You saved my life that day, Jonas. He was your friend. You loved him like a brother. If you hadn’t been there, I’d be dead. I was the one who forced you to make a choice. Jeff’s voice was filled with pain and regret.
Camellia found the entire exchange heartbreaking. She realized, in part, why Jonas hadn’t explained more to her with the two men so close. The explanation was very personal to Jeff. He blamed himself. He was blaming himself even more now. She supposed it was human nature to take on guilt for things it was impossible to control.
No one forced me to make a choice, Jeff, Jonas said flatly. I’ve never been forced to do anything in my life. My choices are my own, and I stand by them, even if they might be difficult to make.
I was there that day, Kyle said. We all were. Oliver would have killed a lot of us before he was through. He was out of his mind. If anyone was to blame, it was Whitney.
“You need to choose whose side you’re on, Camellia,” Angel hissed, his voice a thread of sound, as if he were hiding it from those below. “Choose now.”
They’d run out of time. There was no more negotiating and no finding out more information. Shaker was going to make his move against Jonas.
19
Camellia couldn’t help Jonas. She didn’t know exactly where he was in the dense fog. Like her, he was capable of disappearing into it. Pops and Lowell, the two men hunting him, had climbed up onto one of the helicopters. She had the vague impression of each of them through the droplets of mist, but she couldn’t let herself be distracted by trying to figure out what they were doing. Jeff, up in the tree, and Kyle, lying on the forest floor, were most at risk.
They’re going to attack, she warned the others and turned her attention first to Angel. She wanted to be able to keep her entire focus on Jeff and Kyle and not worry whether Angel was going to attack her the moment she turned her back.
She called on the mycelium network, bringing her weapons close to the surface. Mushrooms began to push through the forest floor, shoving aside the dirt and leaves. Rotting vegetation gave way to bright capped heads and subdued tanned ones. Several blackened cones pushed through the leaves to sit among the rocks and downed trunks. Little mushrooms sprouted on the living tree trunks as well as those that had fallen years earlier.
“Don’t do this, Angel,” Camellia pleaded. She let the fog drift around her. Let him catch glimpses of her. She sat on a flattened boulder, one hand planted firmly to give her the ability to push off.
“You’re either with us or against us, Camellia,” he reiterated. “Loyalty is everything.” He leveled a gun at her. “Make your choice.”
“Clearly, you made yours.”
The jerk on his ankles was extremely hard, taking him to the ground and destroying his aim at the same time. His legs became completely tangled in thick fibers made of natural polymers created from the fungi running beneath the soil. The long ropes of fibrous material tightened the loops wrapped around his ankles and legs as more and more snaked out of the ground like the arms of an octopus. He tried to roll and, at the same time, squeezed off several hasty shots at her.
Camellia pushed off the boulder as Angel went crashing to the soil. She leapt to the opposite side of the rock as leaves, twigs and even branches were thrown up into the air around the big man as the fibrous ropes took him to the ground. He continued to fire his weapon at her, the bullets skimming along the boulder just above her head and to either side of it, kicking up dirt and debris and shaving off splinters of rock.
Gray came out of the fog, a ferocious fury without mercy, claws a dark brown, tipped in black, razor-sharp, slashing first at Angel’s eyes and then stabbing into the back of his head to puncture deep. Before Angel could raise his arm to shove the gun into the growling bird, Blue was on him, tearing the weapon from his hand and then raking at his eyes.
Camellia did her best to drown out the sound of Angel screaming in agony. She’d given him his chance.
“Angel?” Shaker yelled. “Camellia, I’m going to fuckin’ kill you.”
She ignored his threat. She wasn’t supposed to defend herself? Just let Angel shoot her? These men were insane to think they could just kill people and no one would try to fight back.
She couldn’t think about Shaker and his threats, or Jonas and who might be after him. Kyle was in immediate danger. The moment Angel had attacked her, it must have been on Shaker’s orders. They no longer had the bats to give away locations in the dense fog, but Shaker’s men knew they were there.
At Camellia’s warning, Kyle rolled, the only thing that saved his life. Gorman pulled a spear from the sheath at his back, stabbing down at him viciously. Instead of going straight through his throat, it went through his shoulder and pinned him like an insect to the soil. Wisps of purplish-gray fog curled between Kyle and Gorman as blood spurted around the wound, blossoming on Kyle’s jacket and then seeping to the ground beneath him.
Kyle went still as Gorman very slowly lowered himself into a crouch beside him. “You’re not going anywhere, GhostWalker. I’m going to slice open your belly and see if your guts are as yellow as I think they are.” From his boot, Gorman withdrew a knife and held it up for Kyle to see. “Wish your good friend Ryland was here to witness this. Maybe I should take a video and send it to him.”
“Yeah, maybe you should,” Kyle said. “You’re such an upstanding guy.” He couldn’t move with the spear shoved through his shoulder, holding him in place.
Jeff put a rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, attempting to kill Gorman before he could finish Kyle off. Jeff was struck hard from behind, knocked from the branch and dropped thirty feet to the forest floor. He landed in a crouch, turning to face Lewis, who stood just a few feet from him, grinning like an ape.
Kyle, turn your head away, close your mouth and hold your breath. Camellia gave the order. Don’t take a breath until I say otherwise. You’ll die if you do.
I want to look him right in the eyes when he kills me.
He isn’t going to kill you if you do what I say right now. You can’t get any powder in your eyes, nose or mouth. Now, Kyle.
Do it, Kyle. Jonas snapped the command.
With visible reluctance, Kyle closed his eyes and turned away from Gorman. The moment he did, white fibers erupted from the ground to wrap around his head, covering his eyes, nose and mouth. Simultaneously, black cones erupted from the soil, rocketing straight at Gorman’s face. The missiles struck their targets precisely, each eye, his nose, his mouth. The cones exploded, bursting open. A cloud of fine powder went everywhere, covering Gorman’s face so that he had a mask of black powder completely coating his skin and scalp.
Gorman opened his mouth wider to yell, but the powder penetrated deeper and clogged more, preventing air from moving in either direction. Foam bubbled up around his lips as they turned a dark blue under the powder. There was no cough, no sound, other than a muffled choke, and then he slumped to the ground, the knife still gripped in his hand. His entire body went rigid. The powder began to dissolve in the wet mist as if it had never been.