Apparently, the show for the camera was over—and now for the after party.
The soldiers walked deliberately toward them—splitting in half—obviously ordered to take care of each of them.
The rage Alik felt at watching his sister hurt at the hands of those vile soldiers made him nearly burst into flames. He watched them yank her up by her hair to stand, pressing their bodies against her lewdly.
The soldier who had done the talking and shot into the child’s bed was taking sick pleasure at pushing Meg up against the wall with his body. A scream of abject rage for his sister ripped past the gag in Alik’s throat when he saw the soldier grind his hips into her small frame and lick her face like an animal.
As punishment, Alik felt a blunt object hammer repeatedly into the back of his head. Through the angry stars of slipping consciousness, Alik’s last image of his sister was of her head-butting the guy’s face and his nose bursting into a bloody mass.
These assholes messed with the wrong girl, Alik thought with pride just before he blacked out.
Meg’s fury could not be contained. She saw the soldiers beat her brother with the butt of a rifle until he blacked out. Her eyes were transfixed on his limp body as four metasoldiers dragged him away, scoffing as they carelessly allowed his body to thwack hard against the cement corner as they rounded it.
Vibrations of fury caused the air around the girl being held against the wall to crackle and distort.
Until that moment, Meg hadn’t realized she had been living with a tourniquet stifling the flow of her empath gift. All her attempts at wielding her abilities were stifled by her own fears of failure. She’d clipped her own wings—cut off the flow of her full strength because of her own insecurities.
As the room moved in slow motion, Meg blinked the cloud of atrophy from her heart.
She realized something in that moment.
She realized she was more terrified of what was happening to the precious innocence around her than she was of spreading her empath’s wings and leaping into the sky.
An eruption of raw fury burst the tethers holding Meg’s emotional feet to the ground. The strength in the moment was so profound; she even felt her heart lift as if on angel’s wings.
Her body shuddered with a powerful vibration that could be felt by everyone in the room. All heads turned to stare, mouths agape at the small girl still being pressed against the cement wall by brute force. And though no one would admit to it aloud, they all saw the lines of the room distort and shimmy like they were watching the sun on the horizon.
Chapter 45 The Youngest Winter
Crouched behind a bush at the northwest corner of the building he had just rigged, Evan heard everything that happened to his brother and sister through his comm. device. Terror gripped him when he heard his siblings ordered to drop their weapons, but bile threatened to surge up his throat when he heard the gunshot explode—deafening. He yanked the earpiece out, instinctively rubbing his ringing ear even as his body shook with panic.
Oh, God, no! he screamed silently.
Then he tried to still his breath and worked the comm. into his other ear, desperate to hear what was happening to his family. Cowering in the darkness, back pressed tightly against the cold, harsh cement of the building where his family was being beaten, the thirteen-year-old littlest brother tried to control his panic. The harder he pressed his head back against the unforgiving wall to his back, the more anger began to replace terror.
Damn it! This was his family and he was sick of the constant terror; sick of feeling like the only good he served everyone was in the operating room.
The sound of screaming and skin-against-skin smacks electrified Evan.
He stood and bolted across the courtyard, strategically staying inside shadows until he made his way to the administration building. He switched his comm. to channel eight listening intently.
All he heard was silence. He waited as long as his nonexistent patience would stomach before speaking into the device.
“Creed, are you there?” His voice was desperate even to his own ears.
All he heard in return was silence.
“Creed!” Evan’s breathing was erratic as abject terror shook him by shoulders and flung him against the nearest shadow.
He heard a muffled sound, some shuffling then a noise he couldn’t distinguish. Evan pressed the earpiece tighter into place, trying to discern the sound. He didn’t need to. Within seconds, the raspy, choppy sound morphed into laughter. Then it wasn’t just laughter, but hysterics. Evan yanked the earbud out of place and stared at the small device like it contained a piece of the devil itself.