Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3)(5)
Author: Cynthia Eden

“I’m someone you don’t want to piss off,” Dante said. A fair warning.

“That’s him,” another masked man said, his voice breaking with excitement. “The one from the video feed. He’s the one who torched that den of vampires in the alley!”

Dante stiffened.

“Holy hell,” said the fool who still had his gun pointed at Dante. “It looks like we’ve got big game today.”

“No,” Dante said very definitely. “You don’t.” He let his gaze sweep the club. Men and women were cowering under the upturned tables . . . but Paras were supposed to be stronger than that.

No one makes me cower. The knowledge was there, pushing inside him. He feared no one and nothing.

I make others fear.

“Get out of here now,” Dante told the men. “While you still have a chance at life.” He counted a dozen men in the black clothing, complete with heavy, thick vests that covered their chests. They were all armed to the teeth. He didn’t care about their weapons. He’d learned that he had a weapon of his own. One that always seemed to be at the ready.

He lifted his hands.

And he let the fire burn through him. The power started as a warm pool within him, then it heated, going molten, and seeming to spread through his veins. Soon the fire was bursting from his fingertips, rising right over his hands, swirling in a thick ball. Red, gold, and orange, those flames flared higher and brighter.

The men swore and jumped back. But they didn’t flee. Fools. They lifted their weapons. Aimed at him.

He would incinerate them.

He would—

“No!”

It was her scream. His head whipped to the right, and Dante saw the woman with the thick, dark hair running toward him. Her face was paler than it had been before. Her green eyes seemed huge, her red lips were trembling and—

“Dante, get out of here! They’ll drug you!”

The men fired their weapons. Except they didn’t aim at him.

A bullet blasted and slammed into Cassie’s shoulder. Her eyes widened as she stumbled back. But she didn’t go down. “Run!” she yelled at him. “Get out of here!”

He wasn’t running anywhere.

They’d shot her.

The fire raged hotter and fury had him snarling—and letting that fire go.

They’d shot her.

The flames flew from him and the fire raced right for the gunmen. They screamed—yes, now it’s your turn to scream—and dropped their weapons.

Falling to the floor, the men rolled over and over as they tried to put out the flames that licked greedily along their clothing.

“Dante . . .” A whisper. Her whisper.

The woman who’d haunted him. Obsessed him.

Enraged him.

She was on her knees, struggling to get to him, and he . . . found himself running to her side.

“I-it’s a drug,” she whispered. “They were . . . trying to take us in . . . alive . . .”

The men weren’t taking anyone in. They were running out, dragging their wounded with them. The other paranormals were rushing for safety, too.

“Go,” Cassie told him. “Before they’re back with . . . reinforcements.” Her eyelids were sagging closed. The drug she’d spoken of was knocking her out. “Go,” she whispered again.

What was he to do with her? Leave her there? She’d just said the men would come back with reinforcements. When they returned, they’d take her.

No. No one takes her from me.

The thought made him tense. It was—though he did not know why—the first thought he’d had when he’d looked up and seen her coming toward him in Taboo.

No one takes her from me.

He scooped her into his arms. Rose with her held tightly against his chest. He worried—too late—that the heat from his hands might burn her.

But there were no burn marks on her delicate skin.

Her head fell back against his shoulder, but her eyelashes were still flickering, and Dante knew that she was fighting to stay awake.

“What will they do if they take you?” he asked her.

“C-cage . . .”

An image flashed in his mind. Thick, metal bars. A flickering fluorescent light. A dirty, stone floor.

He could taste ash rising on his tongue. He didn’t want to taste the ash. He wanted to taste her again. Sweet, light . . .

Temptation.

“You’re not going in a cage,” he promised.

His arms tightened around her. This woman . . . he’d thought she was a phantom from his mind, someone else to torment him. Not real. Then he’d looked up and seen her. She’d come to him.

Flesh and blood.

Real.

He strode from the wreckage of Taboo, hurrying into the night. Sirens wailed. Voices cried out.

He ran faster. Held her even tighter.

Cassie Armstrong was the key to his life. The key to finding out just who—what—he was.

And he had no plans to let her go.

No one takes her from me.

Lieutenant Colonel Jon Abrams marched into the wreckage of the paranormal club. Tables were overturned. Chairs smashed. The doorway still smoldered from the flames that had been unleashed on his men.

“You had him here?” Jon demanded, turning to the men who stood behind him. Burned, beaten, those men were so useless to him. “You had him, and you let the bastard just walk away?” What part of priority containment had they missed?

“He shot fire at us!” Kevin Lysand said, straightening his shoulders. “No one said the Paras could—”

“He’s a phoenix. What did you think he was going to do, just stand there and let you drug him?” Jon spun away from the men, the fury nearly choking him. After all those months. To be so close . . . and have those idiots let his prey escape.

“I . . . it was the woman.” Kevin’s voice was softer.

Jon glanced over his shoulder. “What woman?”

Kevin’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Th-the one from Genesis. Cassandra—”

Jon lunged and grabbed the guy’s shoulders. He lifted him up, forcing Kevin to look him straight in the eyes. “Are you telling me that Cassandra Armstrong was actually here, in Taboo?” He’d been ripping the country apart looking for her.

A grim nod. “That’s when the big guy attacked. When we shot at her.”

They’d shot at her, but she wasn’t there. Hell, no one was there anymore. Those who hadn’t ran out before the infiltration had crawled out when his men had retreated.

“He went wild when we shot at her,” Kevin told him with a quick nod.