He stiffened and tried to shove her away. “No, he bit me, I—”
Cassie didn’t let him go. “You’re the same. No fangs. No claws.”
He shuddered against her. She eased back just a bit and hurriedly got the straps off him so he could sit up. Jamie stared down at his hands with stunned eyes, and then he reached up to touch his teeth. “How . . .”
“You did it,” she told him, unable to stop smiling. “Your blood—mixed with mine—you made the cure.”
He shook his head.
“We can stop the spread of the virus.” And, maybe, with a little more work, she might even be able to revert those who were already primals.
“Th-that smoke is getting thicker. It’s coming under the doors!”
Cassie’s head jerked up at Charles’s shout. He was right. Smoke was coming under the doors.
Where don’t you want to be when a brutal fire is coming toward you? Trapped underground, with no windows.
There was only one way out of her lab room—through that barred door.
She could hear the crackle of flames coming closer and closer.
Charles turned to her. “What are we going to do?”
Sweat trickled over her skin. It was getting so hot in that room. Too hot. The smoke was making Jamie cough. “We have to get out. The tunnel . . . It’s the only way.” They couldn’t go back up in that elevator. Fire waited in the elevator, above the elevator—and Jon had to be up there some place, too.
I can’t face him now.
She already had one phoenix to deal with.
“We have to get out.” Cassie was coughing, but she rushed toward the door. She reached for the bar—and it scorched her fingers. The heat near the door was blistering. Gasping, she jumped back.
Her gaze flew around the lab. She’d have to find something to use for prying up that bar. If she used her hands, she’d get second or third degree burns. Her gaze locked on the closet and the trusty mop she’d used before. She rushed for the closet.
The doors flew in behind her, bringing in more smoke and flames. Cassie slipped, hitting the floor. She rolled over and looked up—and stared into the burning stare of a phoenix shifter.
“We are so dead,” came the frightened rasp from Charles.
Cassie shook her head. No way. They weren’t dead yet. And she didn’t plan on any of them dying soon.
She rose on knees that wanted to shake, but forced herself to hold steady. “Dante.” If he remembered her, then this part would be a piece of cake. He’d kill his flames, and they’d all get out of there, no problem.
Easy.
His burning stare locked on her—with no recognition whatsoever.
It wasn’t going to be a piece of cake.
“Dante!” She said his name, louder, harder. “Stop the flames!”
He didn’t stop them. So much for that siren power.
“You’re going to kill us!”
No response. Despite the blistering heat, her skin was chilled.
Cassie crept toward Charles and Jamie. Charles had gotten the boy off the table and was trying to shield Jamie with his body. Cassie lightly touched Charles on the shoulder.
The flames seemed to surge higher.
He doesn’t remember me.
Which meant she had to be very, very careful.
“I’m going to distract him,” Cassie whispered to Charles. “When I do, you and Jamie run like hell to the tunnel. Don’t stop until you have fresh air in your lungs. And then . . . suck in that air and keep running.”
Charles grabbed her hand. “Are you crazy?”
The flames definitely surged higher again. Dante’s fire-filled stare centered solely on Cassie.
“Quite possibly,” she confessed. “Get out of here, head to Vaughn’s father in New Orleans. We’ll meet you there at midnight.” The same thing she’d told to Eve. “Tell him . . . tell him that I think Jamie is the cure.”
Charles’s fingers clenched around hers. “And tell me that you’ll be right behind us.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” she whispered.
His eyes were sad. “Cassie, you always were such a terrible liar.”
She stepped in front of Charles and Jamie. “Dante!”
No flicker of recognition.
But he’d told her that a siren could soothe a phoenix’s beast. She was supposed to be a siren, so she could do this, right?
She moved toward Dante. Fire was eating at the walls of her lab, and the smoke was going to choke her if she wasn’t careful. But she had to get Dante away from the exit.
Then she could focus on living and breathing.
“Dante, come to me.” She raised her hand. Tried to tamper down her fear and just project—hell—she wasn’t even sure what she was projecting. But she was scared and most definitely stressed, and he’d told her that he thought her power came out at times like that.
He was advancing toward her.
Charles and Jamie began to edge to the side. Yes, yes. Keep going.
“Your fire will burn me,” Cassie said, locking her gaze on Dante. “Do you want that? Do you want to hurt me?”
An expression of confusion crossed his face.
“Do you know me at all?” She eased a bit to the right.
He followed her.
Cassie took another two cautious steps to the right, then back.
Again, he followed . . . and opened up the escape path for Charles and Jamie.
They ran for the doors.
Dante never looked their way.
“Please remember me,” Cassie said as she stood there, trapped by the fire and by him. “Dante, tell me that you know I’m—”
“Mine,” he growled as he reached for her.
She tensed up, expecting to feel the scorch of the fire, but she just felt his warm, strong fingers curl around her shoulders.
She stared into his eyes. The beast he carried was right there, glaring back at her. She wanted to see the man he was—the man that his rising had made him forget.
She’d never asked him what it was like each time he died. She’d heard the whispers at Genesis. The stories that said a phoenix actually went to hell, that it was the hellfire itself that brought him back.
The fire had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?
Just what did Dante see when he died?
“Mine,” he said again, as if claiming her. His hold tightened.
When they’d talked before . . . when she’d told him that she wished there was a way for him to always remember her, he’d said that a siren could lure and control with her voice—and her kiss.