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
