“Got it.” He checked his watch as he started the engine and pulled into traffic. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“All right.”
Shit. Twenty minutes. Almost no time and also a lifetime.
Chapter 24
Sunday, October 31, 7 a.m.
“Charlotte, wake up!”
Charlotte groaned as the annoying voice got louder and louder. She wanted to swat the voice like a pesky fly, but no matter how much she tried to get away from the noises, they just kept getting louder. All she wanted to do was sleep. But the voice pleaded, cajoled, and demanded that she open her eyes.
Slowly, she pried open her lids. The room was dimly lit and at first glance appeared to be quite barren. “Who’s there?”
“Oh, thank God! You’ve got to open your eyes.”
Charlotte blinked, and her mind cleared a few more degrees. “Sooner?”
“Yes. It’s Sooner.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re in some creepazoid’s basement and he’s going to kill us.”
Her eyes opened wide and full now. Her brain still lingered under a haze but it was improving. “Levi.”
“I don’t know what his name is. I’ve never seen him before.”
“Tall. Blond.”
“He wears a hood, like one of those wizards on television.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s preparing.”
“For what.”
“Shit if I know.” Sooner’s voice cracked with fear. “But I can promise it isn’t good.”
Charlotte tried to sit up and realized her hands and feet were secured to bolts on the floor.
“He keeps calling me Mariah.”
“How would he know about Mariah?”
She sniffed, trying to hold off tears. “He said it is hard to kill witches.”
“He killed Mariah.” Her brain scrambled to get back to the past as her hands twisted to get free of the bindings. “I never saw him before.”
“Eighteen years changes people.”
“Yeah. Sooner, where are you? I’m in a chair. I’m tied.” Charlotte paused. “I hear running water.”
“There’s a big ass tub in the corner. I don’t know what he uses it for.”
“It’s where he drowns his witches.”
When Levi descended the stairs to the underground chamber, he wore only his robe and nothing underneath it. His body hummed with excitement. He’d never before been in the presence of such overwhelming power. Two witches. One was reborn from the dead and the other destined to have been his first kill.
He opened the door and flipped on the lights. Both women tensed and both stared at him.
He met the young one’s gaze head on. “You should have stayed dead.”
The girl stared at him but it was the other one that spoke. “You killed Mariah?”
He faced her. “I did, but as you can see, she came back. I never realized that she was so powerful.”
“Mariah was a young girl, barely seventeen. This girl is Sooner, not Mariah.”
“Don’t be fooled, Charlotte,” Levi said. “She is the reincarnation.” He studied Charlotte. “It makes sense now. You used your power to bring her back. I always knew you were strong, but I didn’t know just how much.”
“She was my mother, you sick son of a bitch!” Sooner yelled.
Levi turned and looked at Sooner. “She wasn’t your mother. You are one and the same.”
Tears welled in Charlotte’s eyes. This was not the way for Sooner to find out the truth. But if they were to die, Sooner deserved the truth now. “Levi, she was born before Mariah died.”
Levi moved toward Sooner and from his pocket pulled a knife. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck. He pressed the tip of the knife to her neck. “I should just kill her now and be done with her.”
Charlotte jerked at her bindings. “Don’t hurt her. She’s a child.”
“She’s no child.”
“She’s my child!” Charlotte screamed.
Sooner’s frantic gaze darted from Levi to Charlotte. “What?”
“Grady lied to you,” Charlotte said to Sooner. The weight of eighteen years pressed hard on her chest. “I’m your mother. Not Mariah.”
“What?”
“I gave birth to you, not Mariah. Grady lied.”
Tears ran down Sooner’s face. “Liar.”
The word scraped over her brain. She had lied. She could have told Sooner the truth immediately. But she hadn’t. Levi pressed the knife against Sooner’s throat.
“You are a coward, Levi.” Charlotte injected venom into her voice. “A spineless coward.”
He pressed the knife into Sooner’s flesh. “Watch what you say!”
Charlotte yanked hard at the ropes around her wrists. “Why, you are a fool! A fucking coward! If you had any balls, you’d be coming after me, not her.”
He lowered the knife from Sooner’s neck. “What?”
“You go after a child when you could take me. Spineless. Pitiful.” She spat at him.
His eyes narrowed. “Bitch.”
Good. Good. Get mad at me. Leave her alone. “You go after helpless women who are alone and vulnerable because you know you can’t handle a ball buster like me.” She coated the words with all the anger that had been building since Grady had contacted her ten days ago.
He crossed the room and grabbed her by the throat. Murder burned in his gaze. He wanted to choke the life from her lungs.
“Take me and leave her,” she gasped.
“Not yet, Charlotte.” He released her and she coughed.
“Why, Levi?” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “What are you waiting for?”
“It’s about Justice. About ridding the world of evil. Something you would not understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I understand?”
“Because you are dedicated to releasing Evil on the world.”
“What evidence do you have?”
“You’re The One that read me all those years ago. When you held my hand, I knew you were destined to be my first. You were the one that would enable me to cross from the light to the dark.”
“But you killed Mariah.”
“I didn’t know there were two of you. The wig and the mask ... I was confused. All these years I thought I’d killed you, and then I saw you at the carnival. And you said you’d worked there. I realized my mistake. And now I am correcting it.”
“How do you
know I’m evil? What if you are wrong again?” She hoped his brain would connect with some shred of logic. “You’re a lawyer. You know we are all entitled to a defense.”
“There is no defense for true evil.” He backed away fearing he’d lash out and kill her. “Did you really think Samantha was innocent?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“She is not innocent.”
“How can you say that?”
“I know. Just as I know you are guilty.”
Rokov and Sinclair arrived at the little home in Manassas, Virginia. It was a one-story white brick home with a neat front yard. The mailbox by the front door was not overflowing with mail and only today’s paper sat on the front step. Levi had been here recently.
The house’s large front window was curtained off with heavy drapes. All the shades on the other windows were drawn. There were no signs of life in the house.
“It looks deserted,” Sinclair said.
Frustration ate Rokov. “Yeah. Let’s have a look around back.”
Guns drawn, they moved around the side of the house through the gate of a chain-link fence. He lifted the latch and carefully opened the gate. It squeaked and groaned. He stepped around a green hose, neatly rolled into a circle, and moved toward a set of three stairs that led to a back door. The drapes on the door’s windows were also drawn.
“There’s no way to look inside,” Rokov said.
“Garrison is working on the warrant. It should be here any minute.”
Time had never carried such weight for Rokov. Minutes even hours didn’t matter in the big scheme, but today both could span the rest of Charlotte’s and Sooner’s lifetime.
Daniel. She’d spoken his name with such urgency. For the first time he’d seen her vulnerable. God, but he did not want to lose her.
He reached for the door handle.
“The warrant will be here soon.”
“I hear something inside. Someone sounds like they’re in trouble.”
Sinclair cocked her head and listened to the silence. “I think you’re right. They sound pretty scared.”
Rokov hesitated one more instant as if to give her the chance to change her mind. They were investigating a prosecutor’s home, and they better damn well be sure they understood the consequences. Rokov understood he would risk all for Charlotte.