Winter's Warrior: Mark of the Monarch (Winter's Saga 4) (30 page)

Where am I?

MEG!
He screamed in his mind, trying desperately to communicate with her through their empath connection. 

He waited for a moment before screaming her name again. 

Silence.

It scared the hell out of him that he couldn’t feel her warm white blanket nearby.  Since her evolution, he could always feel her, but now, there was only silence where she used to be. 

Oh God, please don’t let her be dead.
  His heart was a white-knuckle fist punching angrily in his chest.

With a burst of fury, Creed leaped to reach the ledge.  His right hand clasped it for a moment before slipping off the slick grime.  Determined to get out, he tried again, using his nails to dig into the filthy paste and gain traction. 

Muscles bulging, he pulled himself up as though performing a chin-up and saw a thick, metal door with no handle. 

What the hell kind of cell had a one-way door ten feet off the ground? 

As the ledge was only about three inches deep, there was no way Creed would be able to pull himself onto it.

He let loose a mouthful of curses as he let go of the ledge and landed on his feet. 

With a deep breath, he worked on controlling his fury at being trapped and his panic at not being able to sense Meg.

Unsure what else to do, he moved to crouch beside the laptop and ran his finger across the trackpad to wake it up.  The screen was already set up and waiting for him to press play.  He moved the curser into place and double tapped the pad.  The screen came to life.

They were flying down the highway. 

Farrow knew this was dangerous so she drove as carefully as possible, but she was still traveling at least twenty miles over the limit between towns.  Alik had prevented four speeding tickets so far.

“Pull over,” Alik moaned.

Farrow had been so focused on her driving she hadn’t turned to look over at her companion.  Alik’s face was literally green.

“Oh God, Alik.  You pushed yourself too hard.” Farrow gently scolded as she pulled the SUV to the far-right lane, decelerating as quickly and safely as possible.

“Can’t. Argue. Gonna. Hurl.” Alik was already unfastening his seat belt with one hand and the other was on the handle of the door.

Farrow bit her tongue and pulled the car to a stop just in time for Alik to fling the door open and leap out.  He made it a few feet and began retching behind a bush.  After several graphic moments, Alik sat back on his haunches and held his still spinning head with both hands.  His protein bar and sports drink were splattered all over the wild grass in front of him.

Farrow reached behind her to find bottled water, checked for traffic, then opened her door.  She hurried around the car and found Alik trying to stand.  She helped him hobble back to lean against the car.  The night air felt cooling on his face and neck.  Farrow handed him the water.  “Here, you probably want to rinse.” She offered with a sympathetic look.

Alik took the bottle, filled his mouth with water and swished the taste of bile off his tongue.  He spat in the dirt away from Farrow and repeated three more times.  “I brought our toothbrushes and paste, if you’d like.”

“You did?” Alik asked, brightening as much as his aching body would allow.

Farrow nodded and ducked back in the car for a moment before coming out with his old-fashioned toothbrush and paste. 

“Seeing you stand there right now, with my toiletries…well, it’s just about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” Alik sighed, taking the items in his still shaking hands.

“Wait, let me do this part,” Farrow uncapped the paste and squeezed a perfect line on the bristles before handing it back.

The look of sheer joy on his face as he started to brush the vile taste from his mouth made her giggle.  He spent a good two minutes cleaning his mouth before rinsing with the rest of the bottled water. 

“That was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me,” he smiled weakly handing her back the rinsed brush. 

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“I know it wasn’t life or death, but in that moment, having you take care of me—priceless.”

Farrow was pleased, but downplayed the compliment by changing the subject.  “You want to tell me what happened back there?  You don’t usually have a problem with motion sickness, do you?”

“No, never.”  Alik was already opening the door and climbing stiffly inside.  Farrow followed his lead.

Once they got back up to the speed limit, Farrow kept pushing the topic.

“Alik, I’ve never seen you get sick before.”

“I’ve never been sick before.”

“Well?”

“It’s not a big deal, Farrow.  I just need to take a break every ninety minutes or so.”

“So it’s the scene on scene that causes disorientation?”

“It’s the
moving
scene on
moving
scene that’s the problem.”

“Makes sense.  You just tell me when you’re ready to go again, and we’re not setting any timer.  If you start to feel sick, just tell me and I’ll slow it back to the speed limit.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We also need to get your stomach settled.  We’re coming up on Little Rock.  There’s bound to be a twenty-four-hour breakfast place.”

“Faster we get there, the faster we can eat and get back on the road.  We still have some eight hours left.”

“Eight hours going the legal speed,” Farrow raised a perfectly curved brow.  “We’ve already traveled in two and a half hours what should have taken us nearly four” 

“That’s probably not something we should brag about in front of Mom and Theo,” Alik chuckled despite himself.

Farrow imagined the look on the mild-mannered Dr.
Andrews’ face and started laughing.

“You have the most beautiful laugh,” his blue eyes sparkled at her unabashedly.

“Yeah, we need to get some food in you quick,” she scoffed.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Deflect every time I mention how beautiful you are.”

Farrow shrugged.

“Talk to me.  It’s going to be a while before I’m able to retro-cog.  We may as well talk.”

“I’ll talk about anything you want…”

“Excellent, why the hang-up about your looks?”

“…except that.”

Alik studied her profile as she drove.  She was working her jaw by clenching and unclenching so the muscles moved angrily.  She
didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but her long lashes could be seen thick and heavy even in the dim light of the dashboard.  Her nose was beautifully shaped—straight except a small upturn at the little tip.  Everything about her looked dainty and fragile, but Alik knew better.

“Tell me about life at the Facility.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m ashamed of my life there.”

“It’s part of what made you who you are.  You probably had a lot of bad stuff happen to you there.  I just want to know you better, but Farrow…nothing you say about your life then would stop me from caring about you now.”

Farrow just shook her head.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Don’t do that, Alik.”

“Do what?”

“Try to bait me.”

“Listen, Farrow.  I care about you.  I don’t have an ounce of malicious intent going on here.  I
do
have a sense that some really horrible stuff happened to you—that you were made to do.  I’m not a trained professional, but I know talking it out will help you heal.”

“How did this conversation turn to me?”

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Because I’m much more comfortable talking about you,” Farrow blurted.

“But you won’t even hear a compliment.”  His voice dropped to a whisper.

Farrow bit her lip hard enough to taste blood.  They drove in silence for a while, Alik determined to keep the ball in her court. 

“Please talk to me?” he pleaded softly.

Miles slipped under the car and just when Alik was about to give up hope for a serious conversation with the girl who’d captured his heart, she spoke.

Her voice was barely above a whisper, haunted in its effort to put her pain into words.

“I was left without parents at age six, young enough to be sent off to an orphanage, old enough to feel the pain of abandonment.  My mother,” Farrow swallowed hard and began again, “My mother was beautiful.  Her hair was long and raven’s wings black.  She would sometimes wear it loose.  It would hang in waves down the length of her back.  But usually she wore it braided and up in a bun on the back of her head.  She was a social worker…believe me, the irony isn’t lost on me.” Farrow glanced at Alik’s earnest eyes.

Farrow continued with a sigh, “She would come home from a long day at court where she was an advocate for the children and collapse into our worn sofa.  I would make her a glass of iced tea and she would sip it quietly.  Now I know she was trying to forget the events of her traumatic day—all those children falling through cracks in the system. 

“Back then, I was just a little girl desperate for her mommy’s attention.  I would climb on the back of the sofa and carefully pull the hairpins out of her bun, one at a time.  She wore dozens to keep her wavy hair in place for her very professional job.  Judges don’t put up with any casualness.  I thought I was very sneaky about it, but she must have known every minute what I was up to, undoing the bun and braid—a pile of hairpins growing beside me.  By the time I had her hair emptied of pins, it would fall beautifully—still a little damp from the washing she had given it that morning.”

Farrow smiled softly, her eyes glistened with tears her memories were coaxing from her.

“The night before my sixth birthday, we were going to the grocery store to b
uy eggs and flour for the cake Mommy was going to make that night.  She’d spent the whole day at work, Alik, and she was tired.  But she had promised me we’d make the cake that night, and I pouted until we got in the car to head out to the store, though I knew she was tired.”  Farrow swallowed hard, but continued.

“We were listening to a beautiful song.  I didn’t know it at the time, I was far too young, but it was classical music—Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ was playing repeatedly.  My mother was humming with the piano’s melody when our red light turned green.  Mom pulled forward. Headlights glared through her side of the car.  There was an earthshattering crunch.  I remember hearing the windows explode.”  Farrow visibly shivered. 

Alik wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms to soothe her sadness.  But he knew she needed her space as she told her story, so he just watched and nodded sadly anytime she glanced over at him.

“I awoke in a hospital.  They told me she was killed.  I never got to say
goodbye.”

“I’m so sorry, Farrow.”

She pursed her lips and blinked a tear away.  “My dad had already died.  He was in the US Army stationed in the Middle East when I was a baby.  He never even saw the land mine that flipped his truck, killing him instantly.  So I never knew him.  I had no other family.  As an orphan, I was sent to the state.  No one wanted to foster an angry six-year-old girl, at least, not for long.  By the time I was seven, Dr. Williams had somehow acquired me and two other kids from the orphanage.  He brought us from California to Germany.”

Farrow stopped talking abruptly.  Alik knew the real story was what happened next.

“Then?”

Farrow sighed deeply before continuing.

Chapter 49  Cell #4—Sloan

The air smelled dank, but that’s not what woke her.

The sound of the laptop inches from her ear went into cooling mode—its fan began to whirl loudly.  As it was an older piece of equipment, it was working hard to stay awake and functioning.

Sloan knew how it felt.  She opened her blue eyes to watch it as though it were a fly on the wall.  She kept waiting for it to do something of some significance, knowing she should do something about it, but not sure how to begin.  Instead of coming to life, the screen went black. 

She looked around the room in which she woke sprawled flat on her stomach, face first into the packed dirt ground.

Pushing up carefully, she felt her muscles argue with the attempt at movement.  She felt like she’d spent the weekend at training and had performed very poorly.

Once she was finally upright, she dusted off and looked for the door so she could get out of here. 

There was no door.

No windows either.

This is like a bad riddle,
she thought.

I must still be asleep.
  She pinched her arm, trying to force herself to wake, but the room stayed the same as her skin yelled back at her for her inane tactic.

The walls looked to be made of brick, though Sloan was very sure if this was the prison she thought it was, the brick walls were much more than one layer thick.  She had no way of knowing what day it was, or what time.  She remembered being at the ranch house in Texas when men stormed into the room and attacked her.