Dawn’s Awakening (38 page)

Dash knew it. Dawn knew it. Every Breed there knew that getting her out of Jason Phelps’s hands was the only way to ensure her survival. There would be no rescue attempts later, there would only be a funeral and more death. More blood spilled.

Jason laughed. “You should have kept her at home, Sinclair. I still haven’t figured out what possessed you to bring such a valuable little jewel out of hiding.” He lowered his head and licked Cassie’s cheek. The caress was disgusting, insulting.

“Then Cassie was the goal all along?” Seth asked him, his voice icy with the promise of death.

Jason chuckled. “Actually, no. Cassie is a side benefit. A twofer, you might call it. No, Lawrence, I wanted what belonged to me. And there was this nasty little rumor Caroline so enjoyed telling of the little Breed’s name you whispered in your sleep. Little Dawn. My little girl.”

You’ll always be my little girl, his voice whispered through her mind, his vow each time he dirtied her body.

“You look shocked, Lawrence,” he said tauntingly. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? She was mine in those labs, and I want her back. That was the object all along; it just took me a while to arrange things to my satisfaction once she arrived.”

“You won’t take either of them, Jason,” he snapped. “Give it up now, while you’re still alive.”

Jason smiled, an evil, malicious twist of his lips. His fingers caressed the smooth line of Cassie’s throat with just enough pressure to cause her to part her lips to draw in more air.

Rumbled growls and enraged, throttled snarls filled the room as the guests were pushed behind the line of Breeds now facing Phelps.

He was surrounded, and yet so confident. Dawn knew if he managed to actually escape the ballroom then his success would be almost guaranteed.

“Are you going to let me take her out of here without you, Dawn?” he asked then. “We can do this one of two ways. You can come and be my pet.” He stroked Cassie’s throat. “Or I can make her my pet for a while. You know how the scientists enjoy watching me work. Do you think she’ll survive it?”

Cassie would survive, but her mind would be damaged forever, and Dawn knew it. She knew it, but as she met Cassie’s gaze, she saw only acceptance. Acceptance and regret as she glanced at her parents.

I love you. She mouthed the words to them as a sob escaped Elizabeth.

“Come on, Dawn.” Jason’s voice took a teasing tone. “Tell me you don’t dream of me taking you. You’ve missed me, little cat, you know you have.”

The scent of horror filled the room. Finally, finally the cream of the world’s financial crop was seeing the evil that filled the Council and its soldiers. The complete disregard for life. Adult’s or child’s.

Noble, one of the Breeds on the security detail, shifted in front of her carefully, hiding her from Jason’s sight for the few precious seconds she needed to jerk her link from her purse and attach it to her ear.

A shot fired and he fell. The smell of blood filled the room, pouring from the chest wound as Noble pressed his own hand to his chest and fought to hold the blood inside his body. The other Breeds didn’t move, but the air of savagery that filled the room was nearly stifling now.

“Move between me and what’s mine again…,” Jason sneered, before turning to her. “Now come here, little cat.”

Dawn slid away from Seth quickly, feeling his rage as she did so, as Stygian moved between them and the Breeds surrounded him. They would restrain him if they had to, but Seth was smarter than that. He watched her with tormented eyes, but she saw the determination in his face. He would never stand still if she tried to leave the room with Phelps.

She glided several feet away, then stopped.

“Dawn, we can’t get a bead on him. Cassie’s head is in the way,” Jonas spoke through the link. “You have to get him to shift.”

She moved again, several more feet, but though he turned with her, he kept Cassie in a fully protective position in front of him.

“You’ve lost your edge,” she told him calmly. “Against me, as well as Seth. You showed yourself too soon, Jason. That was a miscalculation on your part.”

He made a tsking sound. “I like your voice better when you’re screaming and begging God to save you.” He grinned. “Did he ever save you, Dawn?”

She arched her brow and spread her arms. “I’m free.”

“You were for a time,” he agreed. “And now Daddy is here to collect you.” He chuckled at his own joke.

And Dawn smiled as she shook her head. “You’ll never get out of here alive, Jason.”

“Everything’s in place, Dawn,” he assured her. “I’m smart, remember? I trained your animal asses and I can take you out whenever I want to. As many of you as I want.”

Dawn let her gaze drift to Cassie. She was staring at her parents, tears washing over her face as Elizabeth’s broken voice whispered her name.

“Let Cassie go.” She bargained then, stepping close as Seth snarled Dawn’s name. “And we’ll go.”

Jason laughed at that, as she had known he would. “Not going to happen,” he promised her. “She’s payday. You’re my reward. I’m going to strap you down, pump you full of those nifty little drugs the scientists wouldn’t let you have before, and I’m going to fuck you until you’re screaming in pleasure. Fuck you and tape it and send it to your fiancé.” He smiled tauntingly at Seth. “He can see how a real man tames your particular Breed.”

“He doesn’t need drugs to make me scream in pleasure, Jason,” Dawn pointed out as the Breeds closed in around Seth.

“Dawn, damn you, stop,” Seth hissed. She heard him, but Jason didn’t. He was laughing at her, but there was fury in the sound.

The black fury toward this man had settled inside her, hardening into a knot of resolve in her soul. She had made a vow, one that had meant so much to her that she’d had to forget it to live. She had vowed, to herself and to God, that she would wash her hands in this man’s blood.

“Don’t talk like a nasty whore, little girl,” he snapped back at her. “I’ll teach you better once I have you alone. You’ll bow for me. You’ll go to your knees and beg for me.”

Dawn widened her eyes. “What a little fantasy world you live in. Shall I tell you my fantasy?”

The link crackled at her ear. “Be careful, Dawn. We can’t lose Cassie to a madman’s bullet,” Jonas warned her.

He wouldn’t kill Cassie. Jason knew what she was worth alive, with her virginity intact. Whatever plans the Council had for her involved that innocence. But Dawn knew well how they used innocence against the female Breeds.

The guests were watching the scene that played out before them in horror. Cassie had made an impression on all of them, with her laughter and wry sense of humor, her teasing jokes and her habit of drawing out even the shiest of the group.

They had known she was a Breed, but there had been no one who had been able to resist her appeal. They watched her now, as Dawn did, their hearts in their throats.

“Let her go, Jason,” she warned him again. Softly. “Number one, you’ll never make it out of here alive with her.”

He smiled. “I could blow her brains out right now, be out that door and gone before any of you could recover from the shock.”

Elizabeth’s muffled sob tore through her.

Dawn shook her head. “We’re too well trained. The second she dropped, you’d be dead.”

He watched, his finger caressing the trigger, a growl threatening to give away his location as Breeds raced for a position to get a bead on the man holding the dark-haired girl.

He was in the perfect position. High enough to see everything going on through the ceiling-high windows, his sights trained on the back of Jason Phelps’s neck. He could take the shot, he should take the shot, but the risk held him back.

If he did it, at this angle, the bullet would tear through the spine at the back of the neck, releasing Phelps’s grip on the gun as he fell. But there was a 90 percent chance that when the bullet tore out of the front of the neck, it would tear a slice through Cassie Sinclair’s scalp.

It wouldn’t kill her. Maybe.

He grimaced, tested the wind again, and prayed it held. He was high enough to hide his scent from the Breeds below for the time being, except, perhaps, one. The one several branches below him trying to get the same bead that he had.

Hell, why did the bastard have to grab that particular female? The one guaranteed to weaken him, to make him caress the trigger rather than shoot.

Dawn would have been a regrettable casualty, but his fascination with her wouldn’t have held him back as this one did.

He lowered his eye to the sights and adjusted again. He couldn’t let this one young woman change the course of the battle between the Council and the Breeds.

If Phelps escaped with her, Dash Sinclair would move heaven and earth to take her back. He would slice through suspected Council members like a swath of overriding fury, and the Breeds that followed him would wash in the blood he shed.

The Breeds would forget political maneuvering and show the world the savagery they were capable of. That couldn’t be allowed.

He inhaled slowly, forced back the tension that would have gathered inside him and lined up the shot. Just one small shift was all he needed.

“Dawn, we just need a small shift,” Jonas spoke softly through the link. “We have sight, we just need more room. You have to maneuver him.”

She glanced around the room. Callan was there as well, Jonas’s words causing him to tense and bounce on his feet. She knew what he would do. He would place his own life in the path of a bullet to force Jason to move that needed quarter of an inch.

He was their pride leader. His safety and the safety of his family was uppermost. She couldn’t allow him to make that move.

“Let her go, Jason.” She moved closer, lowered her voice, watched him carefully. “You can get out of here with me. You can never escape with Cassie. They will kill her first. Cut your losses.”

“So you can kill me the moment we step into the night?” He laughed. “It’s not going to happen, little girl.”

Cassie was pale, her eyes large, the tears shimmering on her face. There was no way to get a message to the girl, though Dawn knew, she knew, Cassie’s training was better than this. Cassie should have already disabled him, should have already made a way for Jonas to get a shot. Unless she knew something, sensed something none of them did.

“You were easy, Dawn,” Jason chided then. “The minute you thought your precious Seth was in danger, you came running. You should have run right back to Sanctuary instead.”

She let a ghost of a smile touch her lips. “But if I had, I would have never remembered you, would I?” she pointed out and watched his eyes widen with surprise, almost in fear.

“You remember all of it?”

“I remember all of it, Jason,” she assured him. “Years’ worth.” She forced herself to laugh lightly. “And you didn’t even faze me. You’re barely a hiccup on my little radar now.”

He frowned heavily, his finger flexing on the trigger of the gun held to Cassie’s temple.

The girl’s lips were trembling, her expression stark, but not with fear. Rather with pain as she watched her parents.

The bond between Cassie and her parents was absolute. It had been forged in steel, her mother’s connection to the Wolf Breed naturally including the child that had brought them together. Seeing her pain, seeing the same knowledge Dawn saw in Cassie, would be killing Dash and Elizabeth. The knowledge that their daughter was meeting death without a fight.

“I’ll become your radar.” He chuckled. “Now get your ass over here with us. We’re going home, baby. Where we can play all by ourselves.”

All by themselves. Dawn moved slowly across the room, praying the others stayed in place. She just had to get beside him, get in place and then she could jerk Cassie that needed distance to save her from a bullet to her brain.

“To the left, Dawn,” Jonas directed her. “That will turn him where we need him.”

She moved to the left, still going forward, pretending to skirt around a couple huddled together as they watched Phelps.

“There’s a good little kitty. Come to Daddy, little girl.”

The bastard moved.

He leveled his eyes on the sight, readjusted and recalculated the odds.

The shot would still strike the girl, but not as deep. He could only pray the wind stayed calm and the players before him stayed in place.

“Dawn, a little more to the left,” Jonas ordered quietly.

She moved more to the left, always advancing, one slow, hesitant step at a time, as Phelps followed her with his gleeful eyes.

He smiled. Yeah, that was better. Just a little more.

Dawn could feel her heartbeat, slow, steady. There was no panic, there was no fear. She knew this maneuver. She had trained with it, perfected it. Any hostage situation or variable imagined and she had gone through it. She needed to get close enough, to get in position. She would have to move swiftly, but Breed reflexes were faster than human, and for all his strength and experience at killing Breeds, the Council soldiers still hadn’t yet figured out that the Breeds trained now to adjust to the knowledge the Council had on them.

They didn’t fight as they’d been trained. They didn’t react as they’d been trained.

She could feel Seth behind her; she sensed Callan a bit to her side. Both men were tensed and prepared to jump.

Just a little more, she thought. Be patient. Let me fight my own battles.

Callan’s protection was absolute and she knew it. He would easily sacrifice himself to save one of the female Breeds under his care. Just as Wolf Gunnar would do, as Dash would do.

They had their own mates, their own children, but the value they placed on all females and their protection would push them to extreme lengths.

She was several feet from Jason now. Frustration was lining his face.

“If you don’t hurry, bitch, I’m going to hurt her,” he warned. “I might not kill her, but I can spill her blood easy and get away with it.”

Yes, he could. But Dawn didn’t hurry. She stepped carefully, cautiously.

“I said now.” The gun shifted from Cassie’s temple toward Dawn and a roar sounded.