The Phoenix Project Read online

  Raul nodded and so did the other orderly. Nick wasn’t certain they would comply once he let go, but he didn’t have much choice. He was certain reinforcements were already on their way. It probably hadn’t been wise to react as he had, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d seen red at what he had perceived as an insult to Amara, not to mention the bald fury at Raul’s blasé admission that they had been watching everything they did. He had suspected, of course, but to know for certain was intrusive and painful.

  Especially for Amara, he figured.

  He looked back at her as he let go of Raul, suddenly worried about how she would react to the way he had so easily and coldly dispatched another human being. Even he was a little shaken by it. It was true, the crimes being committed against them warranted severity of punishment, but death?

  For touching Amara, death was too good for him.

  “Agent Gregory.”

  Nick turned sharply at the familiar voice near the door. There stood that same smooth doctor with the very same air of superiority he’d seen on him nearly a month ago. Of course he could afford to feel superior. He stood with three rather beefy-looking orderlies at his back. At the clear threat, Nick felt his entire being bristle in defense. Every hair on his body seemed to stand on end and he didn’t check the low warning growl rolling out of his throat.

  “Relax, Agent. No one is here to harm you. You are much more valuable to us alive. I thought you might like to know that.” Paulson glanced over at Amara, his eyes lingering on her much too long for Nick’s peace of mind. “I see we’ve made you an excellent match,” he noted with a leering sort of self-satisfied smile. “It doesn’t always work out so well. Some resist and sulk. Others just savagely feed and then pick separate corners. Too often, the male kills his intended mate. Haven’t figured out why. You might like to know you are the exception and not the rule. This compatibility is what fascinates me. You don’t even know each other, yet suddenly you are as familiar as old lovers. Now, I can observe from now until doomsday, as you well know, but I can’t learn what I want to know without asking you some questions.”

  “Then you’re fucked, because we aren’t answering.”

  “You will answer, or you will be separated. If you continue to be disagreeable, Agent Gregory, I will force you to watch while I lock her in another room with a newly turned male.”

  “You can’t do that!” Amara cried. “Another male would kill me!”

  “Why?” the doctor demanded. “How are you so certain of that?”

  “Because she is mine!” Nick roared with fury, everything inside of him screaming to attack this threat before him. But before that imperative was the demand to protect his mate at all costs. He could do nothing that would risk what Paulson was threatening him with. Amara was right. Now that she was marked as Nick’s mate, she would be in danger with any other males. Oh, another male would certainly want her…but he wouldn’t take her unless he could kill the male who had marked her first. Until he killed Nick.

  How did he know this?

  He just did. Just as Amara did. Instinctually. To the bone. It was an imperative written deeply into their altered DNA.

  “She is mine,” Nick repeated, trying to keep his head clear of rage so he could focus and protect them both. “Another male would know that. Resent it.”

  “Hmm. No man likes another man’s leavings,” Dr. Paulson sniffed. “But I sense more. Instinct. Scent marking? Dominance? We’ve never had so large a group turned before. In a day or two, we are going to turn you all loose in the common areas. Morphates and regular humans all together. It will be quite a show, I imagine.”

  “Morphates?” Amara asked hoarsely, her knuckles white as she clenched the blanket around her.

  “You aren’t vampires, my dear. We call your breed Morphates. Humans, or rather, primates, morphed into a better breed. Everything about you is enhanced. Senses, strength, sexuality, reflexes, and, obviously, animal instinct. We revived what has been so deeply repressed. Think of it, Agent Gregory. You have undergone a dramatic physical change on a cellular level that allows you to heal and regenerate at a phenomenal rate of speed. This means you will be forever young and always perfectly healthy. The savagery you exhibit, granted, is a poor side effect, but we will perfect this one day. Watching how you have maintained and regained control over yourself tells us how close we are coming to exactly that. Now we will turn you loose on each other and see what happens.”

  Paulson glanced over Nick’s naked form.

  “Clothe them. Fresh bedding. Bring them some food.”

  The doctor exited and kept his head attached only because Amara reached for Nick’s hand and drew him back toward her.

  “Please. I’m frightened.”

  Nick understood she meant to ask him not to do anything that would separate them. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. God, what would have happened to Amara had he not desired her? Nick wondered. What would he have done to her? Clearly, these men of medicine didn’t want to intervene, preferring instead to observe as their creations ripped each other to shreds. The very idea of it made Nick sick to his stomach. He turned and wrapped his arms around Amara, holding her tightly against himself as they watched the orderlies carry out their orders in the cramped room. With shaking hands, Raul took the blood he needed, beating a hasty retreat when Nick curled an aggressive lip back from his distended fangs.

  As soon as the door hissed closed on its pneumatics, Nick grabbed for the pile of smaller clothing and quickly helped her into the sweats and tee. He snagged sweats for himself and then sat down on the new mattress. He drew Amara down onto his lap and into the protective circle of his embrace. She hooked an arm around his neck and he could feel the burn of her cheek against his and knew she was struggling with emotion.

  “Morphates,” she rasped. “Well, at least it wasn’t random. At least they were looking to produce something specific.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed stiffly.

  “What is it?” she asked, immediately picking up on his tension.

  Nick’s gut feeling, again, was to protect her, but he was also aware that she had a right to know everything since it was her fate as well as his.

  “He told us too much,” he whispered softly against the curve of her ear. “It means they are never going to let us go, Amara. They are never going to allow us to tell anyone what happened to us. They’re going to kill us when they’re done with us. Obviously we aren’t the first generation of these Morphates. We’re just the latest and the greatest. Once they develop a better batch…”

  “We’ll be obsolete.”

  “Yes,” he sighed softly, squeezing her in comfort when she shuddered with fear and revulsion toward their captors.

  “Nick. Nick, I’m afraid of how I feel. I watched you kill that man and I was so satisfied, so proud of you for it. I can manage that. I can understand what made me feel that way. But when that doctor was in here…I wanted to sink my teeth in his throat and rip it out. Half of me wanted to feast on his blood, the other just wanted to rip him to shreds. If he hadn’t left just then, I would have. I haven’t killed anyone…”

  “I know, honey.” He tried to soothe her softly.

  “…since I was sixteen.”

  That made Nick go really quite still in shock. Strange. He had seen just about everything from killer grannies to drug-pusher babies. Why would it so surprise him to realize the quiet woman in his lap was a murderer?

  “Excuse me?” he said, figuring he’d heard her wrong in spite of his acutely improved hearing.

  “I grew up on the streets of Dark Chicago, Nick. My mother was a junkie selling herself from fix to fix. I used dirty old syringes to play darts, learned to run fast and hide in small unreachable places, and stole everything I ate for years. The first person I killed was a gang boy when I was thirteen. He tried to steal from me.”

  She meant he had tried to rape her. Nick could see it from the way she turned her eyes down and away. Her clenched fists told him she didn�
��t regret what she had done, that she would do it again in the same circumstances. But Nick couldn’t hold that against her. She’d been all alone, fending for herself in the worst Dark City there was…tied only with Dark Manhattan. The so-called Dark Cities were the abandoned sections of the cities where gangs had overrun even the police forces. They’d been walled away, fenced up high, and ignored as best they could be by ignorant people who hoped they would stay put. The Dark Cities grew larger with every passing year, though. Some of them, like Chicago and Manhattan, were completely infested. Los Angeles was third runner-up.

  “You don’t have to account to me for how you survived that kind of life,” he told her quietly.

  “But don’t you see? I got out of it. As soon as I was able to work legitimately I left the city and worked my way into a workhouse. It was always cold and always dismal, but it was safe. I could sleep at night without being afraid. I could put away those bestial instincts I’d become grown with. I have no idea how I even knew how to be anything other than a savage. TV, I think. But…”

  Nick watched with an ache in his breast as tears stung wetly into her tough copper eyes. She swallowed them back, though, clearly too proud or too stubborn to show the weakness of them.

  “They’ve turned me back into one,” she whispered. “Don’t you see how easily I am adjusting to this? God, I think I am even enjoying it. Relishing it!”

  “Hey, no more or less than I am,” he said sharply. “I had the good life compared to you, but it wasn’t easy from my perspective. I was always angry. Always violent. My mother swore I had been born mad at the world. Thing is, I hate injustice, and this world is so full of it, it makes me choke. When I was young I was impotent. Our society doesn’t give kids ways of helping make things better. When I was seventeen, my father bought me a low-level commission in the Corps. He knew if I wasn’t tempered, I’d be in jail before I was twenty because my rage would have gotten me into trouble.” He reached to brush gentle lips against her temple. “Thank God he did. I learned control there. I learned empowerment.”

  “You learned how to make a difference. I’ve never made a difference. I’ve just survived.”

  “That isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Right now, that’s all I want. I want us to survive. We have to figure out how to do that, and frankly I am glad you have all that killer survival instinct in you. When the time comes, it’s going to be really handy.”

  “I never wanted to be like that again,” she said sadly, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

  “Let’s just be glad we finally have a choice.”

  Chapter 8

  “Are you awake? I hear someone coming.”

  “Yeah, I’m up. Been listening to you bite your claws.”

  “I was not,” Amara hissed. “Besides, they aren’t bitable. They are like titanium.”

  “And how would you know that?” he teased her softly as he sat them up to face whoever was coming to the door.

  Amara didn’t dignify that with a response. Okay, so maybe she had been nervously nibbling a little. It had been two days since Dr. Paulson’s visit and his ominous threats of releasing them into the general populace. Since then they had discovered they could, indeed, eat. They had not needed to drink blood, although it was tempting when they were having sex to indulge in the act.

  Which made for a lot of temptation, because closed up in such a small space there was nothing else to really entertain them. Not that they wanted any other entertainment. Nick and Amara couldn’t seem to get enough of each other.

  Amara’s worrying was doubled, however. Not only did she dread what would happen next, feeling the ponderous wait of the forward-ticking time as if it were set on an explosive device, but Nick had warned her of another danger she hadn’t even considered.

  “You’re going to begin ovulating soon,” he had said softly as they caught their breath from their latest sensual attacks on each other’s bodies. She had jolted in surprise at that at first, and then realized that once she thought about it, she knew it was true. “I can smell the change on you. I can feel the imperative inside of me that’s eager for it. I’m terrified to think that’s exactly what they want. I’ll be damned if I will breed my children for them.”

  “Me, too,” she agreed with a little shiver.

  Now Nick pulled on a fresh T-shirt and they both got to their feet as the door slid open. Amara knew he wanted to step in front of her, but she stubbornly kept to his side and ignored his dark frown. He might be feeling all kinds of butch and manly because of his alterations, but she wasn’t in a very submissive space herself any longer.

  The orderly was armed.

  It was the first thing she noticed. Granted, it was with tasers, obviously a little added security after what Nick had done the last time. Also, there was a significant change in uniforms. While they remained the same annoying white, they were now boasting armored vests, padded sleeves no doubt meant to protect from sharp claws, gloves, and helmets. They looked like a contingent of guards, which in actuality they had always been. They just had not looked so much the part before.

  Taser guns and nightsticks at the ready, they made way for Nick and Amara to move out of the room. Their sharp gestures said there was to be no argument, and Amara couldn’t see any point in doing so. They eased out of the cubicle room side by side, Nick’s arm tight around her shoulders. As if everything were the same and it was just another normal day as involuntary lab rats, they were marched into the common area.

  Only there had been significant changes.

  The common room had all been caged in. Steel bars disrupted the perfection of white everywhere there was a section of glass or an opening leading out of the common area. The exterior access had been cut off and was now guarded heavily, but not from inside the room. The guards all remained outside the caging.

  They came from four compass points, small groups of them being hustled and even shoved into the common rooms all at the same time. Nick and Amara were the last to step inside from their section and the steel gate rang with finality at their backs as it slammed shut.

  For a moment, everyone was quite still. Hesitant. Amara gripped at Nick, feeling the tension in his muscular body. She automatically looked for the familiar faces of her friends, having been worried about them since this had started.

  That was when she first noticed the smell.

  Then came the sensation.

  Her skin felt as though it were vibrating in a supersonic dance, the hairs at the back of her neck pricking up even as her nose began to sniff out all the signals it received.

  “I can sense them,” she breathed. “I can tell which are still human and which are Morphates.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Nick whispered grimly as he drew her back against a wall where no one could come up behind them. He nodded toward a human male who had approached someone else as if he recognized him, greeting him. He now suddenly found himself the focus of two and then three Morphate males who began to actively sniff him. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to be pretty,” he warned her softly.

  Amara was in agreement with that. She watched as the three males started to shove at the human, batting him between them like cats toying with a ball. Claws appeared, and then fangs. The human male screeched in fear when he saw it alter them into feral-looking beasts. Amara sniffed, smelling how the keenness of his fear called like a sweetly baking treat in an oven beckoned one’s hunger.

  Then it was ending in a sudden flash of violence as the first Morphate male sank his fangs deep in the human’s shoulder. The second chose the opposite bicep, and the third, heedless of how it nearly ripped him apart, grabbed up a leg and tore into his thigh.

  Once the feed was on, the rest of the room erupted into a frenzy of reaction. Other hungry Morphates tried to find their way into the feast, only to be viciously rebuffed. Humans began to scream and clamor for release at the exits, terrified they would be the next meal for these inhuman beasts. Then there were other Morphates who seemed
to have no appetite or simply no care for the tableau that played out.

  Amara felt Nick’s awful tension and sensed how badly he wanted to do something. But there was an entire pack of feeding Morphates now, other humans being picked off to satiate those who either had not been fed properly or enjoyed satiating themselves on the bloodlust and power of their new forms. They could clearly see a good deal of both.

  There was blood and human death everywhere by the time the furor for feeding had died down and the worst of the pack had grown too full to continue to drink or they were just growing bored of the easy prey. The remaining humans were huddled and sobbing or simply sitting in traumatic shock.

  Amara scented something familiar and turned her attention to the approach of a beautiful female Morphate. It was Mina, she realized with no little shock. Mina had always been a confident and sexually attractive female, but now with her Morphate enhancements she positively reeked alluring femininity. Readiness. Sex. She was not marked by a male, not like Amara at all. It was obvious, though, that she had been with more than one male in the last block of hours.

  And she was in search of another.

  Mina practically slithered up to Nick, the slink in her spine and the sway in her hips so suggestive. Her nipples stood out under her tee attentively, and Amara could smell her ready excitement as she approached her desired target. She saw Nick’s nose twitch as he took in her scent as well and felt the knee-jerk male response of interest. Mina was in a full-blown heat, and that was designed to attract any viable mate.

  Even her mate.

  Amara reached out and smacked away the hand Mina reached out toward Nick’s chest hard enough to get her message across. She even backed it up with a growl of threat.

  “Back off,” she hissed, placing herself between Nick and the trashy little Morphate seeking to usurp her place at Nick’s side.