Winter's Warrior: Mark of the Monarch (Winter's Saga 4) (8 page)

A metallic squeaking sound pierced the silence.  Someone was coming up the elevator shaft.  With their attention drawn to the hallway behind them, they didn’t notice the furtive soldiers until it was too late.

Ratt-a
-tat!  Ratt-a-tat!

Farrow and Alik both dove for better coverage even as they rolled to return fire.  Chunks of mint green cement and plumes of white powdered dust flew around the room as the soldiers’ bullets hit the lobby walls.  Farrow was sprawled flat on her stomach.  In her outstretched hands she held her weapon, calmly aiming and pulling the trigger returning fire with precision.  Across the hallway Alik was in a very similar position, though he had crawled toward a sturdy metal waste bin and was crouched behind it, reaching around the corner and returning fire with just as much success as Farrow.  His perfect memory seemed to slow the action in his mind so he
could watch the patterns of the soldiers’ techniques and predict where they would fire next.  Both metas knew someone else was firing against the metasoldiers, but neither could to turn around to see who had emerged from the elevator shaft.

The last soldier was struck down by that unknown meta.  Both Farrow and Alik turned to see who it was and felt no surprise to see Creed’s white-dust covered face step out from around the wall he had been using as cover. 
The foyer was riddled with bullet holes, still steaming white dust. 

“Where are the others?”

“I’m right here,” Evan’s voice came from behind Creed.  His gun was drawn and still smoking. 

“Meg, Sloan…it’s safe.  Come on up.”  Evan called down the shaft.

Seconds later Meg emerged with a small bundle in her arms.  She was hugging it to her protectively, her eyes bright and darting around looking for danger. Meg’s empath senses were bursting with energy.  The world around her was crackling with newfound definition.  Even in their moment of peril, she felt a connection to the world around her she’d never known—especially now that she held the precious bundle in her arms. 

She would kill anyone who tried to harm
a hair on this baby’s head.  She’d never felt so overwhelmed by her need to protect as she did holding the little boy who seemed content to snuggle his little face deep into her neck.  She kept sending him waves of soothing empath emotions.  So much so, that the little fellow had fallen fast asleep.  Even through all the sounds of gunfire, the baby slept, a fist full of Meg’s dark locks in his tiny hand.

Sloan emerged from the black hole
of the elevator shaft right behind her.

“Let’s go,” Meg ordered over her shoulder even as she headed down the destroyed lobby.  She easily stepped over and around the bodies of Williams’ metasoldiers, refus
ing to allow herself to look into their faces.  These people were just as brainwashed as Creed and Farrow had been.  Maybe some of them could have, would have turned away from his teachings if given the chance.

No, Meg.  You can’t think that way.  Save who you can, and get out! 
Her self-talk was stern and stoic.

“Where are the other children?” Alik whispered to Creed even as they hurried to the waiting van.

“Gone.  And this one looks as if he might not last the night.  That’s why he was left,” Alik tossed the van keys to Creed even as they exchanged a pained look.  They knew Meg would never get over losing the one child they could save.

“Let’s go before the rest of the compound shows up,” Evan said, helping Meg, Farrow then Sloan into the van before
he clamored in himself.  Maze leaped inside last.  Just as Evan slammed the back doors shut, his sister let out a painful gasp. 

Everyone
stopped to look at her upturned face contort in obvious anguish, her back arched and a silent scream pulsed in her throat.  She started panting, gasping for air and clinging to the baby in her arms even more tightly. 

“What is it, Meg?”

Through gasps, she locked eyes with Alik and said the one word they were all hoping she wouldn’t say: “Mom.”

Chapter
10  How Mortal Are You?

Margo knew she wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the enraged coyote running at full-speed through the dark, though she tried.  The Facility was eerily quiet.  She kept to the shadows and slinked past the administration building, desperate to find her children. 

She had studied the maps of the compound Creed made for them and had a general idea of where the Research Hospital was located.  As she rounded the administration building and saw the tastefully lit courtyard, she got her bearings and located the hospital easily.  Its rectangular shape stood lit against the velvet, European sky.

The sound of many voices cheering a sport somewhere northeast of where she stood brushed passed her ears.  

White lilies were planted in such abundance around the courtyard; their scent in the cool night air came across as cloying.  Margo wrinkled her nose at it and chose to breathe through her mouth instead.  Still calculating her next move, she ignored the small white puffs of warm breath as they escaped her o-shaped mouth.

Her initial reaction to seeing the building in which her sweet children were trapped was to attack with the rage of a lioness, but she forced herself to hold back and work through that emotional response.  The soldier in her knew better than to run off half-cocked.  She rolled her shoulders and her head trying to force herself to relax through the body shakes compliments of the fight-or-flight adrenaline coursing through her.

Calm down, soldier,
she scolded. 
Focus.

Just as she had chosen her next patch of shadows to slip toward, every light in the entire Research Hospital went out.  The rectangular building that had been lit like an amusement park at Christmas went
dark, as though God himself doused the lights with a massive cloak.  The space where the hospital now stood was only obvious by the lack of stars as though a black hole swallowed them.

Her racing heart skipped a beat.

Oh dear God!

NO!

All logic and training flew from her mind.

Forgetting her own safety, she bolted across the courtyard directly for the building that held her breath captive.  So determined to get to her children, she didn’t even stop at the push of the first bullet as it hit her right shoulder.  Her momentum and determination carried her on.  But by the time the second shot ground into her lower back, she found her legs wouldn’t move the way she commanded.  By the third shot, she felt an intense shard of stabbing pain in her tailbone.  A moment of surrealism enveloped her as the world teetered and spun.
 

Margo’s soft brown eyes were still locked on the blackened building even as she lay bleeding on the ornate flagstone path.  Her arms were reaching, uselessly, and her breath coming through jagged gasps.  From behind her she vaguely distinguished a raspy laugh. 

“Well done, Slider,” it chuckled.

“Oh
, my dear Margo.  If this isn’t justice, I don’t know what is!”

Margo would know that voice anywhere, how
ever distorted.  It belonged to Dr. Kenneth Williams.

Her eyes never leaving the building holding her children, she felt a surge of fury at the man who not only hunted her family but who had just ordered her shot in the back. 

What a coward
! She thought with a soldier’s venom.

She heard two sets of footsteps approaching her on the pathway.

“You have been the bane of my existence for far too long, woman,” the evil doctor’s voice scolded.

“But, in a way, I must thank you,” he chuckled
ominously.  “You developed the three metas beautifully.”

Two figures moved to stand, blocking Margo’s line of sight. 

“Yes, well, I asked Miro to maim you and it looks as though he aimed perfectly, despite your vest.”  The lights from the courtyard glistened off his wet face.  Margo shifted her stare from Slider to the doctor and realized for the first time, that something horrible had happened to him.  There seemed to be no skin on his face, just tendons and muscles exposed—juicy and sick in the moonlight.

Her glassy eyes locked onto Slider’s.  She watched him for a moment before trying to speak.

“Slider?” she gasped, pleading with her eyes at the vacant expression on the boy’s face.  Seeing the void blackness there, her heart broke on even deeper levels.

“Oh, please allow me to introduce my Monarch Slave,” Dr. Williams scoffed.  “This is Miro Reznikov.”  He waved at the young man gallantly.

Slider/Miro didn’t move.  He didn’t even seem to breathe as he stood, jaw-clenched, weapon pointed directly at the fallen woman. 

“What do you plan to do with us?” she croaked.  Her voice was much weaker than she anticipated.

Oh, God.  Did he hit my spinal cord?
She grimaced internally.

“Well now
, I’m not going to worry too much about you, my dear.  I have soldiers en route to handle you.  As for the children, well…we all know children need a firm hand from time to time.”  He chuckled again.

That’s when she saw it.

The blackness draped across the ground behind Dr. Williams seemed to shift.

Margo tried to blink away the waves of dizziness she felt creeping over her and see more clearly.

She watched the evil doctor’s shadow morphing, growing—defying physics.

It grew appendages on either side.  They stretched wide.

That’s when Margo knew with every cell in her body what she was seeing was Williams’ true shape.

His huge silhouette hung menacingly behind him, prancing anxiously.  Margo knew what he was now.

Williams was pure evil—his shadow was that of a winged demon.

She watched with horror as the shape stretched its bat-like wings wide, shook its dragon-like head, and growled unmistakably.

The human form of Williams was watching Margo watch his shadow.  When she tore her eyes away from the sickeningly black shape to look at him, she saw he was smiling a toothless, bloody smile. 

He knew what he was doing.

He showed me who he is and wants me to fear him.

Even as she laid face first on the cold flagstone walkway, blood pooling in the small of her back, she felt a surge of righteous fury.

Bloody fissures erupted where cheeks used to be when he smiled showing off his toothless and bloody drool-filled mouth.

Margo’s body was shaking, but she couldn’t discern whether it was from the abject anger she felt toward the demonic monster
that had hunted her family for years, or if her body was going into shock from her gunshot wounds.

“You will lose, demon.”  Margo shu
ddered.

Williams’ laughter echoed through the courtyard, trying to worm its way into Margo’s soul.

She yelled a soldier’s battle cry, reached into her boot and quickly withdrew the Glock hidden there.

With no time to aim, Margo moved to pull the trigger when she felt the gun explode in her hand. 

Miro stood stalk still, gun still aimed directly at Margo’s hands, smoke wisps spilling from the tip of his 9mm. 

Casually, Williams reached into the breast pocket of his three-pieced suit and retrieved a red handkerchief.  He dabbed his bloody weeping eyes nonchalantly, as though he just had a little dust in it. “Well done, Miro.  You’re worth your weight in gold, dear boy.”

“As for you, wretched human, as you can see, you cannot touch me.”

Even as he finished his sentence,
a wide-eyed Margo heard boots running toward them. 

“You’ll have to forgive their tardiness,” Williams continued
calmly as though he hadn’t just been seconds away from sporting a bullet between the eyes. 

“You see, tonight was a special Moonlight Retribution Match on the other side of the compound.  Most of my metasoldiers were in attendance as this was a much anticipated battle between two of my Perfico Re
z.”  He sighed lovingly.  “I had to leave my new second-in-command, Dr. Chaunders, to handle the proceedings, though I would have loved to have attended myself.  Alas, Miro warned me at the last minute I was to have some unexpected guests.”  He nodded toward the Research Hospital.

“It looks as though someone has
been playing with the electrical power over there.”  His bloody lips made a wet tsking noise that sounded sickening to Margo’s traumatized senses.  She was fighting the waves of unconsciousness that crowded her line of sight, but the fight was becoming futile.

“I must go attend to them, dear, but don’t worry.  My soldiers will show you to your new quarters.”  Dr. Williams’ voice rose as he called to the approaching metahumans.

“Please assist Dr. Winter to the second floor of my administration building.  Room two-hundred has been prepared for her arrival,” the doctor growled the last word.  “No need to be gentle after you disarm her, evidentially, she’s nearly impossible to kill!  Nearly.”  He laughed wickedly at his own humor even as meaty hands reached to grab the fallen human. 

“Later, we’ll see how mortal you are, Dr. Winter
.”