Mind Game (GhostWalkers, #2)(6)

“The focus and concentration required is incredible,” Lily pointed out. “But it’s costing her. She’s rubbed her temples twice, and if you look closely at her face, she’s already sweating. She obviously can feel the emotions of those waiting to attack her. I observed her training in martial arts. She was reading the mind of her opponent, anticipating everything he did before he did it. She utilized her psychic abilities as well as her physical ones.”

“She’s not armed,” Nicolas pointed out.

“No, but she doesn’t need to be,” Lily assured.

They watched the woman called Novelty continue unerringly to the right room, not even bothering to check the various empty rooms between her and the two men waiting to ambush her. She trusted her instincts and her highly evolved psychic senses.

“She’s so damned small,” Gator said. “She looks like a child. She can’t weigh even a hundred pounds.”

“Maybe,” said Lily, “but watch her. She’s lethal.”

The woman moved with confidence until she was against the wall nearest where one man crouched behind the curtains covering the opening to a closet. “She’s laying her hand against the wall, almost as if she’s feeling for something,” Lily said. “Energy perhaps? Could she be that sensitive? Could a human being’s energy pass through the wall in sufficient force to allow her to feel his presence, or is she reading his thoughts?”

Novelty stepped back from the wall in total silence, but remained staring at it for several minutes, slowly sweeping her gaze upward as if she could see the ceiling in the other room as well. The walls slowly blackened. Smoke poured into the hall. Angry flames leapt through the wall to the inside of the room and raced up toward the ceiling, reaching hungrily for both men. Almost immediately the entire room was engulfed in flames, which triggered a sprinkler system. It was the only thing that saved the two ambushers from a terrible death.

“She generates heat,” Ian McGillicuddy said. He was a giant of a man, with wide shoulders and a heavy muscular body. His dark brown eyes were fixed on the screen, watching the flames in awe. “I wouldn’t mind that particular gift.”

“Or curse,” Nicolas interjected.

Ian nodded. “Or curse,” he agreed.

The young woman slipped from the house and moved back into the trees, pressing both hands to her head. She sank to her knees, fell backward, and went immediately into a violent seizure. The cameras remained focused on her as blood trickled from her mouth. In several seconds she lay unmoving on the ground.

Ryland swore and turned away. His gaze collided with Nicolas’s. They stared at one another for a long moment of understanding.

Lily paused the tape, leaving the distressing picture of the woman lying in a heap on the ground. “What’s causing this pain? I’ve checked through my father’s notes and viewed the other training tapes. Every tape where she’s left completely alone, she’s able to perform all sorts of incredible and nearly unbelievable feats, but if there is a human being close by, she suffers tremendous pain and often passes out.”

“Emotions swamping her?” Gator guessed. “With no anchor she’s left wide open to all the emotions. The men in the room would have been scared and angry and feeling betrayed by their handlers. I would imagine they didn’t like being put in the position of nearly being roasted alive.”

“Maybe,” Lily mused, “but I think it’s more complicated than what we go through. I’m not certain she reads emotions, or at least not how most of us do.”

Nicolas stared at the screen for a long time, studying the image of the unconscious woman. “She didn’t sense the presence of her adversaries in the way we do, did she? It isn’t emotions, it’s something else.”

“I think it could be energy,” Lily said. “My father didn’t understand about anchors, not really. When he first performed the experiment on all of us children, he thought we just had close friendships. He didn’t understand that some of us trapped the overload of emotion away from the others, allowing them to function. Novelty, or Dahlia, is not an anchor—she needs one in order to function without pain. If you notice, in the majority of the training tapes, she’s alone. They built a home for her, much like my home was built for me, and she was shielded from people. Dr. Whitney believed she could read minds in the same way many of us can, and he thought he was shielding her from emotions.”

“You’re getting all this from his notes?” Ryland asked. “How dangerous does he say she is?”

Lily shrugged. “He talked about the necessity of removing her from society several times, yet he continued to allow this training to take place. I studied the tapes as he must have, and she doesn’t attack unless she believes she is forced to defend herself. So certainly, during her teenage years, she’s gained some semblance of control over her abilities.”

Lily put on the remaining tapes, one after the other. She had watched them already, the heartbreaking scenes of the woman she was certain was the missing Dahlia doing martial arts, anticipating every move before it was made, defeating every opponent in spite of her small size and lack of weight, but inevitably collapsing in a heap of muscle spasms, with a retching stomach and blood trickling from her mouth and even her ears at times. She never cried out; she merely rocked back and forth, pressing her hands to her head before her ultimate collapse. The tapes depicted training that could possibly be used for undercover work, and each time the woman called Novelty ended up the same way, curled up in a ball in the fetal position.