Viper Game (GhostWalkers 11)

A hand-carved chest sat at the bottom of the stairs with a marriage quilt over it. Two more chests were lined up, both with marriage quilts over the top of them. The fourth - his brother Gator's - was gone now. He remembered how his brother's wife, Flame, had cried and clutched the marriage quilt to her that Nonny had made long ago. Each of the boys had one on top of their ornately carved chests. So, okay, his sister-in-law was the exception to the women-weren't-worth-it rule. They'd keep her in the family.

He knew Nonny longed for babies. She'd hoped Flame and Gator would provide them for her, but Flame couldn't have children. Nonny loved her dearly, but she prayed for a miracle and wasn't quiet about her praying. Often, she glared at Wyatt as if he needed to pull babies out of a hat for their family. He avoided the subject at all costs. He glanced back at Malichai and Ezekiel. He should have warned them what a force Nonny was and how she could get you promising things you never considered.

Both men were looking around the house with wide, almost shocked eyes. Wyatt looked too. He knew what they saw. When they were growing up, the Fontenots weren't the richest family in the bayou, not by a long shot, but there was love in the house. You couldn't walk indoors without feeling it.

The smell of fresh bread and gumbo permeated the house. He lifted his head and found himself smiling. She'd made his favorite dessert as well. That was Nonny, she did the little things that mattered.

"I called ahead, but you didn't tell me you felt so threatened you needed to sit outside your home with a shotgun," Wyatt said, heading toward the kitchen.

"Best not to mention things like that right off," Nonny replied with a shrug of her bony shoulders. "You might not have been able to come and then you woulda felt bad. There's no need of that."

Of course there wasn't. Grand-mere would never want one of her boys feeling bad for her or even feeling concern. She humbled him sometimes with her generous spirit.

The pot of gumbo was right there where it always was. He couldn't remember a time when he had come home and not found something simmering on the stove. He reached up into the cupboard to pull down the bowls.

"You're in for a treat, boys."

"You're not goin' to show them around the house first?" Nonny asked. There was laughter in her voice.

"Eatin' is on our minds, Grand-mere," Wyatt admitted.

"He's been talking so much about your cooking, ma'am," Malichai added, "that all we've been thinking about is food."

"That's good," Nonny said, and sank into her familiar chair at the kitchen table.

Wyatt couldn't help but think about all the times he'd sat at the table with his brothers as laughter and conversation had flowed. There was a part of him that wanted to go back to those carefree days when living on the bayou was enough - was everything.

When all three men had a bowl of gumbo, warm fresh bread and hot cafe, Wyatt glanced at his grandmother.

"Tell me what's going on around here that has you packin' a shotgun, Nonny."

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him with her faded blue eyes, eyes still as sharp as ever. "There's been a coupla strange things happenin', Wyatt. I know you don' believe in the Rougarou, and in truth, I never much believed either, but there's been things in the swamp there's no accountin' for."

She paused dramatically. Malichai and Ezekiel both paused as well, the spoons halfway to their mouths. Wyatt kept shoveling food in. He was used to his grandmother's storytelling abilities. She could hold an audience spellbound. She'd used it more than once to keep the boys from wolfing their food.

"Food disappearin', clothes stolen right off the line."

"Sounds like someone hungry, Nonny, a homeless person maybe."

At the word "hungry," both Malichai and Ezekiel resumed eating.

"Maybe," Nonny conceded. "But the food was taken from inside the houses. Sometimes the clothes as well. The houses were locked."

"No one locks houses on the bayou," Wyatt said.

"They do now with all the thievin' goin' on. I keep a pot of somethin' simmerin' on the stove at all times, Wyatt. You know that. Neighbors drop by. Sometimes Flame comes unexpectedly when Gator's out doin' whatever it is he does. I lock up, and I've got the dogs. Twice I let them in the house with me, but every third or fourth mornin' the food was gone out of that pot, even with the dogs inside."

"Someone entered the house while you were sleepin'?" Wyatt demanded, his temper beginning to do a slow boil.

Nonny nodded. "Yep. I couldn' even figger how they got in. When food disappeared here, I started puttin' a package out with little bits I thought might help. Food, clothes, even a blanket or two. Each time I put somethin' out, it was gone the next mornin', but three mornin's in a row after that, I had fresh fish on my table waitin'. Dogs didn't bark. The doors were locked. I couldn't tell how they got in, but it made me a mite uncomfortable knowin' the Rougarou was in my house."

"Why the Rougarou and not a person, ma'am?" Malichai asked.

"Delmar Thibodeaux seen it himself, with his own two eyes. It was movin' fast through the brush, so fast he could barely track it."

"Delmar Thibodeaux owns the Huracan Club, where liquor flows in abundance," Wyatt explained to the others.

"He swore he wasn't drinkin' when he saw it."

Wyatt sighed. "What else is goin' on around here, Nonny? That shotgun wasn't out for the Rougarou. You wouldn't kill it."

"I might," the old lady insisted. "If it threatened me."

Wyatt lifted his eyebrow at her. "Animals don' threaten you, Nonny. Everyone in the bayou knows that. Even the alligators leave you alone."

The boys were fairly certain they'd inherited their psychic abilities from their grandmother, although she never admitted to anything.

Nonny let out a resigned sigh. Clearly she wanted the shapeshifting legend to be true. "Do you remember that old hospital that burned down a couple of years back? There were whispers about that place, some madman owned it and held a girl prisoner there and she set the whole thing on fire to escape."

Wyatt nodded reluctantly. There were always rumors in the bayou - superstition melding with truth. The bayous and swamps were places where myth or legend often was rooted in reality. In this case, he knew the whispers were true.

Dr. Whitney, the previous owner of the hospital, was truly a madman. He had dedicated his life to creating a supersoldier. Those soldiers were known as GhostWalkers, because they owned the night. Few saw them, or heard them as they carried out their missions. Few knew that their DNA had been tampered with and they were all psychically as well as physically enhanced.

Now they were getting into classified things - things he couldn't discuss with his grandmother. He kept his head down while he ate.

"I remember it," he admitted.

"Some big shot bought up the land right away and cleaned it all up. They built a long, ugly building with few windows and walls at least a foot thick, all concrete. Not a single man or woman on the river was employed."

There was no denying the little sneer in her voice. It was considered an insult for a large company to come into the bayou and not hire the locals who needed work. Most of the families living on the river would have taken it the same way. The "big shot" hadn't made any friends with his decision to give work to outsiders, but he hadn't broken any laws either.

"Who owns the land now, Nonny?" he asked.

Whitney Trust had owned it, and Lily, Whitney's daughter, had sold it the moment she realized her father had used the facilities to experiment on a child. Wyatt didn't look at either of the Fortunes brothers. Like him, they were fairly new in the GhostWalker force, but he had information they didn't on the founder and creator of the program.

"They have a big sign up on their fourteen-foot-high chain-link fence with razor wire rolled up along on the top and men with guns patrolling with dogs," Nonny said in disgust. "Like they're afraid everyone in the bayou wants to know their business."

Wyatt couldn't stop the grin. "Nonny, everyone in the bayou

does want to know their business."

She threw back her head and laughed, the sound adding to the feeling of home.

"Ma'am," Malichai interrupted. "Do you mind if I have another bowl of this very good gumbo? I've never tasted anything like it."

"It's authentic gumbo, a traditional recipe that's been in my family for generations," Nonny said, looking pleased. "Dive right in, that's what it's there for. We always have somethin' cookin' on the stove for you when you come in hungry."

"I'm always hungry," Malichai admitted.

"You're a big man and it takes a might of food to keep you satisfied," she said.

"If you don't mind me saying, ma'am," Ezekiel said, "he's got some kind of hollow leg that's plain impossible to fill. I ought to know, I tried for years."

"He broke into a grocery store once," Malichai said, "you know, back when we were kids," he added hastily when Wyatt shot him a look. "The kind that has the hot chicken roasting and already-cooked food. Our brother Mordichai and I feasted all night and we were still hungry in the morning. Ezekiel said it was impossible to keep up with our stomachs."

"He's like a starved wolf, ma'am," Ezekiel said. "Never gains an ounce of fat, but he gorges on food when we've got it. Our other brother is the same way."