Playing With Fire

  He knew she was there.

  To the right, a two-way mirror waited. The rest of the pricks at Genesis had thought they were safe behind that mirror. Fools. He’d always been able to hear them. And, when he focused his gaze just right, he could see them, too.

  At first, as he headed toward that mirror, Dante saw his own glowering reflection. But when he focused his eyes, he saw Cassie standing there. Staring back at him.

  For an instant, the past and the present merged for him.

  She did this to me.

  “Why?” Dante snapped.

  She had her hands crossed over her chest. “That’s just what I was going to ask you.” Her voice was soft. She knew that she didn’t need to shout. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you make me think I could trust you?”

  “Cain is a threat! If I don’t eliminate him, he’ll come for me.” Dante had been protecting himself, and her.

  She shook her head. “Cain had no plans to kill you before you attacked him.” Her breath whispered out, and he picked up even that small sound. “Now, yes, I’m sure you’re on his hit list.”

  Bring it on. He didn’t fear the other phoenix. He feared no one.

  “You lied to me,” Cassie said, her voice hardening. “Dante, I trusted you.”

  “You caged me!” he threw back at her.

  “Because you’re dangerous. I was told that, so many times, but I was so sure you were good inside.” She sounded sad and lost—and that just pissed him off.

  “I’ve never been a threat to you,” he told her. He’d saved her from that jerk at the ranch. Had the woman already forgotten that? He’d been the one to rescue her from the lieutenant colonel jackass.

  “No, you’re just a threat to what matters to me.”

  Her words stopped him. He frowned at her.

  “I want to help Vaughn. I want to help Trace. I want to cure all the primals out there—I want to undo what my family has done! How many times do I have to tell you this?” Her voice was rising. “But you . . . you nearly destroyed everything I wanted. Everything that I’ve been working toward. You shoved me in a closet and walked away.”

  “I wanted you safe!” Was that so wrong? He hadn’t wanted her caught in the crossfire.

  “You wanted to fight a battle that didn’t exist. This bullshit about phoenixes going after their own . . . there’s no need for that. Whatever war you think is happening, is over.”

  “I don’t think,” Dane told her, suddenly desperate for her to understand. “I know. I was there. You weren’t. I watched them all die as they turned on each other. I saw the fire, I saw the death. I saw it all.”

  She stared back at him, only that glass separating them. He wanted to punch through it and touch her, but knew it wasn’t normal glass. It wouldn’t break.

  The glass at Genesis had never broken. No matter how many times he’d punched it, and he’d punched until his knuckles were bloody and broken.

  “When?” Cassie asked him as her hands fell to her sides. “When was this battle?”

  “When I became immortal.” That’s what he was. There was a reason he’d been given that name at Genesis. “You ever wonder where the phoenixes came from? They came from my village. My blood. We were powerful—unstoppable. We burned and we rose and our enemies fell beneath us.”

  Until her.

  “What happened?”

  “All creatures of myth start somewhere. We started in the mountains near Greece. Rumors and whispers about us spread. No one wanted to face an unstoppable army.”

  She wasn’t speaking.

  “Back then, the paranormals didn’t have to stay in the shadows. And there were more paranormals than you can imagine. So many different monsters, even monsters that hid under a beautiful woman’s smile.”

  She crept closer to the glass. “You’re talking about a siren.”

  He nodded.

  “Someone . . . like me.”

  Dante frowned at that. She was nothing like Zura had been.

  “Zura fell in love with my brother, and he . . . Wren would do anything that she asked.” Dante’s voice was bitter. “When a siren sings her song and asks you to do her bidding, you cannot refuse.”

  Cassie took another step toward the glass.

  “She learned of our weaknesses. She knew that another phoenix could reach through the fire and kill at the time of the rising.” Memories were as bitter as ash on his tongue. “She didn’t want any threat to my brother. Zura wanted to live with him forever, and never be threatened again.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She called all of the phoenixes. She sang her song . . . and she commanded us to kill each other.” All but his brother. Wren hadn’t been there for the summoning.

  He’d been far away, locked up by Zura for his protection. At first, Dante hadn’t thought that his brother even knew the wickedness that she had unleashed.

  He’d thought wrong.

  “How did you survive?”

  “I drove spikes into my ears, so I wouldn’t hear her voice.”

  Through the glass, he saw Cassie flinch.

  “I tried to stop the others, tried to get them to do the same. We just had to turn off her voice, but they were beyond listening. Once the bloodlust hit them, there was no stopping the phoenixes they carried.”

  He lifted his hand and touched the glass.

  She did not lift her hand.

  “The phoenix is always with us, but in those moments, when it felt the blood of its own kind . . . a new hunger hit me. Hit us all. And the fight for dominance began.” Dante swallowed the ash. “When the fire died away, I was left standing. I thought it was over, but then my brother came for me. Wren cut my head from my body.”

  Her hand rose then. Pressed against the glass over his. “Dante . . .”

  “The fire started. I began to rise, and, through the flames, I saw him coming at me again. I knew Wren was going to kill me. My hearing was coming back, and Zura’s words were ringing in my ears, even over the crackle of flames. ‘Kill him . . . kill him . . . let us be free!’ ”

  His brother had tried his best to kill him.

  “What happened?”

  Dante forced a shrug. “I didn’t die. They did.” Zura should have been more specific with her words. She’d never named him, so Dante had risen, and a siren had ordered him to kill—and he had.

  His fire had exploded—going for Wren and Zura. When Zura had begun to burn, Wren had lost his last hold on sanity.

  I’m sorry, brother. Dante had wished again and again for a different ending.

  “Because of what happened then, you think every phoenix will come after you now?”

  He shoved away the image of his brother. “It’s what we do. That wasn’t the only attack. Word spread after that—a phoenix’s weakness is his own kind.”

  “So it’s better to be the only one, than to have a threat out there? That’s crazy!”

  “That’s the way of the phoenix,” he told her quietly.

  “That’s the way of the insane. Cain isn’t a threat to you. He isn’t—”

  “He’ll realize what you are.”

  “No, he doesn’t think I’m anything but human. I asked him if I sounded different. If I smelled different. You know what he said? That his Eve smelled like paradise and temptation. Like every dream he’d ever had.”

  There was an odd note in her voice. Almost . . . envy?

  “He’s not hearing any siren song from me, and I’m—I’m starting to wonder why you’re lying to me.”

  “He’s mated,” Dante said, understanding at once. Smelled like paradise and temptation. That was the way a mate smelled to a phoenix. The way that Cassie smelled to—

  “He’s in love with Eve, yes, but that shouldn’t affect the man’s ability to smell a difference in me.” Cassie turned away. “Get some sleep, Dante, we can talk tomorrow.”

  “You’re . . . leaving me?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Sucks, doesn’t it? Now you know how I
felt when you locked me in that closet.”

  “I was protecting you.” The woman should understand that.

  “No.” A sad shake of her head. “You were protecting yourself. From a threat that doesn’t even exist. Wake up, Dante. This isn’t a world full of sirens and phoenixes any longer. You don’t have to battle your own kind. But you do have to learn to trust them.”

  And she truly did just leave him.

  The door closed behind her with a soft click.

  But she didn’t leave him alone.

  Dante had known that another was there, even if Cassie hadn’t realized it. Another had been standing just outside his cell door the whole time they were talking. Listening to them. Waiting for the moment when Cassie left.

  The lock turned slowly, disengaging.

  Cain stalked inside. The phoenix pulled the door shut behind him.

  No Cassie. No Eve.

  “I think we have some business to finish,” he murmured.

  Yes, they did.

  “Why are you crying?”

  Cassie stiffened at Jamie’s voice. She’d thought that he was asleep, safe and secure for the night.

  But there he was, standing at the front of the small makeshift bedroom she’d claimed for herself.

  Cassie was sitting in a wobbly, wooden chair, and it trembled a bit as she hurriedly swiped her hands over her cheeks. “I’m not crying,” she immediately denied.

  He lifted a brow and looked far too old for his fourteen years.

  “Fine. I was crying. A little.” She sniffed.

  He crept toward her. “Because of what I did?”

  “No, because of something I did. Something that I wanted to make right. I’m not sure I can anymore.” She’d clung to hope for so long, but it was vanishing.

  Jamie came closer. Hesitated, then awkwardly patted her shoulder.

  Cassie almost started crying again. “We . . . we’re still looking for your family, Jamie. The foster family that you were with has moved and—”

  “I don’t want to go back to them.” His voice had chilled. Frowning, she looked up at him.

  “I told you that. Not ever. When I was there, they didn’t want me.” His shoulders straightened. “They got a check for having me, and that’s all they needed.”

  “Jamie . . .”

  “Did your father . . . Did he really make the primals?” She swallowed the lump that wanted to choke her. Jamie had a right to know. “My father was a scientist. He . . . worked with the paranormals. He was supposed to be making a stronger soldier . . . to help protect the country.”

  Jamie frowned. “Did he?”

  She shook her head. “He got lost.” That was the way she’d always thought of him, even as a child. “He stopped noticing the danger of what he was doing. He took humans, tried to give them the strength of vampires, but none of the weaknesses.”

  Jamie’s eyes widened.

  “He made the primal vampire virus, then he tried to keep the vampires he’d created contained, but you just can’t—” She had to swallow again because that damn lump was choking her. “You just can’t hide some things in the dark.” Like she’d tried to hide her true identity. Her name wasn’t just Cassandra Armstrong. It was Cassandra Armstrong Wyatt.

  Jamie studied her a moment, then said, “If you can’t cure them, then we have to kill them. Every single one.”

  Vaughn.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. “There’s still—”

  “How many humans are you gonna let die before you realize those primals all have to be stopped? Not cured? Just wiped away from the earth.” Jamie’s hands had fisted at his sides. “We need the freaking marines in here! It’s a war—and we have to fight them.” He gave a hard shake of his head. “Not cry over them. Not them.” He rushed from the room.

  She didn’t blame him, not for his anger and not for running away. How many times over the years had she wanted to turn and run away?

  More than she could count.

  But it was her mess. One she’d inherited. One she had to fix.

  Her steps were slow but certain as she made her way to the lab.

  Eve was there, keeping vigil over Trace, when Cassie entered the room.

  Eve glanced up. “Do you think,” she began quietly, “that we’ll ever cure him?”

  “Yes.” It was what Cassie had to believe.

  And she knew what she had to do.

  Dante had said that his tears hadn’t healed her in New Orleans. If the tears of a phoenix weren’t what she needed, then maybe . . . just maybe . . . she already had the cure.

  Inside of her.

  “During your research on Genesis, did you come across any information on a Lieutenant Colonel Jon Abrams?” Cassie asked her curiously.

  Eve gave a slow nod. She might have attended med school, but she’d dropped out of the program to pursue her true passion—journalism. Cassie had leaked information about Genesis to her, and then Eve had gone undercover at the facility in order to see firsthand just what was happening.

  It was because of Eve that Genesis had been destroyed.

  “He was one of the recruits in the shifter program,” Eve said slowly. “A success, from all accounts. Enhanced hearing, vision—”

  “Strength and speed,” Cassie finished. “And he got the bonus of having ready-made weapons in the form of his claws.”

  “Why are we talking about him?” Eve wanted to know.

  Cassie walked toward her instrument tray. “Because Genesis isn’t fully dead. Uncle Sam is still conducting experiments, and Jon Abrams was the man handpicked to carry on the work started in my father’s labs.” Her fingers curled around a scalpel. The sharp blade gleamed. “Jon tracked me when I went to Chicago. He caught me, locked me in an exam room, and then he started . . . taking samples from me.”

  Eve’s chair squeaked as she rose. “What kind of samples?”

  Cassie’s hold tightened on the scalpel. “The same kind that you’re going to help me take now.” She couldn’t do it on her own. And Charles was gone. She’d seen him slip away earlier. He hadn’t stopped to tell her good-bye.

  She didn’t blame him.

  But it still hurt.

  “Why did he want samples from you?” Eve asked as she crept closer.

  Cassie gave her a sad smile. “You knew my brother.”

  Eve stilled.

  “You had to notice the resemblance,” Cassie said. “I’ve been told that we have the same eyes.”

  “You do.” Quiet. Careful. “But other than your eyes, you are nothing like Richard Wyatt.” There was anger there, rage.

  Hate.

  Most people hated Richard. He’d been as determined to carry through on his twisted experiments as her father had been.

  But Cassie didn’t hate him. She still remembered a boy who had rushed to her bedside just before her father put her under yet again.

  Daddy. Daddy, no! Don’t hurt Cass anymore. Use me. Use me, Daddy!

  And their father had. He’d started to use them both in his experiments.

  Her brother had tried to save her.

  Until he’d become twisted, too. From the experiments? She thought so.

  “I don’t like to remember him the way he was at Genesis,” Cassie whispered. “I like to remember the boy he was—when we were both too young to see the monsters.”

  She looked up and read the pity in Eve’s stare. Cassie handed the other woman the scalpel. “My father experimented on me and Richard. He made us different.”

  “Is your blood poison, too?”

  Eve had always been resourceful. Cassie wasn’t surprised that the reporter knew Richard’s secret.

  “To vampires, yes, but I think there’s more that is . . . different with me.” Cassie stumbled over the words. She had almost said . . . I think there’s more that’s wrong with me. “In New Orleans, I-I think I died when I was attacked by a vampire.”

  Eve sucked in a sharp breath. “And your Dante saved you?”

  Cassie??
?s laugh held a touch of bitterness. “No, I thought . . . He said I healed myself.”

  Eve blinked.

  “So let’s find out how I did it, okay? We’re going to take samples and we’re going to see just what my father may have done to me.”

  “Uh, fair warning. I never finished med school. That was just a cover, you know that, right?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll guide you through it.”

  Eve’s breath rushed out on a relieved sigh. “So I’m just taking your blood. Nothing major—”

  “No, it will be quite major, but we have to get it done.” The secrets that Cassie needed, the cures, could be within her own body. “Just lock the doors. Dante is secure, but I don’t want to take any chances on being interrupted.”

  “Cassie . . .”

  “People need our help. Vaughn, Trace. Let’s see just what my father did. Maybe we can use it.” Use me. “And some of the nightmares can end.”

  Eve gave a grim nod, and they went to work.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Cain said.

  Dante very much doubted that. “Have you killed others of our kind?”

  “Have you?” Cain tossed right back.

  “Yes.”

  Cain’s hands clenched into fists. “You’re the one they kept in the other lab at Genesis, aren’t you? The one they called the Immortal.”

  Dante nodded.

  Cain’s gaze raked over him. “Were you the first?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know, either. You don’t know where the hell we came from.”

  Hell was a pretty apt description. “Our home was on an old volcano. One that was dormant by the time I lived there, but . . . according to the stories, our village was born of that ash. Born from the fire and brimstone and hell that exploded onto earth.” Dante had first heard those stories when he’d been a child, running around the countryside with Wren at his back. Wren. “From that fire, the phoenix came to be.”

  Cain just stared at him.

  “There were so many of us in the village,” Dante said, shaking his head as he remembered what it had been like before.

  “Until you turned on each other.”

  “Kill or be killed,” Dante murmured. In his mind, he saw the rain of ash that had hit during the deadly battle. A battle started by one woman’s whispered word.