Well, she didn’t know what happened after that, but she was about to find out.
Aiming directly at the bond, Callie slid into the darkness, losing her touch with her physical body.
It felt oddly familiar.
Cool, peaceful.
The temptation of death.
Then, at last through the surface of the bond, she found the darkness separating.
She didn’t know what she expected.
The faces of the warriors. Or maybe her father. Or even the doorway to the underworld.
Instead it was the golden chalice that hovered directly before her eyes.
Of course.
The power didn’t flow from her father.
It came from her.
Her blood.
Her life force.
She only needed to reach out and grasp it.
Not allowing herself time to consider the pertinent fact she’d never used her powers to do anything but search the memories of the dead, she focused on the blood pooled in the bottom of the goblet.
At first she felt nothing.
She could sense the power, but she had no way to know how to gain command of it.
Tentatively reaching out with her power, she brushed it over the chalice. The breath rushed from her lungs as she touched the minds of the warriors.
There was a startled curse from Lord Zakhar as he belatedly sensed her intrusion.
“What are you doing?” he snarled, grasping her shoulders in a grip that threatened to crush her bones.
Callie smiled through the pain as she opened her eyes and whispered one word.
“Stop.”
Duncan didn’t need to be a trained soldier to know the battle wasn’t going well.
His first clue came when he’d pumped his entire clip of bullets into the nearest intruder and the warrior barely flinched.
Not good.
Not good at all.
Traditional weapons were obviously worthless against zombies.
Time to think outside the box.
Ducking to avoid the arrow that whizzed past his face, he darted to the side to grab the heavy chain that was coiled in the back of the jeep they’d taken to the edge of the large meadow.
He couldn’t kill the zombies, but he might be able to slow one or two of them down long enough for Fane to track down the necromancer.
He grimaced at the memory of his short but violent argument with the guardian Sentinel.
Duncan had claimed it was his right to go in search of Callie and kill the bastard who’d kidnapped her. Fane, however, had kindly pointed out that he was by far the superior tracker, not to mention he’d been trained for over a century by the most fearsome warriors ever born.
And oh yeah, he was impervious to magic.
Duncan might have continued the argument—he was nothing if not obstinate—but Fane had simply melted into the darkness and disappeared.
Jackass.
Now Duncan was forced to hold back the encroaching zombies and pray that Fane was as good as he thought he was.
Another arrow flew past his face, and with an infuriated roar, Duncan whirled the chain like a lasso, watching it wrap around the nearest zombie’s legs.
The creature fell to the ground and a slender female witch darted forward, chanting a spell that bound the creature in a shimmering dome of magic.
It wouldn’t last.
But it did take one warrior out of the fight for a few minutes.
Duncan turned his attention to Wolfe, who was swinging a massive sword at a Sentinel who held a battle ax.
The Tagos was surprisingly skilled in wielding the heavy weapon, striking blow after blow before dancing away to avoid the swinging ax. But no matter how skilled he might be, there was no way to win against an opponent who couldn’t be killed. With every passing second Wolfe was losing ground.
Further away the gathered Sentinels engaged in similar fights with the zombies, grimly struggling to keep the monsters at bay.
Pausing long enough to grab another chain from the jeep, Duncan sprinted forward. Behind him he could feel the witch following, clearly trained in battle tactics.
Good girl.
Halting a few feet from the zombie who fought against Wolfe, Duncan was preparing to throw the chain at the creature’s legs when there was an odd sizzle in the air.
And then... the zombies abruptly froze.
Just like that.
One minute they were silently slicing and dicing their way through the line of Sentinels, and the next they were standing like mannequins, their gazes blank, as if they’d been switched off.
Cautiously lowering his sword, Wolfe circled the unmoving zombie who still held his ax midair.
“What the hell?” the Tagos muttered.
“Callie,” Duncan breathed, dropping the chain as he pressed a hand to his heart.
Wolfe scowled, a shallow cut marring his cheek and a deeper slice dripping blood down his neck.
“She did this?”
Duncan gave a slow nod. He had no explanation, but he could catch Callie’s scent mingled among the warriors. As if they were somehow connected to her.
“It has to be her,” he muttered, hissing as he realized the sense of her deep in his heart was fading. “Dammit, we have to find her. Now.”
On cue, there was a sharp whistle.
Fane.
Wolfe raised his hand, motioning to the Sentinels, who were staring at the frozen zombies in wary horror. “This way.”
They jogged across the grass, entering a small clump of trees that circled a gray stone building that was nearly hidden beneath a layer of ivy.
It had to be the opening to the lower crypts, Duncan inanely acknowledged, and where the now frozen warriors had come from.
The thought had barely flickered along the edge of his mind when he caught sight of Fane, who had his hands wrapped around the neck of the tall man with silver hair and diamond eyes.
The necromancer.
A red haze filled Duncan’s mind.
It was the same haze that had risen when he’d been fourteen and he’d seen the high-school quarterback slap his sister when she wouldn’t let him stick his hand down her shirt.
At the time Duncan had barely been over five-foot-five and weighed less than a buck thirty, but he’d launched himself on the quarterback and managed to break the bastard’s nose and knocked out three teeth before he was pulled off.
Now he was impervious to the biting chill in the air, or the fact that Fane was turning a dangerous shade of blue as the necromancer’s eyes flared with a blinding light.
All he knew was that he at last had the chance to kill the man who’d taken away the woman he loved.
Charging forward, he was mere steps away when his rage was shaken by a faint scent of blood.
Shit.
Jerking to the side, he frantically searched the darkness. Callie was near.
And injured.
Any male need to personally get his hands on the necromancer was forgotten as he circled a tree to discover Callie curled on the ground, a golden chalice lying at her side.
Oh... Christ.
The entire world halted as he took in her pale, pale face and the blood dripping down her arms.
She looked like a broken, exotic flower that had been tossed aside by a careless hand.
Then, her lips parted on a soft sigh and Duncan’s heart remembered how to beat.
“Callie,” he groaned, preparing to drop to his knees at her side.
It was only the shout of warning from Wolfe that allowed him to jump to the side in enough time to avoid the nasty bolt of magic that slammed into the tree with enough force to split it in two.
Whirling around, he spotted the crimson-haired woman who was stalking toward him with obvious intent.
The witch.
And not just a witch, he realized, seeing her aura was a black swirl of death.
But a zombie witch.
Just fucking perfect.
The female raised her hand again, preparing to launch yet another offensive spell, but even as Duncan braced himself for the attack, Wolfe was stepping behind her, shoving his large sword through her back and out through her chest.
Duncan grimaced.
He’d seen some gory things in his time, but watching Wolfe lift the skewered witch off the ground made his stomach heave. It didn’t help when the Sentinel walked forward and then, with a mighty thrust of his arm, had the woman pinned to a nearby tree.
The witch struggled, but for the moment she was effectively trapped.
Moving back to Callie, Duncan lowered himself to his knees, carefully slipping his arms beneath her limp body to pull her onto his lap.
He needed to feel her against him.
The beat of her heart against his chest, the brush of her breath against his cheek.
Then, wrapping his arms carefully around her fragile form, he lifted his head to watch Fane in action.
Oddly, he hadn’t doubted for a second that the warrior would be able to kill the necromancer.
It didn’t matter that Lord Zakhar had managed to live for centuries. Or that he had the skill to screw with the dead. Or even that his power was filling the air with a chill that would soon become unbearable.
Fane had prepared for this moment since he’d become Callie’s guardian. And nothing, not even the hordes from the underworld, were going to stop him.
“Callie, stay with me, sweetheart,” he murmured, stroking a hand down her back as he watched Fane slowly, ruthlessly squeeze the life from the necromancer. “Stay with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was supposed to be over.
The bad guy was dead.
Not only dead, but hacked into itty bitty pieces and set on fire, just in case he tried to come back.
But after Fane spread the bastard’s ashes, Callie didn’t so much as stir in Duncan’s arms.
Whatever was wrong with her hadn’t been solved by the necromancer’s death.
Instead she continued to grow weaker.
Rushing her back to Valhalla, they were now in the high-tech wing that served as a hospital for high-bloods with a dozen healers doing their frantic best to keep her alive.
Duncan sat on the edge of the bed where Callie was lying beneath a thin sheet, her arms heavily bandaged and an IV attached to the back of her arm, replacing the blood that she continued to lose.
Fane paced the floor, his skin still faintly blue and his hands marred by frostbite.
Wolfe had come and gone, telling them that the zombie warriors remained in their statuelike state and that the witch had been locked in the crypts to keep her contained.