Blood of the Sorceress (29 page)

Epilogue

“A
nything interesting happen while I was gone?” Selma asked, after hugging them one by one and confiscating Ellie from her adoring daddy, right there by the baggage carousel.

“More than you even want to know,” Lilia told her. “But as you can see—” she gazed up at her beloved, who was holding her hand “—it all worked out perfectly.”

“Wait till I tell you, Mom. You won’t even believe it.” Magdalena picked up Selma’s carry-on, which was bursting at the seams.

“Hmph, and I missed it all. Still, I brought back a few surprises of my own.”

“Souvenirs, right? Is that why this bag is so heavy?”

Ryan got the hint and took it from her.

“Well, yeah, that, and... Lena, remember those storybooks you used to write all the time about your past-life adventures?
Lena and the Prince and the Evil Bad Guy, Lena and the Prince and the Little Slave Girl,
and all the rest?”

“Of course I remember. We read them to Ellie every night.”

“Well...it’s such kismet, I can’t even tell you. My seatmate on the place was this lovely woman, a children’s book editor, and we got to talking, and she’d really like to see your stories.”

Lena sighed. “We’ve talked abut this before, Mom. Those stories aren’t for public consumption, and besides, I was eight. How good can they be?”

“I know, I know, I just want you to meet her. I have a feeling about this. I just...” She turned to look at the other passengers, and then she spotted someone and waved. “There she is.”

The woman, an olive-skinned brunette, came rushing forward, accompanied by her husband, who wore a military uniform. But her eyes were not on Selma. They were on the sisters, and they were oddly intense. As she reached them, she said, “You must be Lilia. I’d know you anywhere.” And then her gaze shifted. “And you’re Magdalena, and you’re Indira. I can hardly believe it.” Then a big tear slipped slowly from her eye and down her cheek.

The sisters looked at their mother and then at each other. Selma shrugged, as baffled as they were.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I’ve just...waited so long. And you’re finally here. You’re really here.”

“I’m just...confused,” Magdalena said softly. “Do we know each other?”

The woman nodded and looked to Indira, who shrugged. “I’m so sorry. I don’t remember you.”

Lilia moved closer, though. She stared deeply into the woman’s eyes, and then she smiled. “Yes, you do. You just don’t remember her being older than us. She was younger then. Slave girl to the slave girls.”

“Amarrah?” her sisters both shouted at once. “Oh, my Goddess, it is! It’s Amarrah!” The women hugged and bounced and danced and laughed.

When they finally parted, Amarrah introduced them to her husband, Captain Harry Brockson, U.S. Army. Lena invited them to follow them back to Havenwood for dinner, and they accepted with a smile.

* * *

The joyous celebration lasted long into the night. But eventually Amarrah and her husband were on their way. Indira and Tomas returned to their cabin, Bahru to his cottage, and everyone else took to their beds, leaving Lilia and Demetrius alone in front of the fireplace. He was lying on the sofa, staring at the flames—when he could take his eyes off her, at least. She was stretched out on top of him, her head resting on his magnificent chest, listening to the steady pulsing beat of his heat.

“We need to get a place of our own,” he said softly, and she loved the way the words vibrated beneath her head. “But first we have to figure out how to make a decent living. I have no skills to offer.”

“Oh, I beg to differ.” She turned to kiss his neck just underneath his chin, and he laughed with her. But then she grew serious. “Maybe we should sell the chalice and the blade. They’re worth a small fortune.”

“We could do that.” He shrugged. “Or not. It doesn’t matter. As long as we’re together, it doesn’t matter at all.”

“I know. I could live in a tent and be happy with you, Demetrius.” She shifted so that she could kiss his mouth. It grew from playful to passionate in a matter of seconds, and when he trailed his hand up and down her spine, over the tender skin of her lower back, where the tattoo had been, she shivered.

The mark had vanished, as it had from her sisters’ backs. They’d discovered it on Beltane night, when they’d been celebrating their victory.

He kissed her more deeply and pulled her blouse up over her head. She sat up and looked quickly at the stairs. “Someone could come down,” she whispered.

“Then let’s sneak up to the guest room.” He lifted her off him and set her on the floor. Holding her blouse in front of her, just in case, Lilia started up the stairs. She got halfway before she sensed he was no longer behind her, and stopped to turn and gaze back at him.

His eyes were stunned.

“My love, what is it?”

“The mark on your back...it’s there again.”

Her frown was fast and hard. “It... What?” She twisted her head, trying to see, but she couldn’t. While she was still making the effort to see for herself, Magdalena’s bedroom door burst open and her sister stood there wide-eyed.

“Look at this!” Lena said, turning to showing her back to Lilia.

“Me, too!” Lilia cried, showing her own back. Seconds later the front door flew open and Indy was standing there, staring from one of them to the other.

“You, too, huh?” Indy asked, and, turning, she pulled up the back of her shirt to reveal the mark of the witch.

“Maybe we’d better not get rid of the chalice and blade just yet,” Demetrius said.

“But what can this mean?” Lilia asked softly.

Her sisters shook their heads slowly, neither of them having any clue at all.

“I guess time will tell,” Indy said, and she went back to her waiting husband.

“I guess it will,” Lena said, and went back into the room she shared with her husband.

Lilia and Demetrius walked in silence into the guest room they would occupy until they found their own place. Inside, Lilia turned to him, running her hands up and down his powerful arms, gazing up into his dark eyes. “What do
you
think it means?” she asked softly.

“I think the Gods only grant special powers when they are needed,” he told her softly. “If this means, as I think it does, that our powers have been returned to us, then it must be because they are needed. Somehow. Somewhere. As your sisters so aptly put it, time will tell.” He pulled her close, holding her against him and rocking her in his arms. “I hate to think of you having to go through any more battles like this last one, though.”

“Small price to pay for the bliss of having you back in my arms, my love.”

“I feel the same,” he told her. “If the Gods demand our service in return, then I’ll gladly do whatever they ask.”

“As long as we’re together, Demetrius. As long as we’re together, I honestly believe we can do anything.”

“We’ve already proven it. You have, anyway.” He cupped her head in one big hand and tipped it slowly back so he could gaze down into her eyes. “You’re an amazing woman, Lilia. Have I thanked you yet for saving me from the abyss?”

“Once or twice,” she said. “But you can thank me again if you want.”

“Thank you.”

She smiled slowly. “Actions speak louder than words, Demetrius.”

His soft laugh was like music to her ears as, bending over her, he kissed her as if there were no tomorrow. Even though she knew there was. There would be many tomorrows. And they would be together for every single one of them.

Finally.

* * * * *

Keep Reading for an excerpt from
Twilight Fulfilled
by
Maggie Shayne

Don’t miss the first two titles in the
Portal series by New York Times bestselling author Maggie Shayne.

Legacy of the Witch

Mark of the Witch

“Maggie Shayne has a talent for taking characters born in
fantasy and making them come alive.”
—
RT Book
Reviews

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1

Coastal Maine

I
t was the blackest, rainiest night the forgotten and overgrown cemetery had seen in centuries. Ancient tombstones leaned drunkenly beneath the bones of dead-looking trees, while gnarled limbs shivered in the cold. Arthritic twig-fingers scratched the tallest of the old stone monuments like old, yellow fingernails on slate. And the surviving vampires huddled together around an open, muddy grave.

Brigit Poe, part vampire, part human, and one of the only two of her kind, was dressed for battle, not for a funeral. It was only coincidence that she wore entirely black. That breathable second-skin fabric favored by runners covered her body from ankles to waist like a surgical glove. Over the leggings, she wore tall black boots, with buckles all the way up to her knees. The chunky four-inch heels provided extra height, an advantage in battle. And the weight of them would add more potency to a kick. Her black slicker looked as if she’d lifted it straight from the back of a cowboy actor in an old spaghetti western. It was long and heavy, with a caped back, but it did more than keep the rain away. Its dense fabric would help deflect a blade.

She could have wished for a hood. She could have wished for a lot of things, topmost among them: for the task she faced to fall to anyone other than her. But that wasn’t going to happen.

As she stood there, watching each vampire move forward to pour ashes into the muddy hole, her twin brother walked up to her and plunked a black cowboy hat onto her dripping-wet blond curls. She had, she’d been told, hair like Goldilocks, the face of an angel, the heart of a demon—and the power of Satan himself.

Black hat, she thought. It figured. In that spaghetti Western she’d been envisioning, she definitely would have worn a black hat. Her brother would have worn a white one. He was the good guy. The hero.

Not her.

“It’s not going to be easy,” he told her. “Hunting him down. Killing him.”

“No shit. He’s five thousand years old and more powerful than any of us.”

“Not exactly what I meant, sis.” James—known to her as J.W. despite his constant protests—looked her dead in the eyes. She pretended not to know what he was looking for, even though she did. Decency. Morality. Some sign that she was struggling with the ethics of the decision that had been made— that she must find and execute the ancient one who had started the vampire race.

Only days earlier, her brother had located and resurrected the first immortal, the ancient Sumerian king known as “the Flood Survivor.” He was the original Noah, from a tale far older than the Biblical version. His name was Ziasudra in Sumerian, Utanapishtim in Babylonian.

A prophecy, the same prophecy that had foretold the war now raging between vampires and the humans who had finally learned of their existence, had also said that the Ancient One, the first immortal, the man from whom the entire vampire race had descended, was their only hope of survival.

Or at least, that was what they had thought it said. Turned out, their ancestor was actually the means of their destruction. Still believing the Ancient One was their salvation, J.W. had used his healing power to raise Utana from the ashes. And the man had returned to life with his mind corrupted by thousands of years spent trapped, conscious, his soul bound to his ashes.

Believing he’d been cursed by the gods for sharing his gift of immortality and inadvertently creating the vampire race, he’d set out to destroy them all. One look beaming from his eyes, and they were annihilated. He’d killed many vampires already.

Human vigilantes had killed even more.

The end of their kind, it seemed, was at hand.

Unless
she
could stop Utana from his self-appointed mission.

“What I meant,” her brother went on, “was that killing someone who can’t truly die, knowing that all you’re really doing is sentencing him to spend eternity, virtually buried alive—”

“Are you trying to tweak my conscience, J.W.?” she asked, irritated. “It won’t work. I don’t have one. Never have. That bastard’s killed hundreds of my kind. Our kind. I’ve got no problem taking him out before he can eliminate the rest of us. No problem whatsoever.”

Someone cleared his throat, and she looked toward the open grave again. Thirteen survivors of the recent annihilation had scooped up the dust of their beloved dead and brought the remains here, to this abandoned and long-forgotten cemetery in the wilds of Maine.

Those gathered included ten vampires: Eric and Tamara, Rhiannon and Roland, Jameson and Angelica, Edge and Amber Lily, Sarafina and the newly turned Lucy. In addition, there was Sarafina’s mortal mate, Willem Stone, and the mongrel twins, Brigit herself and her brother, J.W. The supposed only hope for the dark half of their family.

Rhiannon, their unofficial aunt, her long, slit-to-the-thigh gown dragging in the mud at her uncharacteristically bare feet, poured the final jar of ashes into the hole, threw the jar in after them, then tipped her head back and opened her arms to the skies. The rain poured down on the pale skin of her breasts, almost completely exposed by the plunging neckline of her bloodred gown. Her long black hair hung in wet straggles, and her eyeliner was running down her cheeks, mixed with rainwater and tears. She was not herself.

“I know you can hear me, my friends. My family.” Her voice broke, but Roland moved up behind her and placed his strong hands on her bare shoulders. Then slowly, he slid them outward, following the length of her arms upward, his black cloak opening with the motion, sheltering her from the rain. He clasped her hands in his, his arms open to the skies just as hers were.

It was a beautiful image. And heartbreaking at the same time.

“I know you can hear me,” Rhiannon said again. “And I trust you’ve found that we, too, enter paradise when we leave this life. We, too, are worthy of heaven. We have souls—souls that feel, that love, that live, a thousand times more powerfully than those of the mortals who call us soulless monsters.” She closed her eyes, drew a breath. “Be well, there in the light, my beloved ones. Be well, and fear not. For those you’ve left behind will survive.” She opened her eyes, and they were cold and dark, more frightening than ever, ringed as they were in black. “And I swear by Isis Herself, you will be avenged.”

She lowered her arms slowly, but Roland still held them, and he wrapped them around her waist, enfolding her in his cloak and in his arms as if they were one.

“It is done, my love. Come, we need to brief our little warrior before we send her off into battle.”

Rhiannon turned, meeting Brigit’s eyes, holding them. There was so much there, Brigit thought, staring at her mentor, the woman she most admired, most wanted to be like and whose approval she most craved. And truly, had never been without. There was love in those dark-ringed eyes. Love and grief and fear. A lot of fear.

Fear in Rhiannon’s eyes was something so unusual that it shook Brigit right to the core.

J.W. tightened his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, little sister.”

“Easy for you to say. Your job was to raise our living dead forebear. I’m the one who has to deal with him now that he’s up and rampaging.”

“Come,” Eric said. “Let’s return to the mansion. It’s unsafe to be out in the open for long, even here.”

One by one, and two by two, they filed out of the cemetery together, taking a soggy path that wound from the old graveyard along a narrow and twisting course to the towering structure that sat alone on the rocky, seaside cliff. The ocean was as restless tonight as the skies, as the vampires and their kin made their way higher. Winds buffeted them, howling and crying as if they, too, mourned the loss of so many.

Brigit walked alone. Normally she and J.W. would have been a pair, side by side, the only two of their kind and yet opposites in every way. But now he had his mate, the beautiful, brilliant Lucy, a vampire now. And Brigit was...she was alone, and facing the biggest challenge of her entire existence. A challenge she didn’t want and wasn’t sure she could handle.

And yet, she was all but on her way. Her bag was packed and waiting at the mansion. She’d been waiting only for the funeral rites to conclude.

Up ahead, Rhiannon, in the lead—where else?—reached the mansion’s door and stood, holding it open while the others entered the crumbling ruin.

Brigit was last in line, and as she passed, Rhiannon put a hand on her forearm. “We’ll have a talk before you leave,” she said softly. “Wait in the library.”

Great, Brigit thought. One more delay, and it was as inevitable as it would be unpleasant. The elders must want to brief her before she left on what was undoubtedly a suicide mission. Just what she needed. A lecture before dying.

Downtown Bangor, Maine

The oldest being on the planet, the first immortal, the original Noah, stood trembling on a village sidewalk in the pouring rain. He wore a dripping wet bed sheet, wrapped in the old style around his body, covering one shoulder. He’d arrogantly refused to don the clothing that had been offered him when he’d first been resurrected. The type of clothing that he now realized was necessary if he hoped to become invisible among mankind in this strange new age. People looked askance at him, ordinary humans, mortals, dashing past him from their speeding mechanical conveyances to the small and poorly designed buildings that lined the streets. In and out they ran, as if the rain would melt them. Up and down the streets they rolled in those machines.
Automobiles. Cars,
he’d heard them called.

He wanted to know how they worked. But later. First he wanted to become invisible. He would prefer dead, but death wasn’t an option for him right now.

Right now he had very few options, in fact. But he did have needs, and the immediate ones were urgent enough to distract him from the problem of attracting too much attention. That would come after his initial needs were met. He needed warmth, shelter from the ice-cold, unforgiving rain. So much rain.

It would have been a blessing in his time—unless it went on too long. He wondered briefly whether this rain was normal in today’s civilization, or whether the gods, the Anunaki, had yet again decreed that mankind must be brought to its knees.

Utana shook off the shiver of apprehension that thought induced and tried once again to keep his focus on his immediate requirements. He needed food, lots of it. His belly was rumbling, twisting and gnawing at him, demanding sustenance. And water—he needed sweet water to drink. Those things were first. The rest could wait. The garments to help him blend in with the mundane commoners as thick on this land as fleas upon a desert dog, the knowledge he so craved and must acquire in order to make his way in this world, the mission he must accomplish in order to extract forgiveness from the gods—all of those things could come later.

Food. Water. Shelter.

Those first.

And so he looked at the buildings he passed—red brick or wood, no beauty nor art to them, with wide openings in the walls that appeared to be empty but, he had learned, were not. In the rain it was easier to see the droplets on the hard, transparent walls. When dry, the things—windows, they called them, made of a substance known as glass—were nearly invisible.

And yet, not quite.

He moved closer to one of the windows, drawn by the smell of food, only to pause as he stared at the image he saw there. The image of a man, wearing exactly what he wore and moving exactly as he moved. Clearly a reflection, he thought, lifting his hand, watching as the image did the same. Much like what one would see when looking into still water.

He tipped his head slightly and studied his image in the glass. It was no wonder, he thought, that the mortals were disturbed by him. He looked menacing. Wild. Standing in the rain, letting it pour down upon him, while they all raced for cover. He allowed it to soak his hair, his garment, his skin. And he was bigger than most of them, too. Taller, broader. He sported several days’ growth of beard upon his face. Dark it was, and dense, and he noticed that most of the people he encountered kept their faces shaved to the skin. A few had allowed their beards to grow, but they were trimmed carefully, tame and neat.

He pushed a hand through his long, onyx-black hair, shoving the dripping locks backward. And then he returned his attention to the window, and to the people he could see beyond it. They sat at tables, enjoying bountiful food that was brought to them by smiling servants who seemed content with their lot.

Finally something that made sense to him.

He watched for a while before going to the door through which others came and went. As he started to push the door open, a man appeared and stood blocking it. Skinny, but tall enough, and smiling even though his eyes showed fear.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re full tonight. Do you have a reservation?”

Utana looked from the man’s head to his shoes, and up again. “I know not...reservation,” he said. “I wish food.”

“Well, um, right. But as I said, we’re full tonight.” He lifted a hand, a helpless gesture. “No room.”

“Bring food here, then. I wait.” Utana crossed his arms over his chest.

“Um, right. From out of town, are you?”

Utana only grunted at the man, no longer interested in conversing with him. Silence would best convey that the discussion was over.

“Yes, I see. Well, the thing is, it doesn’t quite work that way here. I do have a suggestion for you, however.”

“I know not suggestion. Bring food. I wait.”

“Why don’t you try the soup kitchen? Methodist church at the end of the road. See? You can see the steeple from here.”

He was pointing while he babbled, and Utana only managed to understand a word here and there. He was learning the language rapidly, but interpreting the words spoken in the rapid-fire way of the people here was still difficult. He followed the man’s pointed finger and saw the spire stabbing upward into the sky. “Ah, yes, church. I know church. House of your lonely god.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s it. Go to the church. They’ll have food for you there, and a place to sleep, as well, if you need one.”