Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3)(15)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Since Trace was incapable of using said homes at the moment, she wasn’t sure that “letting” was involved so much. “We’re both exhausted. We’ll crash for a few hours, then hit the road again, and we should make it to Mississippi—”

“Is he waiting in Mississippi?” Dante stalked toward her, his head cocked. “The man who owns this cabin . . . is he waiting down there for you?”

She nodded.

“And he just let you walk away from him?” The back of his hand skated down her cheek.

She absolutely refused to tremble at his touch. She refused. She—

Trembled. Dammit.

“It wasn’t a matter of me walking way. I told Trace that I’d be back.”

“He’s your lover.”

“No.” Cassie shook her head. “He’s just someone who needs me.” Actually, maybe it was time to lay her cards out for him. “He’s the reason I came after you.” Her breath whispered out as she pulled away from his touch. “Do you have any memory of your life before that alley? I mean, have the images started to come to you at all?”

His guarded expression told her that he did have some memories. It also told her he didn’t trust her enough to tell her what he knew.

Fine. She’d tell him. “It was called Genesis.” It had been her father’s brainchild. “The media billed it as being a research facility. Everyone was told that all of the paranormals there had volunteered to be brought in. Our government was supposed to be developing a faster, stronger soldier at Genesis.” Her hands fisted. “It was the next wave of mankind’s development. Our evolution.”

He just watched her with that dark gaze that could unnerve her too easily.

Just watched . . .

“Some of the paranormals did volunteer, but they didn’t realize they were giving up their lives. The rest of them were taken. Abducted and forced into the program. Then the experiments started.” She swallowed, remembering the screams that had haunted her for so long. “Most folks these days think that Genesis was a fairly new program. One that started a few years ago once the paranormals merged with society and stopped staying in the shadows.”

“They think wrong.”

Was he speaking from his own memories? He’d been in Genesis for far longer than a few years.

Before his first escape, anyway.

“My father started Genesis over thirty years ago. That was when he started to play God with the subjects in his labs.” When she’d been seven, he’d started to play God with her.

“Where is your father now?” Anger. No, rage.

She could see it in the golden flames that had sparked to life in his eyes.

“In the ground.” True. “He was killed a few months ago. Staked, then he lost his head.” Maybe she should be sad, but she wasn’t. “He experimented on himself. Hell, he experimented on everyone.” Don’t, Daddy. Please. “He was a vampire, but now he’s just—dead.”

There would be no coming back for him.

“Trace . . . Trace Frost was infected.” Because of her father. Because of her brother—though Richard was dead now, too. A whole family of Frankensteins, that was all they were. “Trace was given a drug that brought out his more . . . primal instincts.”

“What is he?”

What . . . ah, so Dante did understand. “Trace is a wolf shifter. He used to have control of the beast, but thanks to Lycan-70, the beast has control of him now.” If she couldn’t reverse the effects of that drug, the man that Trace had been would never come back.

“You . . . care for him.”

“I care for anyone who is tortured like that. From all accounts, Trace Frost was a good man before he was given the dosage. I want him to be that man again.” Cassie squared her shoulders. “And I want you to help me.”

A line of stubble coated Dante’s jaw. He looked big and dark and dangerous. Normal for him.

She crept closer to him. “You’re with me now. Stay with me. When we get to Mississippi, come with me to my lab—”

She had just said the wrong thing.

He grabbed her hand and yanked her right up against him. “I remember being in a lab.” Snarled at her.

She didn’t flinch.

“They cut me open. They shot me. They drugged me. They even drowned me a few times.”

He had far more memories than she’d realized.

“I won’t ever f**king go back in a lab again.”

Her gaze held his. “Trace isn’t the only one that is suffering down there. There are vampires. And there’s an infection that’s spreading faster than anything I’ve ever seen. The humans who get bit . . . can’t think or reason any longer. All they do is hunger and kill—”

“Then they need to be put down.”

“They have families. Lives. If I can cure them, they can go back to the way they were before.”

Dante’s eyes narrowed at that. “You think you can cure a vampire? Turn him human again? That’s not possible.”

“A man who dies and burns and rises from the ashes shouldn’t be possible, either.” She swiped her tongue over too dry lips and noticed that his gaze followed that small movement. Her heart slammed into her ribs. “Your tears can cure anything or anyone. If I can just get a sample from you . . .”

He pushed her away. “Is that what you want? For me to cry for you?” His face had twisted into lines that looked cruel. “They tried for years to get me to break. I never did.” He spun away from her. Headed for the stairs.

“You did.” The words slipped out. She shouldn’t have said them. Big, big mistake.

But they were the truth.

He froze with his hand on the wooden bannister. “What?”

She knotted her fingers into fists. “You did break. The phoenix shed a tear.”

He glanced back at her.

“If you hadn’t cried, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Find another f**king phoenix!”

It wasn’t like they were easy to find. “As far as I know, there are only three phoenixes in the United States.”

He whirled toward her.

Right. Ahem . . . phoenixes had a tendency to kill each other. She probably shouldn’t have mentioned that the others were actually in the U.S.

A phoenix was truly vulnerable only in that one moment of rising. When a phoenix’s body regenerated and he rose from the flames, it was during that instant of time when he could truly die. A forever death—one from which he would never rise again.