She tried claw her way to him, but one of the hunters holding her lifted his gun and slammed it into the side of her head.
After that, she didn’t see anything else.
Screams echoed in his ears. Cain smelled ash. Burning flesh. Death.
The fire was around him. In him. Burning hotter every second. Consuming. Destroying.
There was pain. More agony than most could ever imagine. There was a price for life. A price for death.
He’d never been able to stop the pain as it burned him alive and then seemed to mold him back together. The fire—it was all he knew.
Power. Fury. Fire.
His eyes opened. The flames were around him, streaking up walls, sliding down some dark corridor.
People ran away, screaming. He liked the screams. He let the fire flare higher.
His mind was torn, fragmented, the way it so often was after the fire. He stared at those around him and thought only . . .
Burn.
Shouldn’t everyone feel the same burn that he did? Shouldn’t everyone suffer?
It only seemed fair.
He lifted his hand and let the fire leap away at his touch.
Destroy.
“They took her!” someone screamed.
He didn’t care. Cain began to head down the hallway. The fire spread in his wake.
“Dammit, stop!” A man stood before him, just beyond the reach of the fire. Fool. He must have thought he was safe. Didn’t he realize the fire could go anywhere? He’d show the man. He’d—
“Eve’s gone! We have to follow them!”
Eve. The name slid past the flames. Past the beast. Cain screamed his fury and the fire raged higher.
The one who’d said her name—a blond male with a face too pale—leaped back. Even as the fire ripped forward.
More screams.
Eve.
Someone was shooting at Cain. The bullets never made it past the flames, and the fire licked out at his attacker.
No more bullets.
Only ash.
Eve.
His fire blew a hole in the wall nearest him and he walked out into the night. Black vans and SUVs waited. More men with guns. Their bullets came at him even as one van sped away.
Eve.
The fire erupted. The men stopped shooting. They ran. As fast and as far as they could.
His gaze turned back to the van. To the one that was racing away so quickly.
“Pull it back!” It was the blond male again. Perhaps Cain should know him. But he knew only fury. “Pull it back before you hurt an innocent!”
There were no innocents in the world. There hadn’t been, not for a very long time. Only monsters and killers and men who wanted more than they should ever possess.
“Pull it back . . . or Eve will die!”
Eve. She was the one link to sanity that he still had. The only link.
He sucked in a breath. Another. Tasted the ash and the fire. But the fire began to flicker around him. The flames turned back in on themselves.
The van’s taillights were gone. He couldn’t see them anymore.
“Eve.” Her name was a rasp from his throat as he shoved the beast back inside his cage.
The woman they’d taken—that was his Eve.
His eyes squeezed shut and he fought to regain his sanity. She was Eve. He was Cain.
Not a monster.
Yes, I am.
He was both—beast and man. Killer and—
Lover? Eve’s lover.
“Come on!” the guy beside him said. A vampire. Cain knew him. Ryder. He’d . . . wanted to use Eve as bait.
He had used her as bait.
“We’ll follow them,” Ryder said, the words coming fast. “We’ll get her back and stop Wyatt and we’ll—”
Cain grabbed the guy and hurled him back toward the burning building. “You set her up.”
He turned away. The vampire could fight the flames. Cain had a battle of his own—he had to find Eve. Had to get her back.
Because if he didn’t, he wasn’t sure how long his sanity would last.
No, no, dammit, this wasn’t happening. Eve yanked at her handcuffs, twisting and jerking. The ass**les had cuffed her hands and shackled her feet, then tossed her in the back of a van.
“Let me go!” she yelled.
The guard next to her pushed her harder against the van’s floor. “Settle down. Wyatt wants you to—”
She slammed her feet into his stomach. The guy swore and grabbed at her, but she rammed her head right into his face as hard as she could. Bones crunched and she knew she’d broken his nose. Savage satisfaction filled her. She wasn’t making this easy on them. No way.
She hit him again with her head, harder, barely feeling the pain that swept over her at the blows. She had to get out of the van. If they took her to Wyatt’s other lab . . .