the ball to the metahuman.  Effortlessly, Creed reached and caught the football in one huge hand.  He slowed to a jog then stopped entirely.  He was breathing hard, but he didn’t look as torn-up as he should after the wicked-fast pace he’d kept for the past hour. 

Alik had been watching his half-brother through the tacky green curtains their room sported.  He was heartbroken about his sister, but he was starting to really worry about the distraught soldier who didn’t seem to function without her. 

Creed wasn’t sleeping and he wasn’t eating.  The last time Alik saw Creed smile was when he was with Meg more than four months ago.  His whole personality was different when he was with her. Then he was quiet but at peace, often deep in thought and devoted to taking care of her.  But things changed after Kentucky.  Meg was withdrawn, distant.  Then she vanished.

That night pierced Alik deeply because the family looked to him to make the decision—the possibly fatal decision to leave and save everyone except his sister or stay to look for Meg at the risk of them all being captured by Arkdone’s soldiers.   He’d followed Evan’s advice and here they were, three and a half months later, still looking for her.  The guilt Alik felt over his decision haunted him day and night.  And as the weeks passed, he became more and more resentful toward a silent Evan. 

Alik shook his head in frustration at the thought of Evan.  His younger brother had chosen not to come help look for their missing sister.  He came out of his “evolution” unchanged and withdrawn.  The chosen brother, who had been given “the most advanced version of the serum,” came out of his metamorphosis with no wings to speak of.  Instead, his logical, devoted little brother was now withdrawn and sullen.  Dark circles framed still sharp bronze eyes.  He looked haunted, anguished but refused to discuss the night he told his family Meg was a lost cause.  He stayed with their mom and Theo instead.  Alik hadn’t spoken to him in months and the bitterness Alik felt toward him was raw and real.

Now Creed was sullen and withdrawn.  He rarely spoke and when he did, it was in short phrases.  Dark circles hung heavy under his blue, bloodshot eyes and though his muscular and skeletal structure was still phenomenal, he was starting to look wirier than any of them had ever seen the soldier, even before he was double-dosed with the original serum back in Hawaii.

Without a word, the boys fell into a silent game of catch.  The sun was setting in pools of red, orange and purple, but Creed didn’t seem to notice. 

His world was a dull gray without Meg. 

Alik sighed deeply, remembering his sister’s wide smile.  He could see her perfectly in his mind’s eye, the way she would park her fists on her hips, lock her jaw and fuss at him over something he did intentionally just to rile her up.

“Damn, I miss her,” Alik blurt
ed.

Creed’s glazed-over eyes burst with a painful fire.  He looked at Alik like he’d just stuck a knife in his gut and twisted.  Even through his heartache, he didn’t missed a beat in the catch and throw façade they were playing with the football, but he didn’t say anything either.

Alik let the silence go for a while, but felt compelled to speak up.  “Listen, I’m not letting you off that easy, Creed.  You need to talk about her.”

Creed caught Alik’s toss, turned smoothly
away and started back to the motel on silent footsteps, the football tucked under his thick biceps. 

“Damn it, brother,” Alik called to Creed’s back.  “We all miss her.  Everybody’s broken up about the way she was…” Alik visibly flinched at his crisp memory, “…about what happened, but we have to lean on each other so we don’t lose hope.  We are strongest when we pull together.”

Creed stopped walking, his head hung heavily for a moment before he turned back and stared unblinking at his worn running shoes instead of the brother he didn’t even know he had until a few months ago when the family informed him. 

Apparently, that bit of information was just one of the many pieces in his life he couldn’t remember, thanks to the battle with Williams back on the Big Island. 

Creed knew what it felt like to have precious memories taken away, only this time he was on the receiving end of the damage it caused.  And this time, it was so much worse. 

Meg is gone. 

“She was the glue that held me to the family.”  Creed’s voice sounded hollow.

“Meg is the glue that holds our whole family tight, it’s true.  It’s different without her.”

“I—I…shit Alik.” Creed ran his hand over his recently shaved head.  “It’s as if I can’t take a deep breath without her.”

“I know.  She has this way about her.” The sixteen-year-old shook his head as though
he was just as perplexed as awed by his sister.  “She just has that personality—it’s like she’s the sunlight.”

“Alik, you know I’ll never stop looking for her.  She is my heart.  I feel when I’m with her.  Without her
…” he pinched the bridge of his nose as his words trailed off, trying to control the tears. 

It’s bad enough you’re saying all this sappy shit,
he scoffed at himself.
Don’t you dare start crying, too.

“This world is too dark, Alik.  There’s evil everywhere.  I will look for her until she’s found, but just so you know, I am fully expecting to die so she’s saved.  Then my life will be worthwhile.  Nothing else matters to me.  This
messed up world needs her sunlight.  Maybe with you three, and now Danny…maybe you can make right the sick shit that’s wrapped itself around mankind.  I was never meant to be more than a pawn in this game.  At least I got to know what it felt like to love and be loved.   Who knows, maybe your mom’s right about me having a soul.  I expect to find out soon.”