Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6) (7 page)

11 Barbecue

Kylie’s lighter.

He yanked the lighter out, ran his thumb across the metal cogs, reached back over his head and
held the flame against Clever Guy’s face.

What happened next was a blur. 

With a yelp of shock and pain, the soldier released his hold enough for Evan to spin and elbow his burned face.  As the soldier doubled over, blood gushing from his broken nose, Evan grabbed him by the back of his shirt and his biceps then yanked down hard, driving his face directly into Evan’s knee.

From his peripheral vision, movement caught Evan’s eye. 

“Drop it!” Crazed-Laughter Guy was pointing his gun directly at Evan’s face from where he stood across the room. 

  A lightly perfumed breeze billowed in the space between the soldier’s itchy trigger finger and Evan’s grim face. Time held its breath. 

Hollier, always anxious to draw blood, cocked his weapon and dug the barrel deeper into Creed’s forehead.  “Drop the lighter, asshole.   We only need one of you to talk, and I don’t give a shit which of you squeals,” he hissed.

Sweat droplets trickled
from Creed’s bloody face, splatting salty and wet on the hard tile.

Evan wasn’t thinking about surrendering.  He was thinking of his family, silently praying for their safety, even as he calculated odds of their survival. 

They only need one of us to talk. 

In his moment of clarity he knew the best option was to take himself out of the equation while taking as many of
the bad guys down with him. 

Evan glanced over at Alik struggling to keep his eyes open through the swelling.  He offered his brother a minuscule nod good-bye, then turned back to Creed and half winked just before he ripped his thumb across the metal cogs.

Two things happened in the half second that followed.  From nowhere, a body hurled itself at Evan and the soldier with the itchy trigger finger fired.  The bullet hit the body in front of Evan with a sickening
whap!
 

Blond hair unfurled beautifully as the body spun through a graceful pirouette before crumpling in a tragic heap at Evan’s feet.  Kylie’s bright
-green eyes gazed up at Evan, her body starting to convulse in the throes of death from the bullet meant for him. 

“NO!” he screamed in shock and fury.

He ripped the lighter on again, grabbed the flame and shot the red stream across the room like a flame thrower.  He found his aim precise as he controlled the distance, velocity and intensity of the blaze.  He didn’t flinch at the horrific sounds of those screaming.  He couldn’t show any mercy.  These soldiers were the enemy trying to hunt down his family—his mother—and no one was going to hurt his mother ever again.  Ever!

Evan used his hearing to determine when the room had enough.  Now, the screams were fewer replaced by groans.  He released the lighter’s tab and closed his hand.  The fire immediately stopped pouring from him. 

Then, just as fast as it came, Evan held his hand out and absorbed all the flames still burning in the room.

Sticky, thick blood still oozed down his chin from his shattered nose, but Evan didn’t care about himself.  He fell to his knees at Kylie’s side and gasped at the sight of her.  Her green eyes
were closed now.  The scene was surreal as he shook his head in shock at the look of serenity on her beautiful face as she lay in a field of violence, destruction and death.  Her face looked luminously pale, serene.  If it weren’t for the droplets of blood splattered across her neck, she looked as if she had finally found peace.  With shaking fingers, he searched her neck for a pulse. 

He felt one flutter weakly.  Her
heart was barely beating.

“Why did you do this?” he heard himself sob at her.  The sound of his own voice brought him back to reality like a slap across the face.

“Alik!” Evan yelled in the direction he last saw his brother.

“Ev,” Alik coughed his brother’s name.

Evan hesitated for a moment, instinctively wanting to stay with the girl who gave her life for him, but forced himself to stand and run through the smoke and destruction to his brother’s side.  Alik shoved a soldier’s charred body off himself and reached out for Evan’s hand.   The pepper spray had completely blinded him, but he was determined to find his brother and get everyone the hell out of there before another team of soldiers steamrolled them with a round three.

Evan grasped his brother’s arm firmly and helped Alik to his feet.

“Creed!  Cole!” The boys called together.

“What the hell just happened?” Creed groaned holding his side.  The brothers followed the sound of his voice and helped pull him free from under a pile of burned soldiers. 

“Turn off your pain sensors, Creed,” Evan advised.  “You’re gonna need it.”

“
Dang little brother, you don’t have to tell me twice.”

Creed shook his head trying to clear it of the drug he’d been given then rolled his shoulders, popped his neck and dropped his arms to his side.

Alik was weaving on his feet, having gone back to his normal size.  He had injuries and chemical burns from the pepper spray all over his face.  Evan wished to God Alik could turn off his pain, too.

“Cole?” the boys called, desperation slipping into their voices.  They needed to get the hell out of there now. 

“I last saw him over here.” Evan waded through the bodies and pulled a few aside before finding Cole still unconscious in the corner, right where Evan last saw him.

Evan shook him hard.  “Wake up man.  We’ve got to bail, now!”

Cole groaned, “Please tell me,” he moaned and tried to finish kicking a body off his outstretched legs, “why I smell barbecue.”

Evan and Creed reached out and pulled Cole to his feet.

“We have to get the hell out, now!” Creed had to concentrate on not gagging at the horrific scent.

“I’m right behind you, but I’m not leaving without Kylie.”  Evan ran back to her side
.  Flinching at all the blood, he reached inside the jacket she wore and sighed with relief as he retrieved the two vials—his research—unscathed.  Quickly he reached into his back pocket for the black sunglasses case he’d brought and slipped the vials inside.   He repocketed the case while scanning the space for what he needed.

It didn’t take long to find.  He leaned over Kylie to reach
for a razor-sharp, six-inch blade from one of the dead soldier’s weapons belt.  His left hand was already itching to catch a sliver of moonbeam in his palm.  Once the flame burned blue and white, Evan quickly heated the knife’s metal.

“I’m so confused,” Cole mumbled as he helped Alik across the room
. “Who’s Kylie?”

Both boys stumbled and tripped over the bodies littering the floor of what used to be their peaceful home.  Behind them, Creed quickly helped himself to abandoned weapons, picking them up and stacking them in his arms as though harvesting a crop. 

“The enemy.” Creed glanced back at Evan in time to see him yank her shirt wide open. 

“Why are we worried about her?”
Cole frowned.

“She took a bullet for him
,” Creed explained.  Looking back, he saw Evan start to cauterize her bullet wounds.

The boys managed to stagger back to the garage.  Creed popped the trunk and dumped the weapons inside.  He kept two on him; one in his waistband and the other in his hand. 

Alik dug in his pocket and held out the car keys.  “Someone else needs to drive.  I’m a mess,” he groaned through swollen, chemically burned lips. 

By the time Creed shoved Cole and Alik into the back seat of Theo’s sedan, Evan showed up with the girl draped in his arms.  Cole moved over, making room for the girl who looked closer to dead than alive.  Evan’s face was grim as he positioned her body carefully.  He moved to put her seat
belt on and with Cole’s help had her secured in seconds. 

“You good to drive, Creed?”  Evan asked.  As the two remaining who could fight, it was up to them to get every
body out alive.

“I’ll drive like a bat outta hell if it means we survive tonight,” Creed muttered.

“Good, ’cause I’m pretty sure we’re gonna be followed, and I need to shoot.”

Creed looked over at Evan—a question clearly written in his eyes.

“Flames.”

“Copy that.”  Creed slipped behind the steering wheel and shoved the keys into the ignition.  A quick glance proved Evan had retrieved Kylie’s lighter and was ready.  His window was rolled down and the smell of exhaust fumes were starting to pour into the closed-in garage.   

Creed pushed the garage door opener and braced himself.

12  Company Leader

“What the hell do you mean they got away?” Williams was livid.  He had been glowering at the destroyed equipment and dead soldiers at the make-shift base near the Winter’s yellow house on the hill in Cairo.  What should have been a smooth, surgical attack had exploded in his face—literally.

His limousine pulled up beside him and out stepped Stanley Marks
who moved to open the door for the Director.  Just inside the limo was Dr. Percival Chaunders.  His fat, greasy hands shook as he struggled to measure out a powerful opioid painkiller in a syringe for Williams.  Williams had insisted Chaunders come with him to Cairo as his personal doctor.  Without his daughter’s restorative blood, the Director’s health was failing much more rapidly than he had anticipated.

“Sir,” Trent
Hollier tried to use a calming tone, but he was just as incensed as the Director at the operation’s failure.  He was badly burned, but had survived the torching by ducking behind a thick coffee table.  “Dr. Winter and half the family escaped.  The four remaining were all male, trained and highly formidable.” 

Hollier
wasn’t just an excellent soldier, he was brilliant, too.  Not many others had risen to the ranks of company leader at nineteen.  His specialty was his skill with a blade, but he was well versed in all standard issue weaponry.

“Highly formidable? 
We had fifty metasoldiers!  Fifty against four?  I want explanations and I want them now!”  From just inside the limo, Chaunders flinched reflexively.

Kerry Braden, Trent’s
second-in-command, approached with a small stack of papers in his thick hands.  Trent nodded to Kerry wordlessly ordering him to a silent, at-ready position off to the side.

“Sir, Kylie Monroe’s intel concerning Evan Winter didn’t prepare us enough.  He was the one responsible for the returned fire after the initial RPG.”

Williams narrowed his eyes.  What was left of the lids was bloody and torn, pulling away from his bulging eyeballs, but Trent forced himself not to stare at the grotesque effect.

“We were
cautioned he could manipulate fire.  What more warning did you need, Company Leader?”

“Sir, we had no idea
how
well
he could control it.  He killed,” Trent looked down at the report still in his hand, “ten soldiers and left three more severely burned at the perimeter trench.”

“What?  I had no idea so many were lost!”

“We chose this site as a tactically offensive position—we didn’t recognize the need for defensive attributes, sir.”

“Continue your report,
Hollier.” Dr. Williams spoke through gritted dentures.

“We’re still counting the number of losses at the Winter house.”

“How many soldiers do I have left?”  Williams flung his arms angrily, spittle flapping from his foaming mouth.  Chaunders ducked further back into the limousine with the still-full syringe hoping to stay out of Williams’ way.

“T
hirty-eight soldiers remain, sir.”  Trent forced himself to look his Director in the eye when he said this.

“What were their names?”

“Sir, the dead were—”

“No!”  Williams barked.  “Not the names of the dead.  I don’t give a
damn about them!  They’re no good to me now!  I want the names of the four soldiers in the house, Hollier.”

“From photo IDs it
’s clear we were fighting Alik and Evan Winter, Cole Andrews and Creed Young.”

“Creed Young,” Williams spat
the name.  “He defected a year ago—joined the enemy, camp having fallen in love with my daughter.”

“Sir?”

Williams was staring off into space, tapping his fragile flesh at his jawline with the tip of his finger.  He only murmured two words: “My daughter—”

“Sir, your operative Kylie Monroe was one of those killed at the house.”

Williams waved his hand dismissively as though swatting away the stench of rancid meat.

Trent
worked his jaw, angry that Williams hadn’t even acknowledged the girl whose intel gave them the data they needed to support this strike in Cairo.  He was trying to keep it together as the image of her jumping in the path of a bullet haunted him. 

Though Kylie only ever saw Trent as a soldier, Trent had wanted so much more from her.  He never got the chance to tell her how he felt.  Her loss was going to hit Trent hard, once he allowed himself to feel it.  For now, this was just business.  He had to think of it that way, or put a bullet in Williams’ head himself. 

Trent paused at the thought.  He watched his Director mutter incoherently to himself and touch the fragile flesh draped over his face like it was a kitten to be stroked.

Williams sickened him.  Everything was sickening now that Kylie was gone.  He fought the urge to go find her body.  He needed to see for himself that she was truly dead.

Just then, Stanley Marks, Williams’ personal bodyguard and manservant, stepped out from behind the limo door, his hand held to his earpiece listening. 

“Sir, local police are here sweeping the area.  It’s time to leave.”

Williams nodded absently as he turned to step back toward his luxury vehicle.  He was still muttering to himself about “his daughter.”

“Sir
?” Trent forced himself to get his Director’s attention. 

Williams paused and looked absently over his shoulder.

“Sir, what are your orders?”

“We already know they’re headed back to the States.  
During my meeting with Greg Burns three months ago, I learned so much.”  Williams shrugged nonchalantly.  “He offered a wealth of information once he was relieved of his eyes.  Not only had he told us of Margo’s location here in Cairo, but he also shared their address back in Texas before I tired of his company and had him incinerated.”  Kenneth Williams turned back toward his car and started to climb into the back seat but stopped long enough to nod toward his manservant.

“Stanley, give Kerry Braden their Texas address, would you?”

Obediently, Stanley reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and walked it back to a confused Kerry.

“Oh, and Braden.  Don’t screw up.  You have thirty-
seven soldiers at your disposal and one objective: Kill them all.”

“Sir?” Trent looked
as if he didn’t know what to question first.  He frowned, eyes darting between Williams and Kerry Braden, his second-in-command.  Deciding he’d probably misunderstood the Director, he pressed forward.  “
Thirty-eight
soldiers remain.”

The Director nodded to Stanley Marks, who had silently slipped a Beretta from its holster.  Before Trent could move to defend himself
, metal on metal clicked.

Pop, pop, pop!

Trent Hollier crumpled to the ground, dead.

“You have just been promoted to Company Leader,
Kerry Braden.  Congratulations.  It would be in your best interest not to fail me.”  Williams removed his suit jacket, slipped into his car and closed his door on the horrified face of his newest “in command.” 

Once inside, Williams turned his attention to the putty-faced Chaunders and the glistening syringe in his fat hands.  Williams unbuttoned his cuff and pulled up his sleeve, exposing a vein.  He leaned back and smiled at the cold antiseptic cleaning the crook of his elbow and waited  anxiously for the sweet relief of pain
to follow.