Mind Game

  He went across the spongy ground as fast as he could without chancing sinking into the bog. If Dahlia was in the building, the team would be overrunning even her capabilities. The double doors to the main entrance were open as if in invitation. Tendrils of smoke drifted out, along with the smells of gasoline and blood. Nicolas exploded through the doorway, rolling into a ball and coming up on his feet, tracking the room with his gun, eyes adjusting to the darker interior. Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor. Keeping a wary eye on the door leading into the sanitarium, Nicolas approached the bodies.

  He recognized them from the pictures and dossier on each woman. Bernadette Sanders and Milly Duboune lay dead, each executed with a single bullet to the forehead. It particularly bothered him, the sight of them lying lifeless, their blood soaking into round balls of wool half unraveled on the floor. There was nothing he could do for them. The office was destroyed, files already saturated with accelerant and burning. Nicolas moved on quickly, knowing he had little time.

  He found himself in what was obviously a gymnasium with every kind of exercise and training equipment money could buy. There was little damage to the room, but he smelled the gasoline splashed on the walls. There was nothing to be gained in the room so he chose a door that led into a large hallway.

  The door was ajar, an open invitation, but his survival instincts were screaming. He stayed to the side of the door and took a cautious look. Flames licked up the walls and smoke billowed from several places along the floor. A table and several chairs were overturned and glass was smashed everywhere. Several men were in the room, all armed. Several splashed gasoline over the walls and floor, soaking the table and chairs. One was yelling at a man on the floor. Twice he kicked the downed man and once slammed the butt of his gun into the man's ribs.

  "Where the hell is she, Calhoun? She should have been here."

  "Go to hell, Dobbs." Blood poured down Calhoun's face and soaked his shirt. He spit a mouthful of blood on the floor. "She's long gone, and you're never going to find her."

  Dobbs reacted to the taunt instantly, turning his gun on the man's outstretched leg and pulling the trigger. Calhoun screamed. Blood spattered the walls. A man out of Nicolas's sight laughed.

  Nicolas took aim and fired, one shot, dead center, and melted away before Dobbs could fall to the floor in a lifeless heap. At once a rain of bullets spat through the walls and doorway, seeking Nicolas as the death crew fired blindly in retaliation.

  Nicolas had already gone up, choosing to use the high ceiling as a refuge, waiting for the first man to come through the door, knowing they would believe he had fled into another room. He sprawled like a spider above their heads, motionless, a shadow in the dark interior. Even the flickering orange and red of the flames didn't reach him. They would fan out and search for him and that would divide them into a much more manageable enemy. He waited as he always did. Calm. Patient. Certain of his enemies' next move.

  Nicolas heard them talking. Heard Calhoun scream in agony as someone obviously moved him with more haste than care. Two men nudged the door open and slipped into the room with him. They split up, one going right, the other left in a standard search pattern, checking every corner of the room. Nicolas remained utterly still, only his eyes moving, watching, measuring the distance beneath him to his prey.

  Dahlia? Nicolas heard the name clearly in his head. Heard the pain etched into the voice, the thoughts. He glimpsed a swirling eddy of fear and shock, of determination. You can't save me. Get the hell out of here. Disappear. That's an order.

  Nicolas recognized Calhoun's voice. He had to be Dahlia's handler. There was no doubt in Nicolas's mind she had been used as an operative, but by whom? For whom? And how was Calhoun able to speak telepathically? Nicolas had witnessed many interesting and unexplainable phenomena with each of his grandfathers, but other than the GhostWalkers, psychically enhanced individuals, he had never heard of such strong telepathy being natural and genuine. He could only surmise Calhoun was a GhostWalker. And that meant Dr. Whitney had performed his experiment on others at some other time.

  Who are you? He reached out to Calhoun carefully. One of the men searching the room was directly beneath him. Nicolas dropped down like a spider, his hands grasping the head and twisting with tremendous force. The second man whirled around, gun coming up, but all he could see was his partner slumping, almost in slow motion. The rifle, falling from nerveless hands, clattered loudly when it hit the floor, and the man shot toward the sound, a wild hail of bullets that thumped into the floor and wall and into his dead partner.

  Nicolas, already a part of the deepest shadows, was halfway on the other side of the room. He returned a single shot, whispering the death chant as he did so. His grandfathers had taught him the value of life--all lives, not just the ones he approved of--and that taking a life was no small matter. There could be no hesitation, but there must be regret. Each life belonged to the universe, and Nicolas believed each had purpose.

  There had been no answer from Calhoun. Nicolas could no longer feel his presence and that meant one of two things. Calhoun was dead, or he'd lost consciousness. Had Calhoun deliberately withdrawn, Nicolas was confident he would still be able to feel him. Nicolas entered the room where Calhoun had been shot and found only blood and flames. The blood trail told him Calhoun had been dragged from the room. He hurried through the building, searching to find anyone else alive or dead. Searching for a clue where Dahlia Le Blanc might be.

  He found her apartment. Or wing. The place was large and obviously built exclusively for Dahlia. Just as Dr. Whitney had built a house for Lily, he had done the same for Dahlia and hired Bernadette and Milly to take care of her needs. Dahlia's walls were lined with books. Books in every language. Textbooks, reference books on every subject. There were sets of small round balls in various gem-stones on nearly every surface. Nicolas scooped up several and put them inside his pack. There were too many of the small balls not to matter to Dahlia. He knew many Eastern people used similar balls for stress relief.

  On the nightstand were four books stacked neatly atop a small, folded, raggedy child's blanket. He scooped them up and stuffed them into a pillowcase, looking quickly around to see what else might be of value to Dahlia. She would keep the things that mattered close. If she survived the purge, and he managed to get her to Lily Whitney, she would need familiar things around her. The room was extraordinarily neat, even the books alphabetized on the shelves. He found a light sweater made of the same wool that had been beside the two dead women. Obviously they had knitted it for Dahlia. It was folded neatly and kept beside the bed on her nightstand. He tucked that inside the case as well. The only other item close to the bed was a stuffed teddy bear dressed in a kimono. It had been propped up on the pillow before he had thrown it aside. He bent to pick it up. A bullet thunked into the wall where his head had been.

  Nicolas hit the floor and rolled, using the bed for cover, coming up on one knee and firing, laying down a shield of bullets while he located his enemy. He caught a brief glimpse of a man running down the hall. And then he saw the cluster of explosives, obviously C-4, a plastic explosive that would obviously destroy not only the evidence of murder, but the very building itself. He sucked air into his lungs, forcing calm. He had no idea how long he had before the sanitarium went up, but he doubted if it was more than a couple of minutes. Catching up the pillowcase, he shoved it in his waterproof pack as he ran, following behind the man who had tried to ambush him.

  As Nicolas approached the door to the room where Calhoun had been shot, he caught a glimpse of movement and threw himself to one side, firing from the hip, rolling across the floor in a somersault and coming up smoothly onto his feet only a scant distance from his assailant. He saw his assailant's eyes widen in desperation, but the man was already falling backward, his gun spraying the ceiling with bullets. Nicolas murmured his chant as he raced toward the door, a silent bid to the gods of his grandparents to lend wings to his feet.

  "JUST a few more m
inutes," Dahlia consoled herself aloud. It didn't matter how many deep breaths she took, she was on serious overload and shards of glass seemed to be stabbing through her head. Her tired eyes could barely make out the dangerous terrain. One misstep and she would sink into the bogs of the swamp. The ground beneath her feet was spongy, matted with thick grasses. The foul stench of stagnant water permeated the air.

  There was no more than a sliver of moon to spill light across the swamp. In the darkness, the cypress trees looked macabre, as if they stretched long stick arms instead of branches. Grayish moss hanging like streamers looked like tattered clothes fluttering occasionally above the blackened water. The breeze barely stirred, so that the muggy air seemed barely breathable.

  Dahlia pressed her fingers to her temple and paused, her body swaying, rocking back and forth to console herself. Stars exploded in front of her eyes. Her stomach lurched. She lifted her head, suddenly wary. She should be feeling better, not worse, out in the swamp, far from the human emotions breaching the walls of her unprotected brain. She went still, a shadow in the darkness, blurring her image further to keep prying eyes from spotting her.

  There was something or someone stalking her, waiting for her to come into its web. Her heart accelerated with fear for those she called family. Her nurses, or guards, she had never really defined them, but they were all she'd known most of her life. Milly and Bernadette. They were mother and sister and friend and nurse to her, women who insisted she learn to do things she always pretended to dislike. She often teased them that crocheting and knitting were for old women, that the sewing they did made them squint.

  No one knew about her or her home. She was human, yet not normal, so different she could never be accepted in the world. Nor could she ever fit in and live comfortably. She had a vague idea of her childhood, but mostly she remembered pain. It lived and breathed in her body as if alive. The only way to turn it off was to go to her sanctuary, her home. And someone hunted her, using her home as a trap.

  The knowledge blossomed, nearly consuming her brain, a stark reality she couldn't avoid. Her mission had had unexpected complications, but she'd made it out and knew no one followed her. Had they found another way to find her home? Everything that could go wrong had certainly gone wrong, but she knew absolutely she hadn't been followed. Jesse Calhoun, her handler, was certain to be waiting for her. He was lethal and fast when he needed to be. Jesse interested her because he was the only other human being she knew of with capabilities close to hers. And he was also telepathic, so why wasn't he warning her of the danger?

  Dahlia knew how to be patient. She pushed the pain aside and waited there in the swamp, inhaling to try to catch a scent. Listening for a sound. There was only the occasional plop of a snake dropping from overhead branches into the murky waters. Still, she waited, knowing movement drew the eye. The faint smell of smoke drifted to her on the breeze.

  Her breath caught in her throat. There was only one building that could feed a fire. She needed her home. She couldn't survive without it. If they took her residence, they might as well put a bullet in her head. Dahlia took two steps to her right. She doubted anyone knew the way through the swamp. Anyone waiting for her would be expecting her to be coming in by boat. Most likely they would be watching the dock. She stepped carefully on the trail, knowing she could sink into the bog if she took one misstep. An alligator growled somewhere close. Dahlia merely glanced in the direction of the sound, a quick acknowledgment of the creature's presence.

  She took another cautious step forward. She counted ten steps and stepped to her right again. Moving through the swamp was nearly automatic. She counted steps in her mind, but was really concentrating on the smell drifting on the slight breeze. Dahlia peered through the night, her instincts sharp and alert. Something waited for her, something terrible, and a dark dread was taking hold.

  She approached her home from the north, the only real safe passage through the swamp. Twice she had to wade knee-deep through the black water, using the cypress trees to guide her progress. Dahlia was careful to make no sound, blending with the night creatures, tuning to them so the insects continued in harmony and the frogs croaked with annoying repetition. The last thing she wanted was to give her position away by having the animals go abruptly silent. It took stealth and calm to move in their world and not disturb them. Dahlia could do it, but it required all of her concentration when her heart was pounding in alarm.

  The smell of something smoldering choked her as she approached the sanitarium. She could make out the cloud of black smoke rising and orange-red flames pouring from inside the building. The sanitarium was built on solid ground in the center of the small island. A walkway led from the dock over spongy marsh to the higher terrain where the building was located. Dahlia had taken two steps toward her home when the first wave of energy hit her so hard it drove her to her knees.

  Violence--dark, malevolent. It poured from the building and rolled off the walls. Something terrible had happened. The energy was living, left behind by the aftermath of what had created it. Death. She smelled it. Knew it waited just inside the building.

  Dahlia fought to breathe her way through the pain. She avoided violent energy whenever possible, but she could force herself to endure it if necessary. She'd done it before. She had to go inside. She had to know what happened, and she had to get to Milly and Bernadette and maybe even Jesse. Resolutely, she drew air into her lungs and stood up. Her tongue moistened her suddenly dry lips. It was difficult to concentrate with so much pain, but she'd learned to push it to the back of her head. And she had to see what happened. What was left. It was the only home she could remember. The only people she had contact with lived there with her. Her books. Her music. Her entire world was in that building.

  She kept to the trees, running lightly through the tall grass, moving with the breeze rather than against it. She knew there was someone left behind. Someone waiting for her arrival. Energy flowed toward her and it confused her. There was the violence, hot angry waves rolling in to swamp her and a secondary source, completely different. Calm, centered--patient. The contrast was shocking. She'd never experienced it before, and it made her all the more wary.

  As she approached her home, she could see several men dragging Jesse Calhoun down the well-worn path to the boat docks. Jesse appeared unconscious and covered in blood. His legs dragged uselessly and she could see the damage, raw and ugly even in the night. "Jesse." She whispered his name and switched directions, hurrying toward him, using the natural cover, uncertain how she could help him. She never carried a gun. She had long ago realized she couldn't survive the deliberate taking of a life.

  There were too many men slipping through the night toward the waterway. A purge. The men had come to kill her, to wipe out her existence. Why? She'd completed her mission. She tried to maneuver closer, thinking she might be able to scare them away from Jesse with heat and fire. The sound of gunfire erupted from within the building.

  "Milly. Bernadette." She'd never felt so helpless or torn in her life.

  Shouts broke out as Jesse woke, struggling and fighting. Dahlia immediately followed the group of men, reaching out to Jesse as she did so. She wasn't particularly telepathic, but Jesse was, and he would feel her energy and know she was present. Jesse. Tell me what to do.

  A man's voice answered in a hard, authoritative voice. . . . And it wasn't Jesse. Don't do anything. Stay away from here.

  She froze, sinking into the tall grass. Other than Jesse, no one had ever spoken to her like that. The world was crashing down around her and nothing made sense. The overload of violent energy made her sick, her stomach rebelling as the waves rushed over her, wanting to consume her. Her head was throbbing with pain. She kept her eyes on Jesse, hoping he would reach out to her, tell her what was going on. She saw one of the men deliberately reach down and slam the butt of his gun into the raw mess that was Jesse's leg. Jesse screamed, a terrible sound that would echo in her dreams for a long time.

  The rush
of violence hit her hard, swamping her so that she sagged backward, but she kept her gaze focused on the man who had struck Jesse so viciously. Flames rushed up and over him, huge leaping streaks of orange and red, as high as a bonfire, flames she couldn't possibly control. Chaos erupted. Several men fired shots in scattered directions, uncertain where the attack was coming from. One man rolled his partner in a jacket to put out the flames.

  A third man simply shot Jesse a second time, in his other leg. Dahlia had never heard so much agony in a scream. She was sick, over and over, the power of the violent energy swirling around her and beating at her with more force than she'd ever endured before.

  "We'll keep shooting him. You can't get all of us," the man who shot Jesse shouted. They kept moving, a tight unit now, Jesse in the middle, being dragged away while the men faced outward with their guns.

  Dahlia was too sick to move, to think. She cursed her inability to do more than sit there, hiding like a rabbit in the grass while they tortured Jesse and took him away from her. Jesse, who had taught her to play chess and gave her more relief than she'd ever imagined possible by just his presence. Jesse with his easy, engaging smile. He was the only person who ever teased her. She hadn't even known what teasing was until Jesse had come into her life.

  She should have carried a gun. She knew how to use one. She could only watch helplessly until they were out of sight and she heard the boat motor start up. Dahlia rushed down to the docks to see two boats disappearing down the channel. The only evidence of Jesse was the terrible blood-stain. The red puddle looked shiny black in the darkness.

  Dahlia turned back toward her home. Smoke poured from the windows and doors, drifted toward the sky. She could see the flames licking at the walls. Jesse was gone. They'd taken him. I'll find you. Stay alive, Jesse. I'll come for you. She made it a vow. Just using telepathy without him creating the bond sent shards of glass into her brain, but she was far beyond caring.

  That's what they want, Dahlia. I'm the bait. Don't let them kill us both.