Chapter Three
Devon was expecting his reaction, but still she jumped when he exploded up to his full height in an awesome rushing wall of bone and sinew that flexed and bulged with dozens of tautened muscles.
She looked the long way up into his deceptively understated amber eyes, marveling at the glints of gold within them that flashed when his temper was aroused.
Morphates was a word no human being liked hearing.
She imagined Liam Nash had grown to hate it more than most. His personal knowledge of Morphates was one of the reasons she was so determined to have him.
It was also quite possibly the main reason why he might turn her down.
“Are you telling me that you have Morphates gunning for you?” Nash ground out in a voice so low and dangerous it was practically a growl.
“To be precise, it could be the leaders of a couple of different Dark Cities,” she said firmly, keeping her eyes steadily attached to his. “Whoever it is, he wants me to suffer … or submit. I have a lot of information the Morphate leaders feel is quite valuable.”
Devon did not blame Liam for his stupefied expression.
Morphates themselves were stupefying. Once humans, Morphates had been created by a mad scientist named Eric Paulson a few decades back.
His experimentations on the indigent, the criminal, and others had resulted in the people who now called themselves Morphates.
Well known for their savage instincts, their ferociously sexual natures, and the fact that they were, by agreement with the government, supposed to limit themselves to the Dark Cities they had volunteered to live in, they were more recently thrust into human awareness because there were upstart Morphates who no longer wanted to be trapped behind the walls of those confinement camps.
The Dark Cities were huge metropolises that had been overrun by the refuse of humanity—gangs, criminals, the homeless.
Ultimately, humanity had thought it best to wall off cities like New York and Chicago, give up on them and let the criminals have them.
They wanted to pretend that would be the end of the matter.
When the Morphates had come on the scene, their leaders, their Alphas, had struck a bargain with the humans, agreeing to live in the Dark Cities.
Agreeing to make themselves responsible for them.
Agreeing to quietly keep to themselves along with all the other things that frightened mainstream humanity.
But that had been before they’d begun to breed new generations, before it had become obvious they weren’t going to die off like normal humans did—before mainstream humanity had realized that Morphates couldn’t be killed, not even by time or the aging process
The only thing that could control a Morphate was another Morphate.
The Alphas, to be exact. The Alpha hierarchy was an absolute one.
If you lived in their City, you obeyed and respected your Alpha …
unless you felt yourself capable of challenging that Alpha and taking over his or her position.
In the thirty-five years since the Phoenix Project, that had only happened once …
in Dark Houston. All the other Dark Cities were still run by their original Alphas.
The Alphas themselves were controlled by an Alpha Council.
Each Alpha answered to the political and legal power of the Alpha Council.
Ideally. But recently two Dark Cities had broken away from the Council’s control, had decided to start living by their own rules, and Morphates had started bleeding out of the Dark Cities.
Some had gathered into new enclaves that occasionally liked to intimidate and bully the humans they considered inferior to themselves in so many ways.
Luckily, for the most part, they paid humans about as much mind as they might a stray animal.
They were more interested in fighting amongst themselves for power, feuding for control.
Just the same, there were hostilities between the two species.
Morphates didn’t respect humans, and why should they?
Humans were inferior creatures compared to Morphates, with the abilities and power that they wielded.
Humans feared and despised the unstoppable prowess of a species that could potentially wipe humanity from the face of the earth.
To further complicate things, Morphates could easily pass as normal humans if they wanted to.
Some people thought that they were still technically human, but many humans and most Morphates disagreed with that, each finding it to be a little bit insulting.
Still, the Constitution protected American Morphates just as it did anyone else, and all laws applied.
Then there was that little thing called immortality.
You could put a bullet in a Morphate’s brain and it would still survive, healing from the wound completely intact.
Oh, and there was one more little thing … that little thing about drinking blood …
So she wasn’t surprised by Liam’s reaction in the least. It was to be expected.
“I chose you because you have experience in this kind of altercation. Your people have the equipment needed to hurt them, to slow them down, as well as the training specific to fighting Morphates. I’m not asking you to burn them to the ground, although in a perfect world that might be nice, but I do need you to make enough of an impact that you get the message across: to leave me alone. ”
“Last I checked, assault on that scale is still illegal,” Nash reminded her stiffly. “My people are bodyguards, not mercenaries. Oh”—he smiled sarcastically as he folded brawny arms over his chest and settled in a firm stance—“and it’s common knowledge, you can’t kill a Morphate.”
“You’ve killed a Morphate, Mr.Nash.” She took satisfaction in the way his breathing froze into silence, the superiority on his face falling away in a rush of shock.
“And the only reason the incident is even on record is because you reported it to your C.O. in the Secret Service as a matter of protocol. It wasn’t as though there was a body left behind.
” She threw up her hands and made a poofing sound to indicate the vaporous cloud that occurred when a Morphate was finally, truly dead, its body dissolving into its basic gaseous components.
Liam stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head.
“How do you know that?” he demanded. “How did you find out about that?” His eyes narrowed to amber slits when she didn’t respond immediately.
“There are only a handful of people who know how to kill a Morphate. Even fewer know what happens to them when they die,” he said in a low voice full of threat.
“Now I ask you again, Ms. Candler, how do you know that?”
“Hmm.” She contemplated her answer for a moment, watching as his huge hands dropped to his sides and curled into tightly clenched fists. “I suppose I don’t have a choice,” she mused.
Devon was testing his patience and taunting him, and it probably wasn’t at all wise to do so, but there was something fascinating in the way Liam Nash reacted to her.
She had seen hours of video files on this man, everything from interviews to reports, and even supremely stressful tests of strength and mental fortitude.
In each and every one he had remained as still as stone and even less expressive.
Not anything like the man who stood before her now, clenched tight with suppressed storms of emotion.
The man whose extraordinarily fit body, in spite of its forbidding solidity, had quivered like a taut bowstring when she had boldly touched him.
Devon concealed a shiver as her fingertips burned with carnal memory of the all too brief caress against his blatantly aroused cock.
It had been a shocking surprise in spite of her bold tease.
She had never expected him to respond to her as a man does a woman.
Not after everything she had seen, read, and learned about him.
She had assumed that as well trained as he was, a veteran of every tactic known to man, he would have been completely dispassionate. Completely immune to … well, to her.
But he had been hot and hard … and he had scolded her for wearing an “overt” dress.
Devon lowered her eyes lest he see the smug amusement blooming in them and twitching against her lips. She liked the idea of having him a little off center. She didn’t know why. She just liked it.
“Candler International,” she said quietly, “has a military contract. Research focused on stopping Morphates both temporarily and permanently. Specifically, creating viable weapons.”
“And you succeeded,” he breathed in unabashed awe the instant comprehension dawned.
“That’s why they are after you. That’s why they all want you dead.
” He dropped quickly to his knees again, swiftly energized, his amber gaze gleaming with anticipation.
“Tell me, how are you carrying the main component? What’s your delivery system?
The bullets we’re using now are hazardous for humans to handle and too unpredictable.
How did you get around the toxicity factor? ”
Devon laughed at him, unable to help herself. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. His hands and inspection returned to the wound inside her leg almost absently and she felt them actually shaking.
“I’ve never seen anyone get so excited about a new weapon before, Mr. Nash,” she teased him.
“Liam,” he corrected. Devon sucked in a sharp breath when his probing fingers hit a painful spot. She hoped she hadn’t pulled her hamstring muscle again during the fall. She’d done it once already and it was a damned nuisance as well as painful. Incapacitation irritated the hell out of her.
Then the sadist squeezed her thigh again and she threw her body back against the cushion, her hips lifting reflexively as she moaned long and low.
“Something I can help you with there, Nash?”