Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6) (6 page)

9 Defend or Attack  

The ornate, green palms on either side of the front door were shredded in the wake of the RPG.  Their fan-like leaves swayed in the breeze to the chorus of frantic screams coming from neighboring houses. 

Evan’s attention was on the beam of moonlight right within reach, but everything changed at the sound of boots crunching in the thick grass on the front lawn.

They’re attacking from both sides!  Damn it!

A quick glance at Alik was all Evan had time for when three deadly barrels of assault rifles stepped from the shadows of the hallway.  The gunfire was deafening. 

Creed grabbed the hot barrel with his bare hands and in one swift motion shoved it back into the soldier’s solar plexus knocking the wind out of the attacker.  He spun the weapon in his hand and opened fire.

Pop, pop, pop!

Like ants, the soldiers dressed in full battle gear spilled into the room until gunfire, shouts of violence and skin-on-skin smacks echoed off what remained of the living room walls.

Alik’s massive size didn’t slow him from using his viper speed.  He turned to the side, avoiding the trifecta of bullets aimed at his face.  With his left hand
, he shoved the rifle to point up and slammed his fist into the curve of the soldier’s elbow.  One strategic punch to his nose had shards of bone exploding in the soldier’s brain causing death on impact.

Creed yanked the weapon from the hands of the nearest soldier, swung and punched him in the face
, spun and followed through with an elbow to the throat, a swift jabbed from the butt of the rifle up rendered him breathless.  Creed finished him off with a strategic back kick hurling him across the room. 

Evan and Cole
watched what used to be the front door, having heard the crunching of approaching boots.  The first soldier’s black boot had just stepped into view when Cole decided he wasn’t waiting for any more of the enemy to show up.  He aimed at the wall and fired three shots in a row.  Screams and gurgling sounds proved his instincts correct. 

Evan saw the blackness of the night moving, moonlight glinting off the metallic weapons en route to kill.  Without thinking, he reached out to the blue light, rolled it in his fingers to angle it most effectively and sent it flying into the team of soldiers. 

He didn’t stop to watch the effectiveness of his fire—he already knew by the screams and the scent of burning flesh.

Cole was overtaken by three soldiers.  One had him in a headlock and the others were punching him in the gut and sides.

Evan’s glance at Cole took his eyes off his attackers as more poured into the living room filling the small space with what were clearly metahumans.  The four boys were facing terrifying odds that just kept getting worse by the second as more soldiers pushed into the melee. 

Alik disarmed a soldier, reached out and grabbed him by the elbows and yanked so hard he dislocated both his arms.  The guy was screaming, but Evan only saw his mouth open
—the place was overflowing with the noise of ruthless violence.

The still-hot tip of a rifle aimed at Evan from the other side of the shredded wall.  He could almost imagine the feel of the trigger beneath the attacker’s finger.   He knew he had less than a second to either defend or attack. 

He decided to do both. 

The bullet cut the noise, spinning through the air in slow motion as Evan jumped to the side, aimed a ball of firelight at the soldier and sent the burst directly into the eyes, blinding him instantly. 

Evan looked down at his hand in amazement, never having created a blinding flash of light before. 

He practiced his newfound skill next on the guys beating the crap out of Cole.  Once released, Cole yanked his gun from his back and fired one round in each of the
soldiers who’d been breaking his ribs for fun.

Evan saw the blood on Cole’s face from the shrapnel cut was smeared; his green eyes were wild with fury.  Evan moved to stand between Cole’s dangerous rage and the soldiers pushing—
itching to attack.

The attackers weren’t playing nice.

Having witnessed Evan’s abilities, two soldiers decided brute force was necessary to contain the dangerous metahuman.  Like a pair of linebackers, they barreled into Evan and shoved him face-first against the nearest wall before yanking his left arm back up and behind him.  Evan let out an enraged scream. 

10 The End is Nigh

“Haven’t you heard, little boy?” a soldier sneered loudly in Evan’s ear.  “If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned!”  He laughed at his own perceived cleverness, enjoying every moment of the unfair fight.

The other
guy’s laughter sounded crazed, but what worried Evan was the itchy trigger finger the crazy guy had as he pressed the rifle painfully to Evan’s temple.  Clever soldier must have decided Evan wasn’t laughing politely at his joke and needed a swift reminder of manners. 

“Laugh, damn it!” he yelled as he yanked Evan’s head back by the hair and slammed him into the wall for the second time.  Evan was pinned and dazed.  He found himself dissociating by staring at his bloody smudge on the wall. 

“What’s this one’s name?”

“Speak up, genius,” Clever guy screamed into Evan’s spinning vision.  “What the hell’s your name?” 

Evan wasn’t sure, but the ringing in his ears may have been coming from somewhere in the room.  He dipped away from consciousness and vaguely wondered if the others had gotten away.  He hoped they had.  They deserved to live. 

Maybe they could be there for Meg when the time came.

“Your name!”

“Evan,” he
managed to murmur through his stinging face.

On the other side of the room Creed
was being held down on the ground by four soldiers, one of whom was injecting him with something right into a bulging vein in his neck.  Creed raged like a wild animal caught in a bear trap, ready to gnaw off his paw in his zeal to escape.  But seconds after the plunger was pushed into place, Creed’s wild eyes, blinked several slow room-spinning blinks.

“Where is Margo Winter?” a fifth soldier screamed and kicked Creed in the ribs with his steel-toed boots, hard enough to break ribs.

Creed grimaced.  He couldn’t hold a thought in his drugged mind.  He opened his eyes and saw Meg gliding across the surface of the ocean with smooth, powerful strokes.  They were back in Hawaii and he was watching the girl of his dreams through a set of high-powered binoculars.  Her golden-brown skin glistened in the sunlight as she swam gracefully through the waves, one after another.  She stopped swimming to tread water as she looked around.  He saw her reach one hand up and instantly he was right in front of her.  She was smiling—such a beautiful face.  That’s when her hand roared around gathering water and creating a big splash right into his eyes. 

The salt water stung. 

His face stung. 

One of the soldiers was backhanding him. 

“You shit-head!  You gave him too much!” 

“I gave him exactly what Chaunders told me to,” the other was saying in defense.

“He’s coming around,” a third voice barked.

“Where is Dr. Margo Winter?” the first voice enunciated
slowly. 

The answer was right there on the tip of
Creed’s mind, and that was just it.  Whatever they drugged him with was causing him to teeter at the precipice of consciousness. 

He opened his blue eyes but didn’t see the five heavily armed soldiers holding him down—he saw Meg sitting on his abdomen smiling down at him.  The sunlight danced between her dark curls as they fell from the loose braid draped
casually over her right shoulder. 

“Don’t answer them, Creed!” Alik yelled startling Creed into biting his tongue, fighting against the drug clearly designed to loosen it. 

Alik had been the last one still fighting off a half-dozen soldiers.  Bodies littered the ground around him.  No one had survived his calm frenzy as he stepped into each assailant delivering precise, close-quartered strikes. 

The soldiers had given up trying to rush him.  His massive size and strength were just beyond anything the meta
soldiers had ever trained against.  They weren’t attacking him anymore.  Alik was yanking soldiers back and attacking them instead. 

That is, until he was doused by soldiers with no fewer than three canisters of pepper spray
designed to subdue wild animals.  Alik was dripping in anguish now that he was on his stomach, arms pinned behind his back by multiple zip ties and more added even as he screamed to Creed.

Evan’s ringing, pounding head fought to remain sharp, but it was achingly difficult combined with the extreme fatigue.   Through the fog of pain roaring in his head, he dreamed he saw a pale-faced Kylie peek around what was left of the wall to his left.  He frowned at the vision, immediately worried about her getting caught up in the maelstrom of violence.  He blinked and the image of Kylie was gone and his hazy thoughts slipped back to self
-reproach. 

He’d been so concerned about distancing himself from his family to keep from jeopardizing the vision of the future he was given all those months ago, he hadn’t learned to use his own gift.  He
realized the futility of his plan as he heard laughter in his ears. 

Soldiers were screaming for his mother’s whereabouts.  He heard Alik’s slurred words spat through chemically burned lips, screaming for Creed to tell them nothing.  Cole was scarily quiet in the far corner
.  Two soldiers hovered over him like vultures. 

Evan wiggled the numbing fingers of his left hand as they were crushed at a painful angle.  Just then, he heard the crunching of debris under boots but couldn’t see from his position who
had entered the living room. 

The soldier at his back gripped Evan’s light
-brown hair again and smashed his head into the wall for the third time.  His laughter sounded distorted, as though Evan were underwater.

“Dude, check this out,” he called to someone else in the room.  “Gives a new meaning to the term ‘face painting’,” he chortled at the bloody smears the Winter kid left on the formerly white wall. 

“Shit, can’t any of you fight?  Look at this mess.  The Director is going to be pissed.”  A shuffling sound followed by a thump had Evan visualizing a new soldier kicking one of the bodies, but he couldn’t see for himself.  His face was mashed into the wall.

He blinked a few times and tried to concentrate.   

“I hate to break up your fun, but has anyone gotten Dr. Winter’s location out of them?” the new voice snarled.

“
Hollier, sir.  We gave this one a dose of phenobarbital, only he’s not talking—at least not about Margo Winter.  He keeps mumbling the name ‘Meg’.”

Again, Evan heard boots crunching and thumping across the room as the ranking officer made his way to where Creed was lying on his back, eyes threatening to roll back, and stay back.

“Which of them did all this?” the voice asked the room.

“Sir, it was mostly that one, but this one downed
seven or eight before we got him on his back.”  Evan didn’t have to see to know which of his brothers was pointed out. 

“And ‘the fire starter’?  Didn’t he do anything to save his family?”
Hollier scoffed as footsteps approached until the officer stood within Evan’s line of sight.   The hard lines of the soldiers face seemed standard issue to the hard life Williams’ metasoldiers endured.  Though Evan didn’t recognize him specifically, he knew the type.

The soldier’s thin lips pulled back in what was supposed to have been a smirk.  Never taking his eyes off Evan’s shattered face, the officer pulled something out of his back pocket and held it out for Evan to see. 

“I believe you know Kylie Monroe.  Cute little piece of ass, that one.”  The soldier turned the picture back toward himself to ogle the smiling girl. 

Evan was trying not to panic, but dread
had a vise grip on his heart.

“Yeah, see, my girl here, she’s the one who verified your location.  Told us all about you being a fire starter and shit.  Hell, she even shared play-by-plays of your private conversations.” 

The other soldiers in the room tore into gales of laughter and crude remarks. 

Evan’s chest clenched, hurting far more than his face. 

“As for you,” the soldier called Hollier turned and started back toward Creed.  “You’d better start talking, Young!” The distinct click of a handgun being cocked hit what was left of the walls with ominous clarity. 

Creed felt the cold steel dig into his forehead—which just pissed him off.

He pulled himself up in a stomach crunch pushing his forehead into the barrel the officer held with calculating calm.

“I will not betray my family!” Creed yelled through the haze of the drug.

No time. There’s no time,
Evan chanted to himself, trying to hurry.  His mind kept wanting to figure out how he’d missed Kylie’s deception.  He had, after all, held her hand. 
Did I just refuse to allow myself to know?
  He shook his head in frustration trying to double his focus.

Clever
Guy was turned around looking at what his officer and teammates were doing to Creed.  His knee was still ground into Evan’s back and his hands kept yanking Evan’s left arm at a completely unnatural angle.  Crazed-Laughter Guy was distracted and moving across the room to join in the fun at Creed’s expense.

Evan slowly reached with his right hand into his front pocket and almost
yelped for joy at the feel of warmed plastic at his fingertips.