Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

Something wasn’t right about the clouds of lightning. She was secreted in the small animal tunnel, low to the ground, surrounded by tall trees and dense forest and brush. Those clouds continued to stretch for miles overhead, the lightning forks active, crackling and sizzling with hostile intent. The more he studied them, the more he was certain the lightning was an effort to draw Jonquille out. Eyes in the sky. Looking.

If he could make his way to her without giving away her position, that would stop any possible chance of an attack on her, or success of the threat to her. His presence alone would stop it. On the other hand, just moving might draw the hunter’s attention. He had to know where the threat was coming from.

Jonquille didn’t panic, and she had to know the clouds were a deliberate danger to her. Diego would be a ghost in the woods. Rubin studied the terrain. Where would the hunter most likely be? He thought Jonquille was alone. Why had he thought she might be near the stream? What had tipped him off to her presence?

The elk put one hoof in the stream and splashed through the water, his head up, eyes on a section of trees as he traveled without haste out of sight. The drone of the insects never stopped. An owl several hundred yards from him, in the direction Jonquille had come from, flew toward a tree, circled, talons out as if to land, and then veered off, wings beating hard to get lift again. It flew to a red spruce several yards away and settled in the branches there.

Rubin switched away from the vision he mostly used at night—that of a wolf. He was comfortable with that, but he switched his vision in order to see from an eagle’s vision. The bird could see at night. He wanted to inspect that particular tree the owl had decided not to rest in. It had swerved off for a reason.

Crouched on a crooked limb, about thirty feet up, was a man. Dressed in camouflage gear, his face streaked with paint to reflect his surroundings, he nearly blended right into the tree itself. He wasn’t armed with a rifle. Rather, he had a strange device in his hand and he was pointing it upward, not down toward the ground. Every now and then, he would look at something much smaller, nestled in his palm, that Rubin couldn’t see.

Although it was clear the hunter was a patient man, he was also frustrated. He was pushing the clouds farther out, back toward the Campo cabin, as if whatever had made him think Jonquille was in the area he was rethinking. He consulted the device in his palm over and over.

Rubin watched the clouds move away from Jonquille. She wasn’t entirely safe. She had to remain quite still until the electrical charges settled. They could be miles away and still find her, but she would know that. He didn’t take his eyes off the hunter to look for Jonquille. He had to trust that she was every bit as trained as he believed she was.

The hunter in the trees remained still the entire time other than to glance between the two devices. There was no doubt in Rubin’s mind that the man in the trees was forcing the thunderclouds to migrate across the sky toward the Campo cabin in search of Jonquille. Over the next few minutes, the towering clouds spread across the sky, the electrical storm lessening over the area so that the static charges dwindled significantly.

Rubin was concerned with the way the clouds were beginning to take shape overhead. From the original formation, the way the hunter was forcing them to move, they were taking on the appearance of an anvil. That could be very bad. Anvil clouds could produce lightning that could strike as much as ten miles away, where skies could appear blue and people would be completely unaware they were in danger.

The hunter abruptly leapt from the tree, into the nearest branches of the closest spruce, and then continued on to the next tree, his body taking on the appearance of a large flying squirrel. He moved so fast he blurred, his clothing blending into the needles and branches of the swaying limbs of the trees as he sprang in and out of them. It was difficult to track him, and would have been impossible had Rubin not been using his enhanced eyesight.

Rubin was up and after him, running full out, using every one of his many enhanced senses to keep track of the enemy as the man sprang from tree to tree. As he ran, Rubin, through the hairs on his body, felt the shift in the wind just enough to warn him that the clouds were moving back into place overhead. As their opponent ran, he was capable of thinking and acting. The foliage on the forest floor hadn’t been that affected, but the canopy above them swayed.