by Cynthia Eden
White-hot pain ripped across his back. Eric locked his teeth and tackled Ella, sending them both hurtling to the pavement even as his men unleashed a maelstrom of gunfire on the winged SOB.
His back burned—no, not burned. Bled. He could feel his blood soaking his shirt. But Ella was all right. She hadn’t been taken. She was all right.
He lifted his head. She stared at him with a gaze full of shock. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks. “There can’t be two of you,” she said.
Eric was nothing like that winged bastard.
He looked over his shoulder. His agents were giving him cover fire. He knew they’d hit the assailant, but the guy hadn’t fallen. He was up in the air right then, no doubt getting ready for another swipe at them. Another attempt to take her.
Eric picked Ella up into his arms and ran toward the doors of the base. Wind whipped around him and he held her more tightly than he’d ever held anything before. His feet thundered over the pavement. Fast. Fast.
Fast.
They cleared the doors. Gunfire rang out.
And a roar filled the night.
Chapter Eight
“You’re hurt.”
The doors had sealed behind them, and Eric had gone completely still. Ella twisted in his arms, trying to get free because she could smell his blood. He’d been attacked, while trying to shield her.
Why would one of my own kind want to hurt me?
But the guy had. He’d been dive-bombing right toward her.
Eric didn’t let her go. He just tightened his hold on her, using that powerful strength that she usually found to be a turn-on, just not right then because she was too worried about him.
“Eric!”
He surged forward, moving quickly through the winding labyrinth that was the base. His hold never wavered on her, but the scent of his blood grew stronger, scaring her.
Then he rounded a corner and headed into another room. One glance inside and she knew it was a medical ward. She could see the exam tables. The surgical equipment. Bandages.
He carefully put her down on one of the exam tables.
“I’m not the one who got hurt!” She hopped right off that table and pushed him around so that she could see his back. “You were the one who—Eric.” He’d been hurt so much worse than she realized. Long claw marks slid over his back, cutting deeply into his skin, digging into muscle and…bone? Blood seeped from his wounds. Such terrible, terrible wounds.
How was he even standing? Much less carrying her all around the place.
She turned her head to the side, immediately offering her neck to him. “Drink.”
His hands curled around her shoulders. Did he stagger a bit? Ella thought he had.
“You don’t…” Eric rasped, “Need to give me…”
Ella shook her head. “I will give you everything that I have.” Didn’t he get that? Once, long ago, that was how she’d been raised. Always taught that she’d find a mate who was her match and that they would bond, forever. “Drink, Eric, please.” Tears stung her eyes because she hated to see him in pain.
He leaned over her. His breath blew against her neck. Then his teeth sank into her. Pleasure rolled through her—she thought it always would with him—but she tried to push it away. This was about him. Only him. He needed to drink so he’d heal.
Fear was a knot in her belly. She didn’t want anything to happen to Eric. Not when she’d just found him. Fate couldn’t be cruel enough to do this to her now.
Her hands curled around him. Carefully, though, so she wouldn’t touch his wounds. “He must have been trying to take your wings,” she said. “Even our own kind…the stories used to circulate that if you cut deep enough, you might find the wings.”
He tensed. His tongue slid over her skin, and then she felt the light touch of his lips. Kissing her. “He wasn’t going for my wings.” His voice was stronger. Good. So good. “He was going for you.” Eric eased back and stared down at her.
His color was better. He’d been nearly ashen before but now his normal golden tone had returned. Her Eric seemed to be coming back.
“Did you know him?” Eric asked her.
Ella shook her head. “He moved so fast.” She swallowed. “It doesn’t make sense. I-I thought we were the only ones left…”
Something flickered in his gaze. “Ella—”
“Eric!” At that sharp cry, they both turned. She saw Connor standing in the doorway. Shane was right behind him. “Man, we followed your blood trail in here.” Connor ran toward him. “What can I do? How can I—” He broke off and his gaze sharpened. “You sure look pretty good for a guy who bled out all around this facility.”
Eric’s lips pressed together.
“I gave him my blood,” Ella said.
Connor and Shane shared a look. She didn’t really like that look. It held too many secrets.
“Did you now…?” Shane said.
“Yes, I did.” Hadn’t she just said that? “And I’d do it again. He needed me.”
Shane clamped a hand on Eric’s shoulder. “Show us the damage.”
Slowly, Eric turned.
Her breath heaved out in a relieved sigh. The wounds had already closed so much. “He won’t get your wings,” she said.
“Right,” Connor drawled. “No one’s taking your wings, Eric. I guess you’re safe there.”
Eric turned back around and glared at him. “Tell me that guy is in containment right now.”
“I wish I could, but he got away. He was hit at least a dozen times, but there was no stopping him. If anything, the hits just seemed to make him stronger.”
Ella frowned at them. “Of course, rage always fuels our kind.”
“The fey,” Shane said, his voice completely devoid of expression.
Ella nodded. “It would have just made him stronger.”
“We need a gold net,” Eric said.
At those words, Ella stepped back from him.
His hand flew out and caught hers. “He attacked us. We have to stop him.”
She nodded, more slowly this time. “I-I know. Right. I—”
“I want you to head back to our apartment, Ella. I have to secure the base. I need the guards to be aware of just what they’re dealing with.”
She didn’t want to leave him.
He leaned toward her. With his lips near her ear, he whispered, “I swear, I won’t lock you in. I just need to know that you’re safe. Please, do this for me.”
Ella hesitated, but… “Okay.”
He squeezed her fingers. “I’ll have some guards take you there.” He let her go and hurried toward the door. He called out and two men in black rushed inside.
She hesitated a moment, worried. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?” Ella asked. She could practically feel the secrets in that room.
“No,” Eric said immediately.
She smiled for him even as she felt the blow straight to her heart. “I’d really rather you not lie to me,” Ella said as she turned away. “Because I won’t be lying to you.”
***
Eric watched her leave. Her words had made his chest ache. And, hell, wasn’t he already in enough pain? But Ella—she’d looked so sad when he’d lied to her. He’d almost called her back and apologized. Explained.
And I never do that shit.
How screwed up was that? But Ella, she was different. The way he felt with her was different.
Her footsteps faded away.
“Dude,” Connor finally said, “you are playing one dangerous game.”
“I’m not playing any kind of game.” He yanked off his shirt, ignoring the sting when the bloody garment tried to stick in his wounds.
“She thinks you’re her mate,” Connor told him. “Did you tell her that crap?”
Mate. His hands fisted around the bloody shirt. “No. I didn’t.” I just had sex with her. Crazy, mind-blowing sex. And, yeah, maybe I feel like the woman took a bit of my battered soul.
But…mated?
&nb
sp; No, he wasn’t a wolf. He didn’t have any kind of biological connection with her, no primal DNA response. Mating was for werewolves. And, apparently, fey.
“Well, she sure thinks you are.” Connor yanked a hand through his hair. “She thinks you’re just like her.”
“Fey,” Shane added.
Why did the guy keep throwing that one particular word around?
“I don’t even know what that is,” Connor said as he began to pace. “Fey—that’s fairies? Am I seriously dealing with fairies now?”
Shane shrugged. “It would explain the wings.”
Connor paced faster. “Since when do fairies get fueled by rage?”
Eric understood that he had to share what he knew. Connor and Shane were two men he trusted the most. “They’re only good in the movies. In the cartoons where they all sing and dance and grant wishes and shit.” He rolled back his shoulders, feeling the faint pull of healing muscles in his back. That prick is going to pay for what he did to me. “If you look at real folklore, you’ll see a different story.”
“In plenty of old legends I grew up with…” Shane said slowly, “The fairies were wicked. The last thing you wanted to do was get on their bad side. They never forgave and they sure never forgot.”
“Stories,” Connor fired. “Just—”
“Once people thought tales of men turning into wolves who howled in the night…those were just stories, too.” Eric pointed out. “Now I guess we know better.” He dropped his bloody shirt into a garbage bag. “Some Fey stories say that the women like to seduce mortal men. They make them into slaves…”
Did she seduce me?
Did I seduce her?
Does it fucking matter?
He cleared his throat. “Other tales say they like to kill…like to drown their victims. Like to lure prey to their deaths. They get some kind of power rush from that.” He considered the bits and pieces of myth that he knew. “The sirens from Greek mythology—they were supposed to be fairies. They lived only for destruction.” That isn’t Ella. She isn’t like that.
Connor stopped pacing. “You know more about her than you’re saying.”
“I suspected…the first time I saw her wings. There aren’t a lot of creatures with wings like that. I was guessing she wasn’t an angel…”
Connor’s eyes doubled. “Holy shit. Are you saying they’re out in the world, too?”
“I haven’t seen them.” Doesn’t mean they aren’t flying around. “But she had vampire fangs. The fangs didn’t strike me as overly angelic.” His lips twisted. “So I started to think she might be like you, Connor.”
He saw understanding fill Connor’s eyes just before his friend said, “A cross-over.”
In Connor’s case, the guy was half-vampire, half-werewolf. But for Ella…“Half-Fey, half-vampire.” A combination he wouldn’t have thought possible, not until he met her.
Connor snapped his fingers. “The freaking mad scientist.”
Now Eric was the one who felt lost. “What?”
“When you were interrogating Reece, Ella and I started talking about Frankenstein.”
Eric shot a quick glance at Shane. The vampire gave him an I-Have-No-Clue look in response.
Connor growled. “She said there was a mad scientist who tried to make monsters…kind of like the shit that the Para Unit does now. I think she said his name was Cedric.”
Eric’s spine snapped up. The healing skin pulled.
“Maybe she was made,” Connor said, speaking quickly now. “And that’s how she’s a mix of-of Fey and vampire.”
Maybe.
“It’s not like you’re the first one to play God with the monsters,” Shane said.
Eric forced his jaw to unclench. The first monster he’d made…it had been himself. And even Shane didn’t know exactly what he’d done.
“I got the impression,” Connor continued, his voice hardening, “that she wasn’t real keen on the mad scientist.”
Shane whistled. “Not everyone enjoys being experimented on.”
No. Eric squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to figure out what the hell he should do next. It would have been so much easier if he’d been able to keep his hands off Ella, but that hadn’t been a possibility. He’d wanted her too much. Still wanted her too much. But when she found out…
“Shit,” Connor said. “You’re worried she’s going to realize you’re not her mate after all.”
Eric’s eyes snapped open. “Mating is all about biology. One being’s ability to recognize a breeding partner on a strong, sexual level. A basic level. It’s not some predestined souls connecting crap—”
“I wouldn’t let your winged vampiress hear you say that,” Connor cut through Eric’s words. “Not if her temper is really as bad as we’re suspecting. Who knows what else she can do if she gets mad enough?”
And that was the problem. He didn’t know. None of them knew. You didn’t push her to learn the truth because you wanted her. Now all bets are off. The team has to understand the threat they are facing.
“What do you think she’ll do,” Shane asked, “when she realizes you aren’t just like her?”
“Better question,” Connor added before Eric could reply—and he had no idea what he would have said, anyway. “Why,” Connor said, “does she even think you are like her? I mean, I’ve seen your fangs flash lately, so I get the vampire part. But you don’t seem like some rage-fueled creature to me.”
Because he controlled his rage. He never let his beast out. Never. Eric glanced between Shane and Connor. “Steps had to be taken,” he said gruffly. “I needed to make sure I would be strong enough to handle the threats that would come my way.”
Connor’s eyelids flickered. “What did you do to yourself?”
“I didn’t always have a choice. I’ve been bitten by vampires and werewolves. I had to see what would happen with the bites, before I exposed any of my men to those threats. And after the bites, someone had to be the test subject for the drugs that the Para Unit created—someone had to make sure they didn’t cause death or insanity.” He’d been that someone. “I wasn’t going to put others at risk.”
“Are you a cross-over?” Connor finally asked him.
A cross-over. A werewolf who’d been bitten by a vampire—an alpha werewolf who’d survived that blood exchange to become something more. “No, I’m one hell of a lot worse.”
He was the monster that had been created in labs. Made not just with magic but science. And that was why he suspected Ella was so confused about him. His altered genetics were throwing her off. She thought he was something that he wasn’t.
And I deliberately let her keep thinking that way.
“She is going to be so pissed,” Connor said, seeming to follow Eric’s thoughts completely.
“We need to bring in an expert,” Eric said. He turned to Shane. “Olivia is the best at this. Can you get her ready for a sit-down with Ella?” Dr. Olivia Maddox was an expert when it came to understanding the minds of paranormal creatures. She was also the woman Shane loved. The woman that the vampire had once been willing to kill for. And I bet he’d kill for her again, in an instant.
Shane hesitated. “I’ll get her ready, but only if you promise that your Ella won’t go into some rage frenzy and attack Olivia. Because that won’t happen.”
“No, it won’t.” He’d see to it. Eric exhaled on a long sigh. “We’ll get gold collars and cuffs ready, just in case.” Even as he said those words, his stomach clenched. The last thing he wanted to do was imprison Ella.
No, actually, the last thing he wanted was to hurt her.
Too late. When the truth about me comes out, she’ll be plenty hurt.
***
She’d waited in the apartment for nearly an hour. During that whole time, Ella had paced, practically wearing a hole in the carpet.
He was like me. He was like me. The man who’d come flying toward her had been another of her kind. His black wings had stretched so far.
What wer
e the odds? After all of this time, she’d found not one, but two others who were like her.
Amazing.
Terrifying.
The door opened. She spun around and when she saw Eric standing there, Ella ran toward him. She threw her arms around him and just held on tight.
A bit slowly, hesitantly, his hands lifted and curled around her shoulders.
Immediately, her fear began to subside. “I don’t like for you to be hurt,” Ella said.
His hold tightened on her. “And I never want you hurt.”
That was nice. They were definitely making progress. Ella eased back and stared up at him. “You weren’t able to track him, were you?”
Eric shook his head. “He was too fast for us.” His hand slid toward her cheek and he brushed back a lock of her hair. “You know, he was trying to take you.”
Ella nodded. Take me, hurt you.
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“I didn’t get a chance to see his face. I just saw his wings.” Wings…like mine.
“There’s someone I want you to talk with,” Eric said quietly.
She tensed. “Not another doctor. I hate all of those tests.” Not that Holly wasn’t nice and all but…enough.
“Olivia Maddox is a different kind of doctor. One who specializes in understanding people like us.”
Ella tilted her head back to study him.
“I need insight on this guy. By talking to her, you’ll help me figure things out.”
A smile curved her lips. “I want to help you.”
“I know.” He dropped his hands and backed away from her. “Olivia is waiting for us now. We should go.”
He’d put on a new t-shirt. She couldn’t see his wounds, but when he turned away, her hand reached out and lightly touched his shoulder. “Are you better now?”
He stilled. “Yes.”
“I’m so glad.” Because she’d been terrified. Eric shouldn’t hurt like that. No one should ever try to kill him.
Or take his wings.
Eric cleared his throat. “Come on. We need to go.”
She followed him and a few moments later, they were in the elevator. She noticed that he was keeping a very careful distance between them. Alarm bells began to go off in Ella’s head, and, deliberately, she reached out, twining her fingers with his.