Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

He studied the various flowering bushes and the vines winding their way up the trees. Many of the specimens growing up high were epiphytes, plants that lived by extracting moisture out of the air rather than requiring soil for their roots. The kinds of flowers and vines he was observing just didn’t grow in the Lolo National Forest. Certainly, they didn’t grow in this particular high-altitude climate. Intense snow was common several months out of the year, and these exotics needed consistent care, warmth and humidity.

Jonas could feel the rising heat in the mist. At this altitude, temperatures should be dropping, but instead, the air was warm and getting downright hot the deeper into the interior he went. Whoever was able to control the temperature inside the groves of trees over such a wide range had a powerful gift. They weren’t just manipulating temperatures in a controlled environment. They were manipulating the climate of several square miles of open forest and sustaining that manipulation over time. He didn’t know too many of his fellow GhostWalkers capable of such a feat—if any.

He moved slowly, feeling his way with all of his senses. Plants had alarm systems, just the way animals and people did. They could shrink back from heat or cold, from loud noises, or extend their leaves or vines toward appealing music. He had always been able to hide himself from people and animals, even birds and reptiles, but he’d never considered having to include plants.

He tuned his mind to the mist and humidity. Someone had bound nature itself to them. The respect and admiration he felt rose the more he examined the full extent of the shimmering illusion hiding the grove. He was looking at an outdoor greenhouse in an impossible location where few hikers would stumble across it. Two full teams of GhostWalkers made their homes miles below, surrounded by the same national forest, yet they had no idea the phenomenon was above them. The garden had been built after the teams’ compounds had been established, because he knew both had sent men up the mountain to ensure they had escape routes prior to building.

Jonas was capable of binding nature to him. He hadn’t known any other GhostWalker could, not even the newer ones Whitney had perfected. He could only enhance what psychic gifts each individual already possessed. As for the gene doping, in the beginning, he’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink into the mix. He was much more cautious with his last two teams. Jonas, being a member of the first team, had no idea what was inside of him. He had discovered hidden talents accidentally and practiced hard at developing them or controlling them, whichever was needed.

The mist contained not only the illusion and the warning, driving anyone away from the area, but also the humidity, pushing the temperature up so that moisture collected in the air throughout the trees. Was there a trap for the unwary? Had vines moved overhead?

Jonas tuned his body to mimic the same molecular structure of the mist so he could disappear into it. He moved deeper into the interior of the forest and the garden. The deeper he got into it, the more he realized the garden had to have been there for some time. Someone had worked on it lovingly with a great attention to detail. Numerous footpaths wound through the forest floor, created by someone tending the various bushes and flowers.

He followed one of the paths winding in and out of the trees. He remained alert for traps and was careful not to trip alarms, but he increased his speed. He needed to find who had bound nature to them and set the mist, and where the GhostWalker team was hiding and what they were up to. Unexpectedly, he came upon several very exotic plants, flowers that were considered so rare they were only known to grow in one or two places in the world, yet here they all were.

Jonas spotted a ghost orchid growing high in a tree, an epiphyte that required not only high heat and humidity but a certain type of fungus in order to prosper, none of which occurred naturally in the Lolo National Forest. Not far away, a beautiful jade vine was wrapped tight around another tree, its pendulous clusters of claw-shaped flowers hanging a good three meters long. The jade vine was found naturally only in the rain forests of the Philippines, yet here it was in Montana not just surviving but thriving, its magnificent hanging blooms an incredible shade of deep blue.

Jonas recognized the black bat flower. So rare as to be considered endangered in the wild, it was also quite difficult to cultivate. Thirty centimeters in diameter, the flower resembled its namesake bat, with droopy whisker-like stamen that could measure as much as seventy centimeters in length. He also spotted the Rothschild slipper orchid and a flowering Franklin tree. He found it incredible that the variety of flowers from various countries could be successfully cultivated side by side, let alone in this forest. Clearly, someone, for some reason, had brought these rare flowers to this altitude and manufactured the conditions required to grow them.