Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5)

WINTER’S SCARS

T
he Forsaken

Book 5 of Winter’s Saga

By

Karen Luellen

Winter’s Scars
: The Forsaken

By Karen Luellen

Published by Karen Luellen

Copyright 2013 Karen Luellen

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved.  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of th
is book.

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, places, or people, living or dead, is coincidental.

∞

SPECIAL THANKS TO MY BETA READERS!

Just when I would think,
this manuscript can’t get any cleaner
, you would send me your mark-ups and sure enough, you found even more mistakes!  I love how you smooth sentences, catch disconnects, and generally help me look like I know what I’m doing as a writer. (ha!)  Each of you made this book eminently better with your help.  Seriously. So. Much. Better!  I am humbled by your friendship and your selfless acts of giving.  I love my “Betaheads” with all my heart!

Jamie Castle, Wendy Chartier, Lynne Couvier, Jennifer Davis, Kelly Grace, Karen Graman, Nereid Gwilliams, Enika Dobbs, Crystal Faux, Maurica Klein, TwylaBeth Walker Lambert, Jamey Lubeck, Allison Marcroft, Robin McCord, Madison Moore, Christina Nelson, Jennifer Orlinski, Beth Sigmund and Catherine Trieu

Part 1

Present Day

Chapter 1 Taste of the Black Hills

Miro’s brain itched. 

Nothing would ease the pain of his racing, popping thoughts.  They felt like electric sparks zapping around inside his head. 

Something’s wrong.  Something’s very wrong.

“How much further?” Dr. Williams’ raspy voice cut directly into Miro’s throbbing brain through the microphone built into his pilot’s headgear.

Miro cleared his throat, trying desperately to keep his shit together.  “About an hour to the airport, sir.”

“That’s not good enough.  Increase speed.”

“Yes sir.”  Miro was programmed to respond.

Gritting his teeth he tried to focus on the horizon.  The Appalachian Mountains loomed black and solid ahead. 

He was trying to concentrate on flying the private helicopter, but his mind wouldn’t stop itching.  The image of a long-bladed, razor-sharp knife flashed in his aching brain. 

I cannot stand this anymore.  This shit has to stop.  That knife looks beautiful the way the razor edge catches the light, so tempting—the perfect tool to scratch that insatiable itch. 

Miro shook his head hard trying to get the image out of his mind—trying to talk himself down just as he had for the past two weeks since he first met the girl.  And here she was again. 

She sat staring out the window with a blank expression.  Through the rearview mirror he saw Dr. Williams tightening a tourniquet on her arm and flicking her vein with his gloved hand.

That empath did something to me,
he narrowed his accusing eyes at her reflection.  He watched as she didn’t even flinch at the needle jostled into her vein. 

His head roared with white noise that prickled like a thousand
pins.  One hand let go of the steering stick and gripped his forehead hard.  He pinched his eyes closed trying to breathe through the sickly crawling, stinging sensation. 

Behind the tormented pilot, an oblivious Dr. Williams was cooing at the puppet of a girl as he pulled back the plunger on the syringe in his hands.  The doctor had accidentally left the microphone line open so his
one-sided conversation with the other passenger was grating in Miro’s raw ears.

“That’s right my sweet,” he purred.  Holding up the vial of crimson to the sunlight, he smiled wickedly.  “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?  All these years, and I finally hold the blueprint to the original serum in my hand.”  His bloody face contorted into what was supposed to have been a smile.  “Too bad you’re not able to appreciate the magnitude of the moment with me.”  He watched her vacant profile for a moment before tending to the specimen by putting it in a special container designed to maintain the blood’s integrity during transport. 

“Now that I have this,” he motioned to the container, “I’m not sure what to do with you.”  He reached up to touch a lock of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. 

“The others no doubt will come looking for you.  Arkdone wants you back for whatever sick reasons.    Yet, here you are, right beside me.”  He smiled smugly as he watched her stare straight ahead, silent and blank.

Miro stopped listening to Williams’ inane chatter.

His tortured mind scrambled as his vision was focused on the mountain straight ahead of him.
  The cliff loomed beautifully.  Sharp, ragged edges jutted from the immovable giant beckoning him with green trees and brush growing at impossible points along its shadowed face. 

As Meg’s large, dark eyes watched expressionlessly, the details of the black mountain grew larger and larger in the front window of the helicopter.  Dr. Williams was too engrossed in caressing locks of her hair between his raw and bloody finger tips.

His head was pounding with his racing heart but he knew three truths.   First, he knew he didn’t want to keep living like this—disconnected and fractured.  Second, the thorny ice pick digging its way across the soft tissue of his brain was excruciating and finally…

The itching was so intense now; all Miro could do was try to escape it by pushing his alter personality forward.  Miro screamed himself gone and Slider sat dazed and confused in the pilot’s seat.  Now Slider sat holding the pilot’s stick. 

Williams looked up as he felt the helicopter dip nose-first toward the too close mountainside.  “What the hell are you doing, Miro?”  Rage and disbelief at what was about to happen smacked the doctor across the face.

And finally
the pilot spoke: “Who’s Miro and why am I sitting in….”

Chapter 2 For the Sake of the Trees

Sweat and heat from Alik’s massive hand left a wet print on the black cell phone carelessly tossed into the center console after having had the most painful conversation with his mother ever.  He sat hunched over, head in hands, trying to control his rage. 
Farrow watched him from the corner of her eye, trying to focus both on the road before them and the boy she loved who sat shaken to the core beside her.

The effort it was taking for Alik to contain himself wasn’t just painful to watch, vibrations started emanating from his growing frame
biting at her skin.  She didn’t dare take her eyes from him or the road to see how it was affecting anyone else in the back seats.  Alik’s furrowed brow, tightly shut eyes and rapid, erratic breathing were further indications of the pain he was feeling. 

“Alik?” Farrow started.  Her voice strained against the psychic energy pulsing throughout the car.  “Alik, we’ll find her.  Please calm down.  You’re,” she saw Alik rip his hands away from his face and stare violet-eyed straight ahead, “you’re losing control, Alik.”
 

“Dude, calm down,” Cole coaxed.

“Come on brother, breathe through it.”  Creed’s mind was already ticking off contingency plans if Alik lost control right there in the vehicle.

Afraid anything she said would make matters worse, Sloan stayed silent,
gritted her teeth tried to shield the dying coydog from the psychic vibrations. 

Evan was the only one brave enough to reach out and put his hand on Alik’s growing shoulder.  “We’ll figure this out together, Al.” 

“Stop the car,” Alik growled between clenched teeth.

“What?”

“Pull over!” he barked, gripping the door handle with such heat and anguish it bent into an odd angle in his hand.

Farrow’s eyes widened at the sight of it as she yanked the steering wheel to the r
ight and nearly stood on the brake. 

Before the SUV even had time to stop completely, Alik was out the door.  He threw his head back and roared.  The others watched the physical manifestation of his rage as the world immediately surrounding the anguished soldier bent away from him as though an explosion burst from Alik. 

His screams of heartache for his sister didn’t stop.  The nearest tree was his next target.  He grabbed it by the trunk with both massive hands.  A series of loud ripping and snapping sounds poured through the door Alik had left wide-open. 

“Oh, my God
!  What is he doing?”  Cole pushed his door open but hesitated to jump out.

Everyone in the vehicle watched in awestruck amazement—everyone except Farrow, who had seen Alik’s evolved gift of rage once before.

She got out of the SUV at the first sound of a thick root being snapped.  Creed jumped out after her, worried for her safety.

“It’s okay,” she mouthed more than spoke to Creed.  Her short hair was tousled about as Alik’s energy vibrations continued to pulse
through the air angrily. 

Everything about Alik had changed in his rage.  The black T-shirt he wore was popping at the seams.  His black camo cargo pants were filled out, but it was his violet eyes nearly glowing in the evening light, that made his transformation astonishing.

Farrow stood, hands shoved deep in her pocket, unsure what to do to help ease Alik’s anguish, but instinctively knowing she needed to stay nearby. 

Everyone watched as Alik yanked the ten-foot tree out of the ground and threw it like a sack of dog food. 

He stood huffing for a full minute, still trying to calm himself down.  Having spent some of his rage on the unlucky tree, he rolled his twitching shoulders to force calmness and turned around.

“I’m going back.  I have to track her now, while the trail is fresh.”

Farrow watched the violet dim from his eyes, returning to his usually sharp blue.  He was determined and she loved him for it.

“I don’t expect anyone to come with me.  I only need to gather some gear then I’ll scrape up a car to continue…”

“Oh no, you’re not.  You’re not leaving without me!” Farrow marched up to the huge metahuman, fists planted firmly on her slender hips.

“Or me,” Creed stepped up, a look of absolute determination on his face.

“She can’t be far.  The sooner we get going, the better,” Evan said, jumping from the truck.

“The chopper was heading east when we last saw it,” Sloan offered.  She mov
ed to stand beside Evan.

“Oh, hell yes!” Cole blurted.  His green eyes blazed with excitement.

“And the best thing for poor Maze would be to have Meg back.” Evan looked back into the truck to see Maze still passed out from pain and exhaustion.

“You’ll do this with me?” Alik asked the group.  He pulled his shoulders back feeling pride in the people he considered family.

“All in!”

“Absolutely!”

“Brilliant idea!”

“Not gonna let you have all the fun.”

“Let’s get our girl.”

“Wait, now you realize this could be a suicide mission.  We’re all already battle-worn and it might just take a miracle for me to track a helicopter,” Alik frowned, second-guessing himself. 

“For the sake of the trees, Alik!  We have to get your sister back for the sake of the trees!”  Cole smirked and jumped back into the SUV.

Evan smiled at Cole and slugged Alik’s shoulder.  “C’mon Alik.  Let’s go give a miracle its chance to happen.”

“I’m driving,” Creed nodded over his shoulder to the SUV where everyone was climbing excitedly back inside. 

“Of course, you are.  Now you get to be the one to tell Farrow.  She can be a little bossy sometimes.”

“Not as bossy as Meg.”  Creed smiled wistfully at the thought of his dark-eyed fighter.

“That’s very true,” Evan agreed.

“Damn, I love that girl,” Creed rubbed the moisture from his eyes as he rounded the SUV to have a quick talk with Farrow about the keys.