Winter's Warrior: Mark of the Monarch (Winter's Saga 4) (31 page)

Sloan forced herself to breathe, an attempt to slow her bird’s wings flapping heart caged behind her ribs.

Looks
as if I’m supposed to do something with the laptop.
  She frowned at it. 

That’s when she saw the scrap of paper that had been blown off to the side.  She crawled to it, still unsure of her legs and turned it over.  It read, “WATCH ME” in thick, black ink—all capital letters like some sort of note written by a narcissistic psycho with a God complex. 

Sloan had no idea how accurately she predicted her jailor until she pressed the play button on the old laptop and watched in abject horror at the man who had her trapped like one of his rats.  Now when was he going to open her cage to see if she were stupid enough to go running for the cheese?

There ha
s to be a way out of here,
Sloan breathed deliberately in through her nose and out through her mouth. 

The silver-backed coydog whimpered softly before opening his bright-yellow eyes.  It didn’t matter how dark it was in the room, Maze could see well enough with his nose to know his Meg wasn’t there with him.  Her scent so much a part of the coyote, he would smell her in his sleep and feel safe knowing she was safe.

Maze didn’t remember life before his Meg.  She was always there, rubbing his ears, hugging him, using him as a pillow for her head.  Maze loved everything about his girl and would do anything to be near her.  She was his and he was hers.  If a coydog could imprint on a human, Maze had done that with Meg from the time he was a
pup.

Now Maze stood on shaky legs and paced the room, smelling every morsel of packed dirt.  His heightened sense of hearing and smell gave him clues about this room that none of his metahumans could discern.  Many sick people had been in this room before—using this corner to urinate and defecate, using that corner to sleep.  Maze smelled stale excrement, sick people and something else that itched his nose almost painfully.  If he could put words to it, it would have been arid sulfur and ashes, but all Maze was searching for was his Meg.

He kept sniffing the air, trying desperately to separate the rancid stench from foreign scents, peeling back layer upon layer of smells until he found Meg.  The coyote in him felt elation and had to whip back his head to howl wistfully at the wall he knew her to be behind—somewhere.  He couldn’t stand it for even one more second.

Maze began digging at the packed dirt that made the floor right against the wall—Meg’s wall.  Time held still as he worked furiously.  His front paws scrapped at the aged ground so fast, they blurred.  He nuzzled his nose in the hole he was making, sniffing the dirt to help him know which way to move.  Dirt flew out from behind him once he moved past the six-inch top layer of near cement-like substance. 

He worked for an hour without stopping.

He didn’t stop when he felt his first nail rip away, nor did he stop for the second or third.

Maze kept digging. 

Desperation made him whimper as he dug. 

Images of his Meg flashed in his canine mind and his devotion drove him further into the hole as he worked to find a way under the brick wall separating him from his girl.

By the end of the second hour of digging, the formerly regal-looking, fifty-five pound, coyote-German shepherd mix was complet
ely underground with his ripped-up feet, still digging. His beautiful thick coat was crusted with the damp earth though which he was frantic to pass.

Nothing was going to stop him from getting to Meg. 

No matter how much blood he left in the dirt as he worked.  No matter how raw his nose was from nuzzling the unforgiving ground.  No matter how sore his muscles felt. 

Nothing. 

Meg needed him and he would die trying to get to her.

Maze didn’t know he was digging to Creed’s cell first.

Maze also didn’t know about the implant that could activate once he was within seven feet of the others. 

***

Creed was sitting with his back against the grimy brick wall, breathing hard from his efforts.  He had no idea which way was out, but damn if he was going to hold still waiting for that asshole to come along and show him whether he was a trigger or an explosive.

The media player was still paused on Arkdone’s face, just the way Creed left it after watching the video twice.  He wanted to memorize that sick asshole’s face so when he beat the pulp out of him, he could appreciate knowing he
’d wiped that smug look off his face.

He looked down at his bloody fingers and knuckles and willed the pain away, just as Meg told him he could do.  Apparently, he had known of this gift before his amnesia.  Afterward, he used it without knowing it was a gift or exactly how to wield it.  That is, until Meg walked him through it.   He thought everyone could control their pain to some degree, but he learned differently.  Most people couldn’t do what he did. 

He concentrated on his hands for a moment and told himself, “Ah, that’s not real and it sure as hell doesn’t hurt.” Instantly, the pain switched off and he ignored the torn flesh and nails thanks to his efforts at leaping up to the crevice-like ledge and trying to pry the one-way door open with his bare hands.  He tried pounding on it, but got nowhere from the awkward angle of hanging by one hand gripping slimy filth.  He had given up on that and decided the best guess he could make was to attack the same brick wall in which the door hung.  He tried prying the bricks away from the wall, to make a hole.  He was able to pull one brick out only to see another layer of brick behind it.  His efforts with the brick only earned him four ripped off nails.

He was breathing hard after pounding the heck out of the wall out of sheer frustration.  He was just thinking how possible it was that he’d managed a boxer’s break in his left hand.

That’s when he heard sound.

There was a faint scraping, rhythmic.

It was coming from the wall to his left. 

He crawled quietly to where the scraping was the loudest and put his ear to the wall.

“Hey!”  he yelled to whoever was there.

The scraping paused for a moment then continued.

“Hello?  Who’s there?” 

In response he heard a sharp series of barks and knew it must be Maze.  His heart leaped for the first time since he awakened hours before.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to help the coyote with his torn up hands, Creed looked frantically around the room.  The only thing to use was the laptop.  He jumped up and grabbed it.  With what strength his hands had left in them, he broke off the thick plastic monitor from the base and ran back to the spot he knew Maze to be digging.  With the only tool he could find, Creed began pounding the corner of the monitor into the packed dirt, trying to break through to the softer ground that must be below.

Just as he broke through the top layer of packed dirt, and Creed felt a glimmer of hope, he heard the most gut-wrenching series of canine screams.  In them Creed read pleading, surprise and the most horrible pain he’d ever heard from a creature.  Creed held very still listening. 

Dear God, no!

Chapter 51  A Different Kind of Predator

“What happened when you got to Germany?” Alik’s voice was gentle, but he wasn’t letting up on Farrow. 

She gave him a tired, annoyed look.  “Don’t you feel well enough to track again?”

“No, not yet,” Alik stalled, acting as though they had all the time under the sun to hold this conversation.

“It’s not easy to talk about, Alik.”

“I know.”

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Begin at the beginning.”

Farrow bit her lip, but to her credit she cleared the emotion from her throat and started.

“Bjorn dosed me…sick son of a bitch snickered with joy when I screamed because it burned.  Alik did it burn you when you were dosed?”

He was already nodding, even before
she asked.  “It felt like thousands of razors digging in my thigh where the white coat jabbed me and slipping through my veins just as painfully.  I even remember when the pain hit my eyes.  I thought I would go blind with the pain.”

Now it was Farrow’s turn to nod completely agreeing with his description of the pain.  “How old were you?” She asked, feeling a moment’s reprieve from her storytelling now that Alik backed up her memory with his own. 

“I was two years, nine months, according to the records Mom stole from The Institute.”

“You were Danny’s age?”

“Looks like it.”

“But you remember how it felt to be dosed?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember life before that?”

Alik swallowed hard and looked out his window for a moment before responding.  “Eidetic memory, remember?”

“Well, yeah, but I figured it happened once you were dosed and made…meta.”

“No, I have always had a perfect memory.  The serum just enhanced it.”  He pursed his lips together tightly, reached into the center console and grabbed the sports drink he had been sipping trying to replenish his fluids after getting sick a dozen miles back.

“Oh, wow.  Alik I’m sorry you remember everything.  Some things I’m glad time has made blurry to me.”

Alik shrugged, dismissively.  “Back to your story, little sparrow,”

“Right, the story.”   Farrow gripped the steering wheel tightly, but she kept going.

“Bjorn took a special liking to me,” Farrow’s voice sounded very small, like a little girl’s, but she kept going.  “Even once I survived the first week and was sent to the girl’s barracks section A for the ‘new recruits,’ he would come find me and have me go work with him in his office.  I would try to hide from him, but he always found me.  I would ask for extra duties so I would be unavailable.  I befriended the platoon leaders and instructors as much as I could—as long as they were women.”

“Why only women, Farrow?  What happened?”

Farrow tried to take a deep breath, instead her throat hitched painfully.  She let out a coughing fit.  Alik offered her a drink to soothe her throat.  After a sip, she got her coughing under control enough to talk.  But her voice sounded distinctly different—pinched, tight and raspy.

“I never talk about this Alik.  Once I tell you what happened to me, I never want to discuss this again.  Are we clear?”

“If that’s what you want, of course,” Alik agreed to her stipulations sensing how important it was for her to feel in control of this conversation.

“He would come to my room in the dormitory late at night.  The first time it happened I was just a little girl.  I thought he was coming to be nice to me.  He wanted to…” Farrow’s voice caught.  “Alik, he said he liked me and just wanted to make sure I had enough blankets.  It was a cold night—winter in Germany is very cold.  He brought me a blanket the next night and I remember watching his beady eyes catch the courtyard’s light coming in from my small window.  The blanket billowed over me and I... I giggled.  It looked like a big soft billowing cloud.  After losing my mommy and never having known my dad, the extra attention seemed nice—at first.”

Farrow stopped talking long enough to take another sip of the sports drink.  Alik heard her voice tighten with emotion and knew this must be really hard to talk about.  He even wondered if she ever told anyone else about the inappropriate treatment she suffered at the hands of that sick bastard, Bjorn. 

But what Alik was having a really hard time doing was controlling his temper.  Hearing the doe-eyed, sincere girl sitting beside him regress in body language and voice into a sweet little girl, made him crazy with rage.  And hearing that new small voice roughen with unshed tears based on terror made him want to go beat the crap out of the monster who did that to her. 

Now, Alik needed to take a slow, calming breath because he was very close to needing her to pull over again.  This time he didn’t want to vomit so much as punch the hell out of some poor tree trunk. 

Oh hell,
he thought. 
If this conversation goes in the direction I think it’s going, I may need to do both.

“It seemed nice at first.  What changed?” He prodded gently, through clenched teeth.

“Well, the visits became every night.  He would say he was coming to ‘tuck me in’ at night.  He’d…” she swallowed hard, “he said I was special.  He called me beautiful and would tuck my long hair behind my ears.  He would want to brush it out for me.  His favorite was after I’d showered and washed my hair.  Eventually, he insisted that I shower and leave my hair wet and tangled so he could come ‘help me’ with it.”

Nervously, Farrow ran her hand down the back of her cropped hair.

“Is that why you wear it cut short now?”

“Yes,” she said abruptly.

“The attentions progressed from him running his hands down my body when he’d ‘tuck me in’ and way too long hair brushing sessions to…more.”  Farrow’s need to leave details out was completely understandable to Alik.  Besides, he was feeling the need to be sick for entirely different reasons than retro-cogging.