Once Bitten, Twice Burned (Phoenix Fire #2)(14)
Author: Cynthia Eden

“Good,” Wyatt murmured. His gaze darted back to the observation window.

Ryder had frozen. He knew exactly what was happening in that observation room.

“If you don’t let the doctor go, then Donaldson will put a bullet into Sabine’s brain.”

Ryder’s claws—he had claws bursting from his fingertips—dug into the doctor’s throat. “So what? You shoot her, she burns, then she comes back.”

Wyatt actually smiled at that response. “Yes, but we both know the death hurts, don’t we? Do you want her to suffer, vampire?”

Ryder didn’t speak.

If Sabine had been able to do so, she would have shouted, I don’t want to suffer!

“Perhaps you do.” From Wyatt. Considering. “Perhaps you enjoy her pain.” Wyatt waved his hand toward Donaldson. “Go ahead, shoot her.”

Donaldson hesitated. Sabine tried to fight the nausea and the lethargy and the heart-numbing fear. “D-don’t,” she managed to gasp. “I have . . . family . . . too.”

Donaldson’s blue gaze cut to the glass. To Ryder.

“Do it!” Wyatt barked.

Donaldson looked back at her. “You aren’t human.” He said the words as if he were trying to convince himself. His finger began to squeeze the trigger.

Jim Thomas flew into the two-way glass. Ryder had tossed the doctor straight at them.

“Take the gun f**king away from her head,” Ryder snarled.

Donaldson lifted the gun.

“Get the ass**le out of here,” Ryder said, shoulders heaving, as he jerked his thumb toward the door.

The vampire just saved me. Tears stung her eyes.

Wyatt inclined his head toward Donaldson. The guy nodded and rushed to claim his friend. But as soon as Donaldson stepped one foot inside Ryder’s cell, the vampire attacked.

He grabbed Donaldson, tossed him around like a rag doll a few times, and then shoved the guard’s own weapon right against his temple.

“That was a mistake,” Ryder growled at him. “You never, ever put a gun to a woman’s head.” He drove his teeth into Donaldson’s throat. The guard screamed and tried to fight.

Wyatt just watched. Then, after a moment, he sighed. “Briggs, shoot the woman.”

Briggs—the guard still holding her—stared at Sabine with wide eyes.

And he didn’t reach for his gun. Sabine knew why.

Don’t want to wind up like Donaldson, do you?

Wyatt must have realized the guard wasn’t obeying because he whirled around, grabbed the man’s gun, and pressed it against Sabine’s chest.

Then they heard the laughter. Ryder’s laughter. Sounding crazed.

Wyatt paused, then looked over his shoulder.

Ryder had hauled both men—still alive, barely, from the looks of them—toward the cell door. The men lay in a crumpled heap. Ryder was on the bed. His hands behind his head. “Come and get them,” he called, voice almost mocking.

Then he just closed his eyes.

The drug was pumping fast and furiously through Sabine’s veins, and, even though her arms and legs felt leaden, her heart raced so hard that her chest hurt. “He let . . . them go.” Now let me go.

“Yes,” Wyatt murmured. “He did.”

So why hadn’t the guy dropped his gun?

“But today’s experiment isn’t over yet.” Wyatt stared right in Sabine’s eyes. “Let’s see how long it takes for your memory to recover this time.”

Even though Ryder had freed the men, Wyatt was going to shoot her. Sabine tried to struggle but her body wouldn’t listen to her mental commands.

“Briggs, take her back to her room. Strap her down.”

Her breath rushed out in desperate relief. He wasn’t going to shoot her. He—

“Then shoot her in the heart.”

Briggs hauled her out of the observation room, and Ryder’s roar of fury followed her.

The blood was bitter on his tongue. Too harsh. Too metallic. Not like hers. Not like Sabine’s.

Ryder stood in the middle of his cell. Head bowed, shoulders sagging, a deliberate pose of defeat.

His fangs were burning in his mouth, and he wanted to spit out the blood that he could still taste.

What the hell? A vampire never turned away blood, but this time the blood had just been a means to an end. Not the sweet, powerful nourishment that he usually craved.

The observation room was empty. The dead silence from the other room told him that no one was watching him then.

Because you’re off torturing Sabine?

He wanted to bellow again with his fury. Instead, he closed his eyes. He sucked in a deep breath, and he tried to reach her with his mind.

He’d taken her blood twice. The psychic link should exist between them now. Their blood link. Not all vampires could forge those bonds with their victims.

He wasn’t all vampires. Wyatt, you fool, you should have left me the hell alone.

Now Wyatt would die. Everyone who’d helped him would die.

Because Ryder wasn’t some fresh vamp who’d been newly turned.

I am ancient. I am power.

I am death.

And he used all of his power right then, trying to reach out to Sabine, to make sure that she was still alive and—

A wall of flames.

He couldn’t reach her mind. He could feel her. The fear. The fury. But there were flames stopping his mind from connecting to hers. The blood link between them wasn’t strong enough to get past the flames that shielded her mind.

His hands clenched into fists as his eyelids flew open. No one had ever been able to escape his blood link. Not demons. Not witches. Not djinn or shifters.

But the flames just burned brighter in his mind’s eye. There was no getting to Sabine. He couldn’t reach her.

He wondered if anyone could.

Ryder forced his hands to unclench. If he couldn’t get a psychic link to Sabine, then he’d just have to get a physical link with her. She could resist the blood bond but others wouldn’t be so strong. Humans were particularly susceptible to the link.

Oh Thomas . . . And Ryder pictured the redheaded doctor in his mind. Jim Thomas.

The doctor’s blood beat in Ryder’s veins. Blood that didn’t satisfy. That just made him hunger all the more for Sabine.

He couldn’t question that growing hunger, not then. He had to focus on his escape.

Jim Thomas. He felt the doctor’s presence instantly as he locked on the terrified human. He’d bitten other humans while he’d been at Genesis, but the rage had been in control then. Ryder had bitten, drunk, and killed.