Читать книгу Blood of the Sorceress - Maggie Shayne - Страница 8

March …

Being human was absolutely miserable.

“Hey, will you look at that?” The aging man nudged Demetrius with the toe of his tattered sneaker. Demetrius grunted at him, a warning huff, like an animal would make, and huddled deeper into the blanket he’d snatched from an empty baby carriage while the mother wasn’t looking. It wasn’t very big, and the soft smell it had emitted at the beginning was already fading beneath slightly less pleasing aromas.

“C’mon, D-man, stop being so damn grouchy and look.”

Muttering under his breath, he lifted his head. “My name is Demetrius.” He hated when Gus called him by made up nicknames, all of which began with his initial. D-man. D-dog. Just D. And yes, he was grouchy. He was cold, shivering in the bitter March wind. He was hungry, his belly burning with it. His head ached, his eyes watered, and his body was sore from sleeping on concrete and park benches. This experience was not turning out the way he’d hoped.

Gus grinned down at him, tobacco-stained teeth flashing in a weathered, whiskered face. “Over there,” he said.

Demetrius looked where the old man—who had somehow become his only companion—was pointing. Across the busy street, a newly erected digital sign was flashing its message for the first time. They’d been watching as work crews put it up, wondering what useless product it would advertise. Now the scrolling marquee-style message told them The New York State Lottery is now 12.5 Million Dollars!

“And all it takes is a dollar and a dream,” Gus said, shaking his head, a blissful smile on his face.

“We don’t have a dollar between us.” Demetrius wrapped the blanket around his face to protect it from the cold, his eyes peering out from above the warm flannel.

“You could sell your trinkets, trade ’em for a few bucks.” As he said it, Gus hunkered low, reaching for one of the plastic shopping bags Demetrius kept tied to his belt. Before Gus could blink, Demetrius clamped a large hand around the smaller man’s wrist.

“Don’t touch my things.”

“Awright, awright!” Gus pulled his hand away, rubbing his wrist. “Damn, D, I wasn’t gonna steal it. Why you always gotta be so touchy about those treasures of yours, anyway?” He waited for a reply he wasn’t going to get before going on. “I mean, I get it about the knife. A man needs a weapon out here. And I guess I understand about the necklace. Sort of. I mean, it’s kinda girly, but it’s nice enough.” Demetrius lifted his head and sent the other man a glare for that comment, but Gus went right on. “But that danged cup. What the hell does a guy like you need with a fancy-ass mug like that, anyway? We could pawn that thing. Prob’ly get enough to pay for a night in a nice place. A decent meal. A whole suit of clothes, for cryin’ out loud.”

“They are mine. They’re all I have. And they mean something. I just don’t know what yet.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the fairy tale. You’re not quite human. You came from another realm, got yourself a body with the help of three witches.”

“Two,” Demetrius corrected. Though there were supposed to be three. The mass of useless knowledge swirling around in his brain, more and more coming to the surface all the time in disjointed and mostly meaningless bits, had told him there should have been three. But he was sure there had only been two. One had freed him from the darkness where he’d been trapped for … always. It must have been always, because he didn’t remember there being a before. And yet, he had some vague notion of having once been human. But the witches, the three witches …

The first witch had opened the Portal, allowing him to see into the human world, where he’d observed, then absorbed everything he’d seen. And the second one had somehow helped him to manifest a body. And that body had come with the dagger, the chalice and the amulet.

They meant something.

He imagined the third witch was supposed to help him figure out how to make his way in this world where money was king and one had to have mountains of it in order to exist. This world where he had no idea how to get any of that money for himself. That had to be her task. But she had not arrived to help him yet.

Nearly two months of misery had him wondering if she ever would. Seven weeks of living on the streets with the other homeless, many of them suffering from broken minds, had him wondering if any of what he believed to be his history was real. Or if, perhaps, he was as mentally ill as Alice, who thought she’d been impregnated by an alien and was due to have her baby any day now. Gus said she’d been waiting to give birth for years, but that didn’t seem to affect her delusion. Maybe his own backstory was like that. A symptom of an illness, and not a real history at all.

“I don’t see why, if you have enough imagination to think you came from some other dimension, you can’t use it for something positive.”

“Something like what?”

“Like dreaming, D. It doesn’t hurt to dream, you know.” Gus put a hand on Demetrius’s shoulder. “Try it, huh? What else we got to do, anyway?”

“Dreaming?” He sounded irritated, because he was. Though he was doubting his own sanity, it angered him that Gus didn’t believe his tale. Maybe more than it should.

“Dream a little with me, Demetrius.”

Using his full name to soften him up, Demetrius thought. Clever old Gus.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Just think about it. What would you do with twelve million bucks?”

Demetrius’s brows rose in two arches, the idea far more appealing than he’d expected it to be. Grudgingly, he lowered the blanket from his face, settling it around his shoulders, and looked at his only friend in this world. “I suppose it can’t hurt to dream.” He closed his eyes and thought about it. What would he have, if he could have anything he wanted? What, exactly, was the point of going through so much to manifest in a human body, anyway? What desires had driven him at the beginning? What desires did he have now?

He knew immediately, and his eyes popped open. “Do you remember that TV show we watched in the window of the electronics place the other night?”

Gus tipped his head, thinking back as Demetrius willed him to remember. They’d been standing together outside the appliance store, watching the televisions in the windows, which were always playing whenever the store was open. It was one of the few ways they’d found to alleviate the monotony of their lives, and the owner usually let them loiter for a solid thirty minutes before coming out to yell at them in broken Korean-laced English.

A smile split Gus’s face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and Demetrius knew he had remembered. “The one about the Playboy Mansion?” he asked, grinning further. “Not likely to forget that one, am I?”

“That’s what I would do, if I had twelve million dollars. I’d have a place like that. Gated, private. A staff of servants to see to my every need. Heated swimming pools with waterfalls and fountains. Sprawling, fragrant gardens with every kind of flower and tree. The softest beds imaginable. Anything I want to eat anytime I want it. Beautiful women basking in almost no clothing, eager to satisfy my every desire. And a constant flow of cash without having to work.”

Something tickled at his side as he spoke, and he jerked his head down, pulling his blanket away to see what was crawling on him. The golden dagger seemed to be … glowing. A gleam of golden light in the exact shape of the knife and its sheath shone right through the plastic bag that held them.

“D-man! What the hell?” Gus crab-walked backward along the alley floor, his eyes wide and focused on the glowing bag.

Demetrius scrambled to his feet, turning his back to the sidewalk, intuitively wanting to hide the bag at his waist from the view of strangers. He moved fast, deeper into the alley that was, for the most part, their home, past Gus, and past the bins overflowing with trash, until he was well enough hidden to examine this phenomenon more closely. Gus came up behind him but kept his distance, his eyes wide and riveted on the illuminated grocery sack.

Demetrius removed his blade from the plastic bag that hid it from would-be thieves and slid the double-edged dagger from its jeweled sheath. It was glowing. No question.

“You were right, D! I can’t believe … but you were right. Them trinkets of yours … they’re some kind of magic.”

Demetrius shot Gus a look over his shoulder. “But why now?”

“Because! Don’t you see? You were dreaming. Imagining. Visualizing. Isn’t that what those witches of yours do when they want to cast spells? Visualize?”

Demetrius stared at the glowing blade, saying nothing. Gradually the light began to fade, and then it was gone.

“Do it again, boss. Visualize the shit outta that dream life you were talking about before. And make damn sure I’m in it, too!”

“But—”

“Wait, wait, wait, let me help get’cha started.” Gus had lost his fear of the apparently enchanted weapon and moved up close, standing shoulder to shoulder with Demetrius, who thought Gus must have been an impressive man once. They were close to the same height, and there were traces of what must have been an almost regal bone structure in Gus’s face. Every once in a while, when Demetrius looked at him, he saw someone else in the old man’s eyes. Someone vaguely familiar.

“See it with me now,” Gus was saying. “See it real clear in your mind. Playboy Mansion. Big gorgeous house. And good old Gus is the head of security, D-dog’s right-hand man. He’s wearing fine clothes, shiny shoes, a nice suit. Catalogue nice. Gus decides who gets in and who has to stay the hell out.” He pounded his chest with a fist. “I’ll protect you from the swarms who’d take advantage of a guy like you, bein’ new here and all. Shoot, I know how. I was a soldier once.”

That brought Demetrius right out of his vision. “You were?”

“Shh. Not now, Dog. We got visualizing to do. Now see it, damn you. See it. See the pool? It’s bluer than blue, crystalline water sparkling in the sunshine. It’s warm all the time. Like summer, year-round.”

Demetrius nodded, wanting to examine the knife but resigned to shutting Gus up first. “All right, all right. I see the pool. It’s kidney-shaped. And there’s a waterfall off to one side, natural-looking, with stones all piled up.” He really was seeing it—and enjoying the vision playing out in his mind, though he would rather be shot than admit that to Gus. “And off to the side, just above it, there’s a bubbling spa tub that looks like a pond and spills over to feed the waterfall.”

“Ah, that’s nice. And there’s a—a poolside bar, fully stocked all the time. And women in bikinis everywhere you look. Can you see them, D-man? There’s a redhead with bazongas out to here, and there’s a brunette with a butt so round you want to bite it.”

Demetrius frowned. He could see the bikini-clad beauties, all right. But they all looked alike. Pale corn silk–haired angels with piercing blue, blue eyes.

No, no, no, not her. Not her. She’ll ruin it all.

What an odd thing for me to think, I don’t even know who she is.

“And the cars, oh, Dog, the cars. Be sure you visualize a big garage in there someplace, and fill it with the hottest cars. Like that Jag we saw the other day. And a long black limo, with a driver who knows everything we could ever need to know.”

Cars, yes, cars. A good way to get the blonde out of his head. He’d seen enough kinds of cars speeding past his alley to know what he liked. He wanted one of those giant SUVs, and the limousine and Jaguar Gus had mentioned. And then some of those sports cars that made his pulse speed up. A Mustang. A 370Z. A Carrera.

He tried to see himself behind the wheel, but every one of his imaginary vehicles had that blonde sitting in the passenger seat. Every glimpse of her made his heart rate speed up and his nerve endings jump with fear. Who was she? And why was he afraid of her?

There was more tingling going on. It was happening behind him this time, near his hip, where his silver chalice hung in its own plastic bag. He quickly ripped the bag open, tearing it in the process, which meant he would have to find another one. He took the cup out and looked inside it, where the light was coming from. It was filled with … something. Swirling colors, and … was that a face taking shape?

Do as I tell you, Demetrius.

“Who said that?” He looked left and right, then turned to look behind, too, but there was no one there.

“Who said what?” Gus asked.

Demetrius looked at his friend, saw the worry forming in the old man’s eyes. “Didn’t you hear that? A woman. Kind of whispering.”

Gus took a step backward. “What’d she say?”

“She said to do what she tells me.”

“Then do it, boy, there’s magic goin’ on here! And keep visualizing. Don’t you stop. Make sure I’m in it. Don’t leave me out, D.”

Demetrius tried to keep visualizing his own personal den of pleasures, tried to keep seeing Gus as a part of it, but that damned blue-eyed blonde kept popping in everywhere. She was in the sprawling living room with its wall-sized gas fireplace and in the theater room with its giant movie screen. She was sprawled invitingly on his giant four-poster bed’s satin sheets.

The knife in his hand was getting hot and feeling kind of jumpy. And the cup was vibrating, swirling.

Lower the dagger into the chalice and say these words.

“She wants me to put the knife into the cup,” Demetrius said.

“Well? Do it!” Gus stomped his foot. “Do it, damn you.”

Demetrius flipped the dagger so the point was aiming downward and moved it over the cup. Actually, he didn’t have to move it, because it felt as if something was pulling his hand toward that big sparkling mug. He started lowering the blade. It seemed to want to move slowly, so he let it—whatever it was—guide his hand.

Say these words as you lower it, she told him. As the rod is to the God, so the chalice is to the Goddess.

“That’s stupid. I’m not saying that. It doesn’t even make any—”

Say it!

“All right. All right. As the rod is to the God …”

“Huh?” Gus asked. “What’s this now?”

“It’s what she wants me to say. ‘As the rod is to the God.’”

“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.”

Then Magdalena, who had been the eldest, came up beside Indy, with hair that was a mass of coppery red ringlets and the flawless skin of a porcelain doll. “Lilia?” she whispered. Her lower lip was quivering.

“Lena.”

The hesitation broke, and the three women were suddenly in each other’s arms and sobbing so hard they almost couldn’t remain standing. They held on for a long, long time.

“How?” Indy asked. “We thought we’d have to reopen the Portal, perform a ritual, to get you here.”

“Demetrius.”

They both went stiff, their eyes widening.

“He’s not what you thought he was, not in this lifetime, my sisters,” Lilia said, wishing for their understanding but refusing to use magic to get it.

Lena lowered her head, taking a step back. “He tried to take my baby, Lil,” she said.

“Your baby …” Lilia tore herself from the arms of her older sisters and gazed toward the car and the two handsome men who stood there, waiting patiently while the sisters had their reunion. The dark Spaniard, Tomas, former priest of Marduk, lifetimes ago. The other, Ryan, who had once been a prince of Babylon and was the father of Lilia’s precious niece, Eleanora. He was holding the baby in his arms.

Lilia wanted to rush to them, to hold the child, but she held herself back. “When the time comes,” she said softly, for her sisters’ ears alone, “you’ll want them far from us.”

“When will that be?” Indy asked.

“I don’t know yet, but it will be soon.”

“What happens when the time comes, whenever it is?” Lena was looking from her husband and daughter to her newly arrived sister over and over. “What happens, Lilia?”

“I don’t know. I only know the cycle is coming to an end, and that there will be a great battle.”

Indira rolled her eyes. “With who? Your pain-in-the-ass former demon lover?”

“He was never a demon,” Lilia snapped.

“He sure as hell acted like one.”

Lowering her head, Lilia sighed. “As soon as we know when it’s all coming to a head, you’ll need to arrange to have your loved ones far from you. That’s all I’m saying.” Her eyes were drawn to the baby again. “Now, may I please meet my beautiful niece?”

Lena sighed, but nodded. The moment she did, Lilia hurried closer, reaching out, and Ryan placed the wriggling infant into her arms.

Standing close to her side, looking on, Lena said, “Where is he?”

“Who?” Lilia was so distracted by the tiny baby, only seven weeks old, that she was no longer thinking straight.

“Demetrius, that’s who. I don’t care if he is your love, Lilia, I don’t want him anywhere near Ellie.”

Lilia nodded, tugging her eyes from the child to meet her sister’s steady gaze. “He’s in the Intensive Care Unit. He’s no threat to her now.”

They all looked at her, questions in their eyes. She returned her gaze to the angelic little bundle with her rosebud lips and gentle coo. She was holding Lilia’s forefinger in her tiny fist.

“What happened to him, anyway?” Tomas asked at last.

“He was hit by a car.” Lilia shuddered at the memory. “I … Oh, there’s so much to explain. Is there someplace we can—”

“We can take you back to our place, but then you’ll be hours away. Are you sure you want to leave him?”

Lilia closed her eyes and felt for the answer, and as always, it came from that deep well of knowing that had guided her this far. “I’m sure that I don’t want to leave him. Not ever again. But I have to. He needs to experience life without the final part of his soul before I offer it back to him. He has to choose. And he has to know what he’s giving up when he chooses it. He doesn’t yet. He needs more time to learn what he’s capable of, what life can be like for him as he is.”

“How much time?” Indy asked.

Lilia shrugged. “I’ll know when it’s time to go to him. That’s all I can tell you.”

She gazed up at the hospital, and her heart ached for her love. “Yes, my sisters. For now, yes. I would love to go home with you.”

Demetrius felt pain, and with it, relief.

He’d been in some other state, not feeling anything at all, and wondering if he’d been somehow returned to the Underworld prison, the dark, sensory-deprived void from which he’d escaped. It was similar to that, the darkness, the confusion, the mind-without-body-attached feeling. Not identical, of course, but that sense of being trapped in a dream, of trying to wake and being unable to—it had been enough to terrify him.

So when he felt the pain of his broken body, it brought a rush of relief so big that he was almost limp with it. Only then did he realize that, as miserable as this physical experience of life had been for him, he did not want it to end.

He was alive. Thank the Gods, he was still alive.

Sighing, he forced his eyes open and blinked the room around him into focus. He was in a bed, a real bed, soft and clean. There were crisp white sheets and warm blankets over him, and one arm was in a cast. He looked beyond the stranger who was sound asleep in a chair beside the bed and took in the white walls, the single window, the TV set mounted on the wall. A long curtain suspended from a track in the ceiling to his right ended his visual tour just as the sleeping stranger began stirring in his chair.

“D-man?” he asked.

Frowning, Demetrius turned his head and realized the man in the chair was no stranger after all. “Gus?” He was … he was clean. He’d shaved, gotten a haircut and was dressed in clothes that looked new. Brown trousers, with a matching suit jacket over an ivory button-down shirt without a stain in sight. “Did I wake up in some other dimension? Or am I dreaming you now?”

Gus smiled. His teeth were still stained yellow, which reassured Demetrius that they hadn’t both died and moved on to some heavenly realm.

“I’m just glad you woke up at all, boss. You feel okay?” Gus got up, went to the foot of the bed and pushed a button that raised the top part of the mattress until Demetrius was sitting up.

“I’m sore all over, but otherwise fine. I think. What is this place?”

“Hospital,” Gus said. Returning to the bedside, he poured water from a pitcher on the nightstand, held it out. “You remember what happened?”

Demetrius sipped the water, thinking, nodding, sipping some more. “I remember the car hitting me. I thought my brief stay in the physical world was over, I’ll tell you.”

“It’s just getting started, D-man. Do you remember before that? You remember the magic that started happening with those treasures of yours?”

At the mention of his sole possessions, a cold bolt of panic shot up Demetrius’s spine, and he found himself looking down, even knowing his blade and chalice couldn’t be at his waist. He pressed one hand to his chest, but his amulet was gone, as well.

“Don’t worry, boss,” Gus said. “I got your things. They’re safe and sound, and so are you.”

More memories returned in a rush, and he brought his head up to meet Gus’s eyes. “What about the woman?”

Gus glanced quickly toward that door, as if to be sure no one was listening in. Then he leaned closer. “That was something, wasn’t it? The way she just flashed into that alley, buck naked, like some kind of Terminator?”

“I don’t know the reference.” While his body seemed to have come preprogrammed with knowledge of language and customs and the ways of the world, he did, on occasion, find things lacking. Pop-culture references were topmost on the list. But mention of the woman sent another shot of ice into his blood. “Where is she?” he asked, all but whispering, eyeing the curtain, wondering if she lurked on the other side.

“Don’t know. She was gone by the time I looked for her. Course I was distracted by your … accident.”

“She just vanished?”

“Or ran away. Who is she? Or maybe I oughtta ask, what is she?”

“I don’t know.”

Gus frowned hard, his whole face puckering. “Now I know you’re lying, D.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. But I know you know something. Because when that naked blonde popped in, you were scared, man. I saw it, dead fear all over your face, just before you ran for your life, straight into traffic. As lucky as that was for us, I still wanna know what’s so damned scary about her.”

Demetrius lowered his eyes. “I’m not lying to you, Gus. I don’t know. But you’re right, the sight of her scared the hell out of me.” Then he paused, frowned, looked up at Gus again. “What do you mean, it was lucky for us?”

Gus smiled, yellow teeth gleaming. “I’m not sure it was luck, exactly. You were doing all that visualizing, after all.” He nodded. “That fella who hit you? Drunk as a skunk. But even then, I knew who he was. Everyone knows who he is. Ned Nelson.”

Demetrius pursed his lips, shook his head.

“Owns what they call a media empire. TV stations, publishing companies, radio, God only knows what all. He’s so rich he gives billions to charity. I mean, we’re talking big money, D. Big money. Been rumors he wants to run for President next time around, and I guess they’re true, ’cause he was in a dead panic about being arrested for driving drunk and damn near killing a homeless guy. A dead panic. No one else saw it happen—and I don’t think that was just luck, either.” He shrugged. “So we made a deal.”

Demetrius blinked. “What kind of a deal?”

“I tell the cops I was driving him home, take the rap for driving without a license. They probably know better, but they also know him, so they’re not gonna buck it. And he’ll pay any fines laid on me, hire me a lawyer if needs be. Won’t be, though. You did run out in front of me, after all.”

Demetrius was sitting up in bed. “And in return?”

“He said we could have anything we wanted. So … I got us what we wanted. And enough shares of stock in his companies to keep it for a long, long time.”

“You got us … what we wanted?” Demetrius repeated, trying to process what Gus was saying.

“You remember, don’t you? What we were dreaming about when your trinkets started glowing? You remember. We’ve got it now, my friend. We’ve got all of it.”