GhostWalkers 2 - Mind Game

by Christine Feehan

  There was a strange push and pull effect on her with Nicolas Trevane. She never stayed long in anyone’s company, and already she needed her space. She was sick and dizzy and overwhelmed with grief and fearful of his safety. Yet he held the energy at bay. She recognized power in him. It was far subtler than her raw strength, but it was enormous for all its subtlety. And she couldn’t look away from the intensity of his gaze, no matter how hard she tried, or how much she wanted to.

  “If you have to find a way to disperse the energy, Dahlia, we’ll do it together. Energy, even violent energy, can be directed.” Nicolas could see the signs of overload.

  Grief was living and breathing in her. Taking her well past the point of thinking rationally for herself.

  “Can you do that?” She didn’t altogether trust him. She didn’t trust anyone. Not Jesse, not even Milly and Bernadette, but that hadn’t stopped her from loving them. She felt lost and alone and had no idea what to do, but there was something solid about Trevane. Perhaps his calm. Or the power he so obviously was comfortable wielding.

  “We can do it. Follow my lead.” Nicolas kept all anxiety from his voice. His skin was prickling, a sure sign of trouble. The hit team was probably dropping men back into the swamp and coming at them from all directions. There would be more violence and more death before he managed to get her away safely.

  Dahlia did as he said simply because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. She concentrated on his breathing. Listened to the sound of his voice, the deep timbre, velvet soft and captivating, almost hypnotic. He built the picture of a deep, clear pool in her mind. The waves raged, wild and out of control, reaching endlessly to escape, but he kept building the walls of the pool higher and higher.

  Dahlia felt better, less sick, but she knew he was fighting a losing battle. The energy was alive and looking for a target. Trevane was definitely holding the energy within the walls of the pool, but it was growing in strength, continually seeking a way to harm someone.

  “No it isn’t. The energy isn’t alive, Dahlia. It may have the aftermath of violence within it, but it doesn’t have personality. It needs an escape, like water boiling in a kettle. We just have to provide it.”

  “You’re reading my thoughts?” The idea was terrifying. She didn’t have the kind of thoughts fit for public reading.

  “I’ll explain later.” Now the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. “We’re in trouble, Dahlia. We’re being hunted. If you want to live, you’re going to have to trust me to get us out of this.”

  Her gaze moved over his face, assessing him. Assessing her choices. Slowly. A long inspection. “You’re a killer.”

  She made the judgment just like that. Harsh, without any softening.

  Nicolas refused to wince. Refused to look away. He met her steady gaze with one of his own. The ice was there. The distance between him and the rest of the world. He damn well wasn’t going to apologize for what he did. “Yes.” If she wanted to name him a killer, he would accept it. Let her deal with what he was if she wanted to live.

  “Why would you risk your life to save mine?”

  “What difference does it make? I don’t make casual conversation. Let’s do this and get out of here.”

  “I didn’t realize the conversation was casual. It isn’t to me.”

  He wanted to swear—and he wasn’t a swearing man. She stared up at him with her dark, enormous eyes and her exotic, Asian beauty and somehow slipped past his guard and got under his skin. There was something about her he couldn’t quite grasp, something important, elusive, something that floated in his mind but refused to be caught. It had to do with feelings, and the one thing Nicolas wasn’t good at was dealing with emotion.

  He let his breath out, determined not to let her get to him. He had to keep them alive and that was all that mattered. “Focus away from us. Think of the energy like a charge. Something you’re detonating. Direct it to a specific area.”

  She shook her head. Her heartrate might be following his, but her lungs were starved for air, the energy choking her with wanting to get out. “I can’t.”

  “Focus out there.” He indicated the bog several hundred yards away from them. “Think of it as an arrow. You’re sending it right there. Picture a target and get as close to the center of the bull’s-eye as you can and send the energy there.”

  “It will burn everything.”

  “There isn’t much to burn.” His gaze shifted restlessly, examining the areas around them. Instinctively he was crouching now, pulling her down with him so that the trees and bushes gave them more cover. “Send it.” This time, deliberately, there was hard authority in his tone. They were out of time. He didn’t mention that he had seen shadows move in the bog.

  Dahlia sent up a silent prayer that it would work. She stared out into the night, wishing the moon didn’t keep going behind clouds so she could actually see an image. She felt the force of the energy moving within her. And she felt something more. Nicolas Trevane. His strength, his determination. His focus.

  The energy poured out of her, dark and terrible, raging and churning as it leapt toward the bog. The night exploded into flame, everything turning red and orange and burning blue-black. Screams erupted, horrible, agonizing. Gunfire burst through the night, like angry red bees streaking out of the heavy swamp.

  Nicolas heard a distinct thump. “Incoming.” He knew the sound of a M203 when he heard one. They were in for trouble.

  Dahlia was backing away from him, a horrified expression on her face. He simply caught her smaller body and slammed her down into the muck, his body covering hers as the grenade hit somewhere behind them, spreading destruction in all directions. The force of the blast rushed over them. Nicolas was up, dragging her with him, hurrying now, heading away from the water back toward the interior.

  “Head west,” Dahlia said. She kept her head down while hell erupted around them. “The ground is firmer and we can move faster.” Her stomach was churning, but her mind was blessedly numb. The backwash of energy was already racing to find her, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She worked at keeping her brain from functioning past survival. If she allowed the energy to find her too quickly, she had no hope, and perhaps Nicolas would die as well.

  “We’re going to have to go into the water, Dahlia.” He wanted to prepare her. Alligators and snakes called the bayou home. He had to know if she was going to balk. Again he heard the distinctive thump of a grenade fired and pressed her to the earth. She made no protest and didn’t fight him. It was the most he could hope for under the circumstances. The blast landed to their left, a distance away.

  Nicolas never questioned himself. He made decisions fast, under life and death conditions and didn’t believe in second-guessing himself. It was a useless and detrimental trap, yet he found himself regretting using her abilities against their enemies. He glanced at her as they ran again. She was impossibly pale, her eyes enormous. Her body trembled beneath his and she winced, shrinking from the contact each time he took them to the ground to avoid the blast from the scattered grenade shells.

  He tried to tell himself it was the shock of losing her home and the people she loved, but he knew it was more. He knew the repercussions of harming their attackers had somehow turned back on her. She was game enough, forcing her body to move, to keep from slowing him down, but she was in trouble and he was responsible. It was the one problem the GhostWalkers faced and would continue to face. They were living in untried territory. The backlash of using psychic talents was enormous, and they often had no idea what could happen until the aftermath of the results reared up to bite them.

  Dahlia was a GhostWalker with all the extraordinary gifts and, unfortunately, the terrible penalties that often occurred with the use of those gifts. She was dangerous, perhaps even more so than any of them had considered, but not by her nature. The danger came from the energy that raced to her and crammed inside of her as if her body were an empty vessel waiting to be filled. The leftover energy sh
e couldn’t take inside of her surrounded her so that she had no peace. It was no wonder she lived as solitary a life as possible.

  Nicolas steered them first toward the interior, staying to the west and higher ground as she’d indicated, but eventually began to work toward the outer edge of the island. They had to get off. They could play hide-and-seek for a short while, but if they remained on the island, they would be found. He was certain the perimeters would be more heavily guarded, but the team had to be spread thin and they’d lost a few men.

  “Dahlia, can you hang on until we’re off the island?” he asked, more to get her to stay focused on him than for any other reason.

  She stopped running abruptly, going down on one knee to be violently sick. Her skin beaded with sweat that had nothing to do with the heat. She looked up at him and nodded as she wiped her mouth. “I can make it.”

  He had an insane desire to pull her close and wrap her safely in his arms. She was gutsy and he was certain he could count on her in the water. “Stay close. Hopefully if I’m close to you, it will help keep the energy at bay.”

  Dahlia winced at the sound of grenade fire, ducking as he pushed her toward the ground. She took a cautious look around. “It seems like the entire world is on fire. Do you really think we can get out of this?” Her vision was blurred and her head pounded until she wanted to scream, but she was determined to keep going until she couldn’t walk any longer. The closer she stayed to Nicolas the easier it was to bear the burden of the energy rushing at her from the grenades.

  Nicolas handed her his canteen, urging her to drink the water. “We’ll get out,” he assured. “This island is crawling with men though.” He took the canteen back and dragged a shirt from his pack. “Put this on. The sleeves will cover your arms and you’ll blend better. I want to darken your face as well. It’s going to take a little skill to get past them.”

  Dahlia sank down into the marsh. The island was mostly spongy surface. Even hunters and trappers knew to avoid it. The center had been raised by bringing in soil to build up an area for the sanitarium. Dahlia had never questioned why, but she’d heard Milly and Bernadette talking about the flooding during heavy rains and how ridiculous it was to build on the island when there was enough money to go anywhere and worse, not using stilts. One of the biggest dangers was falling through the thin layer of ground to the waters below. Sinkholes were abundant on the island and the only truly safe places were the narrow path leading to and the actual grounds surrounding her home. She realized that it had been built that way for a specific purpose.

  “Did they plan all along on killing me?” She was soaked, but she put his shirt on over her own clothes. It was far too big and she tied the tails around her hips.

  “My guess is yes, once you were discovered or you’d outlived your usefulness to them,” he replied honestly. He wasn’t looking at her, but out into the night, his rifle rock steady in his hands.

  “It occurred to me a couple of years ago when I started asking Jesse too many questions, and he didn’t want to answer or didn’t know the answers, that maybe I was in trouble.” She tried to hold still and not wince away from Nicolas as he blackened her face with some tube he carried in his pack. She looked up at him with solemn eyes. “Who are they? Why do they want me dead?”

  “These men are military-trained, but I think they’re mercenaries. No combat unit would do this. Which agency do you work for?”

  Before she could answer, he clapped his hand over her mouth, pressing her body into the trunk of a tree and crouching lower to stay in the shadow of the trunk. He looked directly into her eyes, slowly removed his hand, and held up three fingers. She nodded to indicate she understood, turning her head as slowly as she could in the direction his rifle was aimed. She noted his hands were steady and his eyes like ice. Dahlia was unable to prevent the continual shivering that shook her body. Nicolas was pressed tight against her, dwarfing her, caging her between his hard frame and the tree. She hated that he was so stone cold calm and she was shaking like a leaf.

  The vegetation all around them was on fire, red and orange flames reaching to the sky. The fire lit up the areas closest to it and cast macabre shadows over the rest of the shrubbery and trees. The leaping flames were reflected in Nicolas’s eyes. Her heart leapt. She was trusting him, yet she knew nothing about him. She had never met anyone that gave off such a low energy reading and yet was capable of such extreme violence. There seemed to be an endless arc of electricity that leapt from his skin to hers. She could feel a strange tingling in her bloodstream. The heat between them was tremendous… and frightening.

  Nicolas brought his hand up and pressed her face against his chest, stroking her hair with his palm in an effort to comfort her. If she shook any harder, he feared she might break her little bird bones. He bent his head over hers, holding her there while the world burned and their enemy slipped by. He put his mouth against her ear. “Are you ready for this?”

  Dahlia nodded, not certain she was, but knowing she had no other choice if she wanted to live. He put a finger to his lips, indicating the need for silence, and then walked his fingers in the air. Dahlia took a deep breath as he stepped away from her. The respite from the violent energy assaulting her had been so complete, the force of the wave hitting her nearly drove her to her knees. She steadied herself by reaching out to him, the first time she’d ever voluntarily touched him. The moment her fingers touched him, rested on him, the force battering at her lessened.

  Nicolas put his hand over hers. He bent his head to hers again. “I can carry you if you think it will help.” Dahlia almost smiled. For the briefest of moments the terrible sorrow weighing her down lifted, and he caught sight of a mischievous Dahlia, but she was gone almost immediately.

  “Hold my hand if you can while we make our way out of here.” It cost her to ask him, but she had no choice. “I can take your pack.”

  Nicolas didn’t bother to respond. His fingers linked with hers and he took her with him, moving away from the direction the three men had taken, around the wall of fire, weaving their way closer to the reed-choked channel. Nicolas didn’t hesitate at the edge of a stagnant pool, but waded in, pulling Dahlia in after him. Insects, birds, snakes, lizards, and frogs were making a mass exodus into the water right along with them, trying desperately to escape the fire. He kept a wary eye out for alligators.

  Somewhere behind them, guns went off.

  “AKs,” he identified. “They aren’t close, so they aren’t shooting at us. They’re either spooked or ran into alligators.”

  “There are alligators all around this island,” Dahlia confirmed.

  The moon crept back behind the clouds. Nicolas suddenly stopped, his head up alertly. Dahlia remained silent, waiting. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that he knew what he was doing. She was far safer with him than without him. When he abruptly froze, not moving a muscle, she followed his lead. Dahlia found herself holding her breath, her fingers clinging to his. The water soaked into the jeans she was wearing and something live bumped against her leg, but she stood, just waiting, trying to see into the darker shadows of the bayou.

  Nicolas bent his head to hers. “We are hunted.” He mouthed the words against her ear, his breath warm, sending butterflies skittering through her stomach.

  “Tell me something new.” She whispered it, knowing the night carried sound easily.

  “He’s like me.”

  She knew what Nicolas meant. She had named him a killer, and he was telling her another of his profession followed them through the swamp. She wanted to ask how he knew but he signaled for silence and pointed to the low strip of embankment leading to the open channel. Her breath caught in her throat. The bank was stripped bare of all shrubbery. A few scattered plants grew low to the ground, but there was no cover to speak of. If they chose that entrance to the channel, anyone following them would see them immediately.

  Nicolas touched her face to bring her attention back to him. She was staring in horror
at the bank. He flattened his hand and slid it forward, indicating they would creep forward on their bellies simulating an alligator going into the water.

  Dahlia peered at the bank as Nicolas began to submerge most of his body, holding his rifle just above the waterline. There was definitely an alligator slide. She wasn’t afraid of alligators, but she was smart enough to have a healthy respect for them. Playing in their territory seemed a drastic solution.

  “You must have a boat hidden somewhere. Can’t we make our way to that?”

  He shook his head. “We can’t take the chance they found it already. If they have, they’ll use it as a trap. Someone will be waiting. It’s best to do the unexpected.”

  Dahlia pressed her hands against her churning stomach. “I don’t suppose you have an affinity for animals.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Nicolas admitted as he moved away from her. Two steps only but the energy reached for her, a greedy monster, slipping past her guard, seeping into her pores, filling her stomach until she staggered with the weight of it. Keeping his rifle well above the surface of the water, he reached back and caught the neck of her shirt, pulling her against him, almost as if he could feel the sickness invading. He guided her hand to his waistband, rucking her fingers into the edge. Her knuckles brushed his skin.

  It was ridiculous to crouch in muddy water with fires surrounding them, her home burning, her world gone, her family dead, hunted by a killer and have the thought that touching Nicolas Trevane in such a way was intimate. Dahlia snatched her hand away, shocked at the passing thought, shocked at her awareness of Nicolas as a man, not simply a human being. She had the sudden urge to run and find a place to hide on her own. She didn’t belong with people. Nothing made sense to her anymore.