Playing With Fire (Phoenix Fire #3)(40)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Cassie laughed, and the light sound caught Dante off guard. Her laugh was so sweet he wanted to hear it again.

“No, he’s not going to kill us,” she said. “He’s here to help us.”

Not really, but they’d get around to the true reason for his visit later.

“And the boy?” Charles asked with a questioning glance toward Jamie.

“We need to keep him safe . . . and use our ties to find some of his family who can take care of him.”

Jamie’s chin jutted up in the air. “I told you, my family is—”

“There was a primal attack,” Cassie said quietly. “His brother didn’t survive.”

Charles’s gaze dropped to the bloody shirt that was still wrapped around her arm.

Jamie’s shoulders hunched.

“Can you . . . can you put him in one of the unoccupied rooms?” Cassie asked softly. “Give him something to eat?”

Charles nodded. “As long as he doesn’t mind the locks on the doors.”

Jamie backed up, edging toward the elevator.

“It’s okay!” Cassie quickly reassured him. “Some of the . . . patients here can’t be let out.” Her voice was soothing. “You won’t be locked in, Jamie. You’re free to go anytime you want. I was just offering you a safe place to stay while we looked for your family.”

“I told you, I have no family.” The kid was pretty vehement on that point. “Tim and I were in the foster system till he turned eighteen, then he got me out.” Jamie’s hands had fisted in front of him. “He said we weren’t ever going back.”

And now Tim was dead.

No, there would be no going back for him.

“If you decide to leave”—Cassie kept talking in that same soothing voice—“I just ask that you tell no one about us. Forget this lab. Forget me. Forget Dante.”

Damn if she wasn’t soothing Dante, too, and he hadn’t even realized he’d needed soothing.

The kid’s eyes were like saucers. “Are you making monsters down here? Like I saw on the news—that Genesis place that got blown up—”

“We’re healing the monsters,” Cassie said carefully. “Not making them.”

Did she believe that lie? It sure seemed as if she did.

But Jamie was nodding. Ah, he bought the lie, too. “I-I’ll stay, for now.”

“Good.”

Charles hurried forward. “Come with me, uh—what’s your name?”

“Jamie.”

“Come with me, Jamie.”

Dante noticed that Charles gave him a particularly wide berth as the man took the boy down the hallway.

And just like that, he was alone with Cassie again.

“I need to check on Trace.” She turned away from him.

Hold the hell up. He caught her arm and turned her right back around. “We’ve been traveling non-stop.” For more hours than he wanted to think about. “You were captured by some military ass**les, you were bitten by vampires—and the first thing you want to do is go and check on him?” Jealousy was there, clawing at him.

“I have to see if Trace’s condition is still stable.”

Screw that. “Cassie . . .”

She pulled away from him. “I have a room down at the end of the hall.” Her hand rose, and she pointed to the left. “You can go rest in there. I’ll see you in a little bit, okay?”

No, that isn’t okay.

But the woman didn’t wait for an answer. She just spun on her heel and went down the hallway that branched to the right. Did she think that he was Charles? About to jump at her every little command?

She needed to rethink that.

He began to stalk after her. He wanted to see this Trace that she talked about so often. The man that she was desperate to save.

The man that was in his way.

Dante needed Cassie to have ties only to him. In the life that he would have with her, there would be room for no others.

She needed to leave everything behind. Everyone else.

She would. It was just a matter of time.

He headed down the hallway, his steps silent. Cassie was up ahead of him. He could see her as she tapped on a control panel before one of the rooms.

The place might have been built in the fifties, but it had undergone some serious upgrades. Just who had made those improvements? Suspicion swelled in him.

Cassie entered the room.

A wolf’s howl seemed to shake the lab, echoing up that hallway.

That was no man. That was a beast.

A fully transformed werewolf.

Shit. Bellowing Cassie’s name, Dante raced down the hallway.

Jon wasn’t following a trail of breadcrumbs. His eyes narrowed on the wreckage. He was following a path of fire.

The phoenix had been there. And he’d left a dead vampire in his wake.

“I’ve never seen a vampire like him,” Shaw whispered as she stared at the man’s claws. “Did you see his teeth?” Fear whispered through her words.

Jon’s gaze left her. Slid around what remained of the lot. The motorcycle was there, tossed on its side. Cassie and Dante must have switched to a different vehicle. They wouldn’t have gone into the swamp on foot.

“What is he?” Shaw asked.

“He’s a primal,” Jon told her, the words coming quickly. “Trust me, it’s a good thing he’s dead.” But a very bad thing that he’d been out in the open. Someone needed to alert Uncle Sam to the fact that more of those freaks were out and infecting others.

That someone wouldn’t be Jon. He still needed to stay off the grid.

“Cassie’s tracking signal led us here.”

He glanced over and saw Shaw frowning down at the phone in her hand—and at the tracking screen that had appeared on that phone.

“She should be here.” Shaw seemed confused.

Jon headed toward the primal vampire. “You put the tracker in her arm?”

“Yes, I—”

“Is the signal still transmitting?”

Shaw pointed to the vampire. “It says that she’s right there.”

Dammit. “She isn’t, but the ass**le who fed on her is here.” That was why the vamp was frozen. “Got a taste of her poison, didn’t you, dumbass?” Jon muttered to the dead man.

“Wait, you’re saying he—”

“When the vamp fed on her, he ate the tracker, and Cassie is long gone.” Fucking hell.

Fury flooded through his body. He’d thought that he was close, that he would have her back by now—