Lethal Game

by Christine Feehan

  “I left those girls. I left them. You would never have left them. You know you wouldn’t have. You’re all about loyalty. I’m not. I’m only loyal to a few people. The rest, I don’t think about. I don’t worry about. It’s just my little circle. I have jackal in me. Jackal. Do you know what that means?” She nearly spat it at him, wanting him to see that those hideous traits in her were never going to go away. They were in her DNA. Deep. And she’d pass them on to her children. She had even worse than that, but she wasn’t even going there.

  “Why do you think that’s a bad thing? Jackals mate for life. The young return as adults and help raise the juveniles year after year, forming a tight group. They defend their territory and each other. GhostWalkers do that same thing, Amaryllis. There’s nothing wrong with that. They run like the wind. We’re all made up of many things. Whitney fed you a line of crap to make you think less of yourself because he controlled all of you that way. He couldn’t let any of you think you were extraordinary. God help him if the women rose up knowing they were strong and smart and beautiful inside and out. Fuck him and whatever he told you. There’s not a damn thing wrong with you.”

  He bent down and brushed at her tears with his lips, and then tipped her face up to his. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. She looked up at his face. She loved his face. Loved his eyes, even though at that moment he looked a little watery. He brushed more kisses over her cheeks, eyes and lips.

  “Stop crying, baby, and let’s talk about this. I love you exactly the way you are. Those women made their choice when they listened to Whitney and went running to him for every little thing. I’m in love with you and I want you to come with me when I leave here. My people can fix your identity, but they’ll know about you, Amaryllis, and they have to eventually anyway.”

  She pushed her forehead into the heel of her hand. “How do you know no one will betray you, Malichai? The more people who know, the more likely that is.”

  Malichai moved away from her, pacing again, taking most of the warmth of the room with him. “My entire team is enhanced. We’ve banded together because we have enemies on every side of us. We know that and we prepare always for a fight. Wyatt’s little girls were scheduled to be terminated, designated failures. We took them and we protect them. His wife escaped that same lab. Trap’s wife was also scheduled for termination. She’s with us now. My brother’s wife was sent out with a virus that would kill her if she didn’t get the antidote. I could go on and on. Whitney uses us and sends his supersoldiers against us every now and then to test us, or them, who knows what’s in his head, but he fights against the faction in the White House that wants all of us terminated. And then, there’s the enemies we’ve made by the missions we’ve taken on.”

  “You paint such an enticing picture, Malichai.” There was humor in her voice.

  He turned back to her, those eyes of his once again gleaming in the darkness. “I want you to know up front, what I’m offering you isn’t rosy. I’m not going to lie about what you’re getting into. Some days it feels like we have to fight every minute for a decent chance with our families. Other times we have months of peace, and we all know it’s a luxury. There’s my leg. Realistically, I could lose it. I’m worth too much money to sideline me, so they’ll fix me up with some kind of fancy bionic one, but I know some people have an aversion to body parts that aren’t natural.”

  She pointed to the chair opposite hers. “Sit down, Malichai. I mean it. And don’t insult me. I am not one of those people, and you’re not going to lose your leg.” He was exasperating. He just kept up that pacing as if he couldn’t make himself stop. She wanted to yank him into the chair herself.

  “If you don’t stick around and save it, I might,” he pointed out.

  She clenched her teeth. “You are an exasperating man. You could tell your brother and he’d have a team of doctors here tomorrow.”

  He stopped moving then and when he did, her heart stopped with his movement. He turned his head slowly to look at her and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. Her heart began to pound. He knew. He’d known all along. She wasn’t certain. She had a gift but she had no idea how to use it. It was undeveloped.

  “What good will a team of doctors do, Amaryllis? You know they can’t save that bone. If I know it, you know it.”

  She hadn’t known it, not really. She had instincts. She could have called up energy and power to heal but she didn’t really know what she was doing. She wanted to stay with him more than she wanted to run and hide from Whitney, but now this . . . What if she failed him on top of everything else? She would be responsible for him losing his leg. She didn’t know anything about healing. Nothing at all. She really didn’t. He didn’t understand that.

  She sighed and looked down at her hands. “It’s such a risk, and I just can’t ever go back there. I’ll never have a child with that disgusting soldier Whitney wants to pair me with. And Whitney will never get his hands on any child I have.”

  “Have your children with me, Amaryllis. I can keep you safe. I can keep our children safe. My team is building a stronghold in the middle of the swamp. It’s unbelievable. We can visit Marie and Jacy and have them out to visit us. I’ve already talked to Lily and asked her to look into getting Jacy any surgeries she needs for free. Also, to pay off Marie’s hospital bills. It didn’t sit well with me that she had those bills at all. I had some money in the bank just sitting there. Marie and Jacy need it far more than I do.”

  Amaryllis looked up at him, her breath catching in her throat. She knew that feeling welling up inside of her was love. It was soft and tender. It was alien to her. Completely foreign. She’d felt something close to it for Jacy and Marie, but not this overwhelming emotion that threatened to choke her. He was making it impossible for her to leave him. Impossible for her to stay. No one could measure up to him. No one could ever be worthy of him.

  “You’re so compassionate. That’s a wonderful, generous thing to do.”

  “Stay with me, Amaryllis. I know it will be scary, but I swear to you, I won’t let Whitney, or anyone else, take you from me.”

  She studied his face. “You’re asking for a very huge leap of faith. Whitney is a very vindictive man. I already had an escape plan and the moment I needed to put it into use, I didn’t hesitate. He didn’t have a chance to know I was even planning it. If he got his hands on me a second time, he would never give me another opportunity.”

  “You have one ready for here as well.”

  “Of course. And, Malichai, I am perfectly capable of defending myself.” She needed him to know that. And that she would. She wouldn’t hesitate. She had more than one animal in her DNA. She had been trained to fight since she was a toddler. Whitney may have recently decided to put her in his breeding program, but prior to that, she’d been a soldier, just like Malichai, maybe a lone one, an assassin, but she’d gone out on missions and used deadly force to defend herself.

  There was warning in her voice as well as a need for him to know there was more to her than the side she’d shown to him. She was afraid he might not like that side of her. He might prefer that she not be a woman who would fight with any kind of weapon to defend her family and herself from any kind of attack.

  “Baby, do you think I don’t want you capable of defending yourself, our children, or even our home? The woman I admire most in the world is Nonny, Wyatt’s grandmother. She raised her children and then her grandsons in that swamp. Mostly alone. When you go into her house, the first thing that hits you is the feeling of home. Even if you’ve never felt it before, you know it when you’re in her home. She’s a beautiful person, kind and compassionate. Intelligent and filled with wisdom. Her shotgun is inches from her hand most of the time. I admire that trait in her. She doesn’t look to others to get her out of trouble.”

  “You’re a very protective man.” He was. Everything about him screamed it. Proclaimed it. No one could look at him without seei
ng it.

  Malichai nodded and sank down into the chair. She could see pain etched into the lines of his face. That leg was on fire and was about to give out on him, but he didn’t want to let on.

  “Yes, there’s no question about it. And I gave my married friends a bad time and said my woman was going to be in the kitchen and bedroom, nowhere else. But I knew all along that my woman was going to have Nonny’s traits. You have them in abundance, Amaryllis, everything I admire most.”

  Amaryllis stood up and went to him. She had feline traits, allowing her muscles to move beneath her skin, causing her to be graceful, fluid and silent in the dark, and she padded across the room to him. Tiny beads of sweat trickled down his face and he wiped them away. He looked a little shocked to find them there. It wasn’t that hot in the room.

  He looked up at her. “Can you get the window, babe?”

  Instead of going to the window, she laid her palm on his forehead, frowning. “Malichai, you’re burning up.”

  Amaryllis crouched down to push up the denim material on his leg. She surrounded his calf with both hands. “Your leg is hot to the touch. You have an infection. Most likely it’s a bone infection. Can you make it to the bed?”

  She couldn’t keep the anxiety from her voice. Without waiting for an answer, she wrapped her arm around him and almost heaved him out of the chair. She was much stronger than she looked, enhanced, like he was, with her GhostWalker DNA.

  “It’s probably not a good thing if that soldier comes looking for you, Amaryllis. If I didn’t kill him, you’d do it.”

  Malichai was stalling. She knew it but she didn’t call him on it. Sweat beaded on his body and she was furious with herself for being focused on their conversation. On the fact that he’d said he loved her. On her need to run. On his leg. On everything but that he was in severe trouble. He swayed for a moment, the foot in the air, his arm around her waist, his weight slightly on her, but none on that hurt leg.

  “He’s tough, Malichai. I honestly don’t know if I could kill him. I think Whitney did something to make it impossible for me to use all my weapons against him. I’ve tried before and failed, but I’d do my best. One of us would die.” She stated the truth.

  Malichai put his foot on the floor and shifted his weight onto it. His entire body shuddered with pain. He didn’t make a sound but took his weight off it immediately.

  “Shit, baby, I’m sorry, that’s not going to work.”

  “It’s all right. I’m strong. We can get to the bed. Seriously, honey. I was worried something was wrong this morning when I examined you. I wish I knew more about healing,” she admitted to him. She wanted him to know she wasn’t qualified to help him. “I’ve never been trained as a psychic healer, but I do know GhostWalkers heal so much faster than anyone else and your leg should have been so much better than it was.”

  With her support, Malichai managed to hop across the room to the bed and nearly fell onto the mattress. She could see it was a relief for him to lie down. She wondered if all the pacing he’d done was because he’d been in such pain. She hurried to get a cool cloth for his face.

  “Here, honey, let me cool you down with this. Drink some water, you don’t want to get dehydrated on top of everything else.” He was burning up. When had the fever started? Why hadn’t she noticed?

  “I’m trying to impress you, Amaryllis, convince you I can be this badass husband that can keep you safe, and I’m literally falling down on the job.”

  She forced herself to smile at his attempt at humor in a situation that had her heart pounding in terror. She would have rather faced Whitney’s supersoldiers trying to recapture her than this situation. If she called the regular doctors, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. She wasn’t certain what to do.

  She sent him a brief, tight smile. “Where’s your phone?”

  “Why? You’re not calling my brother.”

  Amaryllis looked down at his face. He looked petulant, an expression she never thought she’d see on his face. He wasn’t making any sense. He was going to lose his leg from an infection and wasn’t going to call his brother and a team with some of the best doctors in the world to come and save his leg as well as life? That defied all sanity. They had a psychic healer as well.

  She brushed back his damp hair gently and looked at his eyes again. They were glazed with fever. He wasn’t making any sense because he wasn’t really aware of what he was saying or doing. She had to take control of the situation.

  “I want to talk to him, honey. Just let me have your phone. I want his advice.”

  Malichai crossed his arms and shook his head. “I don’t. You call him, Amaryllis, and he’ll have a platoon here along with every GhostWalker unit we have. He’s a master of overkill when it comes to his brothers and their safety. I’m trying to get you to stay with me. He’ll ask you questions and then he’ll scare you off.”

  “I don’t scare so easily.”

  “You were going to leave me.”

  Her hands dropped to his belt buckle and his hands immediately covered hers.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Not what you’re hoping for, but we need these off. Where is your phone, Malichai, and quit stalling.” She poured firmness into her voice, using the tone Marie used on Jacy when she meant business.

  Malichai hesitated only for a moment but then complied. “My phone’s in the back pocket of my jeans.”

  He was lying on the thing and didn’t want to move. Amaryllis felt bad moving him, but it didn’t matter, she had no choice, she shifted his body, pulling his jeans from him and sliding them over his hips and down his leg. She settled him carefully back onto the mattress and just pulled up the sheet as he was still so hot. He lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

  She retrieved the phone and looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “Honey, I need your passcode. I know this is hard for you, but you need to concentrate for me.”

  He opened his eyes briefly and looked at her and then at his phone. He gave her the code and then closed his eyes again, frowning, clearly not fully comprehending what was going on around him.

  Amaryllis immediately punched in the code, and then found his brother’s number and hit that as well. She knew it was late, but he had to answer, and he did, very abruptly.

  “It’s late. What’s wrong?”

  She put her hand on Malichai’s chest, more for her own reassurance than for Malichai’s. He seemed to be drifting in and out.

  She wasn’t certain where to start. What to say. What Ezekiel would believe. She was feeling desperate. They needed help and they needed it immediately. “My name is Amaryllis. I’m here with Malichai. I need your help. That bone in his leg has been deteriorating at a rapid rate. There are little fragments spreading everywhere like a spiderweb. I examined it this morning and could see the bone was going to begin to fail completely. I’m not an experienced healer, but I do have the gift. If you know someone else, another healer like me that could talk me through it, I might be able to save the bone, but it has to be fast. He’s developed an infection. His temperature is spiking, and he can’t put weight on the leg at all. He’s kind of drifting in and out so sometimes is responsive and other times not so much.”

  She took a breath. “I have absolutely no experience. None. Zero. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m willing to take him to the naval hospital, but he doesn’t want to go. I don’t think the bone has much time, by the look of it.” Now she was just chattering like some ninny because she was so afraid of whatever this man might ask her to do. He was so far away. “He really needs help. He does and I don’t know what I’m doing.” That last was a plea.

  There was a long silence. She knew what that meant. Ezekiel was looking for something from Malichai that would tell him the call was real and that his brother wasn’t a prisoner or being used to set the team up in some way. There had to be
a code they used between them.

  She tried again. “He told me about all of you, including Nonny and Pepper and the three little ones. He’s not unconscious but he’s not very alert either. I don’t know how much he’s taking in. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but . . . please believe me when I tell you I need help.”

  “Is he with you now?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say he’s not unconscious. I need to hear his voice.”

  She wasn’t certain how she could get Malichai to talk. She put the phone on speakerphone and put it close to Malichai’s mouth. “Honey, can you hear me? Your brother is on the phone. He wants to hear your voice. Can you please say something to him? For me? Will you do that?”

  She thought she might weep a million tears. She’d learned not to cry, but maybe she’d just stored up all those tears for just the right situation because she wanted to put her arms around Malichai and just give in to that need to weep. She felt helpless and she had never wanted to be that woman again.

  Malichai seemed to rally when he heard the tears in her voice. “I’m all right, baby,” he whispered. His hand came up to stroke her hair. “Zeke, you there?”

  “I’m here, bro.”

  “Amaryllis is my Bellisia. I need you to get her a clean ID. Amaryllis Johnson.”

  “Honey, we need to talk to your brother about your leg, not my identification,” Amaryllis interrupted. It was so like him.

  Malichai ignored her, his eyes closed, his fingers threading her hair, bunching it, holding it to his face. “If anything happens to me, you get her out of this mess. Cops will be looking into her, so get that ID fast.”

  Amaryllis took the cell off speakerphone. “Listen to me. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. He’s running a high fever. Don’t worry about the identity thing. This is more important. Find me a healer. You don’t have to give names, just have him talk me through this. I know that’s the big worry. Whitney and everyone else in the world want the psychic healers, so no one can know who they are. I don’t care who they are. I just want him better.”