Free Winter's Warrior: Mark of the Monarch (Winter's Saga 4) by Karen Luellen Page A

for the signal, detonate then get the hell out of here.  We’ll meet you back at the hotel.  Clear?” Creed nodded at Alik who had moved to the driver’s seat.
    “Clear.”
    Meg jumped out of the van and slipp ed the grenades into her waistband before checking her semiautomatic for clips. 
    Alik pulled away from the Research Hospital and headed toward a spot he figured would be about half a football field away to be ready. 
    His eyes kept darting up to his rearview mirror to watch his sister and Creed Young sprint back toward the courtyard at the center of the compound.
    Evan’s face was pressed into the back glass, watching helplessly as his big sister ran back into the mouth of hell.

Chapter 11  Don’t! Go!
     
    Meg and Creed didn’t need to speak to one another.  Their connection was so strong.  Creed felt Meg’s love envelop him with the same iridescent cloth of his dreams, and Meg felt Creed’s abject devotion through her empath’s glistening strands.  They were of one mind—one strength—fueled and refueled equally by one another.
    “How bad is it?” he asked his dark-eyed beauty as they hugged the shadows making their way back to the bowels of Williams’ hell.  For a split second, Creed watched her in the moonlight—her long hair draped around her muscular shoulders, hands still clutching two semiautomatic weapons.
    “Meg?”
    Just as Creed was about to ask again, he heard the answer for himself. 
    Williams’ maniacal laughter echoed raspy and hollow around the courtyard ahead. 
    This is what a demon’s laughter sounds like, he realized with absolute certainty.
    Meg slammed herself against the nearest building, ducking deeper into its shadow.  Creed followed her every move.  “Mom!” she gasped in a whisper only loud enough for Creed’s sharp hearing, but laced with the pain of a thousand screams.
    Meg slipped one of her guns in her waistband and crouched in the shadows of the men’s barracks.  She crawled on her belly through the white Iceberg Roses, oblivious of the sharp thorns digging into her face and arms as she never lost her empath’s sight leading toward her mother.  Creed, having already switched off all pain sensors to cope with the gunshot wound Slider dealt him back at the admin building, only cringed at the thorns when he saw them tear at Meg’s beautiful, pale skin.
    She stopped crawling, locking eyes on the scene some sixty yards to her left.  The scene was even worse than her gift warned.  Her mother lay sprawled, face down in the grass. Slider and Williams stood over her.  Slider’s gun was aimed directly at her mother’s soft brown hair that fluttered innocently in the night’s breeze.  Williams’ face was thrown back in a menacing laugh.
    Take care, my sweet Meggie, she heard her mother’s thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them in a whisper at her ear.
    No M om! Meg was oblivious of the tears slipping down her terrified cheeks to christen the fistful of earth below.
    You know what has to be done, Meggie.  Look after your brothers.  You have been the joy of my life, little one. I love you so much.  Tell your brothers I love them, too.  Go with God.  Run, Meg.  GO!
    Even as she was sending these thoughts to her daughter across the courtyard, the boots of the metahumans running in formation at double time could be heard. 
    The first of the soldiers emerged from the northeast corner of the courtyard.  Williams barked orders at them and they moved to grab Margo. 
    Creed had positioned himself beside Meg, there in the darkness.  The scent of roses was overpowered by the fresh mulch that had been placed around the base of the bushes , smelling of both life and death. 
    Meg’s eyes were locked onto Williams.  As he stood, bloody head tossed back in wicked laughter, something on the ground around his feet began to shift. 
    His shadow. 
    It was his shadow cast by the courtyard’s lamps that began to morph.  They shimmied together and