Winter's Warrior: Mark of the Monarch (Winter's Saga #4)

by Karen Luellen

  Ever since they’d come home to an empty house and Meg’s pool of blood by the front door, Margo had been fighting to stay sane, stay in the present and think logically. Truth be told, all she wanted to do was curl up under the covers of her big bed and sob for her family, for her legs, for all that she had that was now gone.

  But she had a little boy to take care of and knowing he depended on her made Margo find strength she never knew she had.

  Margo hadn’t held a baby since her children had grown up. To feel Danny’s warm body heavy in her arms made her heart sing. She knew she should call Theo in to help her lay the baby down for the night, but she couldn’t let him go. Something about holding him helped calm her nerves and gave her a feeling of overall peace—completely unexpected considering what she was going through.

  Danny had loved eating the pizza so much he had managed to get sauce all over his face and in his blond hair.

  Theo had run the bath for the little guy. He added bubbles, which fascinated Danny to no end. The baby hadn’t even noticed when it was time to wash his hair; he was so fascinated with the iridescent spheres. He burst into laughter as he’d wrapped his arms around a big pile only to see them slip away or pop.

  Danny’s laughter was very much like the bubbles in his bath. They seemed to gurgle from deep in his belly and come bubbling up his little throat to his grinning mouth where it sounded as melodic as chimes in the wind.

  Finally clean and skin very puckered, Theo let the water drain and lifted the slippery little body that was their newest son out of the tub to dry him with a towel. Danny loved being clean. He squealed with joy, bolting from Theo’s efforts to dress him and ran around buck-naked! The baby seemed to love playing the clean-streaker game almost as much as playing with the bubbles that helped get him there.

  Margo was so charmed by the little boy; she just couldn’t help but giggle at a very wet Theo chasing Danny’s screeching, naked body streaking around the house. Theo was laughing so hard and was so out of breath, by the time he caught Danny and slipped on his little cartoon covered tighty-whities, they flopped across Margo and Theo’s king-sized bed, exhausted.

  Margo’s mind was so torn. She waffled between fretting over her missing children and enjoying the caregiving of the little metahuman who came into their lives.

  Now, as she held the little boy with both arms, she felt a wave of love that hurt just as much as gave her heart wings.

  Since she could no longer rock in a rocking chair, all she had left to offer the baby was gentle, rhythmic pats on the back and her voice. So she hummed and sang to him the same lullabies her mother sang to her, and that she sang to Meg, Alik and Evan when they were little. Something about singing them made her feel connected to her family and though they’d been gone for years now, when Danny was in her arms breathing his sweet, warm baby’s breath on her neck, she felt her family near.

  She softly nuzzled the little tow-headed baby and kissed his velvet cheek. Margo felt a wave of love curl as tightly around her heart as one of Danny’s blond ringlets would wrap around her finger. She knew she would do anything to protect the baby in her arms. Then she smiled to herself thinking how amazing it was that God gave mothers the ability to love so deeply. When a new child came into her life, her love didn’t get spread thin, but grew deeper and wider.

  Thank You for the love of my children. I know You will protect them, She prayed in her mind. Thank You for my hands and my mind. I know Your will has been done. Thank You most of all for my love and devotion to You, God.

  The woman whose life had been so tested, whose children were in a monster’s lair, whose body had been broken, sat in her wheelchair holding a baby who had been left to die, humming “Amazing Grace.”

  Chapter 53 The Deadly Sins

  The weighty silver spheres went flying across the room, shattering a crystal vase against the ornate granite wall behind it.

  “How dare he!” Williams screamed at the room.

  Dr. Percival Chaunders pressed himself deeper into his leather seat hoping he would be able to control his bladder.

  “He thinks he can come and take over my battle? The Winters are mine to destroy. I made them, all of them!” This time it was the antique Tiffany lamp that found itself in shards against the granite wall.

  Chaunders found himself fixating on a shard of red stained glass as it glistened in the overhead light that seemed unable to penetrate the dark veil of Williams’ anger. The room seemed to pulse with his rage. Dr. Chaunders swallowed hard against his fear, but it won by forcing itself back up as acid burning the back of his throat.

  “I’ll not sit back while he takes what’s mine. Arkdone has always thought of himself superior but tonight, he will see who is truly the more evil.” Williams was pacing the twenty-by-fifteen room as a caged animal would.

  A string of profanities flew like the shards of glass, echoing off the walls.

  “Assemble a new team. The Perficio Rez killed themselves off tonight, except one—Gideon Niche, is that correct?”

  Chaunders couldn’t even find his voice for fear of saying the wrong thing and becoming the focus of Williams’ fury. He nodded vigorously causing his glasses to slip down his greasy nose.

  “Collect him and fifty of my most vicious, deadly metas. We leave tomorrow at noon for the States.” Williams paused to yank his gloves off, whip out a plastic box, grab a syringe and puncture himself between his fingers. Chaunders watched in fascinated horror at the act of corruption.

  He seemed to be injecting himself with what looked like heroine and had no qualms about doing it in front of his second-in-command. Williams’ eyes rolled back in his head while bloody tears spilled from his swollen tear ducts. His head slumped forward against the tabletop, waiting for his bloody frame to feel the rush of pain relief.

  The doctor’s usually pristine three-pieced suit was anything but now. The shirt tails were pulled out, the neck tie was hanging loosely and his fedora was pushed back on his head to accommodate his bloody face-plant into the marble table.

  Unsure what to do, Chaunders waited quietly, wringing his sweat-covered hands. He watched the doctor to make sure he saw his back rise and fall with breaths, but as his eyes were trained on the doctor’s back, he could have sworn he saw something squirm under the Italian cloth of his jacket.

  “What are you waiting for, Chaunders?”

  “Sir?” Percival was startled enough to urinate. Williams’ nose caught the scent and he inhaled deeply, enjoying the fear he created in the sniveling fool who he’d chosen to replace the old commander. He much preferred the weak, easily controlled doctor over the militant killer Oldham.

  “I gave you a directive. Go assemble the fifty soldiers and Niche. Then prepare a flight to leave at twelve hundred hours tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.” Chaunders bounced his portly, wet body out of his seat leaving a large sweat spot where he had sat, and nearly ran to the door of the conference room.

  “Oh, and Chaunders,” Dr. Kenneth Williams called after him, stopping Percival Chaunders in midstep. “In case you were unsure, you will be accompanying the soldiers and me. I’m sure you’re honored to do so.” Williams was sitting up looking straight at the quivering doctor.

  “A-a-as you w-w-ish, sir,” he managed to stutter as the rest of the urine in his bladder dripped down his legs, wetting his socks thoroughly.

  Chapter 54 Meg and the Dark One

  “As I promised, little Meg, I brought someone who’s been dying to see you!”

  Meg was curled up into a ball, her knees to her chin. Her bare feet were already black with grime from the dirt floor. She had been pacing for the last two hours, trying to think, trying to stay warm and trying not to panic at the terror she felt after being shredded by Arkdone’s reprimand before. But now she was too worn out to pace. She cried enough tears. She didn’t know how long she’d been in this cell, but it felt like days.

  Her long dark hair draped around her shoulders looking, even in Arkdone’s wi
cked mind like an exquisite lace mantilla, in all its intricacies of delicately woven curls. She had been praying, of course. Arkdone could sense the purity around her and that, more than anything she’d tried to do before now, gave him pause.

  Her dark eyes looked over her folded arms. He watched her face as she realized what lay at his feet, unmoving.

  He relished the fresh layer of terror that coated her aura and nearly giggled when it began pulsing with anger.

  “What have you done to my Maze?”

  “Oh, he did most of this to himself, although I think it adds a nice touch, don’t you? Apparently he was trying to dig to you, Meg. Touching, really,” Arkdone scoffed.

  As desperately as Meg wanted to run to her coyote’s side and soothe his painful whimpering, she knew she couldn’t get closer than seven feet from him. As it was, the room was only ten feet across.

  Her wide, dark eyes took in the shredded flesh on his paws, bloody and oozing. She saw his sensitive wet nose, dry and sliced wide open in two places. Blood coated his muzzle. She wanted to scream at Arkdone, she wanted to rip him open with her bare hands and slice him the way her Maze was sliced right now.

  Arkdone took a slow, deep breath relishing her venom, though they’d not exchanged but a few words, he knew she was seething and he thrived on her hatred.

  “But I’ve brought you your best friend. I could wave my hand and make him well, if you’d but only ask. In return, of course, I would ask the same simple thing I have already asked: Choose me. Renounce all others and choose me. You’ll have all the power and luxuries you might want, and your pet coyote will walk beside you happy and healthy.” Arkdone shrugged his well-built shoulders. “It seems like a simple enough decision, Meg. Don’t you want Maze to be well?”

  Meg was too angry to speak at first, so she prayed for the right words and the strength to say them.

  “I want my family and me to be left in peace. I want to be at home with my Mom and Theo and my brothers around me. I want my Maze to be curled up on my feet after having had a good game of chase in the backyard. I want to feel like a normal sixteen-year-old-girl.”

  Arkdone offered a dramatic sigh. “Oh, you young, sweet girl, you don’t have any idea how impossible those wishes are now, do you?”

  He shook his head solemnly, his Italian leather shoe nudging Maze. “The life you knew is as relevant as a diamond studded collar would be to this dying creature right now. You’re going to have to set new priorities. After all, it is part of growing up. Back in my day, you would be old enough to marry.” His eyes twinkled horrifically at the thought that struck him. “You would make a beautiful, powerful bride to the right groom, my dear.”

  Meg shuddered at the thought of what Arkdone insinuated.

  “Don’t think to answer right now. Take your time to mull over what has been offered to you…and what would happen to you and your family should you choose not to accept.” His face softened. “You are quite extraordinary—so much emotion bubbling just under the surface. You’re effervescent with one of my favorite deadly sins: wrath. Absolutely beautiful.

  “I can imagine you dressed for battle, your dark hair falling down around your shoulders, your gift of influence working those who cross you like puppets on your marionette strings. You would be absolutely magnificent, my dear girl.”

  Meg was seething, but she forced herself to breathe in through her nose, out through her mouth. The scent of ashes and sulfur invaded her. “Arkdone—it’s an anagram of ‘Dark One’.”

  “And oh so clever, too?” His handsome face smiled widely.

  “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” he said, waving his hand gallantly at the coyote. “Though I would not advise you get too close.” He shrugged. “Only Bjorn knows which of you are triggers and which are the explosives. I’d hate to have to come scrape you off the cold, dirt floor—your perfectly shaped body stiff with death’s lovely breath lingering on your decaying skin.”

  Arkdone’s eyes crawled across her frame now that she was standing, fists clenched against the furthest wall possible from him. Arkdone jumped up to the slim ledge and opened the door there easily.

  “Oh, here,” he said and tossed a small handgun back onto the dirt floor. “Just in case he’s dying for a hug, you may need to stop his advances with that. Remember, it’s either kill or be killed Meg. The nanoweapon lodged in your heart and his won’t care if you’re trying not to get close to one another. One bullet is all you get.”

  Meg’s eyes saw the gun glint off the dim light from overhead. She wasn’t sure, but it could be closer to the coyote than seven feet. She tried to estimate, but her mind was playing tricks on her. Who could guess exactly how far away seven feet is—especially when lives depended on it?

  She didn’t move to get the gun. Instead, she stood thinking about her sweet Maze and how she found him all those years ago. Here, lying on the dirt floor, Maze looked a little like he did when he was a puppy. He was on his side, legs and face twitching occasionally in his sleep. But it was the puddles of blood soaking into the putrid, hard dirt from his ripped feet and nose that tore the image of him as a puppy from her mind. Now all she saw was how badly she let her best friend and family down. Tears of anger and fear slipped down Meg’s dirty cheeks.

  Chapter 55 Alik and Farrow

  “Can I get you something from inside?” Farrow asked.

  “No, thanks. I’ll get some stuff myself after I’m done pumping the gas.” Alik smiled at the girl who’d driven all night with him, forcing him to stop tracking every hour so he wouldn’t get retro-cog sick. At nearly five in the morning they stopped to use the restrooms and fill the gas tank.

  Farrow nodded, her short, dark hair falling adorably into her eyes, turned and hurried to use the station’s facilities. Not wanting Farrow to feel dependent on him, Alik had given her fifteen hundred dollars in cash. As far as he was concerned, it was only fair.

  With the gas pumped, Alik locked the car and ran inside the building to get a few snacks. His arms were full of turkey sticks, peanuts, protein bars and vitamin-packed energy drinks when Farrow found him.

  “You know, they do have little baskets,” she teased.

  “I almost have everything I need. Just one more thing.”

  “Well, tell me what it is so I can get it for you. If you put one more thing in your arms, the whole lot is going to topple.”

  “I just need about ten packs of those white powdered doughnuts.”

  Farrow raised her eyebrows. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ten packs of those sugar and fat-based, processed pastries?”

  “They’re for my sister. She loves white powdered doughnuts.” Alik looked down at Farrow with red-rimmed eyes.

  “Ten packs, you said?” Farrow hurriedly started grabbing them by the fistful.

  “Thanks Farrow,” Alik managed with emotion cracking his voice only once.

  “No problem,” she said trying to offer an encouraging smile.

  After they paid for their items, they carried their sacks back to the car in silence.

  “We need to talk about a plan, Alik.”

  “I know, I’ve been mulling a few ideas over, but none of them are ready to be shared yet.”

  Farrow watched Alik’s eyes begin to glow. He was already tracking. She pulled out of the lot and got back on highway I40 East and headed toward Nashville. They were already halfway there and had only been driving for four hours.

  They were cruising along at ninety miles per hour as the sun was coming up over the horizon. Farrow was thinking how beautiful Alik’s natural blond highlights looked in the morning light when he yelled, “TRAP!”

  Farrow immediately slowed the car to the posted speed limit of seventy miles per hour. Both breathed a sigh of relief when they saw the patrol car half hidden behind the cement of an overpass.

  “Don’t speed up. He’s with two other cops on motorcycles over the next ten miles or so.”

  “Wow, am I glad you’re able t
o do that tracking thing,” Farrow mumbled thinking about how ridiculously awful it would be to have to open the back of the SUV for an officer.

  “I’m going to call Mom to check in. Knowing her, she’s already wide awake and sipping coffee by now…at least, that’s what she used to do before she was in a wheelchair.” Alik frowned as he pulled his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans. He slipped his finger across the screen to wake it, and dialed his mother’s cell phone directly. He was thinking that would probably be easier for her to get to than one of the house phones.

  Margo, who had been making chocolate chip cookies with Theo and Danny, picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello, Alik?”

  “Hey, Mom. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine. Where are you?”

  Alik could hear Theo talking in the background.

  “We’re just west of Nashville.”

  “What? Where are you going? Did you find them?” Margo held her breath waiting for Alik’s response.

  “Yes, I tracked them to that private airfield near the house. You know, Kittyhawk? I used my new—skill to figure out where the flight was headed.” The vein in his forehead started pulsing angrily. “They were taken to Louisville, Kentucky, Mom.”

  “Louisville, Kentucky!” Margo repeated for Theo’s sake. “Are you flying there?”

  “Sorta,” Alik didn’t want to lie.

  “Alik Winter, are you flying on an airplane or are you driving like a bat out of hell?” Margo was staring at the wilted peace lily she’d brought home from the hospital—a gift from the children to their mother in hopes of brightening her room.

  “No flights were leaving immediately from either DFW or Love Field to Louisville, Mom. So,” Alik sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes bracing himself for the fit his mother was about to pitch. “I’m using my tracking ability to keep tabs on speed traps and the police in general so Farrow can drive a little faster than we ordinarily would.”

  “WHAT?”