But Cassie didn’t hate him. She still remembered a boy who had rushed to her bedside just before her father put her under yet again.

Daddy. Daddy, no! Don’t hurt Cass anymore. Use me. Use me, Daddy!

And their father had. He’d started to use them both in his experiments.

Her brother had tried to save her.

Until he’d become twisted, too. From the experiments? She thought so.

“I don’t like to remember him the way he was at Genesis,” Cassie whispered. “I like to remember the boy he was—when we were both too young to see the monsters.”

She looked up and read the pity in Eve’s stare. Cassie handed the other woman the scalpel. “My father experimented on me and Richard. He made us different.”

“Is your blood poison, too?”

Eve had always been resourceful. Cassie wasn’t surprised that the reporter knew Richard’s secret.

“To vampires, yes, but I think there’s more that is . . . different with me.” Cassie stumbled over the words. She had almost said . . . I think there’s more that’s wrong with me. “In New Orleans, I-I think I died when I was attacked by a vampire.”

Eve sucked in a sharp breath. “And your Dante saved you?”

Cassie’s laugh held a touch of bitterness. “No, I thought . . . He said I healed myself.”

Eve blinked.

“So let’s find out how I did it, okay? We’re going to take samples and we’re going to see just what my father may have done to me.”

“Uh, fair warning. I never finished med school. That was just a cover, you know that, right?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll guide you through it.”

Eve’s breath rushed out on a relieved sigh. “So I’m just taking your blood. Nothing major—”

“No, it will be quite major, but we have to get it done.” The secrets that Cassie needed, the cures, could be within her own body. “Just lock the doors. Dante is secure, but I don’t want to take any chances on being interrupted.”

“Cassie . . .”

“People need our help. Vaughn, Trace. Let’s see just what my father did. Maybe we can use it.” Use me. “And some of the nightmares can end.”

Eve gave a grim nod, and they went to work.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Cain said.

Dante very much doubted that. “Have you killed others of our kind?”

“Have you?” Cain tossed right back.

“Yes.”

Cain’s hands clenched into fists. “You’re the one they kept in the other lab at Genesis, aren’t you? The one they called the Immortal.”

Dante nodded.

Cain’s gaze raked over him. “Were you the first?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know, either. You don’t know where the hell we came from.”

Hell was a pretty apt description. “Our home was on an old volcano. One that was dormant by the time I lived there, but . . . according to the stories, our village was born of that ash. Born from the fire and brimstone and hell that exploded onto earth.” Dante had first heard those stories when he’d been a child, running around the countryside with Wren at his back. Wren. “From that fire, the phoenix came to be.”

Cain just stared at him.

“There were so many of us in the village,” Dante said, shaking his head as he remembered what it had been like before.

“Until you turned on each other.”

“Kill or be killed,” Dante murmured. In his mind, he saw the rain of ash that had hit during the deadly battle. A battle started by one woman’s whispered word.

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Are you sure?” Dante pushed him. “Even now, don’t you want to go for my throat? Your mate is in this lab. I know exactly what she is. I know her weaknesses, I know—”

“And I know exactly what your mate is,” Cain snapped out, temper biting in the words. “I know Cassie’s weaknesses, but I’ve never hurt her. I won’t hurt her. We may have a battle between us, but I don’t pull in the innocent.”

Dante could respect the other phoenix. He nodded.

“So don’t threaten Eve. Don’t even look at her sideways.”

Dante’s brows lifted. “Does your Eve know that you’re in here now?” he asked, curious despite himself. The phoenix across from him was not at all what he had expected.

But then, he’d made sure to stay away from other phoenixes, except for the young female in New Orleans that he’d foolishly tried to save a few months back. Too late, he’d realized that she hadn’t wanted to be saved from her vampire lover.