Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

Jonas believed her. Jack and Ken Norton, the two men who had originally made their home on the mountain and leased part of their acreage to fellow team members, had roamed all over the mountain. They would have ventured to the altitude Camellia had settled in.

“No one else has ever penetrated your security?”

She shook her head. “Not once. They come close but veer away, taking the trail, believing the illusion. You’re the only one who hasn’t. That bothers me, Jonas.”

He listened to the cadence of her voice. More, his body seemed very tuned to hers. Not just sexually, but the blood running through his veins. Up until that last sentence, everything she said seemed fine. Then his blood reacted. There was a strange rippling effect, a light churning sensation that caused his skin to prickle and his mind to reject her low, almost whispered ending.

“I don’t think it does bother you, Camellia. I think you want it to bother you. You think the fact that I saw through the illusion should bother you, but it doesn’t. That’s what bothers you.” He called her on it.

He kept his voice soft, a velvet caress brushing over her skin and sinking into her mind as gently as he could. He wanted to be branded there. Branded on her bones, just the way he was certain she was on his. The branches of the Middlemist Red Camellia swayed so that the blossoms seemed to hold the two of them in an embrace for a moment, and then with a slight breeze, released them again. Had Jonas not been so intently watching Camellia’s face, he would have missed the small tell in her expression. She knew those branches were touching them both of their own volition. Reading the two of them.

“At least let’s be honest with one another,” he prompted. “I’m not trying to upset you, Camellia. I really want to get to know you and maybe get a few answers to questions I’ve had about myself.”

Camellia regarded him in silence while that slight breeze ruffled her hair and the pink blossoms touched her face as if to soothe her. “How much do you know about Whitney’s experiments?”

Jonas sighed and shoved his fingers through his hair. “We all agreed to strengthen our psychic abilities. Everyone in the GhostWalker program volunteered. We thought it was a good thing. We had a chance to prevent other soldiers from getting killed in combat. I tested fairly high in quite a number of areas. On Team One, there were several of us who did. I think Whitney was very excited about that. He convinced us he knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, he didn’t.”

“You look like you’re a capable soldier to me,” she answered.

“In the beginning, we were mostly a mess.” Jonas was strictly honest. “Whitney did more than enhance our psychic abilities. He messed with our genetic coding without saying a word to any of us. He removed the filters to our brains. Some of us needed anchors to draw the energy away from us, or we got brain bleeds. Because we were unaware of the new genetics that made us more aggressive, faster and able to do things we couldn’t do before, we made mistakes that hurt others.” He looked down at his hands. “Not just hurt others. People were killed. Our team was separated and locked up. There were a couple of factions that took an unhealthy interest in us. One was trying to murder us and the other trying to study us.”

“Whitney would want to continue his experiments,” Camellia said.

He nodded. “Ryland, along with Whitney’s daughter, Lily, helped us escape. Ryland runs our team and is married to Lily now. Lily taught us exercises to develop shields in our brains in order to be able to be around other people for short periods of time without an anchor. It felt like a long road learning what we were and what we could do. We’re still learning. Mostly, we learned we could only count on each other to survive.”

Jonas kept his eyes on her face the entire time he gave her the truth. He didn’t tell her the hell they’d all been in—separated, knowing they were under a death sentence, afraid to go to sleep, knowing others were being murdered and unable to help one another. She’d been in a similar situation most of her life, imprisoned by Whitney, having to stand by while he tortured the other girls, unable to aid them.

Camellia shook her head and then looked down at her hands. “It’s so terrible to feel helpless. I didn’t know, for a very long time, if I had anything to contribute to my sisters. I’ve always been a strong telepath, but my healing abilities didn’t show up until my late teens, and then they weren’t strong. I had to really work at drawing that talent out. Or at least, I thought I was working at it. I didn’t want Whitney to know I had that gift, so I would try little experiments when I was alone in my room.”