There was a heartbeat of silence and then a furious hiss of command. The leader wasn’t in the least bit happy that his rear guard had engaged with the enemy.

Trap stared at the small clearing of leaves, calmly calculating the cubic feet and how best to direct his blast. He knew Gino was in front of the other two men and any others converging on the house. Gino was a ghost. Phantom wind, they called him. No one saw Gino, even when he made his kill. One moment no one was there, the next the body was already dropping to the ground and he was gone. Trap trusted him to do his job.

He sent a gust of air, lifting the vegetation to reveal the rear guard lying prone. Trap changed the actual chemicals in the air, a gift he had in abundance now, one that he’d practiced and honed, one he used when he went into enemy camps and left behind the dead. Gasses changed. The strange shimmer, a veil more opaque than translucent, surrounded the guard.

The man coughed. Tried to push himself up. Coughed again. Spat blood. Collapsed. Keeping to the edge of the heavier brush, Trap skirted around the clearing, holding to cover, keeping an eye on the dying man. Once around the rear guard, he picked up his speed, running full out to catch up with the last two team members.

Two coming in from the south side, Draden reported. Gino, they’ll be on top of you in another couple of minutes. I don’t have a clear shot at either of them.

Take the two about to break out of the swamp, running full out, Trap ordered. They know I’m coming up behind them because I made a little noise to let them know. I’m hoping the helicopter will try to cover them.

He could hear the buzz as the team leader gave orders from his vantage point in the sky. The helicopter began to move cautiously, trying to find a way to shift into position to cover the two men trying to gain access to the house. Trap ducked into the cypress grove and circled back around until he was directly beneath the helicopter. He inched forward, staying as low as possible, making certain no leaf stirred to give him away.

Looking directly up at the silver bird, the two gunners at the ready and the team leader using binoculars to watch the open ground between the swamp and Wyatt’s home, he looked upward toward the sky. The air around the helicopter was made up of a mixture of gasses, mainly oxygen, nitrogen with smaller amounts of argon, water vapor and carbon dioxide along with a very small amount of other gasses.

By changing the gasses in the air beneath and around the helicopter, Trap changed the actual density of the air. He did it fast, not giving the pilot time to figure out what was happening. Even with his instruments to guide him, the pilot would know that nothing changed air density that quickly and he wouldn’t believe what he was seeing. The rotor RPM decayed rapidly until the blades simply ceased rotating. The bird dropped like a stone, forcing Trap to dive to relative safety.

The helicopter crashed hard, breaking apart, scattering bodies, equipment and debris over a wide area. Trap hurried forward, knife in hand. The pilot and team leader were both dead, killed on impact. One of the gunners was still alive, spitting blood and trying to get to a weapon. Trap cut his throat. He found the second gunner a distance away, body in two pieces.

Helicopter down, crew dead.

I’ve got three coming at me from the south, Gino reported. I’ll take them.

Two are moving in from the east, the canal side, Draden reported. No way for me to get them. The sound of his rifle was loud. Two shots. Close together as Draden nearly always did. It was his personal trademark. Both runners close to the house down. Took them in the throat.

I’m moving toward the river, Trap reported. He waited a beat but the wall in his mind was beginning to crumble. He had to reach out whether or not that way lay disaster. Malichai, give me a report.

She’s alive. Her skin has some kind of built-in armor. I swear it feels like silk, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate very far. The skin worked like a vest. It’s crazy, Trap. Her organs took a jolt, her heart nearly stopped, but it’s back to beating steady again. Her thigh needs attention, but I don’t think she’s going to need more than a few stitches.

Trap found he could breathe again. She was fucking glued to his side from here on out, and he didn’t give a damn whether she liked it or not. Guarding her. Keeping her safe. That was necessary. He set out running again, choosing a course that would take him close to the canal and the cypress trees weeping moss there.

Something else strange, Trap. Her bones are different. They don’t feel the same. Nothing’s broken, but her femur should have been. The impact of that bullet should have taken it right through her body, but it stopped in her skin. Still, it should have broken the bone. And man, I have to tell you, no one has skin this soft.

Trap didn’t like that one bit. You don’t need to notice that. Just keep her alive so I can strangle her. He was going to do something to ease the raw, gaping hole in his gut. She’d done that. Gutted him with this shit. He’d had enough. She was going to do what the fuck he said when he said it, and if that made him a bastard, too fucking bad.

You’re broadcasting loud, Wyatt said, amusement tingeing his voice.

There’s nothing fucking funny about her getting shot. Twice. Trap spat the declaration at Wyatt.

No one thinks her getting shot is funny, bro, Wyatt pointed out. Only your reaction. Never saw you lose it before.

Trap heard them now, two of them. They were moving slow, single file. He ran silently until he was parallel with them, ignoring Wyatt. Whitney’s supersoldiers seemed tireless, not even breathing hard. This close he could share their telepathic link.

We’ve got to get the son of a bitch on the roof, Jerrod, one said. He took out the last of our first team.

They weren’t all that anyway, Jerrod said. I’d like to know why these boys are protecting that hideous creature. Do you suppose they don’t know what she is? A fucking spider?

You’re just pissed because your brother tried to fuck her right in front of you all and she killed him.

Whitney should have let me kill her.

Whitney thinks he’s god almighty. His little experiments are getting more bizarre, and he’s losing his backing. If we don’t shut down this shit fast, he’ll have an army of insects coming after us.

Trap drew in his breath sharply. These soldiers hadn’t been sent by Whitney. The soldiers that had come, a few months back, for Wyatt’s daughters hadn’t been sent by Whitney either. They thought Braden had sent them. Another faction was in play. But who? If not Whitney, who?