Blood of the Sorceress (10 page)

But it couldn’t. She knew it, and eventually he loosened his embrace, put one hand on her shoulder and pried her away from his chest. His other hand went to her chin, his forefinger lifting it so he could look her in the eyes.

“A witch’s tears are more potent than I could have known,” he said. “But you’ll have to do better if you hope to trick me again, sorceress.”

5

T
he beautiful witch’s eyes widened and looked as wounded as if he had just thrust his magical blade into her heart. The old priest had been right. She was good at deception. Very good.

“Trick you? What are you talking about, Demetrius?”

He watched her face, searched her blue, blue eyes for signs of her lies, but there were none that he could see. Only hurt.

“I realize that I look very different now,” she said softly. “But it’s not due to any trick. I didn’t plan it this way.”

He grunted, averting his eyes, because keeping them on her face made it difficult to remember what she was.

“You look the same, though,” she told him softly. “Exactly the same.” Her voice took on a slightly raspy quality, and he felt her eyes on his back as he paced away from her.

He headed into his bedroom to fetch a robe and pull it around him before returning to the hub of his circular suite. It made him nervous, being so close to the spiral stairs. Suppose Father Dom should come down from the observatory?

“Even though I look different, I was sure you would remember me.” She lowered her head, turning away from him to face the staircase. “I would have remembered you.”

“How can you be so sure?” He moved toward her, taking her arm and leading her into the kitchenette. He pulled out a stool for her at the breakfast bar, and she took it, moving as if she were operating unconsciously, automatically.

“Because I did remember you. I have remembered you the entire time. I knew you even when you were a formless mass of hatred, festering in the Underworld.”

“Because of you,” he said. He’d moved to the other side of the room and was pouring juice into a frosted glass.

“Yes. Because of me. That’s true.” She lifted her head slowly, frowning at the glass he held out to her. “But if you don’t remember, then how do you know that?” she asked as she took the glass and sipped.

He shrugged. “So you admit it, then? You tricked me in another lifetime, tricked me into murdering my friend and King, and then abandoned me to a fate worse than death. All so you could take my powers for yourself, and you’ve returned to do it all again.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she wrinkled her nose as she seemed to sniff the air. “There’s evil in this house. I smell it.”

“Do not try to distract me, witch.”

Her eyes shot to his. “Who filled your head with this ridiculous story, Demetrius?”

“Are you saying it’s not true? Because I have had flashes of memory that tell me otherwise.”

“Oh, it’s true at the base of it, but it’s been twisted and polluted with lies. You loved me in that lifetime. And I loved you. I loved you...beyond endurance. But that love was forbidden. I was a harem slave, owned by the King. It was illegal, what we did. Maybe it was inevitable that we’d be found out eventually. I don’t know.” She lowered her eyes, and he glimpsed moisture gathering on her lashes.

Dragging his attention from her, he realized he had picked up a second glass and was still holding a decanter of juice in the other hand. So he filled it, then returned the decanter to the refrigerator.

“When we were caught in my chambers together and I was arrested,” she said, “you fought to protect me and they beat you unconscious. When they searched the quarters I shared with my sisters, they found the tools of our magic, taught to us from early childhood by our mother. The three of us were sentenced to die for my betrayal of the King, and for the dire crime of practicing magic. No one, besides that fat, twisted pig Sindar, was allowed to do that, you see. He intended to keep the Gods and their powers all to himself.”

He was riveted by her tale, so close to Father Dom’s and yet different in crucial ways. He sipped his juice. “When did I kill the King?”

“When you learned that he was going to let Sindar sacrifice my sisters and me to the chief God of the pantheon, Marduk.” She lowered her eyes again. “I couldn’t believe you’d done it. You must have exploded in a rage, and how bitterly you must have regretted it afterward. You and the King...you were like brothers. You had been friends for—”

“Stop!” He held up a hand toward her, as if it could halt the flow of words that were beginning to feel like bullets fired into his flesh.

She set her glass down carefully on the gleaming black stone counter. “Demetrius, please. I did not put you in that Underworld prison. I am responsible for you being released from it.”

“No. That was another.”

“Indira.”

He looked up sharply, because that name was correct, he was sure of that, although he hadn’t remembered it until she’d said it out loud.

“She is my sister, and she acted under my guidance. Demetrius, I’ve been trapped between the worlds, as well, though my experience was in a far different dimension. I could watch over all that happened, even you, until the time was right for me to return, to try to complete the cycle, and end it once and for all. To try to set things right.”

A cold tremor worked up from his gut to his throat. “You’ve...seen all that I have done?”

Holding his gaze, she nodded slowly. He wanted to lower his eyes, perhaps in shame, which was odd, because he’d never felt such a thing before.

“Yes, I saw it all. The bomb at the interfaith conference, and all the holy men who died at the hand of the mentally ill human you commanded. The similarly possessed humans you sent to try to eject my precious niece from her newborn body before she drew her first breath. The attacks on my sisters, who were only trying to help you. Yes, I saw it all. And loved you still.”

Blackness began to rise over his heart like a wash of dark ink, cooling and calming its guilty beat. “Now I know you’re lying. No one could love a man who had done those things.”

“No one has ever loved the way we did.” She looked him in the eyes when she spoke, and he felt as if she had thrust a hot poker into his chest. “And it wasn’t a man who did those things. It was a mindless, shapeless force. A consciousness tormented to the point of insanity. A once-brave warrior hero whose soul had long since been torn away. The same soul that my sisters and I captured, and have kept safe all this time.”

There was a flicker in Demetrius’s mind. He saw himself and this woman entwined amid sheer draping fabrics, naked among satin pillows. The feelings were so intense that they hurt.

He pushed them away.

“We split your soul among us, my sisters and I. Indira, whose lover you tried to kill, returned the first part to you, and with it the amulet that had been its home during the time in between. And the power it contains.” She nodded at the pendant he wore around his neck as she spoke. “She did so at the moment of Samhain, on a night when the stars were aligned precisely as they had been at the beginning. And her brave act set you free from the Underworld. Then Magdalena, whose child you tried to steal, used the chalice and the blade to return the second part of your soul to you, and those tools and their powers with it. Her act was at Imbolc, the precise moment halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox, and that act restored your body.”

She lowered her eyes. “We did take your powers, you see, with your soul. But only to keep them safe until we could set you free and return them to you. And now you’ve returned.”

“It was as if I just suddenly existed,” he said softly, remembering. “It was freezing cold, and I was naked in the snow, shivering, and yet delighted that I could feel the cold. That I was...truly alive again.”

“I know. I guided you to the empty house you found. I influenced the minds of the couple who lived there to go away and spend the weekend with their daughter. I ensured that they forgot to lock the door. I needed you to be safe. To be warm. To find your way.”

“And the bus ticket?” he asked. “My trip to the city where I joined the ranks of the homeless? Were you behind that, as well?”

“No.”

He sighed, nodded. He didn’t suppose he could regret even that part of this wild journey, because it was there he had met Gus. And he loved the man like a brother.

“I have the third and final piece of your soul, Demetrius.”

He blinked, deciding he needed to hear the rest, and downed his juice. Then he took her glass and his own and, turning his back to her, placed them in the small sink. “Is it ensconced in yet another magical tool? A wand, perhaps, or a crystal of some sort?”

“It’s in my heart, Demetrius. I hold it in my heart, where it has always lived.”

He felt his back stiffen and couldn’t quite turn to face her, so he rinsed the glasses instead. She was getting to him. This was all too much. He had to keep a distance, however small, between them. So he parted the curtains on the windows behind the little sink and looked out over his miniature kingdom, or pretended to. In truth he saw nothing. Nothing but her. Even with his back to her, he could see her face. Those huge blue eyes, like sapphires glittering at him. Round and innocent. Too easy to believe.

“And what power will this final piece of my soul return to me, witch?” He wondered if she would tell him the truth. It would be a good test, wouldn’t it? To see whether she would admit to him that he would
lose
his powers if he accepted this prize she offered?

She came around the breakfast bar to stand very close behind him. He could feel her warm breath on his back, between his shoulder blades, and he shivered in a way he had seldom, if ever, shivered at the pleasure of any sensation. “This piece of your soul will restore your humanity. Your ability to feel the full range of human emotions. Your ability to live your life as it was meant to be lived, to relish the fullness of all your senses, to know absolute, exquisite pleasure and, yes, pain, too.”

“I already have all of this,” he said. “The use of the senses comes with the body.”

“No. It comes with the soul. You see, but you don’t bask in beauty. It’s as if you see things through a filter that dulls everything. You can smell the cactus blossoms with your nose, but the scent doesn’t make your heart sing. You hear, but you don’t thrill to the sound of music or birdsong. You hear it with your ears, not your soul.”

As she spoke she moved closer to him, and he felt trapped. He couldn’t turn to face her without those eyes piercing his very core, but he couldn’t move away without making it obvious that he was trying to escape her.

“You can taste food, but you don’t savor the burst of flavors on your tongue. You can feel the touch of a lover...” She slid her palms slowly up his back, and he closed his eyes. Then she took her hands away again, far too soon, and it was literally painful. “But not the ecstasy of release.”

He nodded slowly, wondering why he had felt a hint of that ecstasy at her touch, when he had never felt it with any other woman. Wiping the combination of surprise and horror from his face, he attempted a stern and distant expression, as if he’d been unmoved by her touch, as he asked, “And the price?”

He turned then, facing her, needing to look her in the eye now that he’d schooled his own expression to reveal nothing. “I was told there was a price, a terrible price, for this gift you offer.”

Her round blue eyes, swimming now with tears, held his, and she nodded once, then blinked and lowered her head, breaking the spell those glittering sapphires cast over him. “Your immortality, the way you heal more rapidly than others. Your powers, the ones that came to you with the magical tools, the chalice, the blade, the amulet. You would return to being...an ordinary man again. At least, as ordinary as you ever were.”

He tilted his head, smiling a little bit, then paced away from her across the tiny kitchen. “So now we come to crux of it, don’t we? You have come here to offer me the ability to feel pain—”

“And pleasure and so much more—”

“—in exchange for giving up endless life, and the power to acquire anything I want, such as this very beauty you see around you.” He waved an arm to encompass his mansion. “Where would my powers go then, witch. To you and your sisters? And what would I do then? Return to the alley with Gus?”

“Of course not. I’m here now. I would help you, and my sisters would, as well.”

“Those same sisters I so wronged? The mother of the child I intended to use—”

“That was not you.” She shook her head in denial. “Besides, you were going to stop yourself at the last minute.”

“Was I?”

“Yes! Yes, but you didn’t have to. Ryan and Lena figured out what to do and...”

Her voice trailed off as he laughed softly, looking at his feet and shaking his head. “I can’t believe he was so sure that this was going to be a difficult offer for me to refuse.”

“He?”

“I don’t have to consider this long, pretty witch. And you are a very pretty witch. But my choice is clear. My answer is—”

“No,” she said.

He’d paced away, turned and was moving back to her now. “Very good. You guessed it before I even said it.”

“The answer will be yes,” she told him with certainty. “I meant no, you don’t have to make your decision now. We have time.”

“I don’t need time.”

“Of course you do. If you didn’t, I would have come to you sooner. First I had to give you time to embrace what you have. Now you have to give me time to show you what your life could be. To convince you that being human is worth far more than these so-called powers of yours.”

“So-called?”

She shrugged, turning and walking a few steps away from him. “We’re all immortal. We all have the ability to create what we desire. Not in a blinding flash from a blade in a chalice, but still...”

“I don’t want time, and I don’t need time, and do not have to give you time. I like my life just the way it is. And immortality certainly beats the alternative.”

“The alternative is heaven, bliss, wholeness, oneness.”

“Bullshit.” Another expression he’d picked up from Gus. “I’ve seen the alternative, and I’m not going back there.” He marched closer to her, gripped her shoulders and gazed down into her eyes so that could see how deadly serious he was about what he was saying. “Not ever, witch. Make no mistake.”

She was trembling. He felt it beneath his hands, and felt cruel for causing it. He eased his grip but did not let go.