Once Bitten, Twice Burned (Phoenix Fire #2)(18)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Follow him, work with him. Trust him?

Her fingers curled around the metal stair railing. The stairs squeaked beneath her feet as she hurried and climbed up behind Ryder. For better or scary-as-hell worse, they were together now. Maybe they’d both manage to get out of that place alive.

Are vampires even alive?

She had so much to learn.

Wyatt took his time scanning the notes he’d made on Sabine. She’d recovered nearly all of her memories after just three days. Fairly fast, considering that she’d just been through her first rising. She had amazing potential.

Test Subject Twenty-Nine is showing remarkable recovery skills. He quickly jotted down that notation. He couldn’t wait to monitor her after the second rising.

Wyatt glanced down at his watch. Donaldson should be shooting her at any moment. He put the papers aside, not wanting to miss the experiment. His pace kicked up as he hurried toward the observation room adjacent to Twenty-Nine’s cell.

Think of her as Twenty-Nine. When he’d first brought her in, he’d been thinking of her as Sabine. An amateur mistake. He knew better. But when she’d first come in, she’d looked human.

They’re numbers. Subjects. Not people. Because he’d referred to both Sabine and Ryder by name, he’d noticed that his staff had started to refer to them that way, too.

You can’t see them as individuals. As men. As women.

That was a huge mistake. His father had taught him that. His father never saw the humanity in his subjects. They were numbers, not names.

The beings in his lab were test subjects. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Donaldson had hesitated when Richard gave him the order to shoot Subject Twenty-Nine. He’d hesitated because he’d started to see her as a woman, not the monster she was.

I’ll have to brief all the staff. Only numbers from now on. No names. The new recruits he had coming in would learn this lesson from the very start.

You were less likely to feel sorry for a number.

The door to the observation room slid open. “How is the test proceeding?” Richard began, then jerked to a stop when he realized two of his staff members were unconscious on the floor.

His gaze flew to the two-way mirror. The exam table was empty, but the room wasn’t. Donaldson stood, statue-still, in the middle of the room, with a gun pressed to his heart.

Son of a bitch.

Richard rushed forward and pressed the button for the alarm.

They’d just reached the top of the stairs when a shrill alarm pierced the air. Sabine clamped her lips closed to hold back her instinctive cry and pushed behind Ryder. But instead of opening the door that was just a few precious feet away, instead of getting them the hell out, he spun back around and caught her arms.

“Guards are coming,” he rasped.

Her eyes narrowed. She could almost hear the fast thud of footsteps. Wait, she did hear them.

His head jerked up. He looked to the left. The right.

Then his stare came back to her. “I can kill them all.” Said with absolute certainty.

Her heart clenched. She didn’t know these men and women. Maybe they were as screwed up as Dr. Richard Wyatt—every time she saw him, her skin crawled. But what if they weren’t? What if some of the guards truly didn’t understand all that was happening at Genesis? Was that even possible?

“Don’t,” she whispered.

Ryder shook his head. “That’s a mistake.” His gaze locked with hers. “But we’ll play it your way, for now.”

Then, instead of shoving open the door and getting out of the stairwell, he turned toward a grate behind them. He kicked out and the grate fell inward. “Get in,” he told her. “Crawl forward fifteen feet, take a left, then punch out the screen you’ll find in front of you.”

How did he know this stuff?

But she didn’t question him. She just hauled ass. Bending low, Sabine pushed into the entranceway. Some kind of air duct. She crawled forward even as she mentally kept up a hopeful refrain of No rats, no rats, no rats.

Like the rats were all she needed to worry about at Genesis.

Something grabbed her ankle and hauled her back. She didn’t cry out, but she bit down hard on her bottom lip as her hands slapped against the metal walls around her. There was nothing to hold on to as she was pulled back.

“I said fifteen feet,” Ryder growled at her. “Turn here.”

Oh yes. She turned. The air duct became even narrower. Sabine knew that Ryder’s broad shoulders must have been a tight fit, but she didn’t glance back. Her hands slapped against the grate. Before she pushed it down, she peeked through the narrow openings and gazed below her. No sign of the guards.

She shoved the grate down. It fell and landed on a desk. Barely waiting a second’s time, Sabine jumped right after it.

Her gaze swept the room. Heavy shelves. A big desk. No pictures. A lab coat hanging on a hook near the closed door.

Ryder landed behind her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Jim Thomas isn’t going to be heading in here for a while.” His voice oozed confidence.

Glancing over her shoulder, Sabine demanded, “How do you know? What did you do to him?”

He offered her a wide grin. “I took a little bite out of him.”

“Did you kill him?”

His sigh was long and low. “No. Why do you always seem to think—”

“Because you killed me.” Her words froze him as he reached for the lab coat.

Ryder hesitated, then looked back at her. “Back to that, are we? I’ve told you they’d starved me.”

As far as excuses went . . .

“And I didn’t expect your taste.”

Um, come again?

He spun toward her. Actually, he was stalking toward her. She was still crouched on the desk. Sabine scrambled down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, vampire.” She said the word deliberately, in order to remind herself of what he was.

Ryder rolled his eyes. Seriously. The guy rolled his eyes. “So what, now you’re gonna think like them? I’m not a person, just a thing?”

Shame burned her cheeks. “I—”

“Whatever,” he drawled, then lifted a brow as he said, “Phoenix.”

She just looked back at him.

He stopped in front of her. The desk was behind her, pressing lightly against the back of her thighs. Ryder’s intense gaze searched her face. “You don’t know, do you?”

She shook her head. “Is that . . . what I am?”

He put the lab coat down on the desk. His head cocked to the side. His gaze seemed to grow even brighter as it raked over her.