Not all of them, she didn’t.
Some, like Trace—she seemed to push to attack others. Swallowing back her growing fear, Cassie focused on Trace. She had to do the best she could to heal him and to stabilize his beast.
Dante slowly opened his eyes. He was on his back on the hard floor, and a shining, silver ceiling waited above him.
She drugged me.
He surged to his feet, disbelief coursing through him as his gaze flew around the room. No, not a room. A holding cell. He recognized the silver metal that surrounded him. He’d seen it plenty in Genesis.
Cassie had thrown him in a special, fire-proof cell. Just like the ones he’d been held in before.
Not her.
“Cassie!” He bellowed her name.
He knew she was there.
To the right, a two-way mirror waited. The rest of the pricks at Genesis had thought they were safe behind that mirror. Fools. He’d always been able to hear them. And, when he focused his gaze just right, he could see them, too.
At first, as he headed toward that mirror, Dante saw his own glowering reflection. But when he focused his eyes, he saw Cassie standing there. Staring back at him.
For an instant, the past and the present merged for him.
She did this to me.
“Why?” Dante snapped.
She had her hands crossed over her chest. “That’s just what I was going to ask you.” Her voice was soft. She knew that she didn’t need to shout. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you make me think I could trust you?”
“Cain is a threat! If I don’t eliminate him, he’ll come for me.” Dante had been protecting himself, and her.
She shook her head. “Cain had no plans to kill you before you attacked him.” Her breath whispered out, and he picked up even that small sound. “Now, yes, I’m sure you’re on his hit list.”
Bring it on. He didn’t fear the other phoenix. He feared no one.
“You lied to me,” Cassie said, her voice hardening. “Dante, I trusted you.”
“You caged me!” he threw back at her.
“Because you’re dangerous. I was told that, so many times, but I was so sure you were good inside.” She sounded sad and lost—and that just pissed him off.
“I’ve never been a threat to you,” he told her. He’d saved her from that jerk at the ranch. Had the woman already forgotten that? He’d been the one to rescue her from the lieutenant colonel jackass.
“No, you’re just a threat to what matters to me.”
Her words stopped him. He frowned at her.
“I want to help Vaughn. I want to help Trace. I want to cure all the primals out there—I want to undo what my family has done! How many times do I have to tell you this?” Her voice was rising. “But you . . . you nearly destroyed everything I wanted. Everything that I’ve been working toward. You shoved me in a closet and walked away.”
“I wanted you safe!” Was that so wrong? He hadn’t wanted her caught in the crossfire.
“You wanted to fight a battle that didn’t exist. This bullshit about phoenixes going after their own . . . there’s no need for that. Whatever war you think is happening, is over.”
“I don’t think,” Dane told her, suddenly desperate for her to understand. “I know. I was there. You weren’t. I watched them all die as they turned on each other. I saw the fire, I saw the death. I saw it all.”
She stared back at him, only that glass separating them. He wanted to punch through it and touch her, but knew it wasn’t normal glass. It wouldn’t break.
The glass at Genesis had never broken. No matter how many times he’d punched it, and he’d punched until his knuckles were bloody and broken.
“When?” Cassie asked him as her hands fell to her sides. “When was this battle?”
“When I became immortal.” That’s what he was. There was a reason he’d been given that name at Genesis. “You ever wonder where the phoenixes came from? They came from my village. My blood. We were powerful—unstoppable. We burned and we rose and our enemies fell beneath us.”
Until her.
“What happened?”
“All creatures of myth start somewhere. We started in the mountains near Greece. Rumors and whispers about us spread. No one wanted to face an unstoppable army.”
She wasn’t speaking.
“Back then, the paranormals didn’t have to stay in the shadows. And there were more paranormals than you can imagine. So many different monsters, even monsters that hid under a beautiful woman’s smile.”
She crept closer to the glass. “You’re talking about a siren.”
He nodded.
“Someone . . . like me.”
Dante frowned at that. She was nothing like Zura had been.
“Zura fell in love with my brother, and he . . . Wren would do anything that she asked.” Dante’s voice was bitter. “When a siren sings her song and asks you to do her bidding, you cannot refuse.”
Cassie took another step toward the glass.
“She learned of our weaknesses. She knew that another phoenix could reach through the fire and kill at the time of the rising.” Memories were as bitter as ash on his tongue. “She didn’t want any threat to my brother. Zura wanted to live with him forever, and never be threatened again.”
“What did she do?”
“She called all of the phoenixes. She sang her song . . . and she commanded us to kill each other.” All but his brother. Wren hadn’t been there for the summoning.
He’d been far away, locked up by Zura for his protection. At first, Dante hadn’t thought that his brother even knew the wickedness that she had unleashed.
He’d thought wrong.
“How did you survive?”
“I drove spikes into my ears, so I wouldn’t hear her voice.”
Through the glass, he saw Cassie flinch.
“I tried to stop the others, tried to get them to do the same. We just had to turn off her voice, but they were beyond listening. Once the bloodlust hit them, there was no stopping the phoenixes they carried.”
He lifted his hand and touched the glass.
She did not lift her hand.
“The phoenix is always with us, but in those moments, when it felt the blood of its own kind . . . a new hunger hit me. Hit us all. And the fight for dominance began.” Dante swallowed the ash. “When the fire died away, I was left standing. I thought it was over, but then my brother came for me. Wren cut my head from my body.”
Her hand rose then. Pressed against the glass over his. “Dante . . .”