More blinking. “You can’t be serious?”
“My ma is old school.” He shrugged. “She believes a man is incapable of happiness unless he’s under the rule of a wife.”
Her expression was wary, as if she feared he might be playing a cruel game. “I can’t imagine she would ever be desperate enough to think of me as a potential daughter-in-law.”
He reached to sweep his hand over her spiky hair, his touch gentle despite the violent anger that surged through him. Man, he wanted to punch every ignorant jackass who’d made this remarkable female feel she was anything but extraordinary.
Or maybe he’d just shoot them.
Yeah. Shooting them sounded much more satisfying.
“Why wouldn’t she want you?” he demanded. “You’re young, beautiful, and I presume you’re capable of producing the mandatory grandchildren?”
She licked her lips, sending another jolt of heat through his body. Okay. No more thinking of kids. Or how a man went about acquiring them.
“I’m a freak who can see into the minds of the dead,” she said.
He tugged a fiery strand of her hair. “Darling, it’s not exactly a secret. I’ve seen you in action.”
“Mothers don’t invite people like me to Sunday dinner.”
“So you’re special,” he said. “All the better.”
She studied him in puzzlement for a long minute. Then abruptly she narrowed her eyes. “Ah. I know what you’re doing.”
She did?
“I’m glad one of us does,” he muttered.
“You’re trying to distract me from our upcoming meeting with Boggs.”
True. He’d certainly started out trying to tease a smile to those full, delectable lips, but somehow he’d lost track of his goal.
And worse, he knew he wasn’t going to easily dismiss the image of Callie surrounded by his family at his mother’s kitchen table.
A dangerous fantasy.
Far better to concentrate on the simple lust that hummed through his body like a live current.
That was the kind of danger he could handle.
Skimming his fingers over the curve of her ear, he shifted to make sure he was blocking her from sight of anyone entering the garden.
“I have better ways to distract you,” he murmured, lowering his head to nip her bottom lip.
“Really?” she breathed, her hands lifting to grasp his shoulders.
He shuddered at her ready response. “Oh yeah.”
Cupping her face in his hands, he tilted her head to the exact angle for him to claim her mouth in a kiss that was a blatant sexual demand.
They had mere minutes before they would be forced to leave Valhalla. Not nearly long enough to do what he wanted to do with this woman.
But he intended to take advantage of every second.
Slipping his tongue into the silken heat of her mouth, he lost himself in the sweet addiction of Callie Brown.
Chapter Eight
Below the sweeping mansion the rooms weren’t elegantly furnished or designed to impress.
In fact, it looked exactly like a morgue.
Probably because that’s what it was.
The long, open room had white tiled floors and built-in stainless steel freezers along the walls, which filled the air with a soft hum. Overhead the rows of lights blazed as bright as the sun.
And in the very center of the room was a steel gurney where a young female was laid out, her skin as white as the blanket that covered her naked body and her chestnut hair spilling over the edges.
Zak crossed to the gurney, the hem of his gray robe brushing the floor. He peered down at her delicate features, clinically comprehending why a man would make a fool of himself over such a creature although his passions had been purged in the flames of his enemies.
“Ah.” He tilted her face to the side, examining for any defects. “She’s exquisite.”
The man standing beside him shifted in unease.
Tony was exactly what Anya had called him.
A genuine thug.
Short, with a barrel-chest, he was as strong as an ox and about as smart as one. His dark hair was slicked from a square face that had a crooked nose and small, beady eyes.
His personality was as pleasant as a pit bull, but he did have several relatives who always knew someone who knew someone who knew someone—which meant he had a cousin who worked in the police station who was willing to switch off the surveillance tapes long enough for Tony to get in and out without setting off the alarms.
“Whatever you say,” the thug muttered, unconsciously wiping his beefy hands on his jeans.
Not everyone was as comfortable as Zak with the dead.
Strange. The man had reputedly killed over a dozen people, including women and children. How could you be squeamish about death when you were so good at dealing it?
Besides, corpses were far better company than the living.
“You may go,” Zak dismissed.
“Thank god.” The man bolted toward the door.
“Tony,” Zak halted his retreat.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“I don’t need to remind you that it would be extremely unhealthy to discuss anything connected to your job.”
His voice was a gentle whisper, but Tony was suddenly as pale as the dead female. “I swear, my lips are sealed.”
“Go.”
Tony didn’t need to be told twice. Moving with a surprising speed considering his bulk, he disappeared out of the lab and up the stairs.
Dismissing the servant from his mind, Zak continued his inspection of the female. It wasn’t for pleasure. He had to be certain that the coroner hadn’t started his autopsy.
“Are you satisfied?” Anya purred as she entered the lab attired in yet another dress, this one a deep shade of green to contrast with her rich curtain of hair.
Unimpressed, Zak returned his attention to the pretty corpse.
“We retrieved her before any damage could be done.”
“Then you can complete the ritual?”
Assured that the female was still viable to complete her part of his plan, he straightened the blanket and moved to a counter that ran between two of the freezers.
“Are you in a hurry now?” he demanded, washing his slender hands in a sink before drying them on a towel. “Before you were urging me to wait.”
“I haven’t seen any news of her death, but it’s only a matter of time,” Anya snapped. “The risk you took to get the female won’t do us any good if Calso learns that she’s dead.”
He reached beneath the counter to pull out two candles and a shallow bowl made of ivory. From a drawer, he pulled out a large ceremonial knife.
“Some things can’t be hurried.”
“Fine.”
A blessed silence filled the lab (yet another reason to prefer the dead over the living) as he sliced a razor-thin cut in his palm and allowed several drops of blood to fill the bottom of the bowl.
Then, wrapping a linen cloth around his hand to halt the bleeding, he lit the candles and softly chanted the familiar incantation.
Over and over, he repeated the chant, his hands passing over the pool of blood in the bowl.
It wasn’t the words or the candles that mattered.
They were merely the focus to call upon his latent talents.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a cold wind began to swirl through the lab, bringing with it the moist scent of earth and something else.
Something foreign.
He opened himself to the encroaching chill, allowing it to fill his body with a power greater than his own.
He didn’t know when he’d discovered the ability to go beyond glimpsing into the minds of the dead. He’d been too young to be frightened when the power had risen to consume him and yet old enough to realize that he needed to keep it a secret.
Living on a remote estate in Russia, it had been a simple matter to practice his growing skills away from prying eyes. And if he’d been caught once or twice by a serf, well they were easy enough to dispose of.
In time his powers had become more than a source of fascination.
He’d used them to climb his way from a minor nobleman to a favorite among the czar’s court, surrounded by the wealth and luxury his weak, feebleminded father could never have imagined.
Of course, he was no longer a man who would be satisfied by such shallow desires.
His blessings weren’t given to him for pleasure.
They were given to him to rule.
And that’s exactly what he intended to do.
“Bring me the urn,” he said, his body numb from the cold power thundering through him.
“As you command,” the witch grumbled, moving to pull the ceramic urn from the nearest freezer.
“If you wish to act like a child, you may leave.”
She muttered beneath her breath, but she was wise enough to handle the urn with care as she set it on the counter next to him. “Here.”
Zak ignored his petulant companion, reaching into the urn to pull out a frozen heart. He returned to his chanting as he set the delicate organ in the bowl and covered it with his hands.
He ignored the witch, who fidgeted with growing impatience, and even the heavy tread of Tony walking upstairs, no doubt heading to the kitchen to raid the fridge. The man ate on a continuous basis.
Nothing was allowed to distract him from the biting power. Not when it was hammering through him with a growingly painful force.
The ability to wrench a person from the jaws of death wasn’t a gift for the weak. Not like those ridiculous diviners who hid behind the walls of Valhalla and barely scratched the surface of what was possible.
With every second he risked being consumed by the icy darkness that pulsed through him.
He battled with the grim reaper, never certain he would win.
At last the force that churned inside him burst through his hands and arrowed into the heart beneath his palms.
The heart shuddered, the ice abruptly melting as it was filled with a magic as old as time.
Sucking in a deep breath, Zak turned to make his way back to the gurney. He kept his steps steady despite the weariness seeping through his body.
He never revealed weakness.