She didn’t truly believe there would be something just lying around that could destroy a powerful necromancer. That only happened in B-rated movies.
But pulling open the cabinets and rifling through the drawers kept her from giving in to the panic that pounded through her.
What good did it do to agonize over whether Duncan had been hurt? Or worse?
Or to dwell on her hideous fate if she didn’t manage to escape?
She was rummaging through the last drawer when a faint scent of perfume had her whirling around to discover a woman standing in the middle of the room.
“Holy crap,” she muttered.
She hadn’t heard a sound. Not the sound of a door opening or closing. Or the tap of four-inch heels on the tiled floor.
Had she just appeared from thin air?
Unnerved, Callie studied the woman. She was beautiful with her long red hair and emerald green eyes. And expensive. The designer silver Dior gown and the Christian Louboutin shoes cost more than Callie’s entire wardrobe and no doubt had been purchased at the chichi dress salon on the Plaza.
Then her gaze lifted back to the delicate face and her breath was wrenched from her lungs.
The sketch of the Russian mystic she’d seen in the secret monastery vault had been faded, but there was no mistaking the resemblance to this woman.
Which meant she was Lord Zakhar’s accomplice. The witch who was willing to sacrifice children for power.
The female stepped forward, her gaze trained on Callie with a strange fascination.
Not that her fascination was the only thing strange about the woman.
There was something ... off.
Callie couldn’t put her finger on it.
It wasn’t anything tangible.
Just a sensation that the woman was blurred around the edges, as if she were slightly out of focus.
It was weird as hell and only intensified Callie’s terror.
“Hello, Callie,” the female purred, her lips curving in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Callie grimaced. It skeeved her out that the woman knew her name.
“Who are you?”
The woman lifted her brows, as if surprised by the question. “Do you really have to ask?”
Callie frowned, wrapping her arms around her shivering body. Why was it suddenly so cold?
“Have we met?”
“Long, long ago. I’m Anya,” the woman answered, her voice laced with a faint accent. “Your mother.”
Callie stumbled back, painfully smacking a shoulder on a steel cabinet as a shocked horror sliced through her heart.
It was stupid.
She was being held prisoner by a crazed necromancer, she didn’t know if Duncan was alive or dead, and the future of the world might very well be going to hell.
Literally.
But in this moment, nothing was more disturbing than the thought that she might actually be the daughter of this... this woman.
A witch who would make humans ill just for profit. And sacrifice the innocent for power.
It made her stomach turn.
“No.” Callie shook her head in repudiation. “You’re lying.”
“You aren’t blind, Callie. You have to see the resemblance,” Anya ruthlessly pressed, taking a step toward Callie to grasp her chin. “The hair. The lips.” There was a pause as the emerald eyes inspected Callie’s features. “The cheekbones and eyes are your father’s.”
Callie nearly shrieked at the feel of icy fingers against her skin.
It felt so wrong.
Evil.
“Please, don’t touch me,” she rasped.
Anya dropped her hand, but she remained standing way too close. “I’ve thought about you over the years. Wondering what you were like.”
With a sense of idiotic relief, Callie pounced on the outrageous claim. “If you were truly my mother then you would know that I was abandoned in a Dumpster,” she hissed. “If my mother thought about me at all over the years, it would have been with the belief I was dead.”
The woman smiled.
Well, her lips stretched into what Callie assumed was supposed to be a smile.
Christ.
“You think you were intended to die?” she asked.
“That’s the usual reason you toss a baby in the trash.”
“If I wanted you dead, you would be dead,” Anya stated, the sheer lack of apology undermining Callie’s certainty that she couldn’t possibly be her mother.
Wouldn’t the woman be pretending regret if she was trying to convince Callie she was telling the truth?
Oh... god.
Her stomach heaved.
“Then why throw me away?”
“By the time you were born Valhalla had been created and the Mave had sent out word to locate all high-blood babies so they could be tested. The Master of Gifts had far too many spies spread around the world to risk drawing attention to ourselves.” The woman shrugged. “It became obvious the most convenient place to hide you was at Valhalla.”
Convenient?
She’d been tossed into a Dumpster because it was more convenient?
Tears pricked in the back of her eyes.
There were a thousand more important questions that had to be asked. Vital information that might make the difference in halting the necromancer if she managed to escape.
But after a lifetime of claiming she didn’t give a shit who her real parents might be, she was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to know more.
“If I was so much trouble wouldn’t it have made more sense not to have a child at all?”
Something darkened the emerald eyes. Not precisely an emotion. More of an echo of an emotion.
“You were necessary.”
A bad, bad feeling settled in the pit of Callie’s stomach.
“For what?”
The woman’s lips parted, but before she could speak, the door to the lab was thrust open and Callie was face to face with the necromancer.
Her heart stuttered, missing one beat and then two, before kicking back into gear so it could race out of control.
He was just as she remembered from Leah’s mind.
Tall and slender with his silver hair pulled from his bronzed, astonishingly beautiful face and his diamond eyes shimmering with a frigid amusement.
This time, however he was wearing an immaculate black suit instead of the robe. And the power that had been crushing at a distance was off the charts when he was up-close and personal.
He strolled to stand beside Anya, his fingers lifting to stroke down the woman’s unnaturally pale face.
“Ah. I see that you’ve met your mother,” he drawled, his gaze never straying from Callie. “How charming.”
“You,” she breathed.
“Yes... me.” He continued to stroke Anya’s cheek despite the woman’s lack of response. In fact, the minute he’d entered the room Anya had shut down like someone had flicked a switch. She was there, but no one was home. “I suppose I should introduce myself.”
“There’s no need.” Callie shivered, her attention returning to the man who was looking her over with a cold detachment. “You’re Lord Zakhar.” She managed an edge of disdain. Yay, for her. “Russian aristocrat and psychopath.”
“And father.”
Her brief spurt of defiance was demolished by the two simple words.
Father.
A hysterical laugh lodged in her throat, threatening to choke her.
Well, hell.
Of course he was her father.
It wasn’t bad enough that she’d been abandoned in a Dumpster when she was a baby? Or that Boggs had terrified her with vague threats of her future the day she graduated ? Or that her mother was a cold-blooded killer?
Now her father had to be a crazed necromancer who abused the dead and was no doubt plotting some nefarious scheme.
Realizing that she was on the edge of hysteria, Callie grimly tried to concentrate on more important matters. So her parents were raving, homicidal lunatics. She could indulge in a nervous breakdown if she managed to survive.
Sucking in a deep breath, she considered the best way to discover just what her father planned.
With his power, she couldn’t force him.
But there was an unmistakable arrogance chiseled into his beautiful features that suggested he would be eager to brag about his cleverness.
“So why the belated family reunion?” she demanded.
“It was time,” he murmured, a cold smile touching his lips as he glanced toward the woman at his side. “Wasn’t it, dear Anya?”
The witch remained unmoving, her gaze locked on the far wall.
Callie grimaced. “What’s wrong with her?”
The diamond gaze shifted back to Callie. “She recently made the transition to another plane of existence.”
Callie’s breath tangled in her throat. “Is she—”
“Dead? Yes,” he purred. “Magnificent, isn’t she?”
Magnificent?
Callie’s skin crawled as she took in the woman who claimed to be her mother. She looked pale, and still oddly blurred around the edges, but otherwise ... perfect.
There was no way to tell she was a corpse.
“You sick bastard,” she breathed.
Lord Zakhar thinned his lips, as if annoyed by Callie’s response. “You, of all people, should appreciate what I have accomplished,” he berated in chilly tones.
She didn’t have to fake her revulsion.
Everything about this was wrong.
Perverted.
“And what exactly is it you’ve accomplished beyond killing my mother?”
“I’ve opened the gates to the underworld.”
She blinked in genuine confusion. “I don’t understand.”
He ran a tender hand down Anya’s long red hair. “Her body is dead, but her soul remains.”
“Oh—” Callie’s gut twisted with horror. It was one thing to abuse an empty shell of a body, but to imprison a person’s soul... it was monstrous. “God.”
“Yes, I am,” he smoothly claimed, a vast, all-consuming emptiness briefly flaring through the diamond eyes. “A creator who will soon have an entire army of followers who are indestructible and utterly loyal.”
