Deadly Game (GhostWalkers #5)(32)
Author: Christine Feehan

Jack burst through the brush, gun in hand. He took in Mari’s tear-streaked face, her sobs, and Ken’s horrified mask. “What the hell happened here?”

“Find her a pair of jeans. If they’re too big, they’ll slide over that lightweight thing the doc put on her leg.” Ken tried to distance himself from what he’d done. There was no taking it back, no changing it. The monster lived and breathed, was alive and well and clawing for supremacy. I nearly raped her, Jack.

She looks willing enough to me.

Shut the f**k up and take care of this. We had a deal. We made a pact. It was all well and good when you thought it was you. You made me promise to put a f**kin’ bullet in your head, but now that it’s me, you threaten her instead of taking care of me.

Jack gave him a hard look and stepped forward, deliberately close, so close Mari’s body was up against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her as if he might lift her away from Ken, all the while watching his brother carefully. When nothing happened, he buried his face in her neck and inhaled deeply.

Ken went very still, his silver eyes never leaving his brother’s face.

“Does my sister know you’re a pervert? Get the hell off of me. You’re not sharing me.” Mari’s outrage lessened the stream of tears.

“If you’re such a jealous bastard, why aren’t you tearing my head off, Ken?” Jack demanded, ignoring Mari’s comment as he stepped away from her. “The old man would have pulled his gun and shot us both.”

“Get her the jeans and then get her the hell out of here.”

Mari held her breath. He was leaving her with the others. She should be happy, thrilled, but instead she was terrified. “No.” She shook her head, said it softly, a plea she couldn’t stop. “No, you have to stay with me.”

He framed her face with both hands. “I can’t. You have to understand. I don’t trust myself with you.”

“It’s all right. It is. I threw myself at you. I feel the connection the same as you do. It wasn’t just you.”

His thumbs brushed at the tearstains almost tenderly. “You didn’t throw yourself at me and you know it. Mari, I’m not going to take a chance on hurting you. I’m not a good man.”

“Like hell you aren’t, Ken,” Jack interrupted. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you’ve never treated a woman with disrespect in your life.”

Ken flashed his brother a warning look, and muttering a curse, Jack swung around to call in the others and to find a pair of jeans for Mari.

Careful of Mari’s leg, Ken lifted her into his lap, holding her close to comfort her, rocking her gently back and forth. “I’m sorry, honey, I really am. I drew you to me, but it wasn’t supposed to be about sex.” He didn’t know what happened, couldn’t remember changing the command. He rested his forehead against hers, breathing deep to try to quiet the storm of need and the roar of self-hatred.

Her leg was bleeding again, and there was a trickle of blood near her ear. Another at the corner of her mouth. Ken wiped it away with his thumb, a warning going off in his mind. The thin trickle returned.

“I can move things, and I can even make suggestions, have a guard look away, that sort of thing, but I’ve never seen anyone else with the power to control another person’s movements. I didn’t want to come to you, but I couldn’t stop myself,” Mari admitted. She shook her head and wiped at the blood staining her mouth. “Whitney can never find out. Never, Ken, not even accidentally. You can’t do that in front of anyone who might report it to him.” She lifted her head, the color draining from her face. “You didn’t report it, did you? It isn’t written in a file somewhere?”

“You’re really upset. No, there’s no file. Jack and I try using various talents on our own. If we have them, we practice until we get good at them. We live quietly and we just try different things.”

“If Whitney knew you could control other human beings, take over their minds like that, he’d never rest until he had you. And he’d definitely want your baby, or . . .” She broke off. “Can Jack do that? Is Briony really pregnant? Is Whitney after her because she’s going to have a baby? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why he sent Brett and was so determined I get pregnant. He knows already. You were telling me the truth.”

“Calm down. You’re trembling, Mari. Whitney is a jackass. Of course he’d want our children. He’s a nutcase and he thinks he can have a superbaby. He doesn’t know what I can or can’t do, other than what he deliberately enhanced.” He used the corner of the shirt she was wearing to wipe at blood dripping steadily from her leg.

Hurry up, Jack!

“When he targeted certain psychic talents, he strengthened other ones too, didn’t he?” Mari asked. “That’s what happened to all of us. We don’t tell him everything either, but Ken, this is a major talent. He would want it more than anything else. He’d want a child to have it. He can shape and mold children where he has more trouble with the adults. Adults don’t have as many negative side effects, but he can’t control them so easily. He can’t find out about what you do.”

Ken was silent a moment, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat. “If he knew, if it came out, say he had access to a file of mine it was recorded in, he’d make a grab for me, wouldn’t he?”

“He’d move heaven and earth to get to you. He’d pull every string he had in the military and with every official who owes him favors to have access to you.” She shook her head. “Don’t even think about it. I’ve seen him take apart people to see if their brain is different. You’d spend the rest of your life hooked up to machines so he could study your brain activity.”

Ken didn’t reply. He knew he was a sick son of a bitch to do the things to Mari that he’d done. In spite of what Mari and Jack believed, Ken was certain Whitney had psychic ability and had already discovered the hidden monster in him. His fingers tunneled into Mari’s hair, and he leaned his head to brush a kiss along the top of her head. “You have to stop trying to escape. You could have been killed, you know. You dove out of a moving car without even knowing where you were going to land. You could have hit a tree. As it is, you’re bleeding again.”

“I didn’t. And you would have done the same thing.”