Blood of the Sorceress (16 page)

He pulled himself together, shook off the remaining aftershocks of emotion and continued up the trail in the direction she had gone. But after a few steps he paused and looked back at the panorama that had brought him close to tears moments ago.

It looked like red rocks. Just a bunch of red rocks. He could not, for the life of him, figure out what the big deal had been. Why he’d reacted the way he had, or why she had.

Shrugging, he started after her again.

She’d gone beyond the trail markers now, he realized as he reached the end of them himself and saw her ahead and above him, standing precariously on a boulder, reaching up for a ledge above her head. The sight sent fear coursing through him. “For God’s sake, Lilia, be careful!”

She paused, stuck to the stone face like a fly on a wall, and turned her head to look down at him. “What do you care? You won’t feel a thing if I die. You’re incapable of it.” And then she continued pulling herself up, hitching one knee onto the ledge above her and leveraging the rest of her up after it. Only a single layer cake level and a pinnacle rock were above her now, neither of them climbable, he thought, at least not without professional gear. She must have thought so, too, because she sat down where she was, crossed her legs and closed her eyes.

“Now what are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m feeling the energy of the vortex,” she replied. “So either be quiet and let me be, or come on up and join me.”

He joined her. He didn’t think she had expected him to. She seemed both surprised and happy about it when she opened her eyes and saw him sitting down close beside her. Closing her eyes again, but unable to quite control her smile, she said, “Sit like I’m sitting, but keep it loose. Comfortable.”

“Comfortable, while sitting on a rock while the sun bakes me from above? Is this some magical skill I haven’t yet learned?” She opened one eye, and he sent her a teasing grin before he realized what he was doing and bit it back. That wasn’t a good sign, wasn’t it? He was starting to like the woman and to feel badly that he’d so angered her earlier, and wanting to try to make it up to her in some way. No, this couldn’t be good.

And yet he complied, and for no other reason than because he knew it would please her. He quickly mirrored her position. She closed her eyes again. “Holding your hands the way I’m holding mine is one of many postures called mudras,” she said, her voice low and soft, but steady and confident. “This particular mudra helps the energy flow. Let the backs of your hands rest easily on your thighs or knees, thumbs against your second fingers. Keep the touch light, relaxed.”

He did as she asked, not sure if he should or not, but not thinking too hard about that. It was her smile on his mind, the way his joining her up on this rock had put it there, and his sudden and inexplicable eagerness to give her even more reason to beam. How brightly could she shine? he wondered.

“Keep your elbows close to your body, your chin slightly down, and kind of tuck your butt under a little to straighten and lengthen your spine.”

He shifted slightly. He was so aware of her, of her nearness, of her energy, her mood, of her voice soft in his ears.

“Breathe in through your nose, filling your lungs. Slow and deep.” She inhaled with him, guiding him as he took what had to be the deepest breath of his life.

“Now breathe out through your lips, but very slowly. Empty your lungs all the way.” She exhaled with him, too.

“Breathe in,” she said softly. “Sink your spine down into the earth, like the roots of the great Tree of Life.” Her voice was deeper, softer, a silken whisper. “Breathe out. Feel your spine lengthening, as if a string attached to the top of your head is gently pulling you upward and your spirit is reaching into the heavens like the limbs of that same great tree.”

He could feel it. He could truly feel it.

“Breathe in. Thoughts will come. Gently push them aside and focus on your breath as it swirls around your nostrils, over your lips, into your lungs. Breathe out.”

He felt himself relaxing. She continued coaching him a bit longer, but he soon fell into the rhythm easily, naturally, until they were breathing as one. Time ticked by unnoticed as they sat in silence.

Demetrius fell into himself, into a memory. But there was no panic this time, no pain. He watched it play out as if he were watching a movie, without the detriment of wild human emotions to distort it. There was the soldier, once the King’s most trusted friend, now his murderer.

Could that really have been me?

He’d been beaten nearly to death, and now he lay on a cliff top far from his home.

Babylon...

The city gleamed like a jewel in the distance, across the desert, beneath the brutal, red-eyed sun. A stone wall rose behind him, and there was more stone beneath him.

Nearby, but beyond his reach, his beloved stood on the cliff’s edge. She and her sisters were lined up, each with a novice priest at her back, ready to push on the High Priest’s command.

Sindar!

His gaze found the unholy bastard who was to blame for all this. Since that day in the harem, Demetrius had learned that Sindar had long suspected Lilia and her sisters of witchery. Their mother’s powers of healing and sorcery were spoken of in whispers, and where the tree grew, the fruit was soon to follow. Sindar had little power over what the common folk did, though. And Balthazorus was a tolerant king; the superstitions of the masses bothered him not at all.

And he was my friend. A good man. A good king.

But the practice of magic was the right of the High Priest alone. Sindar saw the notion of anyone else using it as a personal assault. And he struck back.

When his snooping had uncovered Demetrius’s love affair with the King’s favorite harem slave, Sindar had found the perfect weapon to punish the women, their mother and, in a way, the King, whom he blamed for not taking action himself.

He stood there, that pregnant-bellied man with his cheeks as fat as if he were preparing to blow a trumpet, his white-and-purple robes wafting in the mountaintop’s searing winds. His eyes glistened as he stared at the women about to be murdered on his command. Already he’d been delighted as they were scourged for their crimes.

The fat bastard didn’t have the stuff in him to wield the whip himself. Only to watch in secret, sexual pleasure.

The priest’s small tongue darted out to moisten his berry-stained lips.

“I’ll kill you for this, Sindar,” Demetrius said, mustering the strength to form words.

“How? You won’t have a body. You will be a formless mass, imprisoned forever in the Underworld. Stripped of the immortal soul you never deserved.”

“I’ll save you, my love!” Lilia cried. “I swear to you, I will find you, and I will save you.”

Sindar smiled sickeningly. “You have no power, witch. The power of the Gods belongs only to the High Priest of Marduk.”

“It’s not Marduk you need to fear,” Lilia said bravely, despite the fact that she was about to die. “We are the Daughters of Ishtar, my sisters and I. Ishtar, Queen of Heaven. You’ll know no peace until this is made right. So sayeth the Goddess.”

For an instant the High Priest’s smile wavered, and his eyes betrayed his fear. Shaking his head as if to rid himself of weakness, he allowed hatred to replace the fear and lifted his hand. “On my command,” he said.

“Sindar, don’t! I beg of you!” Demetrius struggled, but soldiers held him back.

Do not beg anything of this pig, my love.
Lilia’s voice rang inside his mind, louder than the incantation Sindar was speaking, asking Marduk to accept this offering of three witches.

All will be well,
she said gently, softly, inside his mind.
Death is but an illusion. Hold on to your true self. He cannot take from you the man you truly are, only separate you from your higher self for a while. And that will be torture, but it will end. I will find you—I’ll make it right again. I—

The high priest dropped his hand, and Demetrius heard Lilia’s sharp gasp as she was pushed over the edge. She and her sisters began chanting together as they fell, words he could not make out. But in his heart, he heard her final thoughts.
I will love you beyond the end of time, Demetrius. No power on earth can be greater than what I feel.

Pain rocked through him, more powerful than any explosion, but brief. Shattering, then gone. He knew he’d felt exactly what she had suffered on impact. He could only hope her agony, too, had lasted no longer than an instant.

* * *

Lilia had to force herself to stop wondering what he was feeling, what he was experiencing in the ultrarelaxed, ultrareceptive state of meditation, the only time when a person could hear her—or his—higher self through all the white noise of the human mind, all the to-do lists, all the worries about tomorrow and regrets over yesterday. Meditation was being, just being, existing wholly and entirely in the eternal present, connected fully with one’s truest self. Which was...well, everything, really.

As she stopped thinking of him, and focused only on her breathing, on her being, she felt the warmth of peace surround her and flood her with the certainty that everything was going to be all right. Everything would unfold exactly as it should. She would live and find happiness with Demetrius. Or she would die and move on into blissful oneness with the Whole, achieving perfect understanding of why things had happened as they had. Either way, all would be well. It already was, in fact.

Eventually she opened her eyes as she felt the heat of the sun increase. She looked at him. He was sitting still, eyes wide open, looking stricken.

“What is it, Demetrius?” She put a hand on his powerful biceps, felt them tighten in reaction to her touch. “What did you experience?”

He met her eyes, and his were roiling. But he only shook his head. “Nothing.”

“I can see there was something,” she said.

He ignored her and got to his feet. “We should climb down now. It’s getting hotter by the minute.” He extended a hand to her, and she let him pull her to her feet, relishing the feel of his hand around hers, strong and firm.

Then she was up and standing beside him, and he was still holding on, staring down at her. She looked up, met his eyes. They were troubled, but there was more. Something unfathomable but real. Powerful.

“You remembered something.”

“Someone.”

“Did you remember me? Us?”

“No.”

“You lie.”

He shook his head, tugged her toward the way down. But she pulled back. “Do something for me, Demetrius.”

He looked back at her. “I let you stay in my home. I came here with you. I sat through your silly ritual. What more can I possibly do for you?”

“You can kiss me,” she said softly.

She saw his eyes flare wider, and she stepped a little closer to him. “Kiss me here, where we’re wrapped in the vortex. Kiss me, just once, in this sacred place.”

He narrowed his eyes as if he suspected her of trying to trick him in some way.

“No magic, I promise. Just a kiss.”

Her gaze strayed to his lips, and his tongue darted out to moisten them—involuntarily, she was certain.

“Please?” She moved even closer and slid her hands up his chest, over the shirt she wished would vanish at her touch.

He slipped his arms around her waist, then pulled her close, bent and kissed her. His mouth was gentle, tentative at first, then gradually he became more demanding, pressing her lips apart, tasting her with his tongue. She felt his soul-piece leap in her heart. She felt it swell and grow, and begin to spill out of her, as if it wanted to flow into him but was meeting a dam that held it back. Even so, bits seeped through. She was sure of it, because his reactions told her so. He kissed her more deeply, bending her backward and tangling his tongue around hers. She felt him grow hard against her belly, and she longed for more and knew he did, too.

When he straightened, he stared at her, his eyes spitting fire. And she felt his yearning, his need to consummate, and also his fear that it would mean accepting the remainder of his soul, that it would enmesh him with her past the point of escape. She also sensed relief in him and somehow knew he was relieved to know that his body did indeed function properly. He had never been able to achieve this state of arousal with another woman, though he had tried many times before giving up in embarrassment and frustration.

She read all of that before he closed his mind to her just as if he were slamming a steel door in her face, and all simply by averting his eyes.

“Demetrius?” she whispered.

“What?” He didn’t look at her. It didn’t matter.

“I love you. I’ve loved you for three-thousand, five-hundred years. I’ve loved you beyond life, beyond death, and back again. And I will love you forever, no matter what happens between us now.”

He turned and met her eyes again, but his were sheltered, protected. “And if I reject you, send you away the instant we return to the mansion?”

“Love isn’t conditional. I don’t love you when you act the way I wish you would and stop loving when you don’t. Love is pure. It’s consistent. It’s deep. It matters not one bit what you do. I loved you when your raging hatred brought death to the innocent at that interfaith conference. I even loved you when you tried to evict the soul of my baby niece from her body so you could take it for your own.”

“I was misled.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. “And I would bet all I have that you wouldn’t have continued to love me had I succeeded in that attempt.”

“I would have killed you,” she told him flatly. “But I would still have loved you. I will love you whether you embrace your humanity again and love me back, or whether you remain this uncaring being you think you are. I love you.” She shrugged. “I thought you ought to know that.”

And on that note she started back down, climbing from boulder to boulder until she reached the marked part of the trail again, while he followed in brooding silence.

* * *

Father Dom didn’t seem surprised to see Demetrius when he climbed the spiral staircase to the observatory. The old man was standing at the window, gazing out at some distant point, and he spoke without turning around. “Did she get to you, then? With her wiles and her magic? Has she convinced you to give up your power, your immortality, your very life, for her...again?”