Spider Game (43 page)

The sound of Draden’s rifle cut through the air. The quick one-two Draden was famous for. He’d placed both shots precisely in the pilot’s head. The lead helicopter lurched. Spun. One of the gunners went flying. The other fell back into the spinning craft. The helicopter continued to spin as it fell from the sky. The wheels touched earth. Bounced a few feet into the air spinning like a top. The craft listed to the side, the left back wheels touched first, almost gently, and then crumbled as the helicopter spun on the ground.

It looked as if for a moment time slowed. The helicopter continued to tip to the side. The tail crashed into the ground, as the entire craft swept around in a circle on its side, throwing up dirt, debris and pieces of the wheels and tail. The rotor collapsed into the dirt, crumbling, forcing more debris, plants and dirt into the air, so that the sight was nearly obscured from vision. The craft, on its side, continued to spin as more debris flew into the air. It seemed alive, thrashing wildly for a moment, and then it came to a rest on its side, completely broken.

The second helicopter pulled back deeper into the cover of the swamp, hovering behind the taller trees where their leader barked out orders to his ground crew. Trap felt those orders like a tedious buzzing in his ear. He kept his gaze fixed on the tiny bit of clearing covered with vegetation, rather than the temptation of the moss-covered trees. The man they’d left behind to deal with him was in that clearing.

I know you’re there,
he whispered into the midst of the buzzing.

There was an abrupt silence, as if the leader heard him. Not just the leader, but the entire team. He was a strong telepath and he
wanted
them to hear him. He willed them to hear him.

You should have left her alone.
He stayed still. Motionless. He was inside the grove of trees, surrounded by brush, so even if the helicopter swung back to aid the rear guard, they wouldn’t spot him. They could sweep the area with their powerful gun, but they’d kill their own man as well.

You’ll never find me,
the rear guard hissed.
Keep looking, you big son of a bitch. They’ll be on that insect before you ever find me. It’s already too late.

There was a heartbeat of silence and then a furious hiss of command. The leader wasn’t in the least bit happy that his rear guard had engaged with the enemy.

Trap stared at the small clearing of leaves, calmly calculating the cubic feet and how best to direct his blast. He knew Gino was in front of the other two men and any others converging on the house. Gino was a ghost. Phantom wind, they called him. No one saw Gino, even when he made his kill. One moment no one was there, the next the body was already dropping to the ground and he was gone. Trap trusted him to do his job.

He sent a gust of air, lifting the vegetation to reveal the rear guard lying prone. Trap changed the actual chemicals in the air, a gift he had in abundance now, one that he’d practiced and honed, one he used when he went into enemy camps and left behind the dead. Gasses changed. The strange shimmer, a veil more opaque than translucent, surrounded the guard.

The man coughed. Tried to push himself up. Coughed again. Spat blood. Collapsed. Keeping to the edge of the heavier brush, Trap skirted around the clearing, holding to cover, keeping an eye on the dying man. Once around the rear guard, he picked up his speed, running full out to catch up with the last two team members.

Two coming in from the south side,
Draden reported.
Gino, they’ll be on top of you in another couple of minutes. I don’t have a clear shot at either of them.

Take the two about to break out of the swamp, running full out,
Trap ordered.
They know I’m coming up behind them because I made a little noise to let them know. I’m hoping the helicopter will try to cover them.

He could hear the buzz as the team leader gave orders from his vantage point in the sky. The helicopter began to move cautiously, trying to find a way to shift into position to cover the two men trying to gain access to the house. Trap ducked into the cypress grove and circled back around until he was directly beneath the helicopter. He inched forward, staying as low as possible, making certain no leaf stirred to give him away.

Looking directly up at the silver bird, the two gunners at the ready and the team leader using binoculars to watch the open ground between the swamp and Wyatt’s home, he looked upward toward the sky. The air around the helicopter was made up of a mixture of gasses, mainly oxygen, nitrogen with smaller amounts of argon, water vapor and carbon dioxide along with a very small amount of other gasses.

By changing the gasses in the air beneath and around the helicopter, Trap changed the actual density of the air. He did it fast, not giving the pilot time to figure out what was happening. Even with his instruments to guide him, the pilot would know that nothing changed air density that quickly and he wouldn’t believe what he was seeing. The rotor RPM decayed rapidly until the blades simply ceased rotating. The bird dropped like a stone, forcing Trap to dive to relative safety.

The helicopter crashed hard, breaking apart, scattering bodies, equipment and debris over a wide area. Trap hurried forward, knife in hand. The pilot and team leader were both dead, killed on impact. One of the gunners was still alive, spitting blood and trying to get to a weapon. Trap cut his throat. He found the second gunner a distance away, body in two pieces.

Helicopter down, crew dead.
 

I’ve got three coming at me from the south,
Gino reported.
I’ll take them.

Two are moving in from the east, the canal side,
Draden reported.
No way for me to get them.
The sound of his rifle was loud. Two shots. Close together as Draden nearly always did. It was his personal trademark.
Both runners close to the house down. Took them in the throat.

I’m moving toward the river,
Trap reported. He waited a beat but the wall in his mind was beginning to crumble. He had to reach out whether or not that way lay disaster.
Malichai, give me a report.

She’s alive. Her skin has some kind of built-in armor. I swear it feels like silk, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate very far. The skin worked like a vest. It’s crazy, Trap. Her organs took a jolt, her heart nearly stopped, but it’s back to beating steady again. Her thigh needs attention, but I don’t think she’s going to need more than a few stitches.
 

Trap found he could breathe again. She was fucking glued to his side from here on out, and he didn’t give a damn whether she liked it or not. Guarding her. Keeping her safe. That was
necessary
. He set out running again, choosing a course that would take him close to the canal and the cypress trees weeping moss there.

Something else strange, Trap. Her bones are different. They don’t feel the same. Nothing’s broken, but her femur should have been. The impact of that bullet should have taken it right through her body, but it stopped in her skin. Still, it should have broken the bone. And man, I have to tell you, no one has skin this soft.
 

Trap didn’t like that one bit.
You don’t need to notice that. Just keep her alive so I can strangle her.
He was going to do something to ease the raw, gaping hole in his gut. She’d done that. Gutted him with this shit. He’d had enough. She was going to do what the fuck he said when he said it, and if that made him a bastard, too fucking bad.

You’re broadcasting loud,
Wyatt said, amusement tingeing his voice.

There’s nothing fucking funny about her getting shot. Twice.
Trap spat the declaration at Wyatt.

No one thinks her getting shot is funny, bro,
Wyatt pointed out.
Only your reaction. Never saw you lose it before.

Trap heard them now, two of them. They were moving slow, single file. He ran silently until he was parallel with them, ignoring Wyatt. Whitney’s supersoldiers seemed tireless, not even breathing hard. This close he could share their telepathic link.

We’ve got to get the son of a bitch on the roof, Jerrod,
one said.
He took out the last of our first team.

They weren’t all that anyway,
Jerrod said.
I’d like to know why these boys are protecting that hideous creature. Do you suppose they don’t know what she is? A fucking spider?

You’re just pissed because your brother tried to fuck her right in front of you all and she killed him.
 

Whitney should have let me kill her.
 

Whitney thinks he’s god almighty. His little experiments are getting more bizarre, and he’s losing his backing. If we don’t shut down this shit fast, he’ll have an army of insects coming after us.
 

Trap drew in his breath sharply. These soldiers hadn’t been sent by Whitney. The soldiers that had come, a few months back, for Wyatt’s daughters hadn’t been sent by Whitney either. They thought Braden had sent them. Another faction was in play. But who? If not Whitney, who?

He couldn’t ask his fellow GhostWalkers, because if he could hear these two men, they could hear him. He sprinted past their position, inwardly cursing that he couldn’t wait to hear more. They were gaining on the house. He couldn’t allow them that close to Cayenne, Pepper or Nonny.

He got ahead of them and crouched low, once more sending poisonous gasses into the air so that they ran straight into them. The air shimmered with a particular glow that was a dead giveaway, but no one ever seemed to understand what it was until it was too late. He’d moved into enemy camps, that shimmer drifting ahead of him. Even when the enemy coughed and went to their knees, it still didn’t register that they shouldn’t breathe in the air around them.

In the swamp it was much easier to conceal. The shimmer looked a bit like drifting tendrils of fog coming together to form a veil. He heard the two men’s footsteps stumble. They coughed. Cleared their throats. Spat. One tried to take a drink. One tried to speak. He didn’t wait for them to succumb to the change in air. Gino was somewhere and needed backup. He stepped right in front of both of them, sweet air caught in his lungs. His knife slashed deep across each throat in one continuous motion and he was gone before the bodies dropped.

Two more down.
 

I’ve got one down here,
Gino reported.
The other two have holed up.

Whitney didn’t send them. They’re supersoldiers, but they belong to someone else,
Trap reported.
Mine are all down. If we can get one alive, we might be able to interrogate him.

I’ll do my best,
Gino said.
One’s asking for deliverance right now. Give me a moment to oblige him and I’ll ask politely of the last one.

Trap crossed the swamp, using the trail they’d built and then swerving toward the location Gino had given him. He spotted a soldier easing his way on his belly, using toes and elbows to drag himself forward through the thick vegetation, eyes trained on the house. Trap didn’t dare change the air because he didn’t know exactly where Gino was.

The soldier eased himself over the thin trunk of a sapling that had gone down a few years earlier. It was broken in places and rotting. Only a few inches in diameter, it was still quite long. The soldier’s stomach seemed to hang up on it for a moment. There was a gurgling sound. Blood splashed on the leaves around the sapling. Trap tried to spot Gino. He had to be somewhere on the ground. The soldier had been facedown, only a few inches off the ground, and yet Gino had cut his throat. The soldier had to have been staring right into his killer’s eyes when he died, but Trap couldn’t see his fellow GhostWalker.

Nice job, Gino.
 

I can handle this,
Gino replied grimly.
Draden can cover me, you get to your woman. Should have been on top of this, Trap. I’m sorry I let that sniper anywhere near her.

Not your fault. I should have been with her. She wanted to do this alone. Said it was important to her. When a woman tells you it’s important and your gut tells you no fucking way, go with your gut, Gino.
 

Copy that.
 

Trap made his way to the house, leaving the last soldier to Gino. Gino wanted to interrogate him. They didn’t have a whole lot to offer in return for information. Trap doubted that the soldier would believe them if they offered to spare his life. Still, Gino could make him very uncomfortable and plant a tracking device in his body while he questioned the man.

He stayed under cover as long as he could, not wanting to risk getting shot by the last remaining soldier. Crouching just at the tree and brush line, he waited. It took less than five minutes.

I’ve got him. You have to go.
 

Trap didn’t hesitate. He had to see Cayenne for himself. See that she was alive. If she was, he didn’t know exactly what he was going to do with her. The rage buried so deep, rage he’d held for nearly all his life, was there. He could feel it. Powerful. Dark. Lethal. He’d spent years building a glacier to keep it covered. In that moment, when the first bullet had taken her, driven into her body, jolting her heart – that bullet had lodged into the very heart of his glacier. Great spiderweb cracks had radiated out from it, and now that rage was rising to the surface and he was helpless to stop it.

He knew Malichai would have had Pepper or Nonny inform headquarters that they were under fire. That contact would send a team to clean up the mess. They wouldn’t want the bodies strewn around the forest so a medical examiner could speculate on the deaths. They’d already be on their way. That didn’t matter to him.

At first he used ground-eating strides to cross the yard to the house, then abruptly he found himself running, using his enhanced speed. He jumped, clearing the long row of steps leading to the house. Like most houses in the swamp and bayou, the Fontenot home was built the traditional way, raised off the ground in case of a flood. His jump landed him on the wraparound porch Nonny loved so much.