Blood of the Sorceress (3 page)

“What for?”

“How the hell do I know what for?”

So the chalice is to the Goddess. Say it, Demetrius.

“So the chalice is to the Goddess.”

And together they are one.

“And together they are one.” As he said it, the cup pulled the blade down like a super magnet, and the tip of the blade clanked against the bottom of the chalice. There was a big flash of light, and some kind of sonic boom that blew him back toward the mouth of the alley. Gus’s eyes got huge as he backpedaled to join him, and then they both just stood there, staring at the fast-fading glowing orb.

And then it blinked out and there she was, that blonde. She was crouching in the alley, completely naked, and everything in Demetrius told him to turn and run like hell. But he couldn’t seem to move. He just stood there, staring at her.

Slowly she stood and lifted her head to look straight at him, and those blue, blue eyes hit him like a pair of lightning bolts.

He felt sheer terror. His gaze roamed up and down her lithe, naked form, pale skin, small, perky breasts. Everything about her was small. She was like a fairy or an angel.

“I’m no angel, Demetrius,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I’m a witch.”

He dropped his precious blade and chalice, spun around and ran out of that alley as if the devil was after him, because it seemed as if she was.

He never saw the car that hit him. But he sure as hell felt it.

* * *

In a private hospital on the shore of Cayuga Lake, an old priest who’d been in a coma since early November suddenly opened his eyes.

A nurse was bathing him, running a warm, wet sponge up and down his arms as if she had the right to touch him. He gripped her wrist, and she gasped and dropped the cloth, her wide eyes darting to his face.

“A little help in here!” she called.

He gave her a shove, and she stumbled backward, crashing into a shiny metal tray, knocking it and the instruments it held noisily to the floor. Others came, but he was busy by then, staring at his bony arms and concave chest with its curling white hairs and pale skin. How had he become so thin? So old? So frail? He’d been robust. He’d been plump and lush. Beautiful, really.

Ah, yes, but this wasn’t his body. His own body was long dead. This body might not even be capable of walking upright, but it was going to have to do. He’d known he would return when the time came, but he’d let himself forget how frail the host he’d chosen had become.

He peeled back the bedcovers and managed to sit up as the woman came closer again, holding out her hands, flanked by another female and a young man. Pretty thing, too, with his blond hair cut so that its short layers resembled feathers. How did he get it to do that?

“Easy, now, Father Dom. Easy,” the first woman said.

She did not speak his language. At first her words sounded like gibberish, but then, amazingly, his mind processed them and he understood what she was saying. That made sense, he supposed. The brain in this body knew the language. He wondered what else it knew.

There were racks on either side of his bed, barriers to keep him from falling out. He gripped one of them in his bony hands and tried to remove it, but it would not budge. He was too weak.

And then a mature man entered the room and came right to the bedside. He was not a pretty boy but a person of standing—one could tell these things by a man’s bearing, his walk, the tilt of his head. He had the dark skin of the desert lands, the black hair, the deep brown eyes. He extended a hand.

“Father Dominick, I’m Doctor Assad. I’m here to help you. Do you understand?”

He nodded and stared at the hand the man held out to him, trying to guess what to do, before slowly extending his own. The doctor took it, closing his own around it, pumping once, letting go.

“Good, that’s good. I imagine you’re very confused.”

He wondered if he could use the language as well as understand it, and thought before he spoke. “Yes,” he said. “I...am.”

“Of course you are. I’m going to explain everything to you.” Doctor Assad leaned down to touch a button, and the top of the bed rose with a noisy sound that captured his full attention for a long moment. Then it stopped, and the doctor reached behind him to plump the soft pillows. “Here you go. Just relax, lean back, get comfortable. Everything is fine.”

“Is...it?” He rested his head against the pillows, deciding he had little choice but to comply at the moment.

“It is,” the doctor assured him. “I’d like to know what you remember.” As he spoke, he motioned to the first female, who came closer to wrap a device with tubes and bulbs protruding from it around his upper arm.

He stared at her in wonder and a little fear as she attached the thing.

“She’s just checking your vital signs, Father Dom. We need to make sure you’re all right. Just ignore her and focus on me, all right?” the doctor said.

He watched the woman look up at him from beneath her lashes. She was pretty, he thought. And afraid.

She should be.

What did he remember? Ahh, so many things. His city, a gleaming jewel in the desert. Babylon. The power he’d had, the life he’d lived. And the tragedy that had torn it all apart.

But no. That wasn’t what the doctor was asking him.

He closed his eyes and searched the old priest’s memory, presuming this doctor wanted to know what had happened to him to put him here in this place, which, he had deduced, was a place of healing. And it came to him. All of it, playing out in his mind as if he were watching actors on a stage.

Father Dom had tried to kill the first witch to keep her from releasing the damned man Demetrius from the Underworld. The old priest believed Demetrius was a demon, the witch his accomplice.
Because that’s what I wanted him to believe.
He’d tried to kill her, to throw her from a cliff. He’d wanted her executed, sacrificed, as she and her wretched sisters had been sacrificed once before. Poetic. Very poetic.

But of course the old priest had failed and gone over the edge himself.

“Do you remember anything, Father Dom?”

He lifted his gaze, shaking off Father Dom’s memories. “He—” He bit his lip, started over. “I...fell.”

“Yes. You fell. The impact should have killed you. You were pulled from the cold lake some four months ago. You’ve been unconscious—in a coma—ever since. Frankly, Father Dom, we didn’t expect you to ever wake up again, much less to wake as lucid as you appear right now.”

Well, I
did
wake up. But I’m not Father Dom.

But he couldn’t very well tell the doctor that. “This body...” he said, frustrated with how slowly this brain seemed to translate the simplest of commands into their corresponding actions. “This body is weak. Will it heal?”

Doctor Assad nodded. “There’s no way for us to know just yet how fully you’ll recover. We’re going to need to run tests, get you fully evaluated. Then, once you’re strong enough, we’ll get you started on some physical therapy. From there...well, only time will tell.”

“I do not have...time.” Then he frowned. “What month is it?”

“It’s March, Father Dom. March seventeenth.”

“Mmm.” He nodded while the slow-working, formerly comatose brain translated that for him. “I have...some time. A few weeks. No more.”

“It’s going to take considerably longer than that for a full recovery, Father,” the doctor said.

Then the nurse, who had removed her device once she’d finished squeezing his arm with it, said, “Maybe you’d like to talk to your friend.”

“My...friend?”

“He visits you every weekend. Even brought some of your most cherished belongings, so you’d have them near you,” she added with a nod toward the items on the stand nearby. Father Dom’s rosary, the aging journal, handed down to him through his priestly line, a well-worn Bible. “Tomas Petrosa?”

His smile was slow and knowing. “Tomas.” No doubt he was still with the witch. And she would lead him to Demetrius. That bastard was here somewhere, in human form again and using his powers. That was what had summoned him into this frail body that Father Dom had long since left behind. He had vowed to return if Demetrius ever managed to do so. To destroy him utterly this time, and the three witches with him.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, please call my friend Tomas.”

He relaxed against his pillows, deciding he might have time after all.

* * *

When Demetrius ran from her as if in terror and was smashed into by a powerful automobile, Lilia was devastated.

The power of her beloved, performing the ancient Great Rite of witchcraft—lowering the blade into the chalice in a symbolic re-creation of the sex act—had brought her into physical existence at last. She’d been trying to get him to perform the rite for weeks now. But she hadn’t been able to reach him until he tapped into his own inner magic, his imagination. But he hadn’t even recognized her! Lord and Lady, this wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. Yes, she’d known he would resist what she wanted him to do, but she’d expected him to at least
know
her. Remember her.

People flooded out of their businesses onto the sidewalks, crowding around Demetrius, who lay broken and bleeding in the street. Lilia backed deeper into the alley as quickly as she could, knowing he would be fine. He might not know it, but she did. He wasn’t quite human. He was immortal. For now, anyway. She had to restore the final piece of his mortal soul in order for him to become fully human again, and she couldn’t do that until he asked for it. Just as she hadn’t been able to manifest until he used the powers he apparently didn’t know he possessed to bring her through.

One thing at a time,
she told herself.
And the first thing is clothing. I’m naked here, and that’s not the accepted mode of dress just yet.

She wrapped herself as best she could in Demetrius’s dropped baby blanket and slipped out the far end of the alley. It opened into a parking lot behind a series of stores whose rear entrances were labeled with their names.

Daisy’s Unique Boutique appealed, and the door was unlocked, so she opened it and walked in.

Through the glass windows in the front she could see that the shopkeeper was on the sidewalk out front, looking at the fallen man. She knew her by the Daisy’s emblem on her jacket. An ambulance was arriving now, and the scruffy homeless man who’d been with Demetrius was talking to a well-dressed man who’d emerged from the car and was wobbling on his feet.

Drunk driver?

No time to mull on that.

She took a few items from the racks and racks of clothes in the store, moving fast, feeling guilty. Quick as a wink she grabbed a pair of skinny jeans with a peacock embroidered all the way up one leg, a handful of undergarments, a vibrantly colored blouse, a faux suede jacket, a pair of leatherette boots and some socks. She grabbed a business card from the register so she could pay later for what she’d taken, then ducked out the back door and into the alley to put the garments on.

Demetrius would need some time to heal. A few days, she thought. She couldn’t be sure. But she knew he would live, and that he would heal more rapidly than anyone would likely believe possible.

She walked back out through the alley and onto the sidewalk, moving to the back of the crowd to keep out of the shopkeeper’s line of sight, so she wouldn’t notice her own merchandise on a stranger and realize she’d been robbed.

From a safe vantage point Lilia looked at her beloved Demetrius as several medics strapped him to a wheeled bed and lifted him into the back of the ambulance. His eyes were closed. She wanted them to open. She wanted them to meet her own eyes and fill with recognition, with desire. With love.

Goddess, she’d gone through so much to save him, waited so long to be with him again.

In time,
she thought.
In time.

When the ambulance attendant moved toward the driver’s door, she went to him, grateful that the vehicle blocked her from the crowd. “Where will they take him?” she asked the man.

He looked at her, and his eyes softened. “Are you family?” he asked.

“I need a ride to the hospital,” she said.

“That’s against regulations, Ma’am, but if you—” He stopped speaking as she began to hum softly, thinking the words that went with her tune but not saying them aloud. It would work either way.

“Sure you can ride along,” he said. “It’s no problem at all.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” She glanced back at the filthy homeless man. Gus, she thought Demetrius had called him just before he’d brought her through. Gus.

Gus was with the driver, whose car bore a very large dent in its nose due to its impact with Demetrius. The police were there, too, but Gus was stepping between them.

She frowned, sensing something momentous was about to happen, and moved closer to listen. “I was the one driving,” Gus said. “It was me.”

* * *

The nurses at the desk let Lilia use their phone, and she quickly got the number she needed and dialed it.

When Indira answered, Lilia felt tears brimming in her eyes. “By Goddess, I am so glad to hear your voice, my sister,” she said softly.

There was a moment of silence, and then Indira said, “Who the fuck is this?”

“It’s me. It’s Lilia. I’m here. It’s time.”

“Oh. My. Goddess.” Then, in a muffled shout, “Tomas, you’re not gonna believe this!”

Hours later, a battered old Volvo pulled into the hospital’s parking area. Lilia was outside, sitting on a stone wall, waiting. She’d had to leave the hospital before the staff started asking her questions she could not answer about Demetrius. Who he was, where he was from, a last name, even. In their time, last names had not been used. Demetrius was the son of Horum, who was the son of Ferigard, and so on back into history.

Indira got out of the car first, ran toward her, then stuttered to a stop two feet shy. “I... Is it you? Is it you, baby sister?” She squinted a bit, as if trying to see what was unseeable.

“You don’t look the same, either, Indy. I didn’t know there were that many shades of blonde.”

“Yeah, you should talk. You look like you took a shower in peroxide.”