Once Bitten, Twice Burned (Phoenix Fire #2)(74)
Author: Cynthia Eden

He could actually breathe again. Whatever was happening in Sabine’s body, she was fighting off the attack.

Hell, yes, she was fighting.

Cassie tried to push the needle into Sabine’s arm. Ryder grabbed the syringe. Tossed it. “She’s fine.”

He’d been frantic moments before. Ready to trade and barter and demand, but her claws were turning back into regular nails. The stark paleness of her skin had faded back to a normal hue. Her lashes opened.

She was back.

“Ryder?”

His Sabine. So strong, when she didn’t even realize it.

“Get away from us,” he snapped to the woman and Keith. He didn’t need them. He should have stayed away, for a little longer. But the panic had made him crazy.

Didn’t matter.

She was back.

Sabine sat up. Ryder pulled her into his arms. Held her close.

“Amazing,” Cassie whispered. “Her body fought off the infection at such a rapid rate.”

“How!” The desperate cry came from Keith Adams.

Ryder lifted his head. Stared at the red-faced man.

“How’d she do it?” Keith asked, his voice lower. “How?”

“Her genetics are no doubt very different from a human’s,” Cassie said as she tilted her head and swept an assessing gaze over Sabine. “We already knew the primals were after her blood, but maybe . . . maybe it wasn’t for the reason Wyatt thought. Not because they were linked to Ryder, but because . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe they realized she was the key they needed. Their cure.”

Ryder pulled Sabine from the table. Pushed her behind him. “You’re both going to want to get the hell out of my way now.”

Cassie shook her head. “Maybe it was something in her scent, some kind of trigger that their enhanced senses picked up on. They had an instinctive response, not even knowing why . . . but perhaps it was because they were ill. She was their cure—”

Ryder didn’t give a f**k as to the whys of the situation. “I warned you,” Ryder growled. Then he shoved Keith out of his way.

Cassie yelped and hurriedly jumped back. Good. Time to get the hell out of there.

“We have your brother!” Keith yelled at him.

Ryder hesitated. His gaze swung back to meet the human’s. Keith was rising off the floor. No guards were in the room. Just Keith and the doctor.

Easy prey.

Ryder smiled. “My brother is dead. I sent him to hell a long time ago.” The first time I bit him. When I destroyed the man he’d been.

“You think so?” Keith challenged. He was back on his feet now. Looking too desperate. Desperate men were often the most dangerous. “Then why don’t you just check behind that door?” He waved to the right. To a wooden door that had been painted white. “Because Genesis found him. They found him, buried in Russia. The guy was nearly decapitated and had a stake shoved in his chest. Only he wasn’t bones in that grave. Wasn’t a rotted corpse. When they took that stake out, when those Genesis fools there gave him blood, he came back.”

Impossible.

“Ryder?” Sabine’s shocked voice.

“They wouldn’t have even known where to look for him,” Ryder said. He wouldn’t fall for this BS.

“They had dozens of vampires imprisoned in their facilities. Vampires that they tortured for weeks. Years. With enough pain, don’t you think those vampires would have shared the information they had? Told anything? Everything?” Keith’s voice rushed out. “One of them . . . some guy named Lawrence . . . he knew.”

Lawrence. The name was familiar. Ryder had a flash of a vampire. Thin, small. With shaking hands. Hands that had helped to kill Malcolm so long ago.

“You didn’t finish the job on your brother,” Keith told him. “Or hell, maybe he’s too powerful to ever die, just like you. Too powerful . . .” Keith lifted his chin and straightened his shoulders. “At Genesis, they injected him, gave him their f**king tainted blood, and he became just like the others. Primal.”

Ryder shook his head. Impossible. He wasn’t gonna believe this story. “If my brother were alive, he—”

“You were the first!” Now it was Cassie who spoke. “But when you gave your blood to others, you started diluting its power. Every exchange, every vampire created after that was weaker.”

And that was why Wyatt had tried to give Ryder’s blood to the primals in his lab? Because the doctor had thought the pure blood could heal them?

It’s not blood that . . . was the cure. It’s Sabine. Her tears. A phoenix’s tears . . . found out . . . really heal . . . Some of Wyatt’s last words seemed to echo in Ryder’s mind.

His gaze darted to the door. If his brother was in there . . .

“Go look,” Keith yelled. “Look!”

He could hear sounds behind the door. Desperate breathing. Scratching. As if someone were clawing against wood.

“How would you have him?” Sabine demanded. She was at Ryder’s side now. Not looking so weak. Looking strong and beautiful. “If this story is even true, how would he be here, with you?”

“I was smuggling subjects out of Genesis,” Cassie confessed quietly. “Trying to help. I was going to get you out, too, but Genesis burned before I could help you.”

She sounded so sincere. But no one had been there to help him. Or to save Sabine. “Lies,” he rasped.

“Well, there’s one way to know for sure,” Sabine said and she stalked toward the white door.

But before she could rip open the door, Ryder jumped in front of her. If his brother was in that room, no way would he let her go in first. He grabbed her hand, curling his fingers around hers, around the doorknob. His gaze met Sabine’s, and he knew she’d see his fury. “My brother was a butcher.” His head tilted toward Cassie. “Do you even have any idea what he did before I put him in the ground?” My brother . . . alive?

“He isn’t the same man now,” she whispered, looking tearful. “I started . . . I figured out the cure, using teardrops that were recovered from Subject Twenty-Nine—I mean, from Sabine. I used those drops to begin treatment to eliminate the primal virus from his system. Your brother has changed. He’s—”

“Open the door,” Sabine whispered, her soft words cutting right across the doctor’s words.

But Ryder pushed her back. He made sure his body was shielding hers, and only then did he open the door. With a squeak, the knob turned beneath his hand and the wooden door opened.