Maggie Shayne: Blood of the Sorceress

“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.”