“First or last?” Sloan asked.
“I don’t know.” Phillips’s voice cracked. “That’s all he gave me. Just Mercer.”
“What is he?” Sloan asked wanting to know exactly what they were dealing with.
Phillips swallowed, his eyes darting toward the mirrored glass again.
Sloan’s hand clamped onto the arm of the chair, and metal bent beneath his palm. “Look at me.”
Phillips did.
“What is he?” Sloan repeated.
“I don’t know,” Phillips whispered. “Not human.”
Sloan’s jaw tightened as he glared at the piece of shit.
“He came through a private fertility research grant,” Phillips rushed on, as if words alone could keep Sloan from touching him again. “Everything looked legitimate at first. The money. The paperwork. The clinic access. The patient files.”
“My wife,” Sloan growled.
Phillips flinched. “Your wife’s file was already flagged when it came to me.”
“Flagged for what?” Sloan demanded feeling his rage boiling past the point of not return.
“Prior pregnancy. Frozen eggs. Her connection to the VC.” Phillips’s breathing hitched. “And exposure.”
“Exposure?” Sloan went still. “Exposure to what?”
Phillips stared at him, and Sloan saw the panic behind the man’s eyes.
Sloan leaned in until Phillips stopped breathing again. “If you don’t answer me, I will kill you without thought and without answers. We have people who can talk to the dead, and I will be more than happy to bring them here to stand over your fucking corpse.”
Phillips’s lips trembled. “Blood. Your blood.” The words came fast after Sloan’s threat.
The word slid through Sloan like a blade.
He didn’t react. Not outwardly. He gave Phillips nothing because this bastard had already taken enough.
“What did Mercer want?” Sloan asked.
Phillips licked his lips. “A viable conception.”
Sloan’s fangs lengthened, his control thinning by a thread. “A child.”
Phillips nodded fast. “Yes. A child.”
“For what?” Sloan already knew because Daniel had told them, but he wanted to hear it from this piece of shit.
“I don’t really know,” Phillips cried, jerking back when Sloan leaned toward him. “I swear. I heard him talking saying that if the prophecy couldn’t be controlled, then they would create one that could be. I don’t know what any of that means.”
Sloan heard the words, but for one brutal second all he could see was Becky lying on a table under this man’s hands, helpless and unaware. Walking around sick, scared, and blaming her own body while monsters made plans around her.
His hand wrapped around Phillips’s throat again before he could stop himself.
Phillips choked, eyes bulging.
“You listen to me.” Sloan’s voice was nothing more than a growl. “The only reason you are going to live to see another day is because others want to question you. But when that is done you are mine. You understand me?"
