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

by Karen Luellen

  Even as the arid pain of consciousness made Creed’s body convulse, his mind was desperate to plead what would be only his second prayer ever. He prayed for forgiveness for being so late to recognize the preciousness of life.

  I am not worthy of any forgiveness, but I do have a soul, and if you choose to show me mercy, please take it from this body. Let me watch over Meg as her guardian instead.

  Creed’s mind drifted toward the isolating blackness before a burst of iridescent light blossomed warm and welcoming to his weary soul, drawing him into its comforting embrace.

  Chapter 15 Wings

  Meg’s back hurt.

  She couldn’t figure out why it was hurting, but it was. The location of the pain was strange. It ached on either side of her spine, right where her shoulder blades would be. She kept trying to remember why it was hurting. Had I bumped into something?

  No. Not that she remembered. The ache was strange. It didn’t feel like cuts—more like tender bruises. Frowning, she reached one arm over the opposite shoulder to touch the tender spot and felt something.

  A moment of panic had her patting the entire area and feeling the juncture at which something was protruding from her skin.

  Was I stabbed? Was I impaled? How could I have been and not remembered?

  Meg’s other hand flew up to her opposite shoulder to feel if the other ache was being caused by another projectile. It was.

  Oh my God. What is this?

  Having just awakened from a terrifying dream, Meg had only stumbled into the bathroom to brush her teeth, as she always did after a bad dream. She needed to get the foul taste out of her mouth. All she was wearing was a thin strapped tank top and panties. The lights were off and Meg was standing barefoot on the cold tile frantically feeling things dug into her back. They hurt so badly, but felt strangely better when she rubbed the base—the part where it embedded itself into her skin. What the hell?

  Meg slapped on the lights, and blinked hard against the glare, desperately searching for a handheld mirror. Her shaking hands scattered bottles of mousse and mouthwash to the floor before they found what they sought. Meg spun and held the small hand held at an angle to see her back in the built in bathroom mirror.

  Her jaw dropped.

  There, on either side of her spine were what looked like the start of…no, it couldn’t be.

  But it was; there were even small furry feathers.

  Wings.

  She was sprouting fledgling wings.

  Shaking with fear, she dropped the hand held and heard it shatter on the hard tile at her feet.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was agape, but no air entered her lungs. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel the ache in her back, now more acutely than even moments before.

  They were growing, changing.

  Even as Meg stood with shards of broken glass dancing in the light around her feet, the wings possessed her. She felt herself quiver with fear and pain as she unintentionally stretched the growths.

  Terrified, and determined to stop the mutation, she ran from the bathroom, not even stopping when a shard of glass dug into the arch of her foot. With blood trailing, Meg sprinted to the tool box she knew was kept in the garage. Feeling the foreign appendages growing by the minute, Meg frantically rifled through the box’s contents and found the rusted tool she was looking for.

  Without stopping to think of the ramifications, she opened the large wire cutters and reached to feel for the base of one of the wings, now sporting several real feathers.

  Blindly, Meg felt to position the rusted cutters in place and used both hands to close the handles together, screaming at the pain she was inflicting on herself.

  Clip

  Meg felt wetness slip down her back but didn’t care. What she did care about was attacking the other wing before it grew thicker than the wire cutters could accommodate.

  Repeating the blind, crazed positioning of the tool, she squeezed the handles together a second time and heard her own anguished cries echo off the unfinished walls of the garage.

  Clip

  More warm, wetness oozed down her back from where the second wing used to be.

  Standing in an ever-growing pool of red, Meg stared down at the clipped bone-like appendages where they landed on the dusty floor. She watched her red blood soak into their willowy white feathers.

  Pain radiated from her back escalated. It became piercing, all-encompassing. Meg swayed on her feet from it, or maybe it was the blood loss.

  Dropping the bloodied, rusted tool, she reached back to feel the site where she had severed her wings, and for the briefest of moments, felt relief that she had stopped the mutation from achieving fruition.

  That’s when Meg felt the ache return and the wet, bloody stumps start to grow again under her fingers, sticky with blood.

  She screamed in anguish, and collapsed out of control to the dirty floor.

  ***

  A warm hand was rubbing Meg’s back where she was sure the wings were growing. The hand rubbed harder, and she whimpered in pain.

  A groan escaped her locked jaw as she shook with fear.

  “Meg? Meg, wake up,” a raspy voice urged.

  Her eyes were clenched shut with the fear of seeing the orange rust on the wire cutter clash with the dark-red blood dripping off their blades.

  “Meg, open your eyes. Wake up. Please wake up,” the voice pleaded.

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed quietly, still caught in the nightmare.

  The gentle rubbing on her back continued, and Meg waited for the person to gasp in horror at the growing deformity where they touched her, but they didn’t.

  It took her several moments before she pulled her hands away from her wet face and shook the echoes of the nightmare off.

  Meg looked around the floor first and seeing no blood, reached up behind her and felt for the wings she was sure were still growing there.

  Her hands only touched the flat expanse of her back. Nothing was sticking out of her. Hurriedly, Meg checked the other side, only to find the same unbelievable normality.

  Meg breathed deeply and ventured to look up at the person who had spoken to her so tenderly through a raspy voice.

  Cole.

  His green eyes looked worried as they searched Meg. He was still lying on his gurney.

  “Cole?”

  “You were dreaming,” he said frowning.

  “You…you’re awake.” The adrenaline from her terrifying nightmare was still pumping, causing Meg’s teeth to chatter.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Me?” Meg shook her head dismissively, trying desperately to grasp the here and now. “Never mind me. How are you feeling?”

  Cole looked around then connected with her eyes again. “Where are we?”

  “On a plane heading back to the states,” Meg offered not sure how much to unload on him during his first moments of consciousness.

  “You were asleep on my chest,” he jumped subjects, offering a weak smile.

  “Yeah, I guess I was,” she shrugged, running her fingers through her mussed curls. The dream left her feeling foggy. It seemed so real. Meg fought the urge to touch her back again to be sure she didn’t feel wings sprouting.

  “Why are we going back to the states? What happened?” Cole frowned anew.

  Meg sighed deeply.

  Cole’s facial expression changed from confused to scared as his memory kicked in. His hand reached up and felt his shoulder where he was struck by Farrow’s sniper bullet. He pulled up the short sleeve of his hospital gown to look at the wound with his own eyes. Clean, white gauze hugged the site. Tentatively, he touched the cloth. He felt nothing. No pain at all. Curious, he started peeling back the white medical tape.

  Knowing he needed to see for himself what Evan determined an hour or so ago, Meg didn’t move to stop him.

  Beneath the gauze was fresh, pink skin. Cole touched it carefully. Feeling no pain, he rubbed it gently with his palm. It felt
a little tender, but fine. He stared amazed at how quickly he was healing.

  “It’s a normal advantage metahumans experience,” Meg offered carefully.

  His green eyes flashed to hers.

  “Oh, my God,” he said slowly, face paling.

  “Yeah.”

  Cole sat silently for a few moments, eyes darting as he pieced together his memories. Meg just watched him. Evan had warned her that he may experience erratic behavior when he first awoke. They really didn’t know how Cole’s body was going to react to the serum.

  Physically, he was definitely going through metahuman changes. His chest was widening with muscles. His legs were thickening and biceps growing. Even his sixteen-year-old face was changing. As she watched him process the implications of what he’d done to himself, Meg noticed his jaw had begun to square off, the cleft in his chin was becoming more defined, his forehead even seemed thicker and he was looking to need a good shave. Never had Meg known Cole to grow a dark scruffy beard, but there it was. She looked at his right cheek where his charming dimple used to flash when he’d smile and wondered if it would still be there.

  Meg missed him. She missed her friend.

  “What happened while I was out? Why did we have to leave the island?” Cole asked in a shaky voice.

  “A lot happened, Cole. Are you sure you’re ready to hear it right now?”

  “Not knowing is freaking me out. Just tell me.” A look of panic struck him and he tried to sit up, craning his neck to see around the passenger seats around us.

  “Oh, my God. My dad! Where’s my dad?”

  “He’s fine. He’s up front with mom.” Instinctively, she needed to soothe him, so she reached out and held his hand.

  “Do you want me to get him?” Meg offered.

  Cole’s green eyes stared back from a changed, matured face. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Okay,” she nodded reassuringly.

  “Tell me what happened,” he urged.

  Chapter 16 Sunlight In My Eyes

  The landing in LAX to refuel was thankfully uneventful. They had the option to leave the plane for the two hours it was going to take for the ground crew to do their refueling and maintenance checks, but Meg didn’t want to. She felt compelled to keep vigil over the aircraft as strangers worked on it, worried Williams’ influence positioned someone evil nearby. Thoughts of bombs being planted or wires being cut kept her focusing her energies on the strangers who wandered around outside the plane.

  They were all pretty anxious to get airborne again, but Margo found Meg to let her know that she and Theo were heading into the airport for a walk. Mom promised to be right back, but Meg knew she wanted a chance to talk with Theo alone, so she didn’t give her a hard time about leaving. As she watched them leave, she wondered again if she should offer to use her gift to help Theo.

  Sometimes, it was hard to offer help only because the recipient would have to first admit they were struggling. No one worried about Evan helping perform surgery, but there was something different about her evolved empath ability.

  People readily accepted the need to remove a bullet from the flesh through surgery, but not everyone was as comfortable admitting the need to remove the blackness of anger and sadness from their hearts. Somehow it made people feel lesser which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to an emotion-based being like Meg.

  She could feel emotions just as well as she could reach out and feel someone’s skin. Everyone’s essence, their aura, their vibration, their emotional signature—as she’d taken to calling it—was as clear as their physical body to her. Sometimes it could be even more clear. She didn’t have to be with people to feel their emotional signature.

  Meg was thinking about the irony of her empath gift causing people to feel stress instead of the peace it could offer, when she saw Alik and Farrow walking toward her.

  “Hey, Meg. Are you okay if we head to do some shopping?” Alik nodded toward the airport.

  “Of course, I’m okay.” Meg offered Farrow a smile. The more she got to know Farrow, the more Meg really liked her. They didn’t elaborate about what they were shopping for, but they didn’t have to. Meg knew Alik and Farrow went into the airport to pick up a few items she hadn’t thought to pack for the girl. Farrow had to have a few essential toiletries.

  Evan offered to walk with Maze outside. The poor coyote was in desperate need of fresh air and a smooth patch of grass. The indoor doggie pads they had for him to use during the flight were just enough to make him mad. He yipped happily exiting the plane. Meg couldn’t help but smile at his joy.

  Even though everyone had only been gone for twenty minutes, she found herself wringing her hands and pacing the aisle. She would stop periodically to close her eyes and focus on the foreign emotional signatures around the aircraft looking for any malevolence.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” a male voice called to her. Meg turned abruptly and watched Captain Jacobi wink reassuringly at her. “LAX is my turf. I know every one of the crew under this bird’s belly. They’re good people. Don’t fret, little lady. I’ll get you and your family to Dallas.”

  She smiled at the older gentleman. It really was sweet of him to try to make her feel better.

  She’d take his word for it a whole lot more if she hadn’t had to calm him down with her gift moments after they boarded the plane back on the Big Island.

  Captain Jacobi had witnessed Paulie’s death and was severely shaken by it—rightfully so. But they needed him to fly, so Meg left the copilot in charge while she sat with Jacobi and mended his fractured psyche. She had never done that before. Good grief, all this was new to her, but she understood they needed him functioning and, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Meg hoped she didn’t overdo it in there. Jacobi seemed awfully relaxed and chipper.

  Jacobi made a clicking sound with his tongue while winking and shooting a pretend gun at her before walking away. Meg shook her head, worried. Yeah, maybe I did overdo it.

  From the back of the plane Meg heard someone call her name.

  “Meg? Are you there?”

  Smiling at the sound of his deepened voice, she walked back to see Cole. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she teased.

  “Hey, you.” He smiled through a sleepy grin showcasing that sweet dimple in his cheek.

  Meg giggled at his brown hair standing straight up, momentarily forgetting the possible dangers around them.

  “What’s so funny?” Cole looked around himself.

  “You are sporting some serious bed-head,” Meg laughed, reaching out to try to smooth the four inches of his thick hair defying gravity.

  He grinned sheepishly and reached to run his large hands through his mane, only making it worse.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, hopping up to sit on what used to be Farrow’s gurney.

  “Better. I needed that nap.”

  Evan had removed his I.V. and allowed him to get dressed earlier. His wrinkled green T-shirt matched his eyes. Cole was always a handsome boy, but the infinite serum had morphed him into a strikingly gorgeous guy. His physique just seemed to keep redefining itself.

  Meg hadn’t realized she was staring until Cole’s face started blushing red and he hopped off his gurney to busy his hands with folding his sheet.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “For what?” he asked, pretending nonchalance.

  “For staring. You really have changed a lot. It’s like watching a butterfly work its way out of a chrysalis, fluttering its wet wings,” she marveled.

  Cole shrugged in his aw-shucks-ma’am kind of way.

  “I guess I was really lucky to have survived the serum,” he muttered.

  “Yeah, you were.”

  “I almost died, didn’t I?”

  Meg blinked away the tears that sprang to her eyes. “Yeah, you did.”

  “Dad told me you saved me.”

  Now it was her turn to shrug.

  “He said you used your evolved gift to hel
p me.” Cole stopped fidgeting with the blanket he was folding and stared earnestly at Meg. She was studying her ragged cuticles.

  “He said if you hadn’t done that, I may have died before we even made stateside. And that it hurts you to use your gift, but you did it anyway to try to save me,” Cole pressed.

  Meg wished Dr. Andrews hadn’t mentioned that part. She hated looking weak to anyone. It was her turn to fidget, so she hopped off the gurney started straightening the wrinkles she just created there, intentionally turning her back to her friend.

  “How did you know it would work, Meg? Why did you risk it?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Meg felt a surge of defensiveness.

  “You know what I mean,” he pushed.

  “I didn’t know it would work. I wasn’t even trying at first. I was really mad at you, Cole Andrews.” She spun and glared up at Cole’s earnest face.

  “I was sitting beside you, watching your blue lips and feeling your feverish forehead, and I was LIVID!”

  Ah yes, Meg thought. I’m much more comfortable yelling than feeling weak and emotional all the time.

  Cole just nodded, accepting her anger.

  She kept going.

  “You selfish ass! You dosed yourself with an untested serum! You were so willing to risk your life, for what? So you’d stop feeling pain? So you could be a big, tough guy meta? When you were filling that syringe back at the lab, did it ever occur to you that you could have killed yourself? Did it? Did you think about what that would have done to your dad? Do you have any idea how terrifying it was when we found your body on the floor?”

  Her body shuddered at the image she painted in her mind.

  The muscles in Cole’s jaw bulged as he clenched his teeth against her tirade. His eyes were downcast, but he said nothing in his defense.

  “Then, not even twenty-four hours pass and we learn Williams is en route to hunt us with more than a dozen deranged mutant metas and we have to somehow escape him while dragging your unconscious ass around! Paulie and Creed are dead! And one of the most precious people in my life, one of the few people on this measly planet I thought I could trust with my life, is dangling by a blackened thread, on death’s door!” Meg’s voice cracked with tears she refused to acknowledge.