Dirt flew up around the motorcycle. People were yelling. The helicopter’s blades were spinning and sending the air rushing against him.
“Aim for the motorcycle!” It was that same shouting voice. The man who had to be in charge. The man that Dante wanted to rip apart.
Instead . . . he sent a ball of flames flying back at their attackers as the motorcycle raced toward the trees. They were close. Once they made it inside that sweeping band of trees, their pursuers would have a hard time catching up to them.
He tightened his hold on the handlebars, fighting to keep the bike steady.
A bullet sank into the front tire.
Then another hit the back.
The motorcycle spun out of control. Cassie’s arms weren’t around him anymore. He tried to grab for her, but was thrown from the bike, too. His body flew through the air even as Cassie’s scream seemed to echo in his ears.
Then he hit a tree, slamming headfirst into the thick wood, and he didn’t hear her scream anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Dante?” Cassie ran toward him. Her ankle throbbed—she’d heard it crack—and the skin had been ripped from the side of her right arm when she’d slammed into the ground.
But Dante . . . he’d hit so much harder than she had.
Footsteps thundered toward them. Lights cut through the darkness.
She sank to her knees beside his still body. The moonlight spilled down onto him, and she could see the twisted angle of his neck. That very unnatural angle.
Her breath whispered out as her fingers lifted to his throat. No pulse.
The thud of approaching footsteps came closer. Ever closer.
She could run. There was time. She could leap to her feet and disappear into the forest. She might even get away.
She didn’t run. She just eased closer to Dante. Her bruised fingers brushed back his hair. Blood was trickling down his forehead. When the motorcycle had started to spin, she’d tried to hold onto him, but she hadn’t been strong enough.
The lights fell on her. Too bright and hot.
“Is he dead?” The voice came from behind the light. It was a voice she’d grown to hate over the years. Once she realized just what the man truly was.
“For the moment,” Cassie said quietly. The words were the truth. She glanced down at Dante’s still face, lit so well by the shine of flashlights. “While you can, you and your men need to get the hell out of here.” Because when Dante rose, there would be no controlling him. In an environment like that, where there were so many trees and miles and miles of wilderness, a phoenix would be capable of doing an immense amount of damage.
“We’ll be leaving,” she was told. Then the leader of the group stepped forward, and Cassie glanced up to see the hard features of Lieutenant Colonel Jon Abrams. He stared down at her. “But you’ll be coming with us.”
Jon hadn’t changed much since she’d last seen him. Same hard, handsome face. Same military short, blond hair. Those deceptive blue eyes. He could look so harmless with those eyes.
But when he wanted, those eyes could be lethal.
Dante’s skin began to heat beneath her touch. Already, he was coming back to her. Sometimes, the risings were fast. Brutal.
So destructive.
What would this rising be like? Would he come back, full of fury and sending flames at everyone and everything in his path?
Would he know her? Please, know me. Come back with the memories. It could happen. She’d seen him come back with his memories . . . maybe . . . two times before. Bring them back now.
But she knew that, all too often, he came back only as a beast.
“I’d suggest that you step away from him, Cassie.” Jon was actually trying to sound like he cared.
She had to give him credit. He’d always been a good actor. He’d convinced her once that he actually wanted to marry her.
“We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find you,” Jon continued, “and we’re not eager to watch you burn.”
Her lips twisted. She called the lie. “Aren’t you?”
He lunged forward and caught her wrist. Yanked her up and away from Dante, his strength far more powerful than a human’s should have been. She fought him, punching and kicking, but Jon wasn’t letting her go. “You aren’t”—he growled out the words as he twisted her hands behind her—“dying for him.”
He would throw that up at her. Just because she’d almost died once before, while trying to save Dante, didn’t mean she had some kind of death wish.
Jon bent over her, and his mouth brushed near her ear. “I want you to stand back and watch him rise. Watch the monster that you risked so much for.”
Wait. He wanted Dante to rise? But Dante would just kill them all if—
Her gaze flew toward the men who’d swept onto the scene. Men in those heavy, fireproof suits.
“The guys in the government labs have been making some modifications,” Jon told her softly. “When your phoenix burns, he’s at his weakest, right? Well . . . we’re about to have a little test.”
No, it wasn’t a test. It was an execution. If those fireproof suits were strong enough, the men could get close enough to kill Dante.
Then there would be no rising. Not if they destroyed him as he was regenerating. Not if they destroyed him in that one weak moment.
“No!” Desperate, she stopped fighting, knowing that if she was going to help Dante, she would have to catch Jon off guard. “Don’t do this!”
“He’s a monster that can’t be controlled. The orders came from above.”
She heard the smug pleasure in Jon’s voice. He’d hated Dante since the moment he realized . . .
I love him.
“What can’t be controlled must be killed,” Jon told her. He jerked his head to the left, and, at that signal, two men in white began to advance toward Dante’s prone body.
“Don’t do this! He hasn’t even started to burn yet!” Cassie cried out.
“He will soon enough.”
She still wasn’t fighting him. If she didn’t fight, he might lower his guard and loosen his hold. The instant that hold loosened, she’d escape.
“I thought you wanted him alive. He’s the most powerful of his kind! You need his DNA—”
“I don’t need him at all. He’s a threat that will be eliminated.”
The men were close to Dante. Too close.
And . . . she could smell smoke. Could see the faint tendrils rising from his body in the bright light.
When he burned, they’d attack. There might be no more risings. No more Dante.