“Yes.”
“Then I kill them.” He made it sound so simple. Absolute.
She frantically shook her head. Nothing was simple. “No.” There had been too much killing. The men with Jon, did they even understand what was happening? “They’re just following orders!”
“Then they need to think for themselves.”
Vaughn sank his fingers into the ground, trying to crawl toward her.
Dante sent a line of flame at him, blocking his path. “You don’t come near her.”
That fire lit Vaughn’s face and she saw—Cassie’s breath choked out. He didn’t have a mouthful of fangs. Not anymore. His canines were still too sharp, but his other teeth actually looked . . . normal.
“Burning . . . inside . . .” Vaughn muttered. He shook his head and lifted his hands to wrap around his stomach. “Hurts so much.”
His knife-like, black claws were gone. His fingers were normal again.
“It’s working,” Cassie said, the words heavy with excitement. The cure could revert the primal vampires. It. Was. Working.
“Fire!” The shout came from behind them.
“Let me kill them.” Dante’s breath blew lightly over her ear.
Cassie shook her head once more. There was another way. They could—
“There! Get her!”
She whirled and saw Jon breaking through the line of trees. His face was twisted, not with fear or pain but with what looked like heavy burns.
“Kill him!” Jon ordered his men.
Kill him . . .
The men all began to lift their weapons without a moment’s hesitation.
They need to think for themselves.
Only they weren’t. They were getting ready to fire.
And she was standing between Dante and those bullets. Horror flashed across Jon’s face. “No! Not her, don’t hit—”
The bullets were already exploding from their guns. Cassie braced herself. Whatever magic mojo she had inside of herself, she sure hoped it kept working.
Flames ignited in front of her. A giant, white-hot wall that lanced her skin even as the flames stretched high, covering her head, and wide, completely shielding her body.
The bullets never made it through the fire.
“You won’t let me kill them, so we run.” Dante didn’t give her a chance to respond. He yanked her with him, and they rushed toward the waiting woods. The wall of fire he’d made protected their backs.
Cassie glanced over her shoulder, frantic. “Vaughn! Come with us!”
He stumbled to his feet. Tried to dodge the fire. His body was trembling, but he was coming toward her.
“You will come back to me, Cassie!” Jon’s voice. Thundering after her.
He was near Vaughn. Too close to the vampire.
He was—
Jon grabbed a wooden stake from one of his men and shoved it into Vaughn’s back.
Cassie screamed and jerked free of Dante’s grip. I’m coming back, you bastard, I’m—
Fire flashed in front of her. Dante’s fire. Blocking her.
“Leave him.” Dante’s order. His hand locked around her wrist. “He’s already dead.”
Vaughn had fallen to the ground. He wasn’t moving.
“But he was cured,” Cassie could only whisper brokenly. “He was . . . going to be normal again.”
Through the flames, she saw Jon kick Vaughn in the ribs. The fire seemed to be everywhere. Raging so bright.
“Jon!” Her fury broke from her in the scream of his name.
“You will come back to me!” Jon shouted to her.
Dante’s arms curled around her stomach. He lifted her off her feet. Didn’t let her go.
“Cassie!” Jon’s shout blasted over the flames.
But Dante wasn’t letting her go.
Vaughn was dead.
And she wanted Jon to be.
They’d stolen a truck. An ancient pickup with faded paint and a clutch that didn’t want to work. Sunrise was upon them, the faint trickles of light sliding across the sky.
Dante glanced over at Cassie. She looked pale, and her knuckles were white around the steering wheel. “The vampire . . . he mattered to you?”
Her lips trembled. “Yes.”
Her pain seemed to fill the truck’s interior.
Dante rubbed his chest. It kept aching, but no wound was there.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and her gaze cut quickly to him. “I mean, you don’t even remember me, and you still got me out of there. You could have just left me to die.”
“No.” That wasn’t happening. She would not die. “I know your smell. Your taste. I know you are mine.” An instinctive awareness he’d had since the first instant he’d seen her.
Even when she’d looked at him with terror in her eyes, he’d known that she was his.
Her breath whispered out on a soft sigh. “We’re almost to New Orleans. Jon will keep looking for us, but I-I know a place we can use as a safe house there.”
Jon. The man with the burns. The man that I will be killing.
Dante had just needed to get Cassie away last night. To make sure that she was safe.
He hadn’t wanted his fire to hurt her.
“We can stop soon,” she said, and he wondered if the words were to reassure him or her.
Silence filled the vehicle as they came toward the city. Cassie’s body was tense, and she seemed far too breakable. So fragile.
An image appeared in his mind. A little girl with dark hair. Cassie’s frightened eyes. She walked toward him.
Her little gown had been soaked with blood.
“Why is there blood on you?”
“He killed me.” She shook her head. “He’s going to kill you, too.”
“You’re not dying!” His hand slammed into the dashboard, sending a crack streaking across the old, brittle surface.
Cassie jumped and glanced at him. “That is the plan, okay? Relax. I’m no immortal phoenix like you. I don’t know how many repeats are left in me.”
She turned the vehicle onto a narrow road. He saw the tops of—angels? Stone angels. Tombstones. They drove past a cemetery and under the interstate.
“The house isn’t much,” Cassie told him, “but we’re not trying to attract attention.”
The steering wheel was shaking in her hand. That truck didn’t have many more miles in it.
A few more moments, then she was turning in front of an old, plantation style home. One that had burglar bars across its windows and spray paint on the walls. “Most of the locals think that this place is cursed,” Cassie said as she pulled the truck around to the back. “So no one comes here much.”