Blood of the Sorceress (18 page)

She closed her eyes, but tears seeped out all the same. His fingertips touched one of them as it rolled down her cheek.

“What was your plan, exactly?”

“That we would not cross into the afterlife when our bodies were dashed against the rocks below that cliff where so many of Sindar’s victims had died before us. We vowed that, together, we would find you in the cave where Sindar secretly performed the darkest of his rites. He was never a holy man, this we knew. But what could we do?”

“How did you know?”

“A witch knows good from evil, Demetrius. She just does.”

Yes, she thought. A witch knows. So why wasn’t she sensing evil now? Demetrius was good. He had to be.

“So your spirits somehow floated to this cave...”

“Yes. He was tearing your soul from your body. But we snatched it from him. We stole some of his tools, whatever we could grab, powerful tools, imbued with magic. Indy took the amulet and bound a part of your soul within it, at the same time binding it to her own, so no one could ever find it but her. Lena took the chalice and the blade, which Sindar had confiscated from our quarters, and did the same. I had no tool, only one part of you, the part that loved me, the part that was already bound to me. Your heart...” She put her palm on his naked chest and smiled. “The essence of it, not the organ.”

“So you had no tool. Where did you hide it?” he asked.

She closed her other hand around his wrist and brought it to her chest. “You know where,” she whispered. “Right where it’s always been.”

He was so close to her, touching her, naked, in the bubbling pool. She sat there, her palm to his chest, his to hers, just basking in this moment. In touching him. In being so close. His scent, his energy, his essence. No, there was no evil here.

“Are you doing this?” he asked softly, his voice gruff and coarse.

“Doing what?”

“Making me want you?” She met his eyes. “I’m trying my hardest. But not by magic, if that’s what you mean.”

His lips tightened, as if he wanted to smile but was resisting. “I’m not ready to give up my immortality for you, woman.”

“I’m not asking you to. Not here, not now.” She was closer to him now. She had no memory of moving, but she had. Her smooth thigh brushed against his broad, hairy one. Her shoulder pressed up tight to his arm, and when she turned her head to gaze at the face she so adored, she found his eyes gazing right back at her. Mere inches lay between her lips and the ones she longed to kiss.

“I was captive in a void for so long,” he whispered, breath warm on her mouth. His eyes roamed her face until they seemed to get stuck on her lips. “I’m enjoying being alive too much to give it up.”

“You’ve only been half alive,” she whispered. “As I’ve been trying to show you.”

“You
have
shown me. I understand what you were trying to tell me now. It’s true, my entire experience has been filtered, dulled. It’s amazing how different it is when I see it through your eyes.”

“Through your own soul,” she corrected him gently.

“Yes. I just...I don’t know if it’s worth giving up my immortality for. I may be missing a lot of the sensory pleasures of life, but I
am
alive, and I will be forever.”

She leaned in closer, lifting her chin and putting her mouth so close to his that their lips were almost touching. Hers brushed his mouth as she said, very softly, “Why don’t you let me show you a few more of those sensory pleasures you’ve been missing, Demetrius?”

He gave a low, growling consent, and then his lips captured hers and his arms wrapped right around her. He slid his big hands beneath her and kneaded her backside as he lifted her to straddle him. And then he tore her panties, first at one hip and then the other, and pulled them free. She barely noticed the friction, she was so lost in the feel of his chest against hers, his mouth feeding from hers, his hands all over her.

Her breath came faster, shorter, as she moved against his familiar hardness. She’d missed this beautiful part of being human. Of being physical. Loving was the best part of living, she decided. And she wondered why it was so powerful, and then stopped wondering and gave herself over to simply feeling.

He’d unfastened her bra and tugged it down her arms, forcing her to let go of him long enough to pull her arms through the straps. And then he bent and tasted her breasts, one and then the other, lapping lovingly, tugging playfully, nipping and making her gasp when she least expected it. She looked down at him, watching his dark head as he sucked and nibbled, until the pleasure was too much to bear and her head fell backward.

“Are you feeling it, my love? Is it above and beyond?” she whispered brokenly. He nodded, because he couldn’t speak with his mouth full of her. And then he gripped her butt again, lifted her up a little and settled her over him, so the tip of him was just nudging into her. Then he brought her down all at once, sheathing himself inside her to the hilt.

His invasion drove every bit of air from her lungs, and she felt a moment of absolute bliss at the union. For an instant she gripped his shoulders, willing him to hold still and just feel. It was nearly an orgasm in itself. They were together again. He was with her; they were one. After thirty-five-hundred years of longing for him, that instant when he slid home was sheer heaven.

And it only got better from there. He moved, despite her attempt to keep him still. He was too strong for that, his hands too demanding. He lifted her up and brought her down again over and over. She moved with him as much as those commanding hands would allow, and they twisted and arched against each other, yearning, reaching, uniting. Over and over he pushed her near, then relaxed away, built the passion, then eased it back, teasing, taunting, tempting, making her burn hotter with every round, like waves rolling up over the beach, then retreating back to the sea, reaching further inland each time as the tide rose higher and higher.

For an hour he played with her, teased her, until at last he held her close when she expected him to pull back yet again. He gripped her against him and drove deeper, faster, again and again. There was no resisting the climax this time. Like water surging through a broken dam, it hit hard and swept them both into its torrent, rolling over them, carrying them, until at last they crashed onto the shore together, clinging, panting. Her heart was pounding so hard she didn’t think she could survive, and his pounded even harder against her chest. She rested her head on his shoulder, her entire body relaxed, almost limp with satisfaction. She closed her eyes and thought this was the happiest she had ever been. And if this was all she ever had with him, then it was worth all the time she’d worked toward it.

* * *

Demetrius held her and felt her trembling against him in the aftermath of the storm. The physical release, the pleasure—too small a word—the
ecstasy,
had his body shivering and his brain completely numb. He was weak in the wake of it. Content. Blissful. Basking. Completely alive for the first time in his memory. He had to admit that.

When she held him and allowed him to feel things through that connection with her, he realized that she wasn’t lying when she said he was normally only half-alive. Food had tasted a thousand times better. The natural beauty around him had become more vivid, so much so that it had made his heart sing. He’d finally understood why people laughed so hard at comedy, had laughed with her until tears filled his eyes. But this—the sex—had been beyond any of it. Beyond description, really. He couldn’t put words to how it had felt.

And now something else was filling him. Something he recognized, because he’d remembered feeling it in those glimpses of memory, those mind-journeys back in time. So he was fairly certain what it was, and it terrified him. He thought the feeling might be love. And if he loved her, then lost her again, he knew in his heart it would be over for him. He would just end. Even an immortal couldn’t possibly bear that kind of pain twice.

He lifted her off him and set her gently beside him on the seat. Taking the hint, she broke the connection, and his world returned to one of muted colors, tasteless foods, passionless sex. It was like dying a little bit. It was frighteningly akin to the void where he’d been imprisoned. Too empty to bear.

“It can be like that again,” she whispered. “It can be like that every single night if you will let me return the final piece of your soul to you, Demetrius. If you will accept your humanity—”

“And vulnerability. And mortality. And powerlessness.”

“Yes, to the first two. But humans are far from powerless. I can show you. I can teach you.”

He sighed deeply, for the first time truly torn about the decision. She was convincing him, he realized. She was getting through. And he thought he liked it.

But not yet, not now. He needed a clear head, some distance. And yet he didn’t want her to leave his side. Didn’t think he could stand to have her too far from him at this moment. Was that a part of her magic? The effect of the binding spell? Or was it something much more? Something as old as time itself, perhaps?

He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Time for a new subject.

“You never told me what the amulet does.”

She sighed, looking crestfallen, but only briefly. Wiping the disappointed look from her eyes, she put her palm over the amulet where it rested on his chest. “Try to open yourself up to it. Invite its power to course through you, to channel its energy into your body, into your heart and up into your head.” She took her palm away but pressed a forefinger to the amulet, and then traced a path up over his neck, chin, nose, to the very center of his forehead. “Visualize it beaming its light into you, and then direct it up and focus it all right here,” she said, pressing again on the spot in the middle of his forehead slightly above his brows.

He tried, until the spot where the amulet rested seemed to grow warm and he was pretty sure the place between his brows was beginning to tingle. That might have been from her touch, however.

She looked around, pointed. “That potted palm over there. Move it.”

He started to get up, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him back down. “Move it from here.”

He frowned at her, then raised his brows as he finally understood her meaning. “Without touching it?” he said softly.

She nodded.

“That’s what the amulet does?”

Again she nodded. “Try.”

He closed his eyes and visualized the energy of the pendant traveling through his chest, up his body, into the center of his forehead. Then he opened his eyes and stared at the plant, pushing it with his mind.

It moved. Only an inch or two, but there was no question that the entire pot, palm and all, had slid away from him.

He was so stunned that he dropped his focus, and after that he couldn’t repeat the feat no matter how much he tried.

“Indy, my sister, picked up martial arts skills during one of her many lifetimes, but with the amulet’s power, she didn’t need to make contact to send her enemies flying. She moved to direct the energy, and her enemies went down without her putting a hand on them.”

Demetrius blinked, fingering the amulet and staring down at it.

“With practice, you’ll master the way it works best for you.”

“But I’ll lose the ability to use it if I accept your offer and become mortal again?”

She nodded. “Those are the rules as I understand them.”

“Who taught them to you, these rules?” She shrugged, gazing upward at the dark, star-dotted sky far above. “I don’t know. I sort of...absorbed the knowledge during my thirty-five centuries between the worlds. And I have the feeling there’s more I don’t know—I’m sure of it, in fact—but I was only given what I need in order to accomplish what I’ve set out to do.”

“The Gods...want you to succeed, then.”

She shrugged. “Or maybe they only want me to have the chance to succeed. They have a sense of fairness, you know? You and I were robbed of the lifetime we might have had together. It was taken from us in the name of the Gods by Sindar’s evil. So the Gods, for whatever reason, have granted us the chance to make it right.”

“And your sisters, too.”

“Their lives and loves were stolen from them the same way. So yes, my sisters were permitted to incarnate lifetime after lifetime with access to the memories they would need to help you when the time was right, and to remember their lost loves and find them once again. I was permitted to remain in between the worlds to watch over them, to call them into action when the stars aligned and the Veil thinned, and your opportunity to escape that Underworld prison came at last. And now it’s up to you.”

He nodded. “What about the chalice and the blade? Will I lose the powers they possess, as well?” It worried him that he’d said “will I” and not “would I.” Was he that far gone?

“The blade that shoots fire probably won’t shoot fire anymore. But any witch worth her salt can direct energy through an athame, a dagger. It’s just a matter of learning how. And any witch can scry the future in a chalice of water. The visions won’t be as big, as dramatic, but the true power of the witch is in
her,
not in her tools. I can teach you.”

“And what about what happens when I use the two together?”

“Manifesting your dreams as reality?”

He nodded.

“That’s what life as a human being is all about. Those who understand that are able to manifest their dreams every day of their lives. All it takes is the belief that you can make things happen.”

“Then why are there poor and sick and miserable humans everywhere you look?”

She shrugged. “Each for his or her own reasons. They don’t know any other way to be. Or they don’t believe it’s within their power to change their lives. Or they’re so disconnected from their own higher selves that they can’t find their way back. Or they’re on a journey of their own for reasons I can’t begin to guess.”

“And you can teach me this, too, I suppose.”

“I can help you learn. But what you choose to believe is too personal for anyone to influence other than you.”

He sighed. “You didn’t have to show me the power of the amulet. It makes me even less likely to accept your offer.”