Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3)(55)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Eve glanced up. “Do you think,” she began quietly, “that we’ll ever cure him?”

“Yes.” It was what Cassie had to believe.

And she knew what she had to do.

Dante had said that his tears hadn’t healed her in New Orleans. If the tears of a phoenix weren’t what she needed, then maybe . . . just maybe . . . she already had the cure.

Inside of her.

“During your research on Genesis, did you come across any information on a Lieutenant Colonel Jon Abrams?” Cassie asked her curiously.

Eve gave a slow nod. She might have attended med school, but she’d dropped out of the program to pursue her true passion—journalism. Cassie had leaked information about Genesis to her, and then Eve had gone undercover at the facility in order to see firsthand just what was happening.

It was because of Eve that Genesis had been destroyed.

“He was one of the recruits in the shifter program,” Eve said slowly. “A success, from all accounts. Enhanced hearing, vision—”

“Strength and speed,” Cassie finished. “And he got the bonus of having ready-made weapons in the form of his claws.”

“Why are we talking about him?” Eve wanted to know.

Cassie walked toward her instrument tray. “Because Genesis isn’t fully dead. Uncle Sam is still conducting experiments, and Jon Abrams was the man handpicked to carry on the work started in my father’s labs.” Her fingers curled around a scalpel. The sharp blade gleamed. “Jon tracked me when I went to Chicago. He caught me, locked me in an exam room, and then he started . . . taking samples from me.”

Eve’s chair squeaked as she rose. “What kind of samples?”

Cassie’s hold tightened on the scalpel. “The same kind that you’re going to help me take now.” She couldn’t do it on her own. And Charles was gone. She’d seen him slip away earlier. He hadn’t stopped to tell her good-bye.

She didn’t blame him.

But it still hurt.

“Why did he want samples from you?” Eve asked as she crept closer.

Cassie gave her a sad smile. “You knew my brother.”

Eve stilled.

“You had to notice the resemblance,” Cassie said. “I’ve been told that we have the same eyes.”

“You do.” Quiet. Careful. “But other than your eyes, you are nothing like Richard Wyatt.” There was anger there, rage.

Hate.

Most people hated Richard. He’d been as determined to carry through on his twisted experiments as her father had been.

But Cassie didn’t hate him. She still remembered a boy who had rushed to her bedside just before her father put her under yet again.

Daddy. Daddy, no! Don’t hurt Cass anymore. Use me. Use me, Daddy!

And their father had. He’d started to use them both in his experiments.

Her brother had tried to save her.

Until he’d become twisted, too. From the experiments? She thought so.

“I don’t like to remember him the way he was at Genesis,” Cassie whispered. “I like to remember the boy he was—when we were both too young to see the monsters.”

She looked up and read the pity in Eve’s stare. Cassie handed the other woman the scalpel. “My father experimented on me and Richard. He made us different.”

“Is your blood poison, too?”

Eve had always been resourceful. Cassie wasn’t surprised that the reporter knew Richard’s secret.

“To vampires, yes, but I think there’s more that is . . . different with me.” Cassie stumbled over the words. She had almost said . . . I think there’s more that’s wrong with me. “In New Orleans, I-I think I died when I was attacked by a vampire.”

Eve sucked in a sharp breath. “And your Dante saved you?”

Cassie’s laugh held a touch of bitterness. “No, I thought . . . He said I healed myself.”

Eve blinked.

“So let’s find out how I did it, okay? We’re going to take samples and we’re going to see just what my father may have done to me.”

“Uh, fair warning. I never finished med school. That was just a cover, you know that, right?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll guide you through it.”

Eve’s breath rushed out on a relieved sigh. “So I’m just taking your blood. Nothing major—”

“No, it will be quite major, but we have to get it done.” The secrets that Cassie needed, the cures, could be within her own body. “Just lock the doors. Dante is secure, but I don’t want to take any chances on being interrupted.”

“Cassie . . .”

“People need our help. Vaughn, Trace. Let’s see just what my father did. Maybe we can use it.” Use me. “And some of the nightmares can end.”

Eve gave a grim nod, and they went to work.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Cain said.

Dante very much doubted that. “Have you killed others of our kind?”

“Have you?” Cain tossed right back.

“Yes.”

Cain’s hands clenched into fists. “You’re the one they kept in the other lab at Genesis, aren’t you? The one they called the Immortal.”

Dante nodded.

Cain’s gaze raked over him. “Were you the first?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know, either. You don’t know where the hell we came from.”

Hell was a pretty apt description. “Our home was on an old volcano. One that was dormant by the time I lived there, but . . . according to the stories, our village was born of that ash. Born from the fire and brimstone and hell that exploded onto earth.” Dante had first heard those stories when he’d been a child, running around the countryside with Wren at his back. Wren. “From that fire, the phoenix came to be.”

Cain just stared at him.

“There were so many of us in the village,” Dante said, shaking his head as he remembered what it had been like before.

“Until you turned on each other.”

“Kill or be killed,” Dante murmured. In his mind, he saw the rain of ash that had hit during the deadly battle. A battle started by one woman’s whispered word.

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Are you sure?” Dante pushed him. “Even now, don’t you want to go for my throat? Your mate is in this lab. I know exactly what she is. I know her weaknesses, I know—”

“And I know exactly what your mate is,” Cain snapped out, temper biting in the words. “I know Cassie’s weaknesses, but I’ve never hurt her. I won’t hurt her. We may have a battle between us, but I don’t pull in the innocent.”