Ezekiel stepped off first, staying low to prevent sky-lining himself just in case anyone was watching. He tied up the boat fast and moved back into the shadows. Malichai followed, splitting off to make his way around to the back of the house. Wyatt pointed up toward Nonny’s window, indicating to Ezekiel to go high. He was going straight in the front door.

Once Ezekiel gained the balcony, Wyatt stepped out of the shadows and began to saunter up to the porch as if he didn’t have a care in the world. There was no vehicle to indicate Larry and his friends had reached the house before him, but it was possible. Wyatt and the Fortunes brothers had lingered in the swamp to examine the tracks of the Rougarou. That might have given the guards enough time to get to his grand-mere’s home. Still, Larry needed some tending, and the chances that his friends had taken care of him that fast were slim.

Wyatt walked right up the stairs and pulled open the door to the sitting room. It was the one room Nonny kept formal – at least as formal as she was able to be with all her years in the bayou. It was their entertaining room. Nothing fancy, but their best. It was empty. He gave it a quick once-over. One of his gifts was his ability to see every detail in a single sweep of his gaze – the smallest detail registered. He was certain no intruder had been in this room.

There was no sound in the house, almost as if the walls held their breath. He felt Ezekiel’s entrance as well as Malichai’s, one from above and one from the back of the house. Both were absolutely silent, but their presence sent a small shimmer of awareness through the old wood and he felt it.

Wyatt inhaled and instantly smelled blood. His heart stuttered and he forced himself under control, but fear for his grandmother took hold. He breathed it away, and kept his body loose, palming his knife, laying the blade up along his wrist out of sight. He strode into the parlor, knowing his grandmother was in there and she wasn’t alone.

He stopped abruptly in the doorway. His grandmother’s tiny body shielded someone else. There was an arm curved around her neck and the hand held a knife. Bowls of water were lined up on the small coffee table he’d made for Nonny himself. Three bowls. All hand-painted by Nonny’s mother and cherished by the entire family. One bowl was still steaming, which meant they’d used extremely hot water. The water was bloody. There was a cloth in the second bowl of water. The third held plants mixed into medicine.

“What the hell’s goin’ on in here, Nonny?” he demanded, shifting a few inches to get a better angle on his grandmother’s assailant. Nonny was small, so whoever was using her as a shield wasn’t any bigger.

Something else moved in the room. On the pile of blankets in the corner. His heart jumped. His breath caught in his lungs. A child sat up, a small girl with a mop of dark, wavy hair, thick, but not long, curled in little whorls all over her head. She couldn’t have been much more than a year, two at the very most. One little arm was bandaged, and he recognized his grandmother’s work.

“Nothin’ wrong here, Wyatt. Don’ be worried about me. I’m jist helpin’ out some friends.”

Nonny didn’t move a muscle. Neither did the knife. A shiver of awareness went through him. Most GhostWalkers could feel one another. Psychic energy surrounded them and immediately identified them to one another, although there were a rare few whose psychic energy was so contained the others couldn’t feel them. Those same individuals could shield the teams from everyone else as well.

His heart jumped hard in his chest and suspicion mounted. That knife never wavered, not one inch, and whoever held it was just that little bit too still to be a normal human being. He let out his breath slowly. Nonny didn’t appear to be afraid, but if this was the Rougarou that had moved with astonishing, blurring speed, he wasn’t happy about her being in his home.

“I’m not okay with the knife. I’m not goin’ to hurt anyone, but I can’t abide someone holdin’ a knife to Grand-mere’s throat. If you want to get out of this room alive, put it down and back off,” Wyatt said. “I’m damn tired of people threatenin’ Nonny.”

He was too. Damn tired of it. The floor beneath his feet trembled. The walls expanded and contracted. The light overhead swayed. The child’s eyes grew large and round. She looked to the one standing behind his grandmother.

“I can take down the house. You’re fast. I know you’re fast, but you’re not goin’ to be able to save the kid. You take somethin’ of mine, lady, and I’m gonna take somethin’ you love.”

The scent, not the blood scent, but the other, the one he’d smelled in the swamp was getting to him. Flooding his lungs. Doing something to the chemistry of his body, so that he felt alive in every cell, with every breath. He told himself it was adrenaline, but he knew it was far more than that, and it was dangerous. Just the beckoning, exotic scent of her, like a mixture of jasmine and silken sheets.

The little girl stood up, and the floor trembled, throwing her back to the ground. Behind Nonny, the woman gave a small cry and tossed the knife to the floor. His grandmother didn’t move, but remained standing in front of the woman, clearly protecting her.

“That was unnecessary, Wyatt. She wouldn’t have hurt me. She was protectin’ her child. Both of them were shot by the same men who pushed me down in the swamp. I’m of a mind to go huntin’ them with my squirrel gun.”

He ignored the warning note in his grandmother’s voice. She didn’t know what she was dealing with. This was no ordinary woman and child. He couldn’t feel the psychic energy, that was true, but they were both enhanced and that didn’t bode well for anyone in the room – especially his grandmother.