Blood of the Sorceress (19 page)

“I didn’t have to make love with you, either. I want you to make a fully informed decision.” She lowered her eyes. “As fully informed as I’m permitted, at least.”

He frowned. “Is there something I’m not allowed to know?”

She met his eyes, longing with everything in her to tell him the truth. That choosing not to accept his soul would mean death not only for him but for her, as well. That information would be too prejudicial. It would effectively remove his ability to make the choice he truly desired.

He had to want his humanity again in order to receive it. It was a gift. He had to see it as such, to truly appreciate what being human meant, before he could choose to accept it.

She caught her breath as the pendulum around her neck began humming against her skin, and her eyes were intuitively drawn up to the upper stories of the house. “Someone is up there. Someone is watching us.”

* * *

Father Dom closed the door at the top of the stairs above the private garden and backed into Demetrius’s rooms. He glanced back up at the spiral stairway that led to his own temporary abode but knew he could no longer stay there. Not now. They would be looking for him soon. Demetrius had fallen prey to the witch’s charms. He would surrender soon, if he hadn’t already. It was only a matter of time.

Not a lot of time, at least, and that was in Dom’s favor. If Demetrius didn’t accept the final piece of his soul by Beltane, he would die, and so would the witch—but Dom hoped to get his hands on both of them just before they expired and ensure that they suffered a fate far worse than mere death. He wanted Demetrius destroyed utterly. If he could kill the witch in mid-ritual, while the last remnant of Demetrius’s soul remained within her, it would die with her and he would cease to exist.

But short of that, death would suffice. If he didn’t accept his soul by Beltane, he would die a more normal death, one that came with an undeserved afterlife and more lifetimes to come. So would the witch. Her cursed sisters would expire with her, though he didn’t think that even Lilia knew that part of it yet.

All of those who’d murdered, directly and indirectly, King Balthazorus so long ago would finally pay the price for their crime. His hatred had been festering and growing for a long time. He hadn’t been content with Demetrius’s suffering in the Underworld. And the women...well, they’d barely suffered at all. Look at the way they’d worked their dark spells and averted their deserved fate. Look at the way they’d reincarnated and found their illicit, unholy lovers again. Indira and Tomas—he’d been a novice priest, forced to push her to her death for Marduk’s sake. Magdalena and the King’s own son! They’d even had a child together.

A child...

Now there was a thought.

He needed only a few more days. Just a few more days to delay Demetrius from making the final decision and accepting the return of his soul. Then they would all die, and perhaps he could have peace of his own, a peace he had never known since the murder of the King. But they would realize his true identity at any time now. So he needed to delay them, and then to distract them from trying to stop him. He needed to slip away while they were distracted as they were now, and then he needed to provide a reason for the temptress to want Demetrius to stay just as he was, with his soul fragmented and destined to die.

And an innocent baby would make a very good reason indeed.

If he did everything just right, before that became necessary he might even be able to destroy Demetrius as he longed to. Utterly. Because if the witch died with his soul still inside her, and if her body was then destroyed so she could not revive, then Demetrius would cease to exist.

He’d never burned a witch before. He found himself looking forward to it.

10

“S
omeone is watching us,” Lilia said.

“Probably just the old priest,” Demetrius muttered without thinking, unable to take his eyes from Lilia, his mind still on the amazing sex they’d so recently shared.

She was rising from the tub, water trailing down her beautiful flesh, her eyes troubled as she stared up at the stairs. But when he spoke, her head snapped toward him. “The old priest?”

He didn’t like the alarm he saw in her eyes. “He’s been staying here, but he’s asked for privacy, so I’ve indulged him. But he’s harmless, Lilia,” he said, cursing himself silently for erring and mentioning Father Dom’s existence. “He just...he found some bad information. Stories change after being passed along for so many centuries.”

Her eyes narrowed on him. “What stories? What misinformation has he been telling you, Demetrius?”

He shrugged. It was clear to him now, knowing Lilia as he had come to, that the old man was confused, obsessed, perhaps even a bit insane. “I promise you, he’s just a harmless old man who thinks he’s trying to help. He believes you’re trying to trick me. He’s the one who told me you and your sisters wanted me to become human again so you could steal my powers for yourselves.” She was looking angrier with his every word. “But I know he’s wrong. I know that now,” he said, hoping to ease the fury in her eyes.

“Demetrius, I need you to start at the beginning. What old priest are you talking about? Where did he come from, and how long has he been here?”

He sighed, realizing their respite was over. She was all business now, turning to pick up a towel from the rack nearby and rubbing herself dry.

He supposed he should do the same, so he got up with a heavy sigh and helped himself to a towel, though he suspected he would feel much better if he were holding her hand.

“All right, from the beginning,” he said slowly. “He arrived here a few days before you did and he told me you were coming. He said you would try to trick me into accepting the final piece of my soul, so that you could take my powers for your own.”

“And you believed him.” It wasn’t a question. “That’s why you’ve been so suspicious of me, so resistant to me, this entire time?”

He nodded, hating to admit it. “Yes, it’s part of the reason. But he was very convincing, Lilia. He knew things he shouldn’t have known, not only that you were on your way here but that I’d spent thousands of years in an Underworld prison. And that if I accepted your offer, I’d lose my powers. It all turned out to be absolutely true. So when he said that you’d tricked me before, made me fall in love with you through black magic, then used me to kill the King so that you and your sisters would be free of his harem, it...it seemed to make sense.”

“My sisters and I were executed, Demetrius. Not freed. And we’ve spent the past three-and-a-half millennia trying to set you free.”

“I know that...now. Believe me, Lilia, I do.”

She draped her towel over the rack to dry, then reached for her sundress and pulled it over her head, not bothering with her wet bra or torn panties. He finished drying off and pulled on his own clothes.

“Where did he claim to have come by all this ancient knowledge?” she asked. “It’s a story only a few living beings know.”

“He said he had scrolls, that they’d been handed down through the priests of his line for centuries.”

Her brows bent deeply, and she looked at him intently. “I think I already know, but what’s his name, this old priest?”

“Father Dom. He’s—”

“The same Father Dom who tried to kill my sister Indira to keep her from helping you escape through the Portal in the first place?”

“Am I supposed to know the answer to that?” But he was suddenly alarmed. Was the priest in his observatory more than he’d seemed?

“You were there, raging and manipulating and—” Her eyes were blazing, but then she bit her lip and looked into his eyes, and the fires were banked. “I’m sorry. I know that wasn’t you, not really. It was just the energy mass that had once been you, robbed of its soul and tortured past the edge of sanity.”

“I don’t remember a lot of what happened while I was...in that state.”

“I know.” She moved closer, sliding her hand around the curve of his neck, moving as if to kiss him again.

But she stopped, and he did, too, because the necklace she was wearing had begun to shake, practically jumping up and down on her chest. Backing up a step, she removed it, then held it by one end of its long chain, letting the crystal dangle and staring as it began to spin.

“What is that?” Demetrius asked, mesmerized by the winking light reflected by the gleaming stone.

“It’s a pendulum. I use it to...find things, or to answer simple yes or no questions. I’ve been sensing evil in this place, and my sister Lena, the one with the most powerful scrying ability, said it was here. Inside this very house. I brought out my stone to try to track it down, and it led me upstairs, to you.”

“You think I’m evil?”

She shook her head. “No, Demetrius. Not you. It’s that priest. He’s evil. And there’s something else,” she said, looking down at the madly spinning amethyst. “Something big, but I don’t know what. The stone is going crazy.” She started up the stairs, and he followed.

“What else could there be?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Reaching the top of the stairs, she tried the door. “He’s locked us out. He’s up to something.”

“I can break it—”

“You don’t need to.” She caught the stone in her hand and stepped aside, making room for him on the top stair. “Channel the power from your amulet and turn the lock on the other side.”

Doubtfully, he focused on the doorknob, thinking past it to the lock. She kept talking as he tried to focus. “Father Dom has been in a coma for months, even since Indira managed to bring you through the Portal, freeing you from the Underworld. They didn’t expect him to recover. Focus harder, my love, he’s getting away.”

“I don’t know what he would have to get away from,” he said, but he tried to focus harder.

“He awoke from his coma the very day I returned to physical being. The very first time you used the magical tools you received from my sisters. He was not expected to recover, but he woke up and walked out of the hospital.”

He frowned and forgot about the lock—and heard it snap open at that very instant. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying he isn’t finished with us yet.” She reached past him, opened the door.

“He said he wanted to help me,” Demetrius said. “I think he’s sincere, just misguided.”

She stepped into the bedroom, looked around and felt that it was empty. Then she turned to him and lifted the pendulum. “I asked the crystal to lead me to the evil I’ve been sensing in this place since I came here. It led me up the stairs, into your suite. I checked and found you watching a movie. For a moment, I was afraid...”

“That I was the one who was evil.” He lowered his head. “I can’t even say that I blame you.”

She sighed, but nodded. “But it wasn’t you. The pendulum didn’t react to you. Where was he staying?”

Demetrius nodded toward the narrow spiral staircase. “In the observatory.”

She pocketed the crystal, headed through the hall and started up the spiral stairway, but he snapped his arms around her waist and lifted her back down. “I’ll go first, just in case you’re right and he really is dangerous.”

“I know I’m right.”

Protecting her. It was an instinctual thing, one he couldn’t resist and didn’t particularly want to. He’d been unable to protect her before, in that past life he was starting to remember in bits and snippets, and the pain of that was not something he wanted to recall, much less relive.

The love they’d had just might be, though. In fact, he felt as if he didn’t have much of a choice about that. It was coming back to him, maybe not in vivid images in his mind, but in feelings, powerful feelings, that he now knew were only dull echoes of the true ones.

He reached the top of the stairs, pushed up the trapdoor and stepped up into the observatory, which appeared empty. Then he turned and reached down for Lilia, taking her hand and helping her up to join him. When he let go of the trapdoor it slammed closed with a bang that sounded like a gunshot.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” he muttered. “I’ll have Sid take a look later on.”

She looked around the circular room, but he already knew she wouldn’t find the priest. There was nowhere for anyone one to hide up there. It was one large open room, with the powerful telescope in the middle and the glass dome above. Father Dom’s makeshift cot stood as close to one curved wall as it would go, made up none too neatly, with his things scattered on top of it.

“He’s not here,” Lilia said, her tone disappointed.

“He can’t have gone far, and he’ll surely be back. His things are still here.” He nodded at the black suit Father Dom had been wearing when he’d first arrived, which had been tossed carelessly into the corner. There was a battered old suitcase on the floor, a shaving kit on the bed.

“We don’t need his things.”

“But he said he had a book—an old journal that told the story of our past together.”

He was already bending to open the suitcase, while Lilia went to the glass to look outside, slowly circling the room so she could explore in every direction.

In the case, he found a book, large and old, and bound in black leather.

“There he is!” she shouted.

Demetrius tucked the book under his arm and hurried to her side, staring down at the man who had paused just beyond the front gate to turn and look up at the house, a man who didn’t look like Father Dom at all, not even the Father Dom who’d worn the gaudy cactus shirt.

He was wearing a white tunic with swaths of purple fabric draped around it and over one shoulder. His hair had lengthened and thickened and grown darker, far darker, and his belly thrust out like a woman late in pregnancy.

Demetrius shook his head. “That’s not him.” But he recalled the purple fabric he’d glimpsed in this room before. He snatched one of the small secondary lenses from a stand near the telescope and peered through it.

Father Dom—and it
was
Father Dom, Demetrius realized—had changed more than his clothes. He’d lined his eyes and reddened his lips. But it was more than the makeup and more than the clothes. His cheeks were plump and pink, and he’d developed a double chin, when a few days ago his face had been drawn and gray. And that pendant with the dragon on it was still around his neck. Father Dom looked up, and Demetrius could have sworn that the old priest was looking right back at him, straight into his eyes.

“Let
me
see,” Lilia said. He handed her the lens. She held it to her eye, then gasped and staggered three steps backward. Her eyes were wide. “You’re right, that’s
not
Father Dom,” she whispered. “It’s Sindar.”

Everything in him went icy cold as the name turned a lock in his mind and he remembered the high priest he’d vowed to take vengeance on, the man who’d tortured and murdered the woman he’d loved. He remembered the dragon pendant, symbol of the Babylonian god Marduk.

“The same man who had you killed?” he asked, though he already knew.

“The same man who stripped you of your soul,” she said. “He hates you, Demetrius. He hates us all.”

“I don’t understand. If he hates me, why would he want me to keep my powers? To remain immortal?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and, frowning, sniffed the air. “Demetrius,” she whispered. “Do you smell smoke?”

* * *

Lilia turned panicked eyes on Demetrius as sooty gray smoke began puffing up around the trapdoor. He saw it, too, and dropped the leather book he’d been holding, moving her gently aside. Then he bent toward the trapdoor and reached to yank it open. But it didn’t move, making her blood run cold.

“He must have rigged the door to trap us in here.” He continued yanking vainly on it.

Lena backed away, then spotted the book he’d dropped and she grabbed it. Something told her it might be important.

“The amulet, Demetrius. Use it.”

He nodded, straightened and focused intently on the trapdoor. Then he suddenly thrust one fist at the door and it exploded, letting the smoke come rushing in at them.

“Grab the blanket!” he shouted.

She did, holding it around her mouth and nose as they scrambled down the spiral stairs. Demetrius ran to the door that led down to the second floor and pulled it open, only to see a wall of red-orange flames licking at the ceiling. It had happened so fast!

He slammed the door closed again. “He must have set the place on fire before he left,” he said. “Sid and Gus—” He was choking on the smoke and couldn’t finish the sentence.

Lilia ran to the far end of his bedroom to open the French doors. Stumbling onto the balcony, she sucked in great greedy gulps of air and wiped the tears from her stinging eyes.

Demetrius was beside her a moment later, pulling the doors closed behind him. They both leaned over the railing, looking down at the beautiful mansion. Flames were leaping from an alarming number of windows.

“We’re going to have to jump,” he said.

“What about the stairway to your private garden?”

“The smoke would get us before we got that far. And we could burn to ashes before we revived.”

“If our bodies are destroyed, it’s over. We won’t come back from that,” she told him.

He looked back into the increasingly smoke-filled bedroom. “I’ve got to get the chalice and the blade from the safe.”

“Don’t be insane! You’ll be killed!”

“At the moment, I’m still immortal,” he reminded her. “I know I can make it. We might need those tools, Lilia. We have no idea what Sindar’s intentions are.”

He clasped her shoulders, kissed her forehead. “Don’t wait for me if it gets too—”

“Just go!”

Nodding, he flung open the doors and ran into the smoke. Lilia didn’t close them behind him. She stood trying to peer through the smoke to see him, the blanket over her face, coughing now and then. Moments ticked past, then still more.

“Demetrius?” she called. “Demetrius, are you—”

He emerged from the smoke so suddenly that she jumped backward, and then he was with her once more, shutting the doors and trapping the smoke inside. He had a small leather satchel in one hand, presumably with the chalice and the dagger inside, and his cell phone in the other.