Once Bitten, Twice Burned

When they moved away, he saw her again. Her chest was struggling to rise. Her eyes were still open.

“Don’t . . . do this,” he growled as he strained to break free.

Wyatt walked around her, staring down at Sabine as she sprawled on the floor. “Why do you even care? Shouldn’t she just be food to you?”

Ryder didn’t speak. He wouldn’t tell this bastard anything about himself.

“I think one of the bullets must have ripped into your heart”—Wyatt didn’t sound particularly concerned—“you’re bleeding far too much. Hmmm . . . I should have considered . . . will that wound to the heart kill you?”

No. It wouldn’t. He was healing already.

“I didn’t intend for them to shoot you in the heart.” Wyatt frowned at the guards. “Errors like that cannot be tolerated here.”

The guy was psychotic.

A bullet to the heart wasn’t normally an error. It was murder.

“You’re just . . . gonna watch . . . her die?” Ryder yanked at the chains and didn’t care when they cut into his wrists. He’d heal. He always healed.

She won’t.

“Yes.” Wyatt nodded and offered an almost-absent smile. “Yes, yes, I am.”

Her eyes were on Ryder—her eyes . . .

He saw the life leave them. Actually saw a veil of nothing sweep into her stare. “No!” He yanked at the chains, twisting his hands, breaking his wrists as he fought to get free. He smashed his fingers as he tried to jerk his hand through the ring that bound his wrist. He didn’t feel the pain as he struggled.

Dead.

“Exit,” Wyatt snapped, “now.”

The guards started hauling ass. They were leaving her like that? Just sprawled on the floor like a broken doll?

Maybe there was still time. His right wrist shattered. Maybe.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t move,” Wyatt advised Ryder with a quick frown as he paused by the door. “This is her first change. I have no idea how powerful it will be.”

Ryder didn’t understand the bastard. He was moving, all right. Won’t give up. Won’t—

The door slammed shut behind Wyatt and his men. And . . . the scent of smoke teased Ryder’s nose.

What the hell?

His gaze snapped back to Sabine. Her eyes were still open, only her eyes weren’t dark brown any longer. The brown was changing, turning to a gold, then seeming to burn red.

Red like fire.

The scent of smoke deepened around him. Ryder pulled his broken right hand free. Now the other—

Her body began to burn.

He yelled then, roaring her name, but the fire didn’t stop. It blazed hotter, higher, and swept over Sabine’s slender form. The white-hot heat from the blaze rushed over his skin, almost singeing him. Sprinklers erupted with a powerful spray from overhead, and the water drenched him but did nothing to stop the blaze that consumed Sabine.

His breath rasped out. Ryder stopped fighting for his freedom. There was nothing to be done now. No one could come back from those flames.

So there was nothing for him to do in the end but watch the fire burn, to hate himself for the monster that he was, and to wish that Sabine Acadia had never had the misfortune to walk into his prison.

But then something began to move within those flames. She moved, and Ryder realized that Wyatt’s experiments were just getting started.

Because even though she’d just died right in front of him, even though Sabine was burning, it sure looked like she was trying to rise from the fire.

CHAPTER TWO

The flames were all she knew. Burning so hot, but not hurting her. She saw fire—red and gold, so bright. She tasted ash.

The flames grew higher.

Pain and rage and fear and hate began to churn within her. Something had happened to her. Something bad. She knew it, but she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened.

She couldn’t . . . remember much of anything.

Just the fire.

But then the flames began to die away. Slowly, the fury of the fire became just a flicker, then faded to mere wisps of smoke around her bare feet.

She stood in some kind of room. With heavy, perhaps stone walls. She instinctively knew the walls were made of stone—but she didn’t know where she was.

Fear made her heart beat faster. Her gaze searched the small room, flying from the left to the right and she saw . . . him.

Against the back wall, stood a bloody man, blisters on his skin, his eyes—a wild green, bright and fierce—locked on her. There was disbelief in his eyes, shock carved into the hard, chiseled planes of his face.