Blood of the Sorceress Read online

  He was intrigued and excited by all those things, because they were part of what he’d expected to experience with the women he’d encountered so far. But he’d failed. Nothing had lived up to what he had believed sex would be. His senses, in the memory or dream or whatever it had been, had been heightened in a way they had never been in his brief existence on the physical plane. He’d decided he must be incapable of such feelings. But now, it seemed to him that if he could feel those things so vividly in a vision, he must be capable of experiencing them in real life, after all.

  The unanswered questions circled each other in his brain. Had it been a vision or a memory? Was it true that he’d lived another lifetime? And if so, had he really been that aware? That alive? Was that the way it was supposed to be? Was that what others were feeling when they talked about delicious food and fantastic sex? Was that what he’d been missing?

  Or was it all just a part of the witch’s spell?

  * * *

  Lilia stood at the gate of the palatial home, exhausted and uncomfortably hot as the taxicab rolled out of sight. It was ninety-five degrees in the shade. But beautiful. She didn’t think she had ever seen a more beautiful place on this planet. Not just the house itself, which was enough to take her breath away, but the natural beauty that surrounded it. The towering red rock formations of southern Arizona against a backdrop of sky so blue and so cloudless it was hard to believe it was real. The place was outside the tourist trap of Sedona, but near enough for her to feel the energy of the legendary vortices. They spoke especially deeply to a creature like her, not yet quite human and deeply attuned to energy fields.

  She would be human again, though—if she could convince Demetrius to accept the final piece of his soul. If that happened she would be earthbound again in no time, and so would he. And they would finally have a chance to live the lives that had been stolen from them so long ago.

  For three-thousand, five-hundred years she had waited for this day. And now it was here. It was time to begin fulfilling the mission she’d set into motion so long ago. So why was she still standing at the gate like an orphan in hope of a handout?

  Because I’m afraid, that’s why. Because if I fail, it’s all over. This physical part of it, anyway. I like being alive, dammit. And I want to be alive with him.

  She’d disembarked the plane in Phoenix, and even from that distance she’d been able to feel his essence pulling her northward. But she hadn’t known how far, so she’d phoned Magdalena. “I’m in Phoenix. He’s north of me. Did your scrying pinpoint his location?”

  “Yes, it worked perfectly.”

  Lilia’s rush of relief had been tempered by the knowledge of how much Lena must hate Demetrius after what he had put her through.

  How was she ever going to mend that rift between her soul mate and her family?

  One thing at a time, Lilia. There’ll be no rift to mend if you’re both back in the spirit realm. Or worse.

  “Sedona,” Lena had said. “Go to Sedona. He’s near a vortex.”

  “Thank you, Lena.”

  Lilia had hated to end the call, already homesick for Milbury and her sisters, her mother and Ellie. But she was feeling a sense of urgency to get to her love, though she didn’t know why.

  And now she was here, and still feeling that urgency. The pull he exerted was more powerful now than ever. He was so close. And yet she was hesitant, fear of failure pinning her hands to her sides.

  She closed her eyes and began to sing very softly, slow and deep, her voice taking on a resonance it did not have when she spoke. Enchantment. The tune came to her from some higher part of her.

  Come to me, she sang, each word long and drawn out. Welcome me into your home, into your arms. Come, my love, to me.

  When she sang, she became the song, a part of her spirit flowing forth with the melody and floating gently to the intended target, so that her awareness of her body, of her surroundings, faded to nearly nothing. She repeated the verse until she was like a wisp of air, floating to him. And she saw him, vividly and clearly.

  He was soaking in a cool, bubbling tub in a hidden garden, with his head leaning against a cushioned rest and his eyes closed. She kept on singing, over and over, as she drank him in. He was the same. He was just the same.

  His skin was that same sun-kissed desert bronze. He had the same powerfully chiseled chest, broad and strong. The same soldier’s arms, bulging with the muscle that came from wielding his heavy sword and shield. His black hair was wet and slicked back. His thickly lashed eyes were closed, and those full lips she so longed to taste again relaxed, slightly apart. His skin was beaded with water, and she was overcome with a wave of desire so powerful it sucked her right back into her body.

  She landed there with a crash, pressing a hand to her head and realizing she was on the ground.

  She would have to do better and not let her physical yearning for the man overwhelm her spiritual obligation. It would not be easy. She had loved him passionately, in every way. But that had been in another lifetime. A lifetime he’d forgotten. Even if he accepted the last piece of his soul from her and became fully human, that did not necessarily mean he would love her again.

  Getting to her feet, she brushed herself off and prepared to try again. But she was interrupted by a man’s voice. “Well now, who do we have here?”

  She looked through the bars of the wrought-iron gate to meet a pair of pale blue eyes she had seen once before, in the alley where she had first appeared. And maybe...somewhere else, as well. The man recognized her at the same instant, and his eyes widened in what might have been fear. “By God, you’re the witch, aren’t you?”

  She smiled gently, nodding just twice, and began humming a tune at him almost too softly for him to hear, as she thought the words at him. I’m your friend and his salvation. You see me with adoration. My staunch ally you shall be, by the power of sisters three.

  Gus blinked and gave his head a shake, but he was opening the gate even before she could ask him to. “D-man will probably kill me for this, but I think he needs you.”

  “You’re right, Gus. He does.” She passed through the gate, watching as Gus closed it behind her. “You really are looking well,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “Damn sight better than the last time you saw me, eh? Yeah, we’ve moved up in the world. I suspect you had something to do with that.”

  She lowered her eyes. “Not me. He had the power all along, he just didn’t know how to use it. Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.” He walked with her toward the front entrance. “He vanishes sometimes. Disappears for hours, then shows up like nothing ever happened.”

  They passed a fork in the stone-paved drive that led to a grotto where beautiful women splashed in a pool with a fountain. A few men were with them. Not many.

  “This place is like a maze,” Gus said, and he tapped her shoulder to get her focus off the women and onto him again as he led her up the broad flagstone steps to the front door. “A person could get lost wandering in here. I think he likes it that way. I make it a point never to try too hard to find him when he goes off by himself like this.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, pretending interest in the house, but her throat was tight and she wasn’t really seeing it. “Who are...all those women?”

  “Guests,” he said. “Now, if you give me a minute, I’ll—”

  “Whose guests?”

  Gus looked at her, frowned a little. “Mine, to be honest. I know it probably seems...kinda primitive to a lady like you. But I like beautiful women, lots of them, around me. And I’m not kidding myself. They wouldn’t be here, short of gunpoint, if they didn’t think they were gonna get something out of it. The money, the mansion, it all draws ’em in like flies to sugar, mostly hoping they’ll have a shot with the D-man, but figuring I make a good consolation prize.”

  She tilted her head as she studied his sad eyes. “I think you sell yourself short. You’re not a bad-looking man, you know. And I ca
n feel that you have a good heart, Gus. Maybe you should focus less on women who look good in that pool out there and more on finding one who’s a match for you on a deeper level.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “So they...they come here to try to seduce Demetrius?”

  “Would do it, too, if he ever gave any of ’em the time of day. He did at first, but lately... D’s a shade too fussy, if you want my opinion.” He led her through a high-ceilinged octagonal foyer with two-story windows, all arched at the top, and into a smaller sitting area off one side. It was a comfortable room, with bookshelves on one wall, a seventy-two-inch flat-screen TV on another and a giant window on the third. There was an island bar with stools in front, and deeply upholstered armchairs in colors ranging from russet and brown to mustard and sunflower, all with pillows and chenille throws tossed invitingly over them. Her feet sank into the plush carpet so deeply they left footprints. A beautiful room. But not where she wanted to be.

  “You make yourself at home, Angel, and I’ll—”

  “I’m not an angel, Gus.”

  He grinned again, and she noticed his teeth looked whiter. She suspected he was in the process of getting them fixed. “You look like one to me. I’m gonna go find Sid, and he’ll locate our man for you. All right?”

  She nodded, wondering who Sid was.

  Gus left the room, pulling massive double doors closed behind him.

  But Lilia had no intention of waiting. She was too close to Demetrius now to delay. She could feel him pulling her nearer. She didn’t need anyone’s help to find him. She got to her feet, opened the double doors and let her senses guide her back across the foyer, up the stairs, down a hall and up another set of stairs.

  The doors at the top were locked. She smiled at the doorknob and sent her spirit flowing through it in song. Little lock, a part of me, I am you, and I’m your key.

  It clicked, and she opened the door and went inside, closing it behind her and turning her fingers in a mimicry of turning a key and relocking the door. As she moved along the hallway, Demetrius emerged through a doorway, rubbing his hair with one plush towel, another anchored at his hips. She drank in the sight of him, his chest so powerful and broad and familiar. Her palms itched to run across it.

  He looked up, spotted her and stopped in midstride. Then he lowered the towel he was holding and stared at her.

  Lilia lost every shred of control she’d thought she possessed. She launched herself forward, pressing her face to his magnificent warm, damp chest, and wrapping her arms around his waist, palms flattening to his powerful back. Her tears flowed like rivers.

  She felt his hands on her shoulders, but she blurted, “Not yet, don’t push me away yet, Demetrius. I’ve waited so long to feel you again. To touch you again. Just give me a minute, just a minute, just one precious, precious minute, please, my love, please...”

  She was weeping, her words broken by sobs that ripped through her chest like fissures opening in the earth, and letting thirty-five-hundred years of emotion come flooding out all at once.

  He stilled his hands on her shoulders and then, grudgingly, reluctantly, slid them downward, over her back, and tightened his arms around her. For a long moment he held her, and she cried and clung and basked in the feel of him. If only, she thought, this moment, this very moment, could last forever.

  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

  The 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.”