Phoenix Fury Box set

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

When the alarm rang, shrieking through the lab, Cassie jumped to her feet. She’d been working with her samples for hours, and silence had been her only companion.

Until then.

Her gaze flew to the monitors. The alarm was coming from room eight. Not Trace’s room. Oh, crap. Room eight. It was for the only primal vampire she had in the facility.

She grabbed a wooden stake from her desk drawer, even as she prayed that she wouldn’t have to use the weapon. That primal—she’d promised his father that she would do everything possible to save him.

But if he was loose and tried to attack someone, she’d have to stop him.

Charles was in the underground lab. Jamie was there, too. He wouldn’t make it through another attack.

Cassie grabbed for a dosage of tranqs, then hurried forward. She shoved open the sliding doors that led from her work area and raced toward room eight. Her shoes slapped against the tile even as her heart thundered in her chest.

The door to room eight was open.

No, no, it shouldn’t be—

She sprang into the room.

Vaughn Adams, the primal vampire, had his arms wrapped around Jamie. The primal’s teeth were inches from the boy’s throat.

One bite, and Jamie would be infected too.

“Stop!” Cassie yelled.

Vaughn’s head jerked toward her. His nostrils widened.

“Let him go, Vaughn.” She’d had no treatment success with Vaughn so far. All of the serums, the drugs—nothing could give him back even a hint of his humanity. She’d even tried using tears from Sabine, a female phoenix and one of Vaughn’s friends, but the experiment had been a failure. Cassie had theorized that perhaps Vaughn’s basic DNA had been transformed, and she needed a more powerful phoenix to help restore him to human form.

If it would ever be possible to restore him.

Dante was the most powerful phoenix out there. His tears had to be incredibly potent. They had to be the key. She prayed they were.

Jamie whimpered.

Cassie’s fingers curled around the stake. She’d agreed to help Vaughn, but she would not let him hurt the boy.

She stepped forward, and her right foot kicked against—another stake? Her gaze followed the stake as it rolled a few inches away, then her eyes whipped back up when Vaughn hissed.

“Tasting…you…soon…”

So he’d told her before. Once upon a time, Vaughn Adams had been a New Orleans cop, a guy torn between the paranormal and normal world. A bite from a primal vampire had sent him into a walking nightmare. One that, after months, he still hadn’t been able to wake from.

“Why wait?” She lifted the sharp point of the stake and slid it over her wrist, drawing forth some blood. “Come and get it now.”

“No!” Jamie shouted, his eyes bulging.

Vaughn shoved him aside and came right at her with all those terrible fangs in his mouth snapping.

“Cassie!” Dante’s roar. The alarm had drawn him to their little party.

She didn’t look back at Dante. She couldn’t take her eyes off Vaughn. One taste of her blood, and he’d be dead.

She wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.

When he came at her, she yanked up her left hand—the hand that had been in the front pocket of her lab coat. Her fingers were curled around a syringe. One full of enough tranq to knock the guy out for a week.

She drove that syringe into his heart. But he didn’t stop. His hands locked around her shoulders, and he yanked her up against him.

No, no. He should have been on the floor. He should have—

“Bad mistake, vampire.” Dante’s voice was lethal and cold. So very at odds with the sudden heat in the room.

Vaughn’s mouth was inches from Cassie’s throat.

But…he wasn’t biting her.

Cassie lifted her lashes. She stared into Vaughn’s eyes. Bloodlust stared back at her.

But he wasn’t biting her.

In the next instant, he couldn’t bite her. Dante had yanked her away from the vampire then turned, putting his body between her and Vaughn. Dante’s hand was suddenly lit by fire as he reached for the primal.

Vaughn fell to the floor before Dante could touch him.

“He dies,” Dante thundered. “He dies. ”

Cassie couldn’t let that happen. “No! Don’t touch him!” She pulled Dante back. “He’s not a threat now.”

“He wanted to bite you.” Dante stared at her as if she were crazy.

Only a little.

“He could have killed you!” Dante raged.

“You know that’s not true.” Her words were quiet. “But my blood would have killed him in an instant.”

Dante’s eyes blazed at her. “And what about the kid?” He jabbed a finger toward the cowering Jamie. “Do you want him to become like his brother? Like this bastard here?”

She flinched. “You know I don’t! I’m trying to help—”

“Some beings are too dangerous to help! Some just need to be put down.”

She’d heard those same words before. They’d come from her father. “My father said the same thing about you once.”

Dante’s hands fell to his sides. “He was right.”

She shook her head.

“Why is he here?” Dante’s gaze was on Vaughn’s prone form.

“I need a test subject if I’m going to find a cure.” She hated those cold words, but they were true. “I have to see if I can reverse the primal state with the vampires, and Vaughn—Vaughn’s father begged me to try and help him.”

“Helping…him?” Jamie’s voice was shaky as he rose to his feet. “You didn’t help my brother.”

“He took my blood,” she whispered. “There wasn’t a chance for me to help.”

“You let my brother die, when there could be some kind of cure?” Jamie’s face darkened. “There’s a cure?”

They needed to get out of that room. She wanted to make sure Jamie was safe, and if she was wrong about the drug’s effects on Vaughn, she didn’t want the boy getting attacked again.

She reached for Jamie’s hand.

He jerked away from her. “I saw him die.” His voice thickened with pain and fury. “I watched my only family die when there was a cure ?”

Dante grabbed the boy and hauled him from the room.

“Let me go, jerk! You need to let—”

Dante dropped Jamie in the hallway.

Cassie secured the door shut once more after she exited. How had it even opened? How had Jamie gotten in there? “There’s no cure yet,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I’m working on it, hoping—”

“Tim didn’t have to die!”

He had. The instant he took her blood, his fate had been sealed. “There’s something different about me,” she confessed to Jamie. “Vampires—all vampires—have a terrible reaction to my blood.”

Jamie had stomped toward the right wall. “Reaction?”

“It kills them,” Dante said bluntly. “Your brother was dead the instant he put his mouth on her.”

The bright color leached from Jamie’s face.

“What were you doing in there?” Cassie demanded to know as she shook her head. “ How did you get in there?”

Jamie opened his fist. She saw Charles’s key card in his hand. One swipe of that card, and Jamie would have been able to get inside any room in the place.

“Charles,” Jamie rasped. “He asked how I hooked up with you. I told him about my brother.”

“And Charles told you about the primal here.” Dammit. She’d been so rushed to get back to her research that she hadn’t taken time for detailed instructions. She should have been more clear with Charles about the boy.

“He told me to stay away from this room because of the guy in there.”

So Charles had been trying to protect Jamie.

It looked like Jamie hadn’t wanted protecting. She remembered the stake that had rolled across the floor.

“I swiped the card after I saw Charles open a few doors with it.”

“And you came inside to kill the primal.”

“My brother is dead! All of them should be dead, too!” Jamie swiped a hand over his eyes. “Tim was all I had! We were going out to LA! Going to start a new life. His life is gone! It’s all gone! Because of those fanged freaks.”

No, it was gone because of her father and his experiments. More lives destroyed, all in the name of science.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie said.

“If you’re really sorry, you’ll go back in there and stake that bastard.” Jamie spun on his heel and stalked away. “Send him to rot with my brother.”

Cassie watched him storm out of sight.

“Are there,” Dante began quietly, “any other experiments here that the boy needs to watch out for? I’d sure hate for him to stumble onto something that might feel the urge to eat him.”

Cassie shook her head. “Only Trace and Vaughn are here. The rest of the place is empty.” Cassie tried to brush by Dante. “I need to get back to work.”

He caught her. Caged her between his body and the wall. “What happens if you can’t cure them?”

Cure…or kill.

She didn’t want to think about Trace’s words. “I told you, I will cure them.”

“If you can’t ? Will you kill the werewolf?”

Her chest ached. “Why does it always have to be about killing? Can’t I save someone?” She pushed against Dante’s chest.

He didn’t back away. “Still trying to atone for the sins of others, aren’t you?”

“No. It’s my own sins I’m atoning for.”

Trying to, anyway.

Failing.

“Fine.” He bit out the word, and finally—thank you!—backed away. “You want to cure them? You want your shot at this? Then let’s go.”

What?

Dante was half-dragging her down the hallway and back toward her office. Apparently, they were going.

“You think a phoenix is the key, then go ahead, slice me. See if you can find the key in me.”

They were in her workroom. He walked to a tray of instruments near the left wall and picked up a scalpel.

She tried not to remember the feel of a scalpel slicing into her own skin.

“Where should I get?” Dante sat on the exam table in the office. “Will this work? And don’t worry about strapping me down. I won’t fight.”

As he’d fought before, when the Genesis scientists had spent years slicing him open. Dissecting him while he’d still been alive.

“Dante…”

“That was the point of me coming here, wasn’t it So you could use me? To save them?”

Cassie swallowed. Took the scalpel from him. Put it away.

“You’re gonna have a hard time getting your samples with your bare hands,” he pointed out.

Her lips wanted to tremble. How had everything gotten so messed up? “I just want to help.”

“No, sweetheart, you’re trying to take the stains off your hands. But that blood isn’t there because of you.” He was definite.

“Yes, it is!” Why doesn’t he see that? “I was at Genesis, Dante. For years. I should have stopped it. I should have helped those people.”

But she’d been afraid.

Trapped.

“You helped me.”

He was still on the table.

As he’d been so many times.

As I was.

Cassie pulled in a deep breath. “You escaped when I was twenty-two.” A pause. “Because I killed you.” A death that the guards and doctors at Genesis hadn’t been expecting, so they hadn’t been prepared to deal with him as he rose.

She’d cleared the exits. Even drugged a few of the men on patrol outside so Dante could get away.

He’d come back. Years later, but… he came back.

“I thought about burning the building to the ground that night.” His confession.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because something important was inside.”

Her gaze searched his. “Is that why you came back?” She knew he hadn’t just been captured. The crazy phoenix had actually let himself be caught by Genesis.

And she’d had to work to free him again.

“I came back for you.”

How many times had she wished to hear those words? At first, hell, she actually thought she was imagining them.

“I’d waited long enough for you, and I was there to claim you.”

But he hadn’t. He’d escaped again when Genesis was destroyed, and, according to him, she’d died in New Orleans.

“The first time I left…you stayed behind to help the others, didn’t you?” Dante asked.

Cassie nodded. She’d worked, slowly but surely, to free others trapped in Genesis. She’d tried sending data to the media, had tried to get someone to see what was happening in the research facility, but the madness hadn’t stopped until a reporter named Eve Bradley had gone to work—undercover—at Genesis.

“Why do you keep bleeding for them?”

“Someone has to do it.”

His gaze fell to the scalpel. “All of those years and Genesis never figured out a way to use me. But you think you can do it now?”

“Cain O’Connor should arrive tomorrow.” The only other male phoenix she’d ever met. The phoenix who’d fallen in love with Eve Bradley when she’d been undercover at Genesis. “I want to look at DNA from both of you and see—”

“Then you’d better get to cutting.”

She didn’t want to cut him. She didn’t want to hurt him at all. “Did you truly come back for me?”

His eyes swept over her face. “You’ve been mine for years. Did you really think I’d ever let you go?”

Her breath caught. Mine. It was all about possession and need for him. Was it even possible for Dante to love?

“I thought you’d leave Genesis and seek me out.”

Cassie shook her head. “How would I have ever found you?”

His hand lifted. Pressed over her heart. “The same way you found me in Chicago. The same link.”

Okay, now she was starting to get nervous. “Link?”

“Have you studied your own blood, Cassie?”

She’d done tests on herself, yes, and not just blood work. She knew that her DNA had been mutated when she’d been a child.

“You were different even before you father started his work.” Dante paused. “Maybe that’s why he started.”

Cassie gave a hard, negative shake of her head. She didn’t want to hear this.

“You’ve mentioned a brother. We both know about your dick of a father. But what about your mother, Cassie? Where is she?” Dante was sitting on the exam table, and she was standing between his spread legs. She hadn’t felt trapped until that moment.

“My mother died just a few months after I was born.”

“How.” No question. A demand.

“A car accident.” So she’d been told.

Dante was the one to shake his head. “I doubt that.”

Her heart drummed faster.

“I think your father wanted to create very special children, and he found a woman who could provide him with those children.”

Her skin felt icy.

“Nothing too dangerous, not if he was going to have this creature in the family, but something powerful nevertheless.”

Some thing ?

“You’re not supposed to exist, sweetheart, but then, neither am I.”

His words were starting to scare her. She’d been born human. Her blood had changed only because of her father’s experiments.

Right?

“And maybe your father couldn’t resist your mother. That would have been part of her charm, after all.”

Her charm? He was losing her. “You’re wrong, Dante. I’m just—”

“A siren.”

Cassie laughed. She couldn’t help it. Laughter was her first response. “There is no way—”

“Sirens are real, you know. As real as any other paranormal that walks the earth.”

Her mouth suddenly felt very, very dry. “Sirens lure sailors to their deaths.” She knew the myth. Beautiful women, or at least, they appeared beautiful at first, but they were really monsters. “In Greek mythology, they’d sing to lure in their prey. When the boats crashed on the rocks near the sirens, the sirens had fed on the wounded.”

“That’s the myth.”

She was adamant. “That’s not me.”

“Humans only know part of the sirens’ story.” His hand lifted to brush back her hair. “In truth, there were so many ways for them to lure in the men they wanted. Except sirens weren’t interested in mortal men.”

Her heart was going to burst out of her chest.

“They wanted paranormals because sirens craved power. Magic.”

How many times was she going to have to say it? “I am not—”

“Vampires are lured to you by the sweet scent of your blood. It’s different from anything else they’ve ever experienced. They can scent the poison, too, but your blood is too strong for them to resist.”

Cassie put her hands on his chest. “My father made my blood that way. A lure and a poison.”

“He made it poison. Nature made it a lure.”

Her breath rushed out.

“Werewolves will be drawn by your voice. It soothes their beast. That’s why the one called Trace is calmer when you’re near. I realized that when I watched you with him. He hasn’t attacked you yet because your voice puts his beast at ease.”

“Sirens sing, I don’t—”

“The lure is different for every paranormal. I know what you are. I’ve met your kind before.”

She had a kind?

“The magic isn’t as strong in you, probably because of the brews that your father gave you, but it’s there. I’ve known it from the time you were eight years old.”

Her world was spinning. He was solid beneath her hand. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you wouldn’t have believed me. Your brother would have been a lot weaker than you. Siren power never passes as well to males. Maybe that was why your father started his experiments—he wanted to make your brother stronger.”

This was wrong. “My mother—”

“She probably tried to get away from your father. But the thing is…” A sigh. “Once a man has a siren, he becomes obsessed with her.”

A chill skated down Cassie’s spine. Dante’s dark eyes were so intense. So focused on her.

“Once they mate, the siren can walk away, the ties won’t bind her, but her prey is trapped. The only way he can escape her hold is death.”

Cassie didn’t like what he was saying. Didn’t want to hear another word. I’m no siren. I’m Cassie Armstrong. I’m a doctor. I’m twenty-nine. I’m—

“Don’t you want to know how you lure me to you?”

No. “Yes.” Soft. Scared. She would not be scared.

Hell, she was so scared.

“Part of it is your scent.” He inhaled deeply and pulled her closer to him. “Shifters can usually catch a siren’s scent, even if they don’t necessarily realize what that scent means.”

“But you know what it means.”

“I’ve dealt with sirens before.”

It didn’t sound like he’d dealt with them in a positive way.

He bent his head and his lips pressed against her throat. Her heartbeat spiked.

“It’s not just your scent, though,” Dante continued darkly. “It’s your taste that draws me, too. So sweet and light. Tempting me to gobble you up.”

He scored her skin with his teeth.

“I had to be careful. I tried not to kiss you for a long time, but the first time I tasted your lips, the lure was set.”

“You left after our first kiss.” Cassie had kissed him right before she’d killed him at Genesis. Stupidly, desperately, she’d hoped that the kiss would make him remember her.

His head lifted, but her neck tingled, as if she still felt the heat of his mouth. “I thought I could break the link. I tried,” he admitted.

That admission hurt.

“I couldn’t. You kept pulling me back to you.”

He was wrong. She’d wanted him to be free. “No, I didn’t do anything—”

The gold deep within his eyes began to burn. “Did you dream of me, Cassie?”

She had. So many dreams. But what was wrong with a dream? Cassie nodded.

“A siren can lure through her dreams. The link was between us, and you used it. Every time you dreamed, every time you longed, you sent that longing to me. Made me feel it.”

He sounded almost angry.

But she hadn’t meant to do anything like he was saying. “I’m not a siren.” Her desperate whisper. He was wrong. He had to be.

“A phoenix can’t mate with just anyone. Our fire burns too hot. We’d kill human lovers.” His lips twisted. “I know phoenixes who have done just that and the poor bastards couldn’t even take their own lives when the guilt ate at them.”

She couldn’t speak.

“A male phoenix can mate with a female of our kind, but it’s rare. We just don’t fucking trust each other enough. Our killer instinct is stronger than our mating instinct.”

That would be why phoenixes weren’t populating the world.

“Dragon shifters work as potential mates. They can handle any fire. But, because of that, they’re also threats to us.”

Any being that could handle the fire could also attack a phoenix during his weakest moment—the rising.

“But there’s one more that can mate with us. One who can soothe our fire, with her siren’s song.”

Cassie shook her head.

His eyes narrowed. “You’re my mate, Cassie. There’s no denying it. I took you, I claimed you, and now, you are mine.”

***

Jamie ran through the lab and slammed the door of his “room” shut. His hands were shaking, and his stomach twisted with fear.

He’d wanted to kill that vampire—that freak was just like the one who’d turned Tim. But when he’d gone in there with the chunk of broken wood he’d taken from the chair he’d smashed in his room, the vampire had been too strong for him.

The vamp’s fangs had been at his throat. If Cassie hadn’t come in…

I would be dead.

Or, even worse, he’d be a vampire.

He didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t understand anything, not anymore. When they’d first come out to the world, vampires had told everyone that they could get along with humans. They’d been all friendly on the TV shows.

Then those fanged super freaks had attacked.

And Jamie’s world had ended.

He sucked in a deep breath. One. Two. The breaths didn’t calm him down any. Tim used to tell him… Don’t get so angry, man. Breathe. Relax.

Tim wasn’t there anymore.

Jamie wasn’t going to let that vampire keep living in that room down the hall. Tim was dead, and that jerk deserved to die, too.

Jamie just had to find a way to get to the vamp again. Get to him and take him out.

When he’d hidden for all those hours in that swamp, he had made one vow. Just one. If he survived, he’d kill every vampire that ever crossed his path.

That vampire—Vaughn—was going to hell.