by Cynthia Eden
Cain studied the scene before him. Eve was checking the guy’s wounds, swearing, getting her fingers covered in blood. They’d have to talk about that, later. “So why’d they turn on you?” Cain asked him.
The man’s gaze, heavy, pain-filled, darted to Eve.
Cain’s hands knotted into fists. “You didn’t like what they did to her.” And he remembered . . . when he’d rushed in to save Eve, this man had been there, banging on the door of her holding room. Screaming.
Help her . . . There’s a woman in there—he’s fucking burning her alive . . .
His screams had done no good.
“That your first time to see the dirty work your boss does?” Cain wanted to know. “Got a little too up-close and personal, didn’t you?”
Damon tried to lift his head. Eve pushed him right back down. “I’m trying to keep you alive. So will you stop moving? ”
“I’m not trying,” Cain told the guy with a grim smile. “But if you tell me what I want to know, maybe I’ll help put you out of your misery.”
Eve gasped and jumped up. She grabbed for the phone. Cain moved at the same time. He wrapped his arms around her and snatched the phone away. Her eyes, shocked, wide, found his.
“Cain?”
He pushed her behind him and turned to stare back down at Damon. “That pool of blood is just getting deeper.”
Damon wasn’t trying to rise any longer.
“Your own men shot you. Wyatt betrayed you. What the hell kind of loyalty do you owe him?” Cain demanded.
“Please,” Eve’s soft voice. “Wyatt has other test subjects, Damon. He’s going to hurt them, the way he tried to hurt me. We just want to save them.”
She wanted to save people. Cain wanted to kill. Why couldn’t they both get what they wanted?
We can.
“Where is he?” Eve asked the human, her voice so light and gentle. “Don’t die without helping those others. Tell us, please.”
“B-Beaumont . . .” The word seemed torn from Damon. Probably because it was. “He’s got . . . second lab . . .”
Cain waited.
“In . . . Beaumont.”
Cain had heard of the city. A small town, just inside the North Carolina border, nestled in the mountains. “Thanks for the information. Now you can die happy.” Or maybe with a semi-clean conscience.
“Cain!” Eve shoved at his back.
Sighing, he stepped out of her way. She immediately fell beside Damon. Her blood-smeared fingers reached for the man’s cheek. She leaned in close and told him, “You aren’t dying.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, it hurts like a bitch, I know, but the bullet missed your heart, and that second wound’s just a graze.”
While she was talking Cain was calling nine-one-one . . . and keeping a close watch on Eve.
“No vital organs were damaged.”
The woman sounded like a doctor. Fitting, since she’d played one back at Genesis. Cain wondered . . . how much of that role had been pretend?
“You get stitched up, get some good drugs in you, and you’ll be just fine.” Eve gave Damon a light tap on the cheek. “Sorry I had to press down so hard on your wounds, but I needed you to hurt a little bit more.”
“Pain can make people talk,” Cain murmured. The nine-one-one dispatcher answered in his ear and Cain told her to send an ambulance. “We’ve got a human down.”
Eve looked back at him with a frown.
Cain tossed the phone onto the countertop. “You make one fine bad cop.” He could admit when he was wrong.
The left side of her mouth hitched into a half-smile. “Told you that I have my moments.”
Yes, she did.
“But your bad cop . . . was better,” she admitted.
Because he hadn’t been playing.
Eve glanced back at the groaning man on the floor. “Just stay still until the ambulance gets here. You really will be okay.”
Anger tightened Damon’s face. Anger and pain.
Eve rose and went to the sink. Cain shadowed her moves—just in case Damon wanted to attack. She washed the blood away from her fingers. The water turned red as it poured down the drain.
Cain took Eve’s arm and began to lead her from the kitchen.
“You’ll . . . stop him . . .” Damon’s voice. Weak. Growling.
Cain glanced back. “I will.” A promise.
Damon nodded. “Good. He’s . . . sick . . .”
“A real monster,” Eve whispered. She cleared her throat and told Damon, “When the doctors sew you back up, get out of that hospital as soon as you can. Wyatt tried to kill you once, and when he finds out he didn’t succeed, he’ll come after you again.”
When you worked with the devil, you had to expect to feel the fire. “And if you try to warn him that we’re coming,” Cain said, voice sharp and hard when Eve’s had been soft, “I will be back for you.”
Damon’s breath heaved out. “Won’t . . . tell . . .”
He’d better not.
But just in case, Cain planned to attack the lab in Beaumont as soon as he could.
The distant wail of an ambulance’s siren reached him. Help. Coming quickly for the human.
They hurried back to their vehicle. Left the blood behind. Didn’t look back.
By the time the ambulance turned onto Branchline, Cain was already heading in the opposite direction. He watched the ambulance’s flickering lights in his rearview mirror.
“They’ll save him,” Eve said, sounding so certain. “The wound was all gore, but nothing vital had been hit.”
He glanced her way.
“Two years of med school,” she explained with a sigh. Her eyes closed as if she were tired. “I know what death looks like.”
She also knew how to be one fine actress.
She’d just bluffed her way into getting them the information they needed.
How fucking perfect.
Beaumont.
Now, to just find a safe place to leave Eve while he turned Wyatt’s new playground into ashes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“It’s not happening,” Eve said into the silence that filled the car. She knew exactly what Cain was planning, and the guy needed to think the hell again.
He shot her a fast glance from the corner of his eye.
“You’re not dumping me and going after Wyatt on your own.” Right, like she hadn’t seen that one coming from a freaking mile away. This was not her first ball game, not by a long shot. “We’re in this together, remember? I’m not about to sit on the sidelines now.” Not when things were finally coming to a head.
The road had passed in a blur of yellow and white lines and asphalt, but she’d known exactly what Cain had been thinking. She’d seen him try to slow at a few motels during their road trip.
Looking for the right spot to dump me? Not happening.
“You go with me,” Cain said, “and you die.”
Trying to scare her. He didn’t get it. She was already plenty scared, and the fear changed nothing. “I’ve been dodging death since I was four years old.” Maybe it was easier to confess because of the darkness that filled the car. “That’s when my parents died. When vampires killed my father and a fire took my mother away from me.”
“Eve . . .”
“The fire spread through my house. Burning everything but me. I remember screaming and crying, but the flames wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything but watch them . . .”
Mommy. Daddy!
She choked back the memory and tasted ash. “I hated fire after that.” Her gaze slid to him. Still do. But she’d stayed next to Cain anyway.
What did that say about her? Drawn, pulled, to the one thing she hated most.
“I’m . . . sorry.” His words seemed rusty.
“So am I.” Her whisper. “Vampires took my family away. They took everything from me, but I didn’t let that stop me.” Not during all those long years she’d spent alone. Bouncing from one foster home to the ne
xt. They’d said she couldn’t connect with the families. That she didn’t know how to bond. That had been bull, and she’d known it even as a kid.
I just didn’t want to risk loving someone and losing them again. Sometimes, it was better, safer, to just not care at all.
“You’ve helped. Done your part.” He seemed to be gritting out the words. “There’s no need for you to face more danger.”
“Trace is my friend.” For a while, the only friend she’d had. “I have to—”
“I’ll get the wolf out for you.” The car sped faster. “Don’t worry about him.”
Anger? She frowned, not expecting that. “Trace . . . he’s a good guy, Cain.” Once you looked past the snarling surface. “He helped me, I helped him.” So many times.
“You . . . care for him.”
“Yes.”
His jaw locked.
“But we’re not lovers.” She should have put that out there sooner. A vein flexed in Cain’s jaw. A lot sooner. “We never have been. Never will be.”
The fast look he fired her way was full of surprise.
“He’s my friend. That’s all.” You’re my lover. She’d gotten too close with Cain, too quickly. After only a few days, he didn’t know what she was really like. How could he? Maybe he thought she just made a habit of jumping into bed and having really hot sex.
She could straighten him out easily. “Cain, I’ve had four lovers in my life.” Eve frowned. “You’re the fourth. This thing with us”—the wild, hot sex, the need that couldn’t ever seem to be filled—“hasn’t happened to me before.” It was important that he understood that.
He pulled off the main road. Headed toward the no-tell motel nestled near the edge of the woods.
Dropping me off?
Her jaw clenched. “I can make my own way to Beaumont, you know. Leaving me here—it won’t stop me.”
He stopped the car. Turned off the lights.
“I’ll be right on your tail. I’m not going to just—”
In an instant, he had her in his arms. His mouth was a breath from hers. “I’m glad there were only four . . . though I’m damn tempted to hunt down the first three.”
Wait. What?
“I want you, Eve, the way I haven’t wanted anyone or anything ever before.”
Her lips wanted to tremble into a smile, but the harsh look in his eyes had her holding still. The gearshift pressed into her leg.
He held her tightly against his chest. “You can make me weak,” he growled in the dark interior of the vehicle.
The car seemed too small then. Maybe he was too big. Her hands were on his chest between them, but Eve wasn’t pushing him away.
She was trying to understand him. “You’re leaving me again.”
At least it wasn’t a truck stop this time. . . .
“No, I’m stopping the asshole who’s been trailing us.”
Trailing us . . . Her head whipped around just as a pair of headlights cut into the parking lot around them. Darkness had fallen as they traveled, and she hadn’t been aware of anyone on the lonely road behind them.
She realized that Cain hadn’t parked their vehicle right in front of the motel. He was on the side in the shadows with his lights off.
As soon as the other car pulled to a stop, Cain jerked away from her and rushed toward the other vehicle.
She could just see Cain’s powerful form with the aid of the moon and the dim glow of a fluorescent light from the motel. The other car’s windows were dark, tinted so that they looked black in the night.
Cain yanked open the driver’s side door, nearly ripping it right off the vehicle. Sometimes, she forgot just how strong he could be.
He reached inside and yanked out a man. Tall. Big. Wide shoulders.
In the moonlight, she saw the flash of his fangs. Ryder. The vampire sank his teeth into Cain’s throat.
Eve shoved open the car door and raced for them. “Cain!”
But Cain had already broken free of the vamp’s hold and shoved the vampire back. Ryder’s body dented the side of his car.
“Bad mistake, vampire,” Cain growled. “I was going to let you live . . .”
“Can’t live . . . without her . . .”
The pain in Ryder’s voice made Eve’s heart ache. The vamp seemed to really care about his phoenix.
Ryder rose to his full height, baring his fangs. The two men circled each other. Going in closer, closer . . .
One will die.
“Where are you heading in such a hurry?” Ryder demanded. “You talked to the human, then you swept out of town.” Blood dripped down his chin. “What did he tell you?”
Cain just smiled. “Why didn’t you ask him yourself?”
Ryder’s face tightened, but his arms stayed loose at his sides. “The other humans got there before I could make him tell me.” Ryder’s gaze cut to Eve. “But I know you found Wyatt. I know, and I can help you.”
With his enhanced strength and speed, he just might be a strong ally.
If they could trust him.
We can’t.
“I can taste the fire in your blood,” Ryder said as he swept the back of his hand over his chin. “Just like hers . . . ”
The vampire was on a dangerous edge of obsession, and Eve knew he’d turn on them in an instant, if it meant he could get to his phoenix.
“I gave you the chance to walk away,” Cain growled, voice low and cutting. The parking area was deserted. The whole place looked deserted, except for the faint glow that shone from inside the motel’s office. “You should have just kept going.”
“Tell me where she is!” The vampire leaped toward Cain.
“No.” Cain punched the vampire in the chest, a pounding blow that crunched bones.
The two men were a twist of bodies. Punching. Kicking. Brutal fighting that was silent and vicious.
Since Cain’s fire wouldn’t work on the vampire, it looked like Cain was going to kill the guy the old-fashioned way.
By tearing him apart.
“Stop!” Eve yelled.
Neither man even looked her way.
I can taste the fire in your blood.
Cain kept swinging. Eve glanced around. The railing near the motel’s office was old and sagging . . . and made of wood.
Yes. She raced toward it. Saw the sleeping form of an old man inside the office. Ignoring him for the moment, Eve shoved her hips against the railing, then she yanked hard on the loose wood. Once, twice . . .
A chunk of wood broke off in her hands.
There was another way to kill the vampire.
She ran back to the two fighting men just as Cain tossed Ryder onto the ground. The vampire landed on his ass. He began to lunge up.
“Don’t!” Eve jumped near him. The stake hovered over his chest.
Ryder froze.
Good. Looked like she had finally gotten his attention.
Cain came up behind her. She could feel his strength all around her. He wasn’t going to like this part, but there wasn’t a choice.
Eve kept one hand wrapped tightly around the stake. Maybe it was sliding into Ryder’s flesh, just a little, but she needed the guy to understand she meant business. She lifted her other hand and turned it, wrist first, toward Ryder’s mouth. “Bite me.”
Cain’s hands closed over her shoulders. “Are you insane?”
Ryder wasn’t biting her. He’d tilted his head to the side, and, sure enough, he was looking at her like she was the crazy one.
Takes one to know one . . .
“He can taste the fire in your blood. He said so. He said you tasted like the other phoenix.” She pushed her wrist toward the vamp’s mouth. Since when did a vampire turn away from a bite? “If I’m like you, he’ll know with one taste, Cain.”
She wasn’t going to let Cain kill the vampire, not when he could give her so much valuable information. Tell me what I am.
If she was like Cain, like the other phoenix, then she wasn’t alone. She wasn’t the freak in the
world.
“Bite her and you die,” Cain promised.
“Don’t bite me,” Eve snapped right back, “and I’ll shove this stake in your heart.”
“I can take it away,” Cain whispered in her ear. “By the time you can even blink, I can have that stake in my hand and in the vamp’s heart.”
He could, she knew it. But . . . “Don’t.” Her head turned just a few inches, so she could meet his stare. “I need to know this.”
She gasped at the sting of pain in her wrist. The vampire had sunk his teeth into her. The skin broke beneath his fangs, and she felt his tongue against her flesh. She jerked her hand, wanting to recoil, but forced herself to freeze.
Have to know. I want to—
“Enough.” Cain’s snarl.
Ryder lifted his head and licked the blood from his lips. His eyes seemed to glow a bit as he stared at Eve. “Lot of power . . . so much . . .”
She swallowed. She’d heard talk that some vampires could drink the power right from the blood of their prey. Power . . . life.
“But you’re no phoenix.” Ryder gave a brief negative shake of his head. “You’re something”—another swipe of his tongue over his lips—“altogether different.”
Of course she was. Her skin chilled. Eve stared down at the vamp. “You truly want to save her?”
He nodded.
“Beaumont,” she told him. “Damon said Wyatt had a lab in—”
But the vampire was already gone. His kind could move so quickly.
Kill so easily.
“Why?” Cain demanded, voice cutting like a knife.
Eve tossed the stake to the ground. “If Wyatt kills me, I want to know if I could rise again.” Like you.
But she wasn’t like him.
Wasn’t like anyone else that she knew. Even among the paranormals, she stuck out like the freak she’d always been.
He caught her hand. There were two small puncture wounds on her wrist. He cradled the flesh, lightly running his fingers over her hand. “Why’d you tell him about Beaumont?”
“Because we need all the help we can get.” Did he hear all that emphasis on we? She sure hoped so. “If the vamp wants to attack, let him.” Her head tilted as she studied Cain under the moonlight. “That’ll give us the distraction we need in order to get inside and get to Wyatt.”