Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3)(24)
Author: Cynthia Eden

“You told us—”

“Get her blood off your hands, Shaw! Get the smell off you, or you’ll be dead once he breeches the perimeter.”

But the increasing shrieks of the alarm told him that the perimeter had already been breached.

Water immediately began to pour from the sprinklers positioned along the ceiling. Ah, right . . . the phoenix’s flames had been detected. The spray of water wasn’t going to do much to stop him, though.

Jon knew that he had to get Cassie out of there. They’d escaped on the helicopter before. They could do it again.

He just had to run fast enough. But he could do it. No problem. The others who smelled of Cassie’s blood … the others who were running into the path of the phoenix would be his perfect distraction.

Sometimes, a leader had to lose a few soldiers in order to win a war.

Or, in this case . . . the doctors had to die so he could survive.

He lifted Cassie higher into his arms and ran from the room.

“My Cassandra . . .” Dante inhaled then stilled as he caught her very distinct scent. It had often drifted to him when he’d been held in that pit at Genesis.

She smelled of sunlight and flowers. Life. Hope.

Except . . . her scent was deeper and tinted with the faintest trace of copper.

Blood.

“Stop!” The barked order came from behind him. “We’ll shoot—”

A bullet slammed into Dante’s shoulder. They weren’t going to shoot. The ass**le was already shooting at him.

Too bad the guy had horrible aim.

Dante twisted and sent his flames racing toward the trigger happy fool. The man dropped his weapon. Ran away as fast as he could.

Dante turned to the right, following Cassie’s scent. Someone had hurt her. Someone would pay.

Two men in white lab coats were running down the hallway. They stopped as soon as they saw him.

His eyes narrowed. They had Cassie’s blood on their gloved hands.

“Please!” the man in front shouted. He was in his early fifties, with graying hair and a paunch. “She’s alive! I swear, she’s alive.”

Dante grabbed him. Slammed the bastard against the wall and kept him there with one hand shoved against the guy’s chest. Dante knew that hand would burn him—it was burning as smoke rose from the fellow’s shirt. “What did you do?”

“Sh-she was just here for some research. We didn’t know, we didn’t—”

“We knew!” The shout came from the second man. He was tall, thin, balding. “But what choice did we have? The lieutenant colonel calls the shots. He made us—”

The rage in Dante was swelling ever higher. “You both hurt her.”

The second man screamed then, a high, terrified cry. He yanked something out of his lab coat pocket and lunged for Dante. The man drove a needle toward Dante’s arm. “This’ll stop you!”

Dante caught the syringe. Snapped it in half. “No,” he said, slowly, definitely, “but I will stop you.”

The man’s jaw dropped. He spun around to flee.

Guards came around the corner then. Half a dozen of them. They took one look at Dante and opened fire.

He used the two men in lab coats as his shields. They fell, bodies riddled with bullets, even as he sent his flames out toward his attackers.

Her blood . . .

He kicked in the door nearest him. Found another hallway waiting.

Water poured from the ceiling, but it didn’t stop his flames. Nothing was going to stop him.

Jon dropped Cassie into the chair in the back lab. She barely seemed to breathe, and that scared him.

He hurried toward the small cabinet on the right wall and used his private code to bypass the security system in place for the particular resource he wanted. A hum, then a beep, and the metal doors swung open. The dosages were there, just waiting for him.

He grabbed a syringe and drove the white-hot liquid right into his vein.

“What are you doing?”

He spun around to see Dr. Shaw standing in the doorway. She had never realized that he’d been one of the test subjects at Genesis for years. Her surprised gaze was on the needle he’d just shoved into his arm.

“I’m taking precautions.” He hadn’t been one of the dumb bastards who’d signed up to receive the modified vampire transformation. He hadn’t wanted to spend his days and nights drinking blood.

He’d wanted power. Strength.

He’d gone into the Lycan program.

Until something better had come along.

His back teeth clenched as the dose burned through him. It was always a burn, one that seemed to be destroying him from the inside out.

But it didn’t destroy him. It made him stronger.

“What was in that syringe?”

Ah . . . Dr. Shaw. She was one of the newer recruits. Someone that Uncle Sam had hoped would be able to match Cassie’s wonderful brain.

There was no match.

The alarms kept shrieking.

“A brew that one of your predecessors created,” Jon told her. Unfortunately, that predecessor was dead. Killed when the last main Genesis lab was torn to the ground.

Jon headed back toward Cassie.

Dr. Shaw blocked his path. The woman had been running and some of her blond hair fell from the sleek twist she usually kept at her nape. “I don’t want to die.”

“Then you need to get the hell out of here.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re going for the helicopter, aren’t you?”

Yes, he was.

“Take me with you. You know I can help you—I understand the genetics of the werewolves and their mating characteristics so I can—”

He wasn’t interested in the werewolves any longer, but the woman still might be helpful. He nodded. “But run fast, doctor. Run very damn fast.”

She nodded, eyes wide. A woman with a strong instinct for self-preservation. He liked that.

He grabbed Cassie and lifted her over his shoulder. He—

Cassie drove a scalpel into his shoulder.

He yelled at the unexpected pain and his hold slipped on her. She fell, slamming into the floor.

Cassie shoved back her hair, and he saw that she was very much awake and aware and far, far from dying.

“Dante’s here, isn’t he?” She smiled up at him. “And you’re terrified.”

Jon would have been terrified if he hadn’t been staring at his perfect weapon. He pulled that scalpel out of his shoulder and gripped it in his hand. “He’s never tried to kill you, not in all those long years when you were with him at Genesis . . . so I’m betting he won’t kill you now.”