He chuckled mockingly, "I won't make the same mistake twice." The trailing finger down her cheek changed to his hand harshly gripping her chin. "Oh, wait... that was the other one who had escaped before, but the sentiment remains the same. I won't let you leave here. You can keep my dear Xianmei company until you serve the purpose I need."

Xianmei... the dead woman to the left of them? The name, it sounded familiar, yet it sat at the edge of her mind just out of reach. In fact, the face of the woman held a sense of familiarity as well. Nastasia couldn't recall where she had heard the name or seen the face, however.

Her distracted thoughts fell back to the deranged man pinning her down as he leaned forward to sniff at her neck. Stiffening at the unwanted contact, she took a shuddering breath to calm herself so that she could deal with the present situation.

"Hmm... you share the same scent as her, but that isn't surprising. In order to use you as she needed, she melded the last vestiges of her being with yours." He rubbed his nose along her flesh, nuzzling her. "The question that needs to be found, however, is what parts were merged?"

The grip that secured her was as unyielding as steel. His sturdy body contained a strength greater than her own. She didn't think it possible to struggle free and escape facing them head-on. Therefore she had to carefully tread and act accordingly until she found the proper moment to flee.

It the meantime, Nastasia decided to understand as much as she could about her current situation. Why had she been brought to this other world that mirrored her own world's past? The voice, this man that pinned her also seemed to be aware of it. In fact, if she was understanding it right, the lilac-haired woman to their left just might be the voice's body.

That mean's, her mind worked quickly, the voice was probably the Xianmei this man spoke of.

"You can speak English, so then, are you also like me? Brought here from another world?" Being that she could speak her native tongue, it was easier to articulate her thoughts. This helped her rather deteriorated situation and made gathering information and understanding the happenings around her much easier.

The answer to this question didn't really matter anymore. It had been something she desperately wished to know, hoping to find, in him, a way back. Now, however, it was obvious that wishing for help from such an obviously bad guy would hardly be the best move. To go back, she needed to accomplish what the voice brought her to this world to do.

The man chuckled lightly as he pulled back slightly from their close proximity. "That girl tried this too. It's too bad, though, as I'm too focused to be led astray by mere words."

"That wasn't my intention. I honestly want to know. If you're from the same world, I thought that maybe you would have or know of a way to get back."

"Darling," though the man's lips were twisted into a harmlessly smiling expression, it evoked a sense of terror in her heart. "To open a gateway to another world requires a person with the ability to manipulate space. The preparations to open such a gate takes an entire human lifetime and, even with so much preparation, one can't guarantee the world the gate will open into.

"You see," he said as his eyes began to glow, "you need a special type of energy in order to use the proper arrays required to set the right coordinates. There's actually an equation I've worked out over the years to..." He trailed off as his smile fell to a frown. Without the smile, the death circulating in his dark inky eyes became all the more prominent. "If that bastard hadn't f***ed my property I would have long realized my dream."

After he mentioned the word "dream," his face fell even more.

Though these words of his revealed a lot and she appreciated them, tucking each detail away, they worried her. Though he didn't say it, Nastasia felt that this man was from the same world as her. His over the top actions a reflection of his desperation to find a way back. She understood his deep desire to once again return home, to see his loved ones. However, there were boundaries that should never be crossed. This man, in his frantic need, became blind to those lines.

While he poured out these words, Nastasia gave half her mind to the story while the other half worked out a plan of escape. Though she didn't know how much of what he spoke was common knowledge to this world, in all the books she's read and the movies she's seen, the bad guy never talked like this if they planned to let the victim go.

Death or enteral imprisonment, between the two she would definitely grab on to the option of escaping. As her mind started losing focus of the things around her to her inner thoughts, she heard the man angrily spit out. "That bastard thief was born with her abilities, it would have been perfect had his blood been partly from me. Instead, he was tainted with a bastard's blood... it's little wonder that he turned out to be a thieving wretch."

"Thief," she murmured as if she wasn't meaning to say it. In reality, she hoped this lightly dropped word would incite this man to elaborate on the thief.

Nastasia wasn't made to be disappointed as he fell into the memory, almost as if he no longer saw the girl he pinned down, to rattle off the things she wanted to know. His grievances fell from his lips as his eyes were misted over from nostalgia. "Yes, thief. That man's blood's expertise lies in taking the things that don't belong to him. After all the efforts I placed into building all of that, just because I left it alone for a few years, they take it for themselves." His voice was incredibly bitter as he complained.

Though it was a far-fetched idea, something in his words clicked inside the thoughts of her brain. Perhaps it had to deal with the voice suddenly demanding she ask this question, but the identity of the thief and the identity of this man had suddenly become a clear certainty in her mind.

After asking this question she wondered if the sudden thought that had risen from it would be proven correct. "Have you ever written a book?"