Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

Oh, dear. I suspect Kyle could be surrounded. She batted her eyelashes at Jonas.

“That’s not funny, Camellia,” Jonas hissed. “He has a rifle. If he feels threatened, what do you think he’s going to do?”

The smile left Jeff’s face. “Who is being threatened? Kyle?” It was clear he reached out to the absent man. “He assures me he’s fine.”

“Did you think the wolves would actually give themselves away? They’re ghosts in the forest, Jonas. Call your man off and I’ll call off my wolves.”

“Jeff, call Kyle in now,” Jonas ordered. “Camellia is not a danger to any of us.”

“I can see that by the ten thousand weapons she has on her,” Jeff said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“In my defense, I would like to point out that Jonas has a few weapons of his own, as do you,” Camellia said, indicating Jonas’s jacket and belt. “I’m not even going to talk about what’s in his boots—or yours, for that matter.”

An owl flew just a few feet overhead with soft, slow wingbeats a distance from them. It perched on a broken tree trunk inside the grove of trees from where Camellia and Jonas stood together. Immediately the Great Gray owl was lost in the fog and darkness of the forest. It was just that brief moment that the raptor had become visible, and then it was gone, as if it had never been.

“I suppose you’re right, ma’am,” Jeff agreed. “I’ll call Kyle in, but I won’t be happy if he loses his way in this fog or something happens to him.”

“He’s a GhostWalker,” Camellia pointed out. “He won’t lose his way.”

“Although your little alternate trail has been sending GhostWalkers in a different direction for a while now, hasn’t it?” Jonas asked.

Camellia shrugged. “I suppose. But only because there was a real trail there. The actual trail had forked. It was easy enough to redirect, make it appear as if the trail just went in one direction, not two.”

“Then you embedded a warning system to keep any strays away,” Jeff said.

“In case Whitney sent someone after me, yes,” she admitted. “That was easy enough as well. I already had the system in place, a warning system set up for me, a way to send hikers or anyone else away from my home, so I just embedded a dread, and then if they continued, a slight illness. If anyone persisted beyond a certain point, the headache and illness would become more severe.”

“Some people were obviously more susceptible than others,” Jeff said. “Kyle’s coming in. You make certain he’s safe,” he reiterated.

Camellia could feel the slightest vibrations along the mycelium network, indicating someone was approaching. He walked with deliberate steps, clearly trying to let her know he was coming. Jeff had evidently cautioned him to make a little noise because she was certain he wasn’t the kind of man to give his presence away.

Let him through, she instructed the wolves.

The temperature changed subtly, and the breeze swept through once again, easing the fog so that it appeared to be just a thin veil of grayish lavender.

“Coming in,” Kyle called out.

Camellia turned her back completely on Jonas to watch Kyle’s approach. She knew both Gray and Blue were perched on dead tree trunks just a few feet apart, watching over her. They would fly at anyone with deadly talons and vicious hooked beaks. The wolves were close and would come to her aid. She went through the targets in her mind, practicing, going through each motion until she knew how she would make each kill in order to make her run should it be necessary.

The largest problem was she would have to kill Jonas first. The wolves or the owls wouldn’t get to him in time. She would be responsible for that task. She would be the one to have to slit his throat or stab him through the heart or shoot him. She turned, pushing her forehead against Jonas’s chest one last time before she stepped completely clear of him.

“Honey, do you think, connected the way we are, I don’t know what you’re thinking?”

She detested the way his voice was so gentle. She was going through the act of killing him in her mind, repeating it over and over after he had kissed her, and he could use that voice, look at her with such understanding in his eyes. Instinctively, she knew he didn’t look at anyone else that way.

“I won’t apologize for who I am or even what I am, Jonas,” she said, lifting her chin. “Unlike you, I’ve come to terms with what Whitney did to me. I’ll admit, I’m nowhere near as aggressive as you are. I can see that you have to fight your nature every minute, and that sucks. I wouldn’t want to be you. I don’t judge or condemn you the way you do yourself. I know what it feels like, if only in a small way, to have a predatory instinct burn along my nerves, demanding I hunt prey when it runs from me. Rabbits, mice, voles, I’ve had to find a serene, peaceful place to go when I can feel that need rising in me. To have to deal with it every minute would be hell. But I will fight to stay free, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to be free. Whitney is never getting me or a child of mine to experiment on. Nor will he get one of my plant creations.”