Nicolas recognized Calhoun’s voice. He had to be Dahlia’s handler. There was no doubt in Nicolas’s mind she had been used as an operative, but by whom? For whom? And how was Calhoun able to speak telepathically? Nicolas had witnessed many interesting and unexplainable phenomena with each of his grandfathers, but other than the GhostWalkers, psychically enhanced individuals, he had never heard of such strong telepathy being natural and genuine. He could only surmise Calhoun was a GhostWalker. And that meant Dr. Whitney had performed his experiment on others at some other time.
Who are you? He reached out to Calhoun carefully. One of the men searching the room was directly beneath him. Nicolas dropped down like a spider, his hands grasping the head and twisting with tremendous force. The second man whirled around, gun coming up, but all he could see was his partner slumping, almost in slow motion. The rifle, falling from nerveless hands, clattered loudly when it hit the floor, and the man shot toward the sound, a wild hail of bullets that thumped into the floor and wall and into his dead partner.
Nicolas, already a part of the deepest shadows, was halfway on the other side of the room. He returned a single shot, whispering the death chant as he did so. His grandfathers had taught him the value of life—all lives, not just the ones he approved of—and that taking a life was no small matter. There could be no hesitation, but there must be regret. Each life belonged to the universe, and Nicolas believed each had purpose.
There had been no answer from Calhoun. Nicolas could no longer feel his presence and that meant one of two things. Calhoun was dead, or he’d lost consciousness. Had Calhoun deliberately withdrawn, Nicolas was confident he would still be able to feel him. Nicolas entered the room where Calhoun had been shot and found only blood and flames. The blood trail told him Calhoun had been dragged from the room. He hurried through the building, searching to find anyone else alive or dead. Searching for a clue where Dahlia Le Blanc might be.
He found her apartment. Or wing. The place was large and obviously built exclusively for Dahlia. Just as Dr. Whitney had built a house for Lily, he had done the same for Dahlia and hired Bernadette and Milly to take care of her needs. Dahlia’s walls were lined with books. Books in every language. Textbooks, reference books on every subject. There were sets of small round balls in various gem-stones on nearly every surface. Nicolas scooped up several and put them inside his pack. There were too many of the small balls not to matter to Dahlia. He knew many Eastern people used similar balls for stress relief.
On the nightstand were four books stacked neatly atop a small, folded, raggedy child’s blanket. He scooped them up and stuffed them into a pillowcase, looking quickly around to see what else might be of value to Dahlia. She would keep the things that mattered close. If she survived the purge, and he managed to get her to Lily Whitney, she would need familiar things around her. The room was extraordinarily neat, even the books alphabetized on the shelves. He found a light sweater made of the same wool that had been beside the two dead women. Obviously they had knitted it for Dahlia. It was folded neatly and kept beside the bed on her nightstand. He tucked that inside the case as well. The only other item close to the bed was a stuffed teddy bear dressed in a kimono. It had been propped up on the pillow before he had thrown it aside. He bent to pick it up. A bullet thunked into the wall where his head had been.
Nicolas hit the floor and rolled, using the bed for cover, coming up on one knee and firing, laying down a shield of bullets while he located his enemy. He caught a brief glimpse of a man running down the hall. And then he saw the cluster of explosives, obviously C-4, a plastic explosive that would obviously destroy not only the evidence of murder, but the very building itself. He sucked air into his lungs, forcing calm. He had no idea how long he had before the sanitarium went up, but he doubted if it was more than a couple of minutes. Catching up the pillowcase, he shoved it in his waterproof pack as he ran, following behind the man who had tried to ambush him.
As Nicolas approached the door to the room where Calhoun had been shot, he caught a glimpse of movement and threw himself to one side, firing from the hip, rolling across the floor in a somersault and coming up smoothly onto his feet only a scant distance from his assailant. He saw his assailant’s eyes widen in desperation, but the man was already falling backward, his gun spraying the ceiling with bullets. Nicolas murmured his chant as he raced toward the door, a silent bid to the gods of his grandparents to lend wings to his feet.
“JUST a few more minutes,” Dahlia consoled herself aloud. It didn’t matter how many deep breaths she took, she was on serious overload and shards of glass seemed to be stabbing through her head. Her tired eyes could barely make out the dangerous terrain. One misstep and she would sink into the bogs of the swamp. The ground beneath her feet was spongy, matted with thick grasses. The foul stench of stagnant water permeated the air.
There was no more than a sliver of moon to spill light across the swamp. In the darkness, the cypress trees looked macabre, as if they stretched long stick arms instead of branches. Grayish moss hanging like streamers looked like tattered clothes fluttering occasionally above the blackened water. The breeze barely stirred, so that the muggy air seemed barely breathable.
Dahlia pressed her fingers to her temple and paused, her body swaying, rocking back and forth to console herself. Stars exploded in front of her eyes. Her stomach lurched. She lifted her head, suddenly wary. She should be feeling better, not worse, out in the swamp, far from the human emotions breaching the walls of her unprotected brain. She went still, a shadow in the darkness, blurring her image further to keep prying eyes from spotting her.
There was something or someone stalking her, waiting for her to come into its web. Her heart accelerated with fear for those she called family. Her nurses, or guards, she had never really defined them, but they were all she’d known most of her life. Milly and Bernadette. They were mother and sister and friend and nurse to her, women who insisted she learn to do things she always pretended to dislike. She often teased them that crocheting and knitting were for old women, that the sewing they did made them squint.
No one knew about her or her home. She was human, yet not normal, so different she could never be accepted in the world. Nor could she ever fit in and live comfortably. She had a vague idea of her childhood, but mostly she remembered pain. It lived and breathed in her body as if alive. The only way to turn it off was to go to her sanctuary, her home. And someone hunted her, using her home as a trap.