Born in Blood (The Sentinels)

by Alexandra Ivy

  “I’ll wait with you.”

  There was no point in arguing, even if she’d wanted to.

  Duncan wasn’t going to let her out of his sight until he’d handed her over to Fane.

  Which might have been insulting if she hadn’t accepted that her pride had to take a backseat until the necromancer was found. In her mind she might be a kick-ass Xena warrior, but in reality... yeah, not so much.

  Leaving the apartment, Callie felt a strange chill brush over her skin. Almost as if she’d been touched by death.

  She shivered, hastily looking down the narrow hallway that ended at a heavy fire door. There wasn’t much to see. A few plastic plants in dire need of dusting and a shallow alcove that led to the second apartment.

  So why did she feel as if there was something lurking just out of sight?

  “What is it?” Duncan demanded, his hand on his gun.

  She gave a last glance down the hall before giving a shake of her head. Obviously the nightmare had affected her even more than she’d realized.

  She was jumping at shadows.

  She shook her head. “Nothing”

  Duncan nodded, continuing to lead her out of the building, but his hand remained on his gun.

  She wasn’t the only jumpy one.

  They stepped into the parking lot, briefly blinded by the late afternoon sunlight.

  Callie blinked, scanning the lot for a sign of the heavy vehicle that Fane always preferred.

  A Hummer, a truck, an armored tank.

  When there was nothing beyond the expected minivans and midsize clunkers, she glanced at Duncan in surprise.

  “Not here?” he demanded.

  “No. Strange.” She pulled her phone out, discovering she’d missed Fane’s text. “Oh. He had to wait for the monks to arrange a car. He should be here any minute.”

  “Good.” Without warning Duncan wrapped his arms around her and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “We have time for a little PDA.”

  “PDA?” She tilted back her head with a lift of her brows. “Dare I ask?”

  “Public Display of Affection,” he murmured, his sexy smile suddenly freezing as he glanced over her shoulders. “That guy looks familiar and not in a good way,” he said, in full cop mode as he shoved a key into her hand. “Here. Go back to the apartment and lock the door. I’ll call when Fane gets here.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, catching sight of the barrel-chested man with dark hair slicked from his bluntly carved face. He was half hidden behind a Dumpster, peeking around the edge in a way that had been guaranteed to catch the attention of a wary cop.

  Callie didn’t like it.

  It screamed TRAP.

  “But—”

  “Please, Callie,” Duncan muttered, his voice tense.

  Knowing her companion wasn’t going to back down until he was certain there was no danger to her, Callie heaved a resigned sigh.

  “Fine.” She sent him a warning glare. “But if you let yourself get hurt, I’m not going to be happy.”

  His answer was a gentle push toward the door and Callie heaved a resigned sigh as she reentered the building and headed the short distance to Duncan’s apartment.

  Halting in front of the door, she fumbled trying to fit the key into the lock. She was consumed with the knowledge that Duncan might very well be walking into danger.

  He was a good cop. A great cop. But his obsessive determination to protect her made him vulnerable.

  She didn’t doubt for a second he would put himself in danger if he thought it was necessary.

  Barely capable of concentrating on the simple task of unlocking the door, Callie was oblivious to the shadow that slipped through the doorway at the far end of the hall.

  She had no warning that the trap she’d suspected was about to snap shut.

  Not until a crippling pain exploded in the back of her head and the world went dark.

  Waiting until Callie disappeared into the building, Duncan walked with a commanding purpose across the parking lot, his hand deliberately on his gun. If the lurker was a run-of-the-mill drug dealer he’d take off. They always did when confronted by an authority figure. Duncan could call it in and get back to Callie.

  If it wasn’t... well, he’d dealt with scumbags before.

  And the man hiding behind the Dumpster had all the earmarks of being a class A scumbag.

  Halting with his back to a nearby car so no one could sneak up on him, he studied the blunt features that tugged at a distant memory.

  This man had crossed his path before. Not uncommon. Duncan spent a lot of time on the streets, dealing with a lot of different people. It was rare that he didn’t see someone he’d encountered before. Either a criminal or a victim or just an eyewitness.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded, not bothering to flash his badge. No need to make it official.

  Yet.

  “Tony,” the man muttered, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow.

  Nerves? Guilt? Something worse? Only one way to find out.

  “You have a reason for lurking in my parking lot, Tony?”

  Tony licked thick lips, glancing toward the apartment building. “I wasn’t lurking. I was—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Me?” He frowned. “Why?”

  “You’re a cop, right?”

  “I am.”

  “I have information for you.”

  Duncan remained wary. In his experience confidential informants didn’t hide in parking lots waiting for a cop to appear.

  And how the hell had he known where he lived?

  Duncan covertly tightened his grip on his gun. “What kind of information?”

  “I heard you’re looking for a necro.”

  Duncan sucked in a sharp breath. “How did you know that?”

  The man once again glanced toward the apartment building. As if looking for something.

  Or someone.

  “Word gets around.”

  No. Word didn’t get around. Not to low-level criminals.

  Cold spikes of suspicion pierced his heart.

  This wasn’t right.

  “Okay.” He angled his body so he could keep watch on the apartment building as he began to back away, his inner alarms screeching a belated warning. “Meet me at the police station in half an hour and we’ll talk.”

  “No.” With an unexpected lunge, Tony grabbed Duncan’s arm. “Wait.”

  Duncan pulled his gun, pointing it between the bastard’s eyes. “Let go of me.”

  Tony’s dark eyes widened with fear, but he tenaciously held on. “I have to tell you now.”

  There was a distracting flare of light as the sun reflected off the glass door of the apartment building. Turning his head, Duncan watched as it was shoved open and his heart came to a brutal halt.

  Callie.

  Stunned, his attention turned to the man who was carrying her limp body in the opposite direction.

  Was that...

  “Frank,” he muttered in confusion, the world moving in slow motion as he watched his longtime friend carrying Callie toward a car parked next to his own.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Okay, Frank might have said some stupid things in a misguided need to protect Duncan, but he was a man of honor. He would never hurt an unarmed female just because he didn’t like high-bloods.

  Never.

  So what the hell was going on?

  His sluggish brain struggled for a reasonable explanation.

  Had Frank found Callie collapsed and was hurrying her to the hospital?

  Had he realized Callie was in danger and was trying to protect her?

  Had he...

  His eyes narrowed as Frank walked directly in front of a car entering the parking lot, his head never turning even when the driver gave a blast of his horn.

  “What the hell—?” Duncan breathed, a savage fear ripping through his heart. In that minute he realized there was more wrong with his fr
iend than just his weird behavior. His aura was distorted.

  As if the spark of life that danced around him in swirls of color had been sucked dry to leave behind an empty soul.

  He was... a walking cadaver. There was no other explanation. “Shit.” Yanking his arm free from Tony’s grasp, he charged across the parking lot, bellowing at the top of his lungs. “Callie.”

  Focused on reaching Frank before he could put Callie in the car and disappear, Duncan dismissed Tony from his thoughts. The thug had clearly been nothing more than a distraction. He would deal with him once Callie was safe.

  But with a speed that was shocking for a man with his bulk, Tony bulldozed into Duncan from behind, knocking him to the ground.

  “Goddammit,” Duncan growled, swinging his arm backward to hit Tony in the side of his head with the butt of his gun.

  The man cursed, but grimly held on, his harsh grunts filling the air.

  “It’s too late,” he panted. “It’s too late for all of us.”

  Struggling to dislodge the man, Duncan managed to swivel around far enough to point the gun between his eyes.

  “Let me go or I’ll blow your brains out.”

  The man laughed.

  Actually laughed.

  “Go ahead. It will be a relief to the fate waiting for me.”

  Fuck.

  There was nothing worse than a perp with a death wish.

  Especially when that perp had information he might need.

  Hissing with frustration, he resisted the desire to squeeze the trigger and instead pulled back to whack him again with the butt of the gun.

  There was a dull crack as Tony’s skull fractured and a gash appeared in the middle of his forehead, but insanely he continued to hold on.

  Duncan growled in frustration. Enough. He was done screwing around.

  Pressing his finger on the trigger, he was a breath from shooting Tony when his dark eyes crossed and the buffoon at last slumped to the side.

  With a groan Duncan heaved the dead weight off him and surged to his feet.

  His gaze desperately scanned the parking lot, terror gripping his heart as he caught sight of a silver car with Frank behind the wheel hurtling in his direction.

  Callie...

  She had to be in the car.

  Raising his gun, he fired directly at the windshield, holding his ground even as the car picked up speed, clearly determined to run him over.

  No. Christ, no.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Emptying his gun, he cursed as he realized the bullets were worthless against Frank. It was as if his corpse simply absorbed the damage and reformed.

  Tossing aside the weapon, Duncan braced himself. He would jump onto the hood of the car and crawl through the shattered windshield.

  Almost as if sensing Duncan’s intention, Frank swerved at the last minute, taking the car out of reach.

  “Shit.”

  With a superhuman effort, Duncan lunged toward the car, his fingertips grasping the handle of the back door. Desperately he tried to keep pace as he wrenched on the handle, his shoulder twisting out of joint when Frank whipped the car sharply to the left.

  The momentum of the car yanked him off his feet and he lost his grip on the handle as he went flying backward. Still airborne, he clipped his temple on the back bumper, gouging a deep wound before he was flung to the pavement.

  Roaring in pained fury, he forced himself to his knees, not even noticing the body of Tony lying just feet away. Not until a sluggish stream of blood ran down the pavement to pool directly in front of him.

  Oh... hell.

  Frank hadn’t been swerving to avoid Duncan.

  He’d been running over the unconscious Tony.

  Leave no accomplice behind ... That was obviously the motto of the unknown necro.

  At least not one who could talk.

  And this one most certainly wouldn’t be talking.

  With a shudder, Duncan studied the mutilated body. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that Tony was dead. Not only had the front tires crushed his chest, but the back tires had nearly decapitated him.

  Any information they could have got about where Frank was taking Callie or even the plans of the necromancer was gone.

  The inane thoughts whizzed through his head even as he stumbled to his feet, running toward the curb.

  Too late, too late, too late ...

  The damning words were playing through his mind as a heavy black truck screeched to a halt in front of him and Fane was shoving open the door.

  “Where’s Callie?” he growled.

  The world was spinning in a funny way, but Duncan grimly struggled to answer. “They have her,” he managed to rasp, wondering why the side of his face felt damp.

  It hadn’t started to rain when he wasn’t paying attention, had it?

  Lifting his hand, he touched the warm stickiness, pulling his fingers back to reveal them coated in red.

  Not rain. Blood.

  Then it came to him.

  Oh yeah.

  Head vs. Bumper.

  Head loses.

  That was his last semicoherent thought before collapsing in Fane’s arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Callie cautiously opened her eyes and glanced around.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected.

  A crypt? A dungeon? A spooky castle complete with Renfield?

  Instead she discovered she was in a high-tech lab.

  Somehow, the sight wasn’t remotely reassuring.

  With all the gleaming metal and clinical white it made her think of a morgue for a creepy modern day Frankenstein.

  Climbing off the stainless steel gurney she’d been lying on, Callie forced herself to take slow steady breaths as her gaze skimmed around the large room.

  Steel cabinets. A long counter with a sink. White tiled floor and a high ceiling with fluorescent lights. Along the far wall were a line of walk-in coolers that she had no intention of investigating.

  No windows.

  One door that she swiftly discovered was locked.

  Which severely limited her avenues of escape.

  Accepting she was stuck for now, Callie turned her search to finding a weapon.

  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.

&nbs
p; 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.