Ryder growled. Then his body was surrounding her. Cradling her. Covering her. If anyone saw them now . . .
I don’t care.
He adjusted his clothes. Parted her sex and pushed deep into her.
The pleasure hadn’t stopped. When he thrust into her, when he drove deep, the sensations nearly ripped her apart.
Too much.
So good.
So . . . Ryder.
Her next release contracted around him, tightening around his cock. He thrust. Withdrew. Thrust.
The rhythm was frantic. Desperate.
Then he was stiffening behind her. Holding her even tighter. Coming.
In the rain.
In the alley.
With her.
His body shuddered. His arms curled around her and hugged her. And he pressed a kiss to her neck. Not a bite. A kiss. Right over the wound that was finally healing.
In silence, he withdrew from her. Ryder straightened her clothes, his. His hands steadied her when her knees wanted to tremble.
Then he turned her around and stared into her eyes.
They were soaked through.
And she was so sated she just wanted to sink into his arms.
“When you come for me, your eyes burn.”
Sabine blinked. That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear.
“When you touched the primal who attacked you, smoke rose from your fingers. His chest . . . it burned.”
She didn’t remember that. She’d just been afraid. Desperate.
“When I kiss you, I can almost taste the fire.”
Was that good? Bad?
“You’re so much more than I ever expected.”
So was he.
He put his forehead against hers. Held her tighter. “If I could go back, I’d change it all.”
“There isn’t any going back.” She didn’t even want to look back. Why see the scars? “I just want to go forward.” She drew in a breath. “I’m ready to leave this town. Let’s forget about Keith. He doesn’t have my brother. He doesn’t have anything that I need.”
“He’ll hunt us.” Ryder shook his head. Raindrops slid off him. “I don’t want you always looking over your shoulder. I can finish this mess. If he’s the last tie connecting you to Genesis, then we sever the tie and make you free.”
Her laughter was weak. “There’s always another tie and another . . .” She just wanted to start new. To do that looking-forward bit, with him. “I want . . .”
You.
They’d never talked emotions. Just lust and need and power.
But it was more than just lust. What she felt for him was so much more.
A sudden ache stabbed at her, as if a knife had just been plunged into her stomach, and twisted. She sucked in a sharp breath and her nails sank into Ryder’s arms.
Her nails . . . her nails were turning black.
He bit me. The primal . . .
“Sabine?”
She pushed at Ryder. “It’s . . . happening.” The virus—whatever the hell it was—it was in her. She could feel it. Twisting. Cutting. She ran her tongue over her teeth. They felt normal, but her nails . . .
She held up her hands. “It’s happening,” she said again.
His face blanched. “No, no, it’s fucking not.”
Her gaze met his. She was so glad she’d taken the pleasure with him. So glad that they’d stopped in the rain.
The rain . . .
It was just a sprinkle now.
“You promised you’d help me,” Sabine reminded him. She fumbled, adjusting her clothes.
He had to help her.
But his face had locked into tortured lines. “I’m not killing you.”
The knife was stabbing her again. “It . . . hurts, Ryder.”
He shook her. “We can stop it.” He laced his fingers with hers. “Come on. Genesis made them. We can fix them. Hell, Wyatt said that you were the key—”
She wanted to tell Ryder that she felt more than lust for him.
But she couldn’t seem to speak. The stabbing was gone, but she felt as if she were burning up from the inside. Burning .
A moan slipped from her.
Ryder lifted her into his arms. “Hold on, love.” He started running then, moving so fast. “Please, hold on.”
Her vampire.
The fire built within her. Burning more. Hotter. Her hands curled around his neck. If she changed, he wouldn’t kill her. Sabine knew that.
Because she also knew, though he’d never said the words . . .
He loves me.
Which was only fair, since Sabine was sure that she loved her dark vampire.
Loved him and was very, very afraid that she might soon turn on him.
The others had no control. They killed.
Her black nails dug into his skin. Her teeth began to ache.
I don’t want to hurt him.
But when she turned fully primal, her control might not last.
It wasn’t midnight. Not even eleven o’clock yet. Ryder didn’t give a fuck. He kicked down the door at 49 Chartres, and when the humans turned toward him, he bellowed, “Adams! Keith Adams!”
Keith came running, his eyes wide. As soon as he got a good look at Ryder, and the woman lying so still in his arms, Keith stumbled to a halt. “Sabine?”
Ryder’s hold on her tightened. “One of the primals bit her. I thought . . . I thought the bite wouldn’t change her.”
“But it is.” A woman’s voice.
Keith backed up.
Ryder saw the woman walking toward him. Her hair hung in a long braid. Her eyes—green, focused—were on Sabine. “The virus is pushing through her body now.”
Clinical. “You’re the doctor Keith mentioned.”
She nodded. “My name’s Cassie, and I’m here to help you.”
He stalked toward her. “Don’t help me. Help her.”
Cassie’s stare drifted over Sabine. Worry flashed on her face. “Bring her to the next room. There’s a table in there that we can use.”
Ryder followed her, hurrying inside the small room. Keith shoved some papers off the table, and carefully, Ryder put Sabine on the table. He took her hand. Wanted to roar when he saw the dark nails.
The woman—Cassie—reached into a black bag.
Ryder swiped out with his left hand and caught her fingers. “She’s been sliced open enough.”
He saw the pulse jump in her throat. “Please, I-I’m not like Wyatt and the others at Genesis.”
But he didn’t believe her. There were secrets in her eyes. Lies.
“I just . . . I need to check her blood. Get it under a microscope.” She had a needle in her hand. “I need to see what’s happening on a deeper level.”
Sabine moaned. “Burning . . .”
Cassie frowned down at her. “How long ago was she bitten?”
“Thirty minutes.” He rubbed his fingers over her knuckles. Her nails. Shit, they were . . .
Not as dark.
His breath stilled in his lungs.
Cassie leaned over Sabine and looked into her mouth. “Her teeth aren’t changing.”
No.
He lifted her hand. He could see the pink in her nails now.
He could actually breathe again. Whatever was happening in Sabine’s body, she was fighting off the attack.
Hell, yes, she was fighting.
Cassie tried to push the needle into Sabine’s arm. Ryder grabbed the syringe. Tossed it. “She’s fine.”
He’d been frantic moments before. Ready to trade and barter and demand, but her claws were turning back into regular nails. The stark paleness of her skin had faded back to a normal hue. Her lashes opened.
She was back.
“Ryder?”
His Sabine. So strong, when she didn’t even realize it.
“Get away from us,” he snapped to the woman and Keith. He didn’t need them. He should have stayed away, for a little longer. But the panic had made him crazy.
Didn
’t matter.
She was back.
Sabine sat up. Ryder pulled her into his arms. Held her close.
“Amazing,” Cassie whispered. “Her body fought off the infection at such a rapid rate.”
“How!” The desperate cry came from Keith Adams.
Ryder lifted his head. Stared at the red-faced man.
“How’d she do it?” Keith asked, his voice lower. “How?”
“Her genetics are no doubt very different from a human’s,” Cassie said as she tilted her head and swept an assessing gaze over Sabine. “We already knew the primals were after her blood, but maybe . . . maybe it wasn’t for the reason Wyatt thought. Not because they were linked to Ryder, but because . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe they realized she was the key they needed. Their cure.”
Ryder pulled Sabine from the table. Pushed her behind him. “You’re both going to want to get the hell out of my way now.”
Cassie shook her head. “Maybe it was something in her scent, some kind of trigger that their enhanced senses picked up on. They had an instinctive response, not even knowing why . . . but perhaps it was because they were ill. She was their cure—”
Ryder didn’t give a fuck as to the whys of the situation. “I warned you,” Ryder growled. Then he shoved Keith out of his way.
Cassie yelped and hurriedly jumped back. Good. Time to get the hell out of there.
“We have your brother!” Keith yelled at him.
Ryder hesitated. His gaze swung back to meet the human’s. Keith was rising off the floor. No guards were in the room. Just Keith and the doctor.
Easy prey.
Ryder smiled. “My brother is dead. I sent him to hell a long time ago.” The first time I bit him. When I destroyed the man he’d been.
“You think so?” Keith challenged. He was back on his feet now. Looking too desperate. Desperate men were often the most dangerous. “Then why don’t you just check behind that door?” He waved to the right. To a wooden door that had been painted white. “Because Genesis found him. They found him, buried in Russia. The guy was nearly decapitated and had a stake shoved in his chest. Only he wasn’t bones in that grave. Wasn’t a rotted corpse. When they took that stake out, when those Genesis fools there gave him blood, he came back.”
Impossible.
“Ryder?” Sabine’s shocked voice.
“They wouldn’t have even known where to look for him,” Ryder said. He wouldn’t fall for this BS.
“They had dozens of vampires imprisoned in their facilities. Vampires that they tortured for weeks. Years. With enough pain, don’t you think those vampires would have shared the information they had? Told anything? Everything?” Keith’s voice rushed out. “One of them . . . some guy named Lawrence . . . he knew.”
Lawrence. The name was familiar. Ryder had a flash of a vampire. Thin, small. With shaking hands. Hands that had helped to kill Malcolm so long ago.
“You didn’t finish the job on your brother,” Keith told him. “Or hell, maybe he’s too powerful to ever die, just like you. Too powerful . . .” Keith lifted his chin and straightened his shoulders. “At Genesis, they injected him, gave him their fucking tainted blood, and he became just like the others. Primal.”
Ryder shook his head. Impossible. He wasn’t gonna believe this story. “If my brother were alive, he—”
“You were the first!” Now it was Cassie who spoke. “But when you gave your blood to others, you started diluting its power. Every exchange, every vampire created after that was weaker.”
And that was why Wyatt had tried to give Ryder’s blood to the primals in his lab? Because the doctor had thought the pure blood could heal them?
It’s not blood that . . . was the cure. It’s Sabine. Her tears. A phoenix’s tears . . . found out . . . really heal . . . Some of Wyatt’s last words seemed to echo in Ryder’s mind.
His gaze darted to the door. If his brother was in there . . .
“Go look,” Keith yelled. “Look!”
He could hear sounds behind the door. Desperate breathing. Scratching. As if someone were clawing against wood.
“How would you have him?” Sabine demanded. She was at Ryder’s side now. Not looking so weak. Looking strong and beautiful. “If this story is even true, how would he be here, with you?”
“I was smuggling subjects out of Genesis,” Cassie confessed quietly. “Trying to help. I was going to get you out, too, but Genesis burned before I could help you.”
She sounded so sincere. But no one had been there to help him. Or to save Sabine. “Lies,” he rasped.
“Well, there’s one way to know for sure,” Sabine said and she stalked toward the white door.
But before she could rip open the door, Ryder jumped in front of her. If his brother was in that room, no way would he let her go in first. He grabbed her hand, curling his fingers around hers, around the doorknob. His gaze met Sabine’s, and he knew she’d see his fury. “My brother was a butcher.” His head tilted toward Cassie. “Do you even have any idea what he did before I put him in the ground?” My brother . . . alive?
“He isn’t the same man now,” she whispered, looking tearful. “I started . . . I figured out the cure, using teardrops that were recovered from Subject Twenty-Nine—I mean, from Sabine. I used those drops to begin treatment to eliminate the primal virus from his system. Your brother has changed. He’s—”
“Open the door,” Sabine whispered, her soft words cutting right across the doctor’s words.
But Ryder pushed her back. He made sure his body was shielding hers, and only then did he open the door. With a squeak, the knob turned beneath his hand and the wooden door opened.
The inner room was big, much bigger than the other room. Inside, there were lab tables. Test tubes. Cages.
Been there. Fucking done that.
In one of those cages, he saw the hunched form of a man. The man’s body was in the shadows. Ryder began walking toward him. There . . . that was where the scratching sound was coming from. He could see the man’s long, dark claws scratching at the floor near his feet.
“I know what he was like before, but he’s different.” Cassie followed close behind Ryder. “Since I started his treatment, there’s been no aggression. I think the original vampirism virus created a serotonin deficiency in him that—”
Malcolm wasn’t in the cage. As he watched, the man in the cage surged toward the bars and gave Ryder a clear view of his face.
“Vaughn?” Sabine whispered. “He’s . . . dead.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” another voice said.
A voice that came from the right. The man standing there had made no sound at all, hadn’t even breathed, so Ryder hadn’t picked up on his presence as he stood cloaked in the shadows.
But that voice had haunted Ryder for so long. He turned his head even as his hand reached out and curled around Sabine’s arm.
And his eyes met a gaze the exact shade as his own. A gaze that had last looked upon him with fury and hatred.
“Hello, my brother,” Malcolm said quietly. “It’s been a long time.”
Screams and blood and agony. Women and children slaughtered. Cries that wouldn’t end. So many broken bodies. “Not long enough,” Ryder responded as battle-ready tension pumped through him. He’d defeated Malcolm once, and he’d do it again.
“You see?” Cassie was there again. Rushing in front of Malcolm. Gesturing excitedly with her hands. “He’s cured! His fangs have returned to normal. His claws—normal. He has his control back. There haven’t been any attacks from him, any—”
“Did you hear that?” Malcolm asked with a smile. One that showed his sharp canines. “I’m normal.”
Easy words. Flat. But . . .
“Sabine, go back into the other room,” Ryder ordered.
Cassie blinked. Some of the excitement left her face. “But we need Sabine’s assistance. It’s her tears, they’re the key. A phoenix’s tears can heal anything, anyone.”
; So he’d heard.
Cassie glanced toward Sabine. “The tears have to be shed willingly. They can’t just be harvested from the tear ducts. That’s why it’s so hard to get them.”
Wasn’t that just a damn inconvenience for her?
Cassie shifted nervously. “If we can just get a few more then we can help so many others.”
“I-I haven’t cried since Ryder changed me,” Sabine said, shaking her head.
“Changed you?” Now Keith had come into the room.
“Ryder’s blood . . .” Sabine swallowed. Ryder saw her gaze dart to Vaughn. The primal was yanking at the bars of his cage. Snapping his teeth. “I’m a vampire now, not a phoenix. I can’t help Vaughn.”
Cassie’s eyes widened, and then she glanced over at Vaughn. “B-but we need . . .”
“You will help my son,” Keith demanded as his hands fisted. “He’s not dying!”
The snarling, fighting beast in that cage screamed. An inhuman cry.
Then Keith charged for Sabine. Ryder yanked her back and stepped forward. So instead of attacking Sabine, Keith shoved the stake in his hands into Ryder’s chest. Or rather, the fucking fool tried to drive it into Ryder’s heart.
Ryder stopped him. He caught the wood. All but disintegrated it in his fist. “Never come at her!” he roared.
Then he heard the laughter.
Ryder stared into the human’s eyes. They looked a little . . . lost. Unfocused.
And that mocking laughter had haunted so many of his dreams.
“You always were too impetuous . . .” Malcolm’s voice. Ryder turned slowly and found Malcolm holding Sabine in his arms. His brother bent to smell her hair. “You just could never see the real threat that was right in front of your face. The threat that’s been there, all along.”
His brother.
Ryder grabbed the human’s head. Turned it to the side. Saw the faint bite marks on Keith’s neck.
Son of a bitch. Malcolm had just forced Keith to attack, in order to distract Ryder.
“They’re just puppets, aren’t they?” Malcolm murmured. “Puppets and food.”
Ryder pushed Keith away. He faced off against his brother. Cassie was still there, her frightened gaze flying back and forth between Malcolm and Sabine.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Cassie asked Malcolm. “Let her go!” The woman was scared, but she didn’t appear to be under Malcolm’s control.