Cover images: woman © Ruben Mario Ramos 2021/Arcangel Images; man © Stephen Carroll 2014/Trevillion Images; foggy woods © 2015 Elizabeth Moehlmann/Getty Images; military helicopters © Creativa Images/Shutterstock; soldiers © APChanel/Shutterstock
Book design by Kelly Lipovich, adapted for ebook by Shayan Saalabi
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Titles by Christine Feehan
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
For My Readers
Acknowledgments
The Ghostwalker Symbol Details
The Ghostwalker Creed
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
For Cheryl Wilson and Domini Walker. Thank you.
FOR MY READERS
Be sure to go to ChristineFeehan.com/members/ to sign up for my private book announcement list and download the free ebook of Dark Desserts. Join my community and get firsthand news, enter the book discussions, ask your questions and chat with me. Please feel free to email me at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Denise, for the invaluable research.
To Brian, for keeping me going even when I was faltering.
To Domini and Cheryl, for editing. This one was difficult, but we did it!
THE GHOSTWALKER SYMBOL DETAILS
SIGNIFIES
shadow
SIGNIFIES
protection against evil forces
SIGNIFIES
the Greek letter psi, which is used by parapsychology researchers to signify ESP or other psychic abilities
SIGNIFIES
qualities of a knight—loyalty, generosity, courage and honor
SIGNIFIES
shadow knights who protect against evil forces using psychic powers, courage and honor
THE GHOSTWALKER CREED
We are the GhostWalkers, we live in the shadows
The sea, the earth, and the air are our domain
No fallen comrade will be left behind
We are loyalty and honor bound
We are invisible to our enemies and we destroy them where we find them
We believe in justice and we protect our country and those unable to protect themselves
What goes unseen, unheard and unknown are GhostWalkers
There is honor in the shadows and it is us
We move in complete silence whether in jungle or desert
We walk among our enemy unseen and unheard
Striking without sound and scatter to the winds before they have knowledge of our existence
We gather information and wait with endless patience for that perfect moment to deliver swift justice
We are both merciful and merciless
We are relentless and implacable in our resolve
We are the GhostWalkers and the night is ours
1
The mountains rose up, climbing higher and higher, towering all around, the peaks reaching for the clouds. All along the mountainsides and in the valleys between, red cedar, whitebark pine and spruce trees vied for space. This was true forest, two million acres of actual wilderness, most of it, left to the animals that were native to the area. Grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions, moose, timber wolves, mountain goats, elk, bighorn sheep and mule deer all made the vast forest home, along with a range of smaller animals.
Jonas “Smoke” Harper, Dr. Kyle Forbes and Jeff Hollister, three of the genetically and psychically enhanced members of GhostWalker Team One, continued along the nearly nonexistent game trail they’d been traveling for the past three hours.
“You still getting that bad feeling in your gut, Jonas?” Jeff asked.
Jonas scanned the dense forest with narrowed eyes, maintaining his purposefully relaxed gait while keeping his hand close to his weapon. “Yep.”
Kyle sighed. “You sure it isn’t just a stitch in your side?”
“Yep.”
“You did notice that the higher we climb, the more bear scat we’re coming across,” Jeff said.
“Yep.”
“Just thought I’d point that out.” A small grin lit Jeff’s face.
“I’m not sure he actually knows how to talk, Jeff,” Kyle said. “Ryland did warn us. Said if we volunteered to come with him, we’d hear nothing but grunts for days.”
“Wait.” Smile fading, Jeff halted abruptly and glared at his companions. “You volunteered? Ryland ordered me to come with you two. Said I had to protect your asses.”
Jonas and Kyle stopped as well, and Jonas took the opportunity to study Jeff without appearing to do so. It had been a couple of years since Jeff had recovered from a stroke that would have put any normal soldier out of commission for good. Jeff had fought his way back.
Jeff, like most men in the government’s GhostWalker program, wasn’t anyone’s definition of a normal soldier anymore. These men were, instead, the products of a military experiment that hadn’t quite gone as expected. They had gone into the program volunteering for psychic enhancements with the expectation of being of more use to their country, but along with removing filters in their brains, Dr. Peter Whitney had also performed experimental gene coding on them. That part they had not signed up for.
Worse, the first of Whitney’s gene-coding experiments had been illegally performed on young orphan girls, with disastrous results. Those initial failures hadn’t stopped Whitney though. Instead, he’d forged ahead with similar gene modifications on the soldiers, believing that grown men could better handle the pressures of the enhancements than the female children had. Team One had lost several of the men in their unit, and Jeff had suffered a brain bleed and stroke. He was fully recovered, but the entire team tended to watch over him, Jonas especially.