Power Game

by Christine Feehan

  "Joe." Now Violet stepped right up onto the porch. Joe didn't take a step back so she was pressed against him tightly. She cupped the side of his jaw. "I need you to do this one little thing for me. Wipe out this nest and then come work for me. I need your protection. I do, my love. No one is strong enough to stand up to me the way you do. Only you, Joe. Please. I really need you with me."

  Ezekiel closed his eyes. It was clear that Joe and Violet knew each other and had an intimate relationship. Violet's psychic gift of that beautiful, persuasive voice didn't work on Ezekiel, but he had no idea if it worked on Joe. He couldn't warn the others, but his fingers closed around the butt of his gun.

  Activity at the car, Draden reported. Three more of her beefy mercs just rolled out and slipped into the trees. Another vehicle came in on the southern entrance. At least six men there, might be more. They came out fast. I caught a glimpse of what I think is a third on the other side of the road leading to Trap's. This is a setup.

  Don't see a fourth vehicle, but more men creeping in from the swamp, Gino announced.

  Violet had come prepared to wipe out Pepper, Cayenne and the triplets if Joe didn't do it for her. Ezekiel could see her waiting, certain of her power over the men.

  Joe sighed and cupped her face in his hands. "Why didn't you kill Whitney? You've had the chance so many times, Violet. Why is it you never do it?" His voice was gentle, his thumbs tender as they moved gently over her cheeks.

  15

  Violet stood very still, looking up into Joe's face. She opened her mouth twice and then closed it, shaking her head. Clearly the question was the last thing she expected. It took her by surprise and she clearly didn't know how to answer.

  "Joe."

  Ezekiel winced at the pure sensuality, the intimacy in that softly whispered name. Violet sounded as if the two were alone in a bedroom, not there surrounded by others who might overhear.

  Her bodyguards looked at one another, one, a burly man with lots of muscle, scowling. He stepped right up to the porch stairs, one hand inside his jacket. Ezekiel drew out his weapon very slowly and held it in his hand, ready to fire, but hiding it low across his body.

  Joe shook his head, ignoring the fact that Violet's bodyguard was clearly a threat. Ezekiel would bet his last dollar that the man shared the senator's bed. He was posturing, exhibiting signs of jealousy. Violet never spared him a single glance. Her gaze was eating Joe up, for him alone, as if she was so enamored with him she couldn't see anyone but him. If Ezekiel had been susceptible to her voice, he would have believed everything he was hearing and seeing.

  Joe's hands slid almost lovingly up her arms. "No, Violet. This time, give me a real answer. Why haven't you killed Whitney? You say you think he's lost his mind. You say it often enough that everyone in your employ believes you. Hell, I believe you, but you don't kill him. No one else gets close to you. You could do it and you know it."

  She shook her head. "I can't, Joe. I've tried. I want to. I want someone to do it, but I can't do it myself."

  "You don't want someone else to do it," he said patiently. "If you did, you would have told me where to find him and asked me to do it for you."

  "No. Never. I would never risk you."

  "Even if that was true, Violet, you would have given one of the GhostWalker teams his location and let us kill him, but you didn't. You know we could get in and out without being caught. You let him pack up the women he's holding prisoner . . ."

  For the first time, Violet's mask of sweet sensuality slipped. She looked almost ugly, just for a moment. "They aren't prisoners," she spat. She took a breath and once again looked almost hauntingly beautiful. "Love, don't believe that. Don't believe anything those women say. They want sympathy and try to get it from you and the other men, but don't listen to them. They aren't prisoners any more than I am. They work for the government just like you do. Just like him." She gestured toward Ezekiel.

  Joe refused to be distracted. "Why didn't you kill him, Violet?"

  "You have to understand." Her voice went to a low, musical plea. "To be in a situation where I can do good, good for the entire world, not just for a few women who are unhappy with their lot, I have to be in a certain position. I'm almost there. I need his money. His connections. Until I can replace that money and the connections . . ."

  There it was. Violet craved power and she was willing to sell her fellow sister GhostWalkers, the men in the program and anyone else in her way to get what she wanted. She wanted the presidency. Ezekiel believed that once in power, the president would die and Violet would take over. Her plan was very, very close to working. He could only hope that Joe would believe the evidence from the woman's own mouth.

  "I want you with me. Do it, right now, Joe. Walk into that house and kill those hideous creatures and come home with me."

  Joe shook his head. "That's never going to happen, Violet." Something in her eyes made him start to pull back, his hands sliding from her arms up toward her throat.

  They're trying to get into the house from the back. Mordichai's rifle barked. Once. Twice.

  Violet gasped, her hands reaching toward Joe's face, the blade of a knife she'd concealed up her sleeve flashing as she slashed it across his cheek, down his chest and then slammed it into his gut. She leapt back and kicked the hilt viciously, driving it deep as she threw herself sideways off the stairs. When she kicked him, she angled the kick so his body would stagger back into Ezekiel. Clearly she'd planned out every move in her mind, carrying it out over and over until it was time to put her plan into action.

  The bodyguard on the stair drew his gun, stepping back to try to cover Violet's escape. Cayenne dropped a net of webs over him as he fired at Ezekiel. Joe lunged across his teammate as his body fell toward the floor, taking the bullet meant for Zeke and knocking him down as well.

  Ezekiel fired as he was falling, killing the guard behind the one wrapped in webs. Two rifles shot simultaneously and two more of Violet's guards went down. Cayenne's webs spun the first guard up so tight he appeared to be a mummy on the ground. The sack rose up in the air, so that he hung macabrely, swinging back and forth like a bad Halloween decoration. His finger on the trigger, the guard fired wildly and without direction. He couldn't move, couldn't turn his head and couldn't see anything. Mordichai's rifle spoke again and the guard went slack, his automatic silenced as it fell from his hands into the web.

  Ezekiel rolled out from under Joe's dead weight, cursing Violet, trying to get a decent chance at a shot. She was halfway to the river, running low. Three more men cut between Zeke and Violet, protecting her as she ran. His bullet hit one, spinning him around as he threw his body in front of the fleeing woman. Mordichai took out one of the men and Diego shot the other.

  The last bodyguard gained the porch with a leap, his gun dead center on Ezekiel's chest. The whine of several bullets sounded like angry bees swarming, and the big man was flung into the porch railing, his body jerking. Ezekiel recognized the sound of a Glock firing. His woman, watching his back. He turned to look down at Joe, for the first time seeing the terrible wounds to his body.

  Shit. Shit. Draden. Get here any way you can. Right the fuck now. OR room in the house. Pepper, set up for surgery. I'll need you or Nonny. Mordichai, Gino, I'm taking him in now. Keep them off of me. He kept his voice as calm as possible when Joe was dying right in front of him. He crouched low and put his mouth against Joe's ear. "Don't you fuckin' die on me. We need you. You understand me? You fight. Don't give Whitney the satisfaction." He lifted him as gently as possible. Waiting. Counting heartbeats.

  Go. Go. Mordichai and Gino began firing, taking out targets in the front, giving Ezekiel the moments needed to carry Joe into the house and for Draden to race in after him. They rushed down the hallway straight to the small operating room Wyatt Fontenot had set up a couple of years earlier. Pepper and Nonny were there already, Pepper scrubbed and began to lay out the medical instruments.

  "We've got blood stored for him," Ezekiel snapped over
his shoulder as he laid Joe on the table and ripped open his shirt. "Get it now, Pepper. Hurry."

  Nonny was there, removing boots and cutting off bloodstained jeans. "I've got this. Go scrub."

  Draden had equipment set up in minutes, getting veins, and helping to prep his team leader for surgery.

  We're three men down, Mordichai announced. Violet's mercs are everywhere. Gino, you take the ones in the woods coming in to the left side of the house. I don't have a visual on them.

  They were three men down just that fast. The enemy had several teams moving in and that meant four GhostWalkers, Cayenne and the unknown Bellisia had to keep them off the house.

  On it. Gino never had much to say. He was a hunter and he felt right at home in the swamp.

  I'm more effective in the trees, Cayenne said.

  Negative. I need you here, Mordichai insisted. I think the teams closing in on either side of the house and in front are distractions to allow others to slip inside from the back. I know there are three more back there. He'd taken out three, but the other three had managed to get into positions he couldn't see from his location and they could gain the house from the back entrance. Cayenne. I don't have eyes on the targets. Can you get to the back of the house?

  Moving now. Cayenne was up and running in a low crouch over the rooftop. She blew past Mordichai's position and across the roof to the other side. She dropped down onto the ground, landing in a crouch, and rolled to her left. Bullets spat on the ground where she landed, but she was already in the thicker brush.

  You have three targets, Cayenne. I can't cover you. We've got men pouring in from the north and south.

  I'm good, Cayenne assured grimly--and she was. She was engineered to be an assassin. Silent and deadly she crept through the brush. She was small in order to get into those places the bigger men couldn't fit. More, they wouldn't think anyone else could. She kept her breathing very shallow, barely there, as she moved along the ground, using toes and fingers to pull her body forward.

  Nonny, Pepper and the three little girls had become family to her over the last few weeks with her new husband. Cayenne knew both Nonny and Pepper would defend the children with their last breaths, but Nonny was in her eighties and Pepper's body was too fragile from the enhancements. Whitney and one of the scientists he'd employed had removed so many filters from Pepper's brain that anytime she was around violence, she got brain bleeds. No one had counted on their perfect assassin having such a flaw. Cayenne wasn't about to let the enemy close to Pepper and force her to have to defend the girls. Right now, she was certain both women were occupied helping Ezekiel and Draden save Joe.

  She smelled sweat just off to her left. A twig snapped just feet away. She lay very still and waited, letting him come close to her. Another snap and his boot came into view. She looped a web around his ankle, loose, so he wouldn't notice, and continued to loop until she had a strong, unbreakable rope. He took a step and then a second. The second step tripped him and he went down hard, throwing his hands out in front of him to break his fall.

  She was on him in seconds, delivering the fatal bite and then scooting back into the brush before he knew what happened. He had no idea he was already dead and that every thrash of his body, every wild pump of his heart only speeded up the inevitable. He didn't realize he'd been bitten. Over time she'd learned exactly how to deliver the venom with no more than what felt like a small pinch or sting.

  One down.

  The second soldier was at the window to one of the back bedrooms. He was trying to lift it without making noise while the third soldier guarded his back. Cayenne broke cover to the left of them, scurrying around the side of the house with blurring speed, leapt and was up on the roof in seconds. Silently, she crept across the roof until she was just above them.

  The third soldier sensed movement, but by the time he'd turned his head toward the brush, she was already above his head. Cayenne didn't fool herself into thinking it was going to be easy. She had to get her net just right and spin fast. She dropped it over both of them, but just as it fell, the guard at the window leaned into the house. The web completely enmeshed the third soldier, and she jerked hard on the silken lines, spinning him fast, encasing him tighter and tighter so that he spun in the air as she raised him.

  The soldier leaning into the window pulled back when he saw his buddy yanked upward and then he dove inside. Cayenne flung silk at his ankle, a loop that she pulled tight and wrapped over and over. Her silk was strong, stronger even than normal spider silk, stronger than Kevlar, and she was well versed in using it. She spent hours every day spinning beautiful artwork and practicing using it as a weapon. All that practice didn't let her down. She used the enshrouded body of the soldier to climb down, keeping the cocoon between her and her prey.

  She kept looping the ankle with more and more silk before she yanked hard and dropped into a crouch on the ground. The leg of the soldier emerged. He stuck his gun out of the window and fired blindly over and over, striking the body of his friend so that droplets of blood ran down the silk shroud, turning it red, and the man's hoarse screams abruptly ceased.

  Cayenne stayed beneath the window, but continued to manipulate the silk by just reading the vibrations alone. She kept adding silk and yanking on it, tightening it and dragging the soldier's leg farther out the window. He planted his other foot hard against the wall in an effort to keep from being drawn outside. The gunfire ceased and she felt him sawing at the silk with a knife, cutting desperately through the strands as fast as he could.

  She kept tension on the threads as she slowly stood up into a crouch. She had to deliver the venom into his skin. He wore boots, so she needed to inflict the bite above the boot without getting shot. She had to be fast. She took a breath and moved into him, throwing silk at his face as she injected the venom into him. She felt the sharp burn of a blade slicing through her shoulder and down her arm and then she dropped away, breathing through the fiery pain.

  He'd gotten her good. She was losing blood. A lot of it. Need stitches. It's a bad cut. I'm coming into the house through the back window in Wyatt's old room. No one shoot me. She dove through the window, ignoring the man lying on the floor, eyes wide open, gasping for breath. The toxin was already doing its job, shutting down his nervous system so that he couldn't move and soon wouldn't be able to breathe.

  "I'm all you've got," Nonny said, the shotgun in her hands aimed at the soldier on the floor. "Ezekiel, Draden and Pepper are fighting to keep Joe alive. Let me see."

  Rubin and Diego Campo had hunted together almost from the time they were toddlers. They weren't twins, but they could have been. They were both just a quarter of an inch shy of six feet. They had wide shoulders and lean bodies, both all muscle. Their brown hair was in a perpetual state of needing to be cut, and both had firm jaws that always had a faint shadow and very dark, nearly black eyes.

  Ten months apart, they grew up hunting and fishing for food in the Appalachian Mountains. Their father died in a fall from a horse, their main form of transportation, when they were seven, leaving their mother with nine children and little else other than their land.

  Already showing astonishing promise, the two boys discovered a spring up above their house when they were out hunting rabbit. By the time they were eight they'd figured out how to bring that water, using gravity, to their cabin and for the first time, they had running water in the house.

  That same spring, the two oldest boys left, looking for work at only fourteen and fifteen. They never returned. Rubin and Diego had no idea what happened to them. They were nine years old when Mary left to marry a man on the small farm next to them. She was only sixteen and died in childbirth nine months later. Their mother didn't smile again after that.

  They were ten when they figured out how to make a generator. It was the first time their mother ever had electricity and hot water. The next summer, several men hiked the Appalachian Trail and camped just past their land. Lucy, their twelve-year-old sister, was night fishing with
the eight-year-old, Jayne. They didn't come home. Rubin and Diego went looking for them. They found Lucy's body half in and half out of the stream, her clothes ripped off of her and blood under her fingernails. Their little sister Jayne lay beside her, her head bleeding from where someone had struck a terrible blow. Her clothes were torn off as well. She was drooling and not making any sense and when she saw her brothers, she screamed and screamed.

  Rubin took Jayne home and collected their rifles while Diego stayed to look for tracks. They left their sister's body to be seen to by their mother and two older sisters, Ruby and Star, the thirteen-year-old twins. They caught up with the four men the second night and shot two of them. They didn't waste bullets because they couldn't afford it. Two shots, two dead. The other men hid, but early the next morning, they were dead as well. The boys didn't bother to bury the bodies. The vultures could have them. They were many miles from their run-down shack, and by the time someone did find the bodies, there would be no tracks leading back to them.

  The flu hit the winter they were thirteen. Ruby, their mother and Jayne all came down with it. They buried Jayne first. Three days later Ruby died. Their mother never spoke a single word after that. She sat in a chair and rocked back and forth, humming songs and refusing to eat no matter how much Star coaxed her.

  They came home from hunting to find Star sobbing and their mother's body swinging from a rope right in the middle of their miserable cabin. They were only fourteen. It was left to them to cut her down and bury her alongside her husband and children.

  They woke the next morning to find a note from their sister explaining that she couldn't stay. She'd gone to the nuns in the next town over. Rubin and Diego packed what little they had and hopped the train leading out of the mountains. They rode the rails for days, staying hidden until they got off in a big city thinking they could find work. It was a terrible mistake. There were no jobs and no home. They couldn't hunt or fish. Everyone they loved left them. Not a single person cared whether they lived or died. And then they'd run into Ezekiel Fortunes.