“Russ.” Dean’s tone was cautionary. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Russ shrugged. “Together, we’re unstoppable. We’ve got everything we need to succeed. Whitney has faith in us. Who’s going to stop us? The soldiers running up the mountain before they make sure the old man is dead? One old man. They couldn’t even kill him.”
He signaled to the others. “Let’s move out.”
Diego shadowed them, a dark menace pacing along beside the men, unseen and unheard. He studied how each moved. Dean, the soldier in the tree, stayed cloaked, very difficult to see. Diego caught glimpses of the man, tall with lots of muscle, and that was only when the cloaking device seemed to glitch for the space of a microsecond. It took Diego several minutes to recognize a pattern. There was a slight malfunction in the cloaking device. Every fourth minute, the transparency shimmered, briefly revealing the man behind the strange camouflage.
After ten minutes of watching, Diego wondered if Dean could remove the transparent cloak. Was the thing permanent? Was the man forced to be an apparition at all times? What would that do to him over time? At first it would seem cool. He’d feel superior, able to conceal himself in any situation, like a phantom. But eventually Dean would want some normalcy. How could he be with a woman? How could he be around his friends without them wondering if he spied on them?
Then there was Bobby. He moved constantly, not really walking in a straight line but undulating his body, the muscles contracting as he propelled himself over the trail. He was mesmerizing in the way he wove a pattern in the dirt. If Diego had come along behind him and inspected the tracks, at first glance he would have thought a very large and heavy snake had made those marks on the trail.
On close examination, Bobby appeared misshapen. His muscles were overly bulging in places, and his head was bullet shaped. His mouth opened continually, his long, forked tongue emerging, twisting this way and that as if he could scent the air. His ears were smaller than normal, and his eyes were a strange, yellowish hue. Twice he nearly went to the ground, his body undulating in coils as if he couldn’t stop himself.
Russ was the soldier who had been sitting on the ground, and the spot had been extremely hot. The ground had protested as if the man was burning through the layers of soil to the very heart of the earth. Even the mushrooms had recoiled from his presence. As he, by turns, jogged or walked up the trail, he set a steady, easy pace that would cover miles in a timely fashion. It took a few minutes of observation to notice that when he jogged, he seemed to leave blackened leaves and twigs behind. Twice, smoke curled up from the debris on the trail.
It took even longer for Diego to notice that Russ’s skin would alter subtly from an even tan to spots of deep red and charcoal black. The change happened when he jogged. When he slowed to a walk, the effect would disappear.
Whitney had always tried to place armor under the skin of his soldiers, making it much more difficult to kill them. Bullets didn’t work unless they managed to hit the precise spot where there was no armor, usually the throat. Armor made the soldiers slower and much stiffer, like a robot. These men were not at all like that. Diego doubted they had armor under their skin.
Jim definitely seemed the most normal of all the soldiers. He moved easily, gracefully, his boots barely skimming the ground. He didn’t look in the least bit winded, almost as if he were taking a stroll through the park instead of moving stealthily through steep, difficult terrain.
The owl flew overhead, drawing Diego’s attention. They were nearing the gorge where the bodies of the soldiers who had attempted to murder Leila lay. The owl called out to warn him of a disturbance in the trees above the gorge. Branches shook on the oak tree looming above the ravine. Because he was looking for him, Diego spotted Dean shimmering like a transparent veil as he balanced on the branch and peered down at the decomposing bodies.
Movement caught Diego’s eye below the tree. It was Billy, or at least half of him. His upper body contorted and twisted as if trying to emerge from a ghostly egg. The bottom half of his body—hips, legs and feet—was invisible, hidden in that oval shell surrounding him. A teleporter? Diego knew they existed. A couple of the GhostWalkers could teleport, but not in the same way. As far as he knew, they didn’t get stuck between. What had Whitney done?
Every single GhostWalker was flawed in some way. Some had worse defects than others, but all of them had strengths to make up for the problems they had. Was Whitney continuing to experiment with animal and reptilian DNA even when he knew how badly things could go wrong? Looking at the soldiers Whitney had sent, he was certain the man hadn’t learned his lesson.
Dean stayed in the tree, and Billy managed to pull himself together by the time Russ, Bobby and Jim arrived to peer down into the gorge. Diego was still unsure of Jim and what gifts or drawbacks he had. The others seemed to give him a wide berth and a lot of respect. Even Russ, who was clearly in command, seemed leery of Jim.
Diego waited to hear what the others thought they were looking at.
“You’ll have to go down there, Billy,” Russ said. “We need to know who’s dead and if the woman is there as well. It would be good to know how they died.”
The soldiers stared down into the ravine and then looked carefully around them. Russ indicated to Bobby to fall back to protect them. He sent Jim ahead to scout for any tracks that might indicate what had taken place.
Billy didn’t hesitate. One moment he was standing under the tree Dean was sheltering in, and the next, he appeared in the gorge. At least a part of him appeared. Once again, he seemed to have to fight to bring his entire body forward with him. Diego knew teleporters had to be precise when they moved from one location to another, or they could end up in the middle of a boulder or tree trunk. But to have to struggle to get your body to come together each time you teleported had to be terrifying. The idea that you would never be whole had to take its toll each time the man made a jump from one place to another.
Diego studied Billy as his body slowly appeared. The soldier was slumped over, unable to stay on his feet without support. Teleporting made him extremely weak. Diego had experience with weakness after healing. Depending on how much energy he used, the crash could be anywhere from mild to extremely dangerous, rendering him unconscious.
He still had no idea what kinds of gifts Jim had. He needed to know his strengths and weaknesses before he began his attacks. He had no problem using his rifle to kill them from a distance, but he had to know hecouldkill them that way. Whitney was notorious for protecting his soldiers with armor.
Below, in the gorge, Billy had begun to straighten up. He looked around him, carefully inspecting the dead. “Smells prettybad. The vultures and beetles are having a field day. There are at least eight or nine bodies. Don’t see a woman.”
“Can you tell what killed them?” Russ asked, raising his voice to be heard.
Vultures circled above the gorge and stared down at the carnage below them. Diego noticed several of the birds looked warily toward the tree Dean was in. Not a single vulture took up residence in the branches overlooking the gorge. Did that mean they could see through the cloak to the man shielded behind it?
Diego blinked rapidly, calling up the raptor in him. Eagles had excellent vision, and he used the sight of the large bird to view Dean and his shimmering cloak. When he looked at the soldier through the eyes of the raptor, the outline of the man wavered repeatedly behind the blurring cloak.
The fact that birds were aware of the soldier’s presence even when he was cloaked was very interesting to Diego. It was a major flaw. It wouldn’t take soldiers with the enhanced vision Diego had very long to become aware of the enemy hiding in the trees. All it would take was one soldier very aware of his surroundings and nature to spot there was a problem if birds were reactive.
Diego slipped away from the site, becoming a shadow in the forest, following Jim. With Jim separating himself from the others, it was an opportunity to dispose of him before the soldiers reached Leila. It was imperative, before he struck, to know Jim’s gifts. He’d prefer to stay silent so the others weren’t aware they were being stalked.
Jim was thorough looking for tracks, but he stayed on the trail, resisting the lure of the deeper woods. He stopped occasionally and studied the forest on either side of him for long minutes, his eyes carefully searching the edges leading into the trees. He examined brush and fern, looking for twisted, bruised leaves.
Diego stayed in the trees, watching the man for signs of anytalents that made him lethal. He couldn’t forget the way Jim’s fellow soldiers acted around him. None of them wanted to be close to him. There had to be a reason.
Jim suddenly crouched down, one palm sliding just above the ground while he looked around, his gaze going to the trees where Diego was concealed. Jim’s head tilted first one way and then the other as if listening for something. Diego knew he couldn’t be seen, and he wasn’t making a sound, but there was no doubt in his mind Jim knew he was there. Had the soldier tapped into the mycelium network? Was he capable? Diego didn’t think so. It was something else.
